Making Sense - Sam Harris - #392 — Technology & Culture

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

00:00:11.640 you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be

00:00:15.580 hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making

00:00:19.840 Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. There you'll also find our

00:00:24.960 scholarship program, where we offer free accounts to anyone who can't afford one.

00:00:28.340 We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support

00:00:32.860 of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

00:00:45.120 Well, Trump is off to a running start with his appointments, or desired appointments. Some

00:00:53.340 have been comparatively normal, and some have been not. I guess the ones that have provoked

00:01:01.260 the most alarm are Pete Hegseth at Defense, Tulsi Gabbard for the Director of National Intelligence,

00:01:08.980 Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, and Robert Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services.

00:01:14.980 I guess I'm going to abide by my policy, which is to not react until something actually happens.

00:01:24.020 There's some debate about whether all of these are legitimate appointments, or trolls of some

00:01:29.620 kind. On its face, it looks like affirmative action for kooks and ghouls, but let's see what

00:01:37.620 happens. We'll see if these survive confirmation, or get appointed during a recess. Let's wait and see.

00:01:44.860 Today, I'm speaking with Christine Rosen. Christine is a senior fellow at the American

00:01:51.200 Enterprise Institute, and a columnist for Commentary Magazine. She's also a senior editor

00:01:56.780 at the New Atlantis, and a fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies and

00:02:01.900 Culture. And she's the author of a new book, The Extinction of Experience, Being Human in a Disembodied

00:02:08.860 World. Christine and I spoke just as these cabinet appointments were getting started.

00:02:13.880 Marco Rubio had just been mentioned for Secretary of State. That is comparatively normal. But the rest

00:02:22.320 hadn't come in yet. We talk generally about how technology is changing our culture and politics

00:02:27.540 and society. We praise the courage of our friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We talk about lost cultural practices

00:02:35.340 like handwriting, trade-offs in our use of technology, social media, conspiracy thinking,

00:02:42.780 X as a platform for breaking news, the future of journalism, the importance of local news,

00:02:49.080 the asymmetry between the right and left politically with respect to information, the strange case of

00:02:54.860 Tucker Carlson, the anti-Semitic hallucinations of Dan Bilzerian, our expectations for a second Trump

00:03:01.960 presidency, anti-Semitism in America, and other topics. And now I bring you Christine Rosen.

00:03:16.700 I am here with Christine Rosen. Christine, thanks for joining me.

00:03:20.340 Thanks for having me.

00:03:21.440 So I'm a big fan of yours from the commentary podcast that you do with John Putthoritz and others.

00:03:27.680 And also you have a new book, which I really enjoyed, the title of which is The Extinction

00:03:33.580 of Experience, Being Human in a Disembodied World. I want to start with the book because

00:03:39.580 it's interesting and I think it touches on many larger issues that are worth thinking about. But

00:03:45.820 I think we will, in short order, feel the tractor beam pull toward American politics, given that we're

00:03:52.580 just about 10 days out from the presidential election. And given your political experience

00:03:58.380 and your perspective on history and American culture, maybe we can start with you just giving

00:04:05.260 a potted bio here. How do you describe your background politically and intellectually?

00:04:11.320 Well, I was trained as a historian. I went to graduate school in history, studied American

00:04:15.740 intellectual history, but realized I didn't want to go into academia, that I wanted to do something

00:04:21.580 else. And like many young, naive Americans, I found my way to Washington, D.C. and stumbled into

00:04:28.480 the think tank world, first at the American Enterprise Institute briefly, and then to some other

00:04:33.560 institutions, Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is right of center. And then I moved to New

00:04:38.380 America, which is left of center. I found myself, again, like a lot of people, politically somewhere in

00:04:45.080 the middle on some issues, social and cultural mainly, but on things like foreign policy, strong

00:04:51.460 national defense. I was always more conservative. So it became very clear when you come to Washington

00:04:57.400 that you're supposed to choose sides, particularly if you go to work on the Hill. The beauty of many of

00:05:01.980 the think tanks in this town is that you can then you can actually find a very comfortable home where

00:05:06.420 people like to argue about the issues and the ideas, and they don't really care if you're if you have a D or

00:05:11.540 an R after your name or how you vote. So I eventually landed at the American Enterprise Institute, which

00:05:17.280 is where I am now. And it's I've always found it to be an ideologically diverse place in the sense

00:05:23.420 that we have people who started out on the far left and people who started out for the right. Some of us

00:05:29.220 meet in the middle, others don't. We have libertarians who argue with social conservatives. I would place

00:05:34.980 myself kind of where I started, I've probably become a bit more hawkish on national defense issues. But

00:05:42.780 on cultural issues, I've remained largely more centrist. And having raised children has probably

00:05:51.340 made me a little more culturally conservative. So I do define myself as a conservative. But I think

00:05:56.300 nowadays, a lot of these labels are shifting. And even in the last week for a lot of people, I think

00:06:00.400 their understanding of those labels has shifted considerably. Were you among the never Trump

00:06:06.500 conservatives or never Trump Republicans? I never was. I was not a never Trump Republican. I think

00:06:12.640 because and this is actually where reading history books is very useful. It gives I think it gives some

00:06:18.420 humility about the ability of our system to stand up to almost anything that challenges it. I was not

00:06:25.320 a fan of Trump. I did not vote for Trump. And but I didn't think he was quite as evil a force as he was

00:06:33.020 often portrayed to be. I have a fairly healthy skepticism about mainstream media, which which I

00:06:38.020 which comes out of having grown up not in the class of people who go into mainstream media work and from

00:06:43.720 Florida and just a sort of healthy skepticism about what what we're often told to believe. And I felt like

00:06:49.780 a lot of the reaction to Trump initially came from that very elite sense of he's not one of us. We

00:06:56.180 don't understand where he's coming from. He's brash. He's crude. And I didn't like him for many of those

00:07:00.660 reasons as well. But I had a really strong faith in our political system and our system of government

00:07:05.480 and our founders vision of of the upheaval that over the course of hundreds of years, we've been able

00:07:11.440 to weather. So he January 6 tested that for me. Significantly, I actually do believe he should

00:07:18.740 have been impeached and removed and not have been allowed to run for reelection. But that's not what

00:07:23.580 happened. And the history books will judge accordingly. And we shall see with the beginning

00:07:29.400 in inauguration in January how he governs. And I think some of his choices for cabinet, a few have

00:07:35.520 been fine. Others have been slightly alarming. And I think our system is stronger than any one

00:07:43.560 individual who might test its limits. Okay, well, needless to say, we're already feeling the tractor

00:07:50.060 beam pull toward politics and the presidency. I'm going to resist, however, ineffectually for a few

00:07:58.360 more minutes here. First, let me say that I've never had any real connection to AEI or

00:08:05.020 really any direct connection to any of the think tanks, right or left. But I always felt that AEI

00:08:10.420 probably was distant from me politically. But I have undying gratitude for the organization,

00:08:17.060 given that this was the only think tank that would take in my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali when she really

00:08:24.040 needed a perch in the West, in America in particular. But just to see her in flight from theocrats

00:08:31.620 and to see her shunned from liberal think tanks and embraced by a right-of-center think tank that

00:08:39.360 had to assume some considerable security costs for her, I will never forget that.

00:08:44.700 We were very, very lucky to have her here in Washington for the time that she was here.

00:08:49.020 Wonderful, wonderful person who I think taught a lot of us who study, write about, think about

00:08:55.620 virtues like courage, what it actually looks like when you have to behave in courageous fashion. And

00:09:01.440 she has done that again and again for decades at risk to her own life. And I too was very proud

00:09:07.480 of AEI for never hesitating to say, yes, you're someone whose ideas matter, whose freedom matters,

00:09:15.480 and will protect you and give you a place where you can work. And they did that for many, many years.

00:09:20.260 The story is not yet fully written on Ayaan's place in the world, but the fact that she has

00:09:26.320 not been recognized as a feminist icon globally, and you have the Nick Kristoffs of the world still

00:09:34.780 perpetually confused about which way is up here morally and politically. This is one of my hobby

00:09:45.040 horses, which we need not get on, but it's, I just find it infuriating.

00:09:48.640 Well, her foundation has done, yeah, her foundation has done wonderful work in this arena. And I find

00:09:53.820 her description of Kristoff quite diplomatic, actually. So I'll just leave it at that.

00:09:57.860 Okay, well, so your book is really focused on the impact of technology on culture. And you argue

00:10:07.480 that essentially that we need a new approach to humanism, right? So maybe you can just jump into your

00:10:14.060 thesis here. What has worried you about our engagement with technology of late?

00:10:19.100 Well, I think the way I would put it is that we are now in a time and place where we have to actively

00:10:25.780 defend the human. And by that, I mean, it is much easier now going through our days in our personal

00:10:33.800 relationships, in our work lives, in our leisure time, to mediate all of our experiences through

00:10:39.440 technology, whether that's our smartphone, our computer screen, wearable sensor-based technology

00:10:45.300 that more and more people are adopting. It means that we measure the quality of our experiences

00:10:52.260 based on the data that's created when we have them. And we compare and contrast ourselves to others in

00:10:58.500 ways that weren't possible before. And some of these tools are incredible. It allows us to do a great

00:11:04.520 many things, to connect to lots of people. But after several decades of living this way, I feel

00:11:11.200 we're going through life with a worldview that has started to devalue what it means to be an embodied

00:11:17.380 human being. And by that, I mean, we are all attached to physical bodies, but our world in a daily basis

00:11:24.060 doesn't remind us of that often enough. And so we lose some deeply human skills when we mediate

00:11:31.120 everything, whether that's the ability to read those around us, their emotions, their responses,

00:11:36.540 whether that leads to less patience when we have to deal with things that we can't have on demand or

00:11:42.020 immediately swipe, swipe right and get. So in all of these ways, some of them that we can quantify,

00:11:48.860 but many, many more that are qualitative, intuitive. We have changed the way we live as human beings,

00:11:56.560 and our technologists would very much like us to continue swiftly going in that direction.

00:12:02.340 So my book is an argument to say, maybe we need to pause and reconsider some of the ways we're

00:12:07.760 mediating our relationships and our lives, because it doesn't always make us happier, healthier,

00:12:14.780 or even able to get along as human beings in the way that I think these technologists promised us when

00:12:20.180 they created these incredible tools.

00:12:22.440 Yeah, well, there's so many examples of this kind of thing. The one that on its face seems somewhat

00:12:28.320 trivial that you focus on early in the book, I think might not be trivial, and you don't think

00:12:36.040 it is. You go into the neurological reasons why it may not be. But the fact that we no longer teach

00:12:41.660 our kids to write cursive, and I just discovered to my horror that one of my daughters can't even read

00:12:50.180 cursive writing. It never occurred to me that in not being taught to produce handwriting,

00:12:56.880 she would have not been taught to read it. And so I showed her, I think it was, it might have been

00:13:02.900 a note written to her by her grandmother, or something that she should have been able to read,

00:13:08.560 and she looked at it like it was the Rosetta Stone. What, if anything, does one do about this?

00:13:15.380 I mean, so clearly there's only so much bandwidth in a human day and a human life, and there are new

00:13:21.200 things to learn. And these, just by sheer logic, will have to replace some old things that we no

00:13:28.080 longer learn. Take handwriting as an example. What are your thoughts about the fact that we now have,

00:13:35.300 I mean, the truth is, I don't, I can't comfortably handwrite. I've never, I always printed. I mean,

00:13:40.740 this might just be a neurological fact about me rather than a cultural fact about our cohort in

00:13:46.620 school, but I'd actually never, I never was somebody who wrote cursively, although I've done

00:13:52.960 a fair amount of printing. But, you know, as you discuss in your book, there's actually some research

00:13:58.080 that suggests that the difference between typing words on a screen and writing by hand is, it runs

00:14:05.680 pretty deep cognitively. Yes, handwriting became a source of fascination for me. I happen to be

00:14:12.060 left-handed, so the world is sort of against us. If you're left-handed, you understand what that

00:14:16.480 means. You know, scissors don't work, it's much more difficult to learn to write because you drag

00:14:20.300 your hand across the page, and there are all kinds of challenges. And I remember as a child,

00:14:25.460 they had the Palmer cursive letters above the chalkboard, and we all had to painstakingly learn

00:14:30.560 to write them. And I didn't enjoy that experience at all. Like many kids, I was impatient to do

00:14:36.140 something, do something else, but we all had to do it. So when my own children were younger,

00:14:41.440 I have two boys, and one is left-handed and one is right-handed, I was shocked by how little concern

00:14:46.420 educators had for any sort of proficiency in handwriting. And when I asked, you know,

00:14:52.520 why is this the policy? I was told, you know, a version of what I think a lot of people assume,

00:14:57.080 which is, you know, this is a society where we need keyboarding skills, so we're going to teach

00:15:01.560 them that earlier. They use touchscreens, so they don't really need to handwrite that often.

00:15:07.060 And this, of course, because I'm sort of wired as a contrarian, I thought, well, hmm, I wonder if

00:15:12.740 there's anything that's bad about that. Are we going to lose anything? And as I started researching

00:15:18.380 the embodied cognition, you know, how the mind and the body working together teach you things that

00:15:24.120 without that really focused effort, and handwriting is a perfect example of this,

00:15:29.880 there are later skills that will be implicated, skills related not just to how well you hold a pen

00:15:34.980 and write, but to memory, memory formation, recall, all kinds of interesting ways in which

00:15:42.000 our very mysterious brains operate by using our bodies, and then there's a kind of habits of mind

00:15:48.880 and learning that we teach ourselves through practice with a skill like handwriting. But there

00:15:55.040 was this other part of it, too, and you hit on it perfectly in describing, showing that letter to

00:16:00.320 your daughter. And this is something a little less quantitative. It's qualitative. And that's that we

00:16:06.380 will lose something important about human history if we cease to write by hand, because we'll lose the

00:16:11.440 ability to, say, read our founding documents, which were written in script. We will lose an ability,

00:16:16.920 you know, from a historian's perspective to read the letters of the dead. There's a lot of personality

00:16:23.420 in handwriting. I spent a lot of time in archives as a grad student, and I got to know these long

00:16:28.880 dead sources, because you could tell by how hard they were pressing on the paper with the pen, or if

00:16:33.300 they scribbled something out. And there is something deeply human about that ability. And it turns out

00:16:39.520 that we do lose something technically important in terms of memory, in terms of patience as well,

00:16:46.480 I should say. When you're a writer, I also, when I'm writing a shorter piece, almost always do it on

00:16:50.800 the computer now. But I do find if I get stuck, if I take out a notepad and try to jot down ideas by

00:16:57.040 hand, it doesn't, I mean, my handwriting's not great, but it does make me slow down my thinking

00:17:03.020 in a way that can sometimes be really revelatory. So there are all kinds of ineffable things that when

00:17:09.140 something disappears, and handwriting is disappearing at scale, where we haven't stopped. And for me,

00:17:17.360 this was an example that throughout the book, I tried to surface these examples. We didn't stop

00:17:21.820 to think about it. There was no conspiracy against handwriting. I think there's a real focus on

00:17:26.900 efficiency, particularly in education. And the thinking was, well, we have to do all these tests,

00:17:31.740 we have to teach some computer skills, and this is just, this is obsolete. But I would argue some of

00:17:36.680 those things are not obsolete. We need to make sure if we set them aside that we do it thoughtfully

00:17:41.740 and knowing what we're giving up in return. Yeah, well, one of the things that changes

00:17:46.800 when you move from writing by hand to typing is that obviously you can type much faster,

00:17:53.300 and that seems to be intrinsically good. But we embrace that change without realizing that

00:17:58.680 it actually changes the cognitive act of writing. I mean, if you're writing creatively,

00:18:04.140 if you're writing your own thoughts, because you can get them down faster when typing,

00:18:09.200 you forego a stage of editing that's happening naturally when you're reconsidering the words

00:18:16.380 as you're writing them more slowly by hand. And if you're taking notes on, you know, if I'm trying

00:18:22.260 to take notes on a lecture, say, as a student, because you can type so fast, you can almost get

00:18:28.440 to the place where you basically just write down everything you're hearing as you become a

00:18:33.040 stenographer. Whereas if you're, this is a point you make in the book, whereas if you're writing

00:18:37.120 by hand, you can't do that. And so you're, you're summarizing in the act of writing it down. And that

00:18:43.060 leads to a different kind of memory encoding, just in the very act of taking notes. And so it's,

00:18:48.280 there's something lost. I mean, it's true, there's something gained. I mean, obviously,

00:18:51.920 we value the speed too, and the ease of doing it. And so I'm not tempted to go back to handwriting

00:18:57.480 or printing when, you know, when writing myself, but it is interesting to realize that there is

00:19:03.720 just cognitively, the, the act is, has been transformed by the motor skills you're using

00:19:09.760 to just get the words down. Yeah. And I think that that's absolutely right. And it would probably

00:19:15.400 be less of a concern if we spent more of our day every day doing other things with our hands

00:19:22.880 besides typing or besides swiping on a screen. And I think the opportunity cost here is, is another

00:19:29.800 concern because I agree with you. I mean, I, I do, I write, I'm a list maker, so I do write my lists

00:19:35.220 by hand. And, you know, I do have some friends with whom I exchange handwritten letters, not, not very

00:19:40.100 many, but very rarely tend to send email or text messages. But there is something about the

00:19:46.840 disappearance of these experiences, not just when it comes to writing, but to any way we use our

00:19:52.080 physical bodies to interact with the world. Now, this is especially true, obviously, of the knowledge

00:19:56.860 class folks, less so if you, if you have a job where you work with your hands or you're an artist or

00:20:01.740 musician and you spend your time in, really spend most of your day in a form of embodied cognition

00:20:07.320 because you're using your mind and your, and your body. But most people, a lot of people mediate

00:20:13.420 even their daily work now at a level that I think they end up lacking those experiences. And so taking

00:20:21.260 away handwriting on top of that, and particularly for children whose childhoods are now absolutely

00:20:26.260 saturated with technology. It's just one example among many where I think we haven't made a thoughtful

00:20:32.080 trade-off and really discussed and thought through the choices we've made.

00:20:35.340 Yeah, well, so that, that phrase or that term trade-off is, I think, important here because

00:20:40.840 there are trade-offs with any technology. And the one that comes to mind is, it was the,

00:20:45.980 the very act of reading or, or consuming your book in anticipation of this conversation. I mean,

00:20:52.200 I have the, the hardcover and I, I read some of it there, but I also listened to many hours of audio

00:20:59.740 while hiking. So then there too, it is somewhat ironic given the contents of your book, because

00:21:05.480 from one point of view, I'm degrading the experience of hiking in nature by imposing the,

00:21:14.460 the mediated layer of, of an audio book on it. Right. But in reality, I was given a forced choice on

00:21:21.040 that given day, which happened to be the most beautiful day of the year over here, which I could

00:21:26.080 be stuck at my desk reading your book, or I could be listening to it and gleaning nearly as much from

00:21:33.780 it while hiking in the hills. And then that really is a form of multitasking that, that is, it seems to

00:21:40.920 be the, the right side of the trade-off here because nothing much was lost in terms of my comprehending

00:21:47.580 your thoughts and I'm good enough with my attention so that I, you know, I can really enjoy nature while

00:21:54.220 also listening to your book. And it's not a pure experience of either, but it really does seem like the

00:22:01.720 sort of sweet spot of, of this encroach of technology into our lives that at the moment, I wouldn't want to

00:22:09.080 give up. I wouldn't want to be the purist who says, no, no, I'm going to, I'm going to be stuck on the couch for

00:22:14.540 three hours now reading and I'll hike tomorrow. Right. I feel like I, I, this was a kind of have

00:22:19.640 your cake and eat it too experience. Do you see that differently or do you, how do you view the

00:22:24.040 push and pull here between technology and having a 20th century or a 19th century experience of the

00:22:30.380 world? I love how you describe that because I think the difference between what you just described

00:22:36.040 doing and how a lot of people mediate their daily lives is that you were aware of making a choice

00:22:41.920 for yourself and of making a trade-off. And I certainly, I would be a hypocrite if I argued

00:22:47.620 that everyone should just read the hardcover book and be sitting there, you know, stationary and not

00:22:52.420 have, not use any of these tools because I use them every day as well. And then there's the,

00:22:57.020 the separate issue of people who might struggle with reading, but can, can absorb information by

00:23:02.140 listening to it. I mean, there are all kinds of reasons to embrace these, this choice that we have,

00:23:06.740 but you made a choice knowing that you were going to potentially slightly dilute that experience of

00:23:13.520 just being outside on a beautiful day, hiking with no, nothing else to distract you. And that

00:23:20.020 worked for you. And that's the way I think we largely as a culture have not made those choices.

00:23:26.300 I think we, we rushed to mediate experiences. Now, if you had told me that while listening to the book,

00:23:31.600 you were also live streaming on TikTok, all of your, all of your observations about your hike,

00:23:36.700 I would scold you profusely. But, but I do think that that, for example, is particularly for younger

00:23:42.460 generations, far more likely to be the way they go on a hike. It has to be documented. It has to be

00:23:47.640 shared. And in the documenting and sharing, they aren't even aware they are giving something up.

00:23:53.640 So you understood. And, and this is, this is one of these interesting generational things where

00:23:59.100 those of us who grew up without this stuff take a lot for granted in terms of being our awareness of

00:24:05.200 the trade-offs and our awareness of the choices we're making. And that's no longer true. You know,

00:24:09.920 our children and, and all, all of the younger generations don't have that option unless they

00:24:15.320 willingly stop and think about it and choose it. And, um, I am the older I get, the more grateful I

00:24:21.660 am to have been, you know, a sort of Gen Xer who was sent out into the neighborhood with a

00:24:27.140 beat up bicycle and told to come home when the streetlights came on and no way to track us.

00:24:31.720 And, um, I think some of those experiences now are disappearing, particularly for children. And

00:24:37.920 again, we're, they lose something in, in the offing of that experience. So I would not scold you,

00:24:43.420 but I would, I would applaud you for being aware you were making a trade-off and a choice.

00:24:47.800 So what about the rest of our engagement with digital technology at this point? I'm thinking

00:24:52.540 in particular, and this is now bending us back to the chaos of the present moment, I'm thinking of

00:24:58.600 social media and what it's doing to our politics, to our culture, to our sense of ourselves,

00:25:06.040 just the sense that you exist, not merely in the real world or in the face-to-face interactions you

00:25:13.220 can have with, with friends and colleagues and even strangers, but you exist as a digital persona too.

00:25:20.880 And you, you have a digital reputation to be concerned about. And it's really in terms of

00:25:27.840 what's truly indelible and what truly scales, the, the digital version of you has grown beyond what

00:25:36.100 any, you know, terrestrial impact is likely to, to be in any given life, right? I mean, it's just,

00:25:44.040 we're all trailing, I mean, some of us more than others, but we're all trailing just, you know,

00:25:48.060 whatever a Google search says we were, I mean, that's more and more the impact we've had on

00:25:54.700 human culture. How do you think about this? What is your, how would you describe your engagement with

00:26:00.480 social media at this point?

00:26:02.500 So I, and now I will come off as a Luddite, although my reasons for doing this, I will explain.

00:26:07.900 I've never used social media. I'm not on any social media, in part because some friends and I

00:26:13.420 started a journal 20 years ago called the new Atlantis. And my focus when we, when I started

00:26:19.080 writing essays for the journal was on new technology, new personal technology. And so I

00:26:25.020 started studying my space. It's really, it was old. And then Facebook, when it first appeared on the

00:26:30.240 scene and all of the new social media platforms. And, you know, I talked to people who were working,

00:26:35.580 you know, early Facebook employees, people who were devising these platforms, many of whom were

00:26:41.300 really sort of idealistic about what, what the possibilities for these tools were. And I don't

00:26:47.520 know if it's because I, I'm pretty certain that there is something called human nature and it doesn't

00:26:52.680 always, it's not always amenable to transformation. I worried about these places bringing out our worst

00:26:58.500 impulses, the anonymity. There weren't very few barriers to entry. There was no way of assuring people

00:27:04.660 that what you said was true or who they even claimed to be was true. And this was the early

00:27:09.740 internet, right? So there used to be this contrast between IRL in real life and the internet. But now

00:27:16.380 even that is not an appropriate way to think about how we live. Everything is online. And even if you're

00:27:23.440 not online, someone else is or commenting on you or their, your profile is somehow out there in the

00:27:29.280 world. And we consume more information about other people's experiences than we have unmediated

00:27:36.320 experiences of our own day in and day out for most people. And what that means is that we, even though

00:27:42.480 we're doing that, we, we somehow lack a shared reality. And I think this is where in politics in

00:27:48.100 particular, it has become toxic, not because the internet lets people scream and yell at each other

00:27:53.940 in social media rewards that kind of anger and hostility and anxiety. Although it does, because

00:27:59.600 that, that brings greater engagement than happiness looking at unicorns and puppies and kittens. But

00:28:04.960 it's that we can't even agree on what reality looks like because we're so, that the power we have now to

00:28:12.080 carefully curate our reality and to not listen to what other, what someone else says, or to do our own

00:28:18.580 research as people like to say when they, when they are going down a conspiracy theorist rabbit hole.

00:28:23.380 And, and, and prove that what the other person saying, not reality is not reality. And you do

00:28:28.240 see this play out. I, I, I read a lot of books about conspiracy theories, both the history of them

00:28:33.420 and people who, the sort of personality types that are drawn to them. And what worried me was realizing

00:28:39.540 that we are, we have created a world in which one day, pretty soon, we're all going to be conspiracy

00:28:44.380 theorists of a type, right? Because we cannot agree on truth and fiction. We cannot agree on sometimes

00:28:52.260 even on with AI generated images. Now, what if what we're seeing is real. So all of these things are

00:28:58.140 very destabilizing to our individual sense of identity, to our sense of community. But in

00:29:03.400 politics at scale, what it means is that we don't trust anything. And we, we are at risk of becoming

00:29:09.700 not cynics, but almost nihilistic about our ability to, to do that and to rebuild our trust. And that's

00:29:15.480 what worries me in our current moment with regard to how social media has sort of dominated and become

00:29:21.660 a kind of public square, but without any of the virtues of the old style public square.

00:29:26.820 Yeah. Well, that really, this really is the, at the center of my concerns at this point. So

00:29:30.600 when you say you don't use social media, you don't have any profile yourself on it.

00:29:36.220 I don't even have a LinkedIn. I've been scolded for that.

00:29:38.520 But do you, do you ever go on X or any other platform to see breaking news as a,

00:29:44.300 just a lurker?

00:29:44.800 Yeah. So I lurk. I lurk on, the only one I lurk on is X, to be honest, because that's

00:29:50.000 generally where breaking news happens. So for, because I, you know, yammer every day about

00:29:56.100 politics with my colleagues at commentary, I do check that when something's happening.

00:30:01.260 Right.

00:30:01.460 But what I find is that all, everyone I know is on social media and they always send me stuff. I,

00:30:06.780 I'm on many, I have the most active thing I do is all my various text chains with,

00:30:11.140 with friends and colleagues and they curate the most important stuff for me. And then I'll double

00:30:16.180 check obviously what, if, if what they sent me was a true story or not, but I don't miss it. But

00:30:21.580 that, that is a luxury that I know I have because many, many people have jobs where they have to be

00:30:27.900 on social media, whether it's because they're a small business and they have to be on Facebook to

00:30:31.240 advertise, whether they're in any sort of knowledge job that requires them to have that

00:30:36.760 social media presence. So I, I understand that my choice is a luxury because many people don't

00:30:42.040 have that choice.

00:30:43.120 Yeah. Well, I question that. I mean, I do think that, I mean, I said in my last podcast,

00:30:47.760 I really think serious people need to leave X at this point. I mean, that we just need to

00:30:52.720 boycott what has become a digital sewer and an increasingly radicalized one politically. I mean,

00:31:00.140 the level of antisemitism and racism and just Frank insanity, I mean, it just, it is this,

00:31:05.420 the epicenter of so many crazy conspiracies at this point. And the reason why it's not like the

00:31:11.360 other platforms apart from the way it's architected is just that the, the man who owns it has become

00:31:17.360 an amplifier of all of its worst tendencies just by the way he uses it, not even policies aside and

00:31:24.260 an algorithmic tuning aside. It's, it has become the digital playpen of a digital maniac. I say,

00:31:31.360 this is someone who used to be his friend, but I guess I'm wondering what you think about that.

00:31:35.500 I mean, I get the fact that it is a way for certain kinds of news stories to break, right? I mean,

00:31:42.580 so I think antisemitism is something I, I know you are, you're focused on over at commentary and I think

00:31:48.260 we should talk about as well. But so I know for instance, that it's conceivable. I don't know if

00:31:53.280 this is strictly true in this case, but you take the recent pogrom-like eruption of violence in,

00:32:00.300 in the Netherlands around the soccer teams. And I don't know if that's still ongoing or not as we

00:32:06.060 speak, but you know, so that's the kind of thing that you could see breaking on X as a platform.

00:32:11.880 Maybe, maybe it was just as prevalent on other platforms too. I don't know, but, and then you,

00:32:17.060 you could reasonably worry, well, but for the fact that there was so much noise on X,

00:32:22.200 maybe the New York times wouldn't have covered it. Right. And I, I don't know if we live in that

00:32:28.620 world or not. I'd love to get your opinion, but even if we just stipulate that that's true and

00:32:34.140 that certain stories that we really do want to hear about would effectively go dark if a sufficient

00:32:40.500 number of people walked away from X, I still think it would be a good trade at this point, given the

00:32:46.300 level of conspiracy thinking and the way it gets amplified on X in particular, uh, given this,

00:32:53.540 just the, the sea change in attitudes toward truth and error correction that has occurred over there.

00:32:59.280 No, it, it, I think, I hope this is right, but we won't know for some time. I feel like we're in a

00:33:07.180 real period of churn with some of these platforms. X most predominantly two, two things X does now,

00:33:14.000 not always well, but, but that are necessary in the current media environment. The first is the one

00:33:19.360 you mentioned. It can surface stories that otherwise, and often real-time images of things that are

00:33:25.340 happening that we should know about. And, and that I think sometimes our mainstream media outlets have

00:33:31.220 an incentive not to show us and not to talk about and not to really want to discuss at all. And I

00:33:36.520 don't mean conspiracy theories. I just mean stories that would be difficult, whether because the

00:33:42.060 ideological tendencies of the newsroom or the editorial, uh, voices in, in, in those publications

00:33:48.340 were against it or simply because it would be difficult to verify. And, you know, if we look at the

00:33:53.900 media environment now, you know, there are foreign bureaus in particular have shrunk. There's a lot

00:33:57.600 of looming layoffs once again in media. So there are obviously bottom line concerns too, but it does

00:34:03.480 surface those stories and then prompts debate. And when old school reporters then chase down some of

00:34:09.120 those stories, they sometimes find them to be true. They sometimes find them to be false, but it does at

00:34:13.220 least start a conversation on that. I think it can occasionally be useful. And honestly, I will make a

00:34:19.700 defense of community notes. I kind of, I kind of like them in part. They're not always correct,

00:34:24.400 but they're closer to correct than some of the mainstream fact checking that goes on these days.

00:34:28.700 And in that sense, it's an example of crowdsourcing that can in real time say, actually, there's this

00:34:35.800 you should look at or consider this. So those are two attempts to, to, to do something useful on a

00:34:41.660 platform that I completely agree with you is very chaotic and is actually designed to bring out

00:34:45.740 everyone's worst impulses and doesn't really moderate much content. I know, you know, if you

00:34:51.260 know people who are, who are on the right, they have a healthy suspicion of moderation of content,

00:34:55.840 particularly on X when it was Twitter, they, there were a lot of claims of, of, you know,

00:35:01.180 Twitter files, the biggest story of the decade. In case you missed it, it's right next to Hunter

00:35:06.480 Biden's laptop as the most important thing that has been surfaced right of center in our politics.

00:35:11.740 Yes. I'm well, and, and, and I think if you look at rates of trust in the media now, it's not just

00:35:17.400 people who are right of center, who are mistrustful, it's spreading. And that I think is where we, I hope

00:35:23.520 we are in a period of transition because what I would like to see are more reliable, independent,

00:35:29.120 often small and focused on a particular set of issues, outlets doing that work, not leaving it to

00:35:34.940 social media and crowdsourced opinions of these things, but actually back, back it up with facts and

00:35:40.280 reporting. And that's what's missing. Because if you're a, if you're a young journalist these days,

00:35:45.180 it's, it's, you do have to ally yourself. Either you become, you know, an X personality and, and you

00:35:51.360 have to really amp up the rhetoric and, and perhaps not do the due diligence of the reporting in the

00:35:56.060 same way, or you have to go find a legacy media institution that will hire you for nothing and

00:36:00.800 you'll churn out, you know, six stories a day for their website. Neither of these are great options

00:36:04.960 for, for surfacing truth and, and honest debate. But I do see a, a brighter future because of platforms

00:36:11.720 like Substack and others that give people a place where they, they can do this less expensively with less

00:36:18.960 ideological baggage and just try, you know, very entrepreneurial opportunities in, in the land of ideas

00:36:24.840 and of journalism. And so I hope that this particular moment is going to be looked back upon in, in, in a

00:36:31.580 decade as, as a transitional moment, but we'll see. Don't you think we need to build back these

00:36:38.180 journalistic institutions? And if, if the market can't actually support the Bureau in Beijing and a

00:36:46.400 hundred other cities that we need philanthropy to step in? I mean, you have someone like Jeff Bezos

00:36:51.140 who owns the Washington Post. If he were convinced, he could obviously decide, well, this doesn't actually

00:36:57.280 have to pencil out as a business. I can just, uh, take several billion dollars and make this

00:37:03.460 a bulletproof institution with all the resources it needs. I mean, that's, I think a, that's only a

00:37:10.820 conversation away from happening potentially if, if one had the right argument for it. Why isn't that

00:37:17.140 the direction of progress? Well, I would say two things about that. The first is that if you really

00:37:23.340 want to invest, if look, if you're a billionaire and you want to throw your money at a good cause,

00:37:28.020 one of the best things you could do is to try to revive local news because most of the grift and

00:37:33.280 corruption and, and really awful things that impact people in the day to day happens at the local level.

00:37:39.760 And we do not have those newspapers anymore. We don't have the person covering the city council

00:37:44.820 meeting, going to the, to the school board meetings. Only when some huge scandal erupts that

00:37:49.380 becomes nationalized. Do people go to school board meetings and cover them anymore? And what that

00:37:53.920 means is that that's where the trust deficit begins for people. Because if your city is supposed to come

00:37:59.440 fix a pothole on your road and you've complained about it and you think that someone's getting a

00:38:04.220 kickback from a contractor and that's why they're not fixing the pothole, how do you prove that if you're

00:38:08.620 just the average citizen? That's the role of journalism. And that would do another thing that I think

00:38:13.400 is important. And that's cultivating new generation of journalists who don't come out of only the elite

00:38:19.900 institutions because journalism, national journalism now is drawing from a very small pool of talent.

00:38:27.640 And it's, you know, Ivy and Ivy League plus universities. There's, there's a lot of insularity

00:38:33.620 to their worldview there, a lot of expectation of what people, what the right people think.

00:38:37.960 And that's always been the case at places like the New York Times and elsewhere. But I think that's

00:38:42.260 spread and you do not have a contrast with like the guy who went to the state university and got

00:38:47.660 his first job covering, you know, city council meetings at a Midwest newspaper and then worked

00:38:52.280 his way up and then became a political reporter in his forties at the New York Times. That used to be

00:38:57.040 the trajectory. That's not how it works anymore. And I think we lose both the skill and training and

00:39:01.900 discipline of, of requiring people to cover those, those local issues and report on them honestly and

00:39:08.160 cultivate sources, learn what it means to be a journalist. And we also lose a diversity of

00:39:13.920 worldviews and experiences and, and class-based differences that are extremely obvious now.

00:39:20.320 When you look at places like the New York Times, places like the Washington Post, when they talk

00:39:24.380 about people who aren't from their class, it's glaringly obvious because they don't know anybody

00:39:28.640 who didn't come through those institutions and shares their views. So they seem very out of touch

00:39:33.080 because they are. So I do think that those two things over the course of a generation or two

00:39:38.500 could give us a revival of, of the kind of journalism and reporting that this country really needs.

00:39:44.740 What can we do about conspiracy thinking? And I mean, there are many people who won't even

00:39:51.260 like that phrase because they, it has been used to stigmatize their cherished conspiracy theory that

00:39:58.160 they're quite sure it's true. But I mean, I just, you know, this is something that is,

00:40:04.440 this is one of those moments where you hope social media isn't real life, but then you discover that

00:40:09.880 it is. I mean, I just feel like we're becoming a pizza gate culture politically. I mean, it's like

00:40:15.980 most of us, much of the time are, are showing up to rescue non-existent children in a non-existent

00:40:24.240 basement. Right. And that, and that has just completely distorted the nature of our, our

00:40:29.460 politics. I mean, I mean, the most egregious case or cases happens right of center, I think. I mean,

00:40:35.740 obviously the left is not immune to this, but there's something, there's some fundamental asymmetry

00:40:40.000 in the dynamics when you look at the penalty paid for error left and right politically. I mean,

00:40:46.720 like if the New York times gets it wrong, you know, it's, it's embarrassing. They'll be criticized.

00:40:51.500 People will break trust with the, the organization. And, and many people were certainly right of

00:40:56.720 center will say, look, you can never trust that. They made this one mistake about black lives matter

00:41:01.380 or pick your topic. And we can't trust these guys ever again. Whereas right of center, you have

00:41:09.300 organs like, you know, Fox news or Breitbart or, or own, or people like Tucker Carlson or Trump himself.

00:41:16.780 And there's absolutely no reputational damage done by obvious lies, right? You can lie with a

00:41:25.740 velocity never seen on planet earth before. And, and no one cares. It's just, you're creating a mood,

00:41:33.380 a partisan mood that your fans admire. And I mean, to take the, an egregious case around this election,

00:41:39.520 you had in the run-up to election day, and even on the day itself, you had people like Elon Musk and

00:41:45.520 Donald Trump clearly lying about voter fraud and, you know, irregularities in Philadelphia and

00:41:52.780 elsewhere in Pennsylvania. And this was all going to be an enormously problematic should Trump have

00:41:58.120 lost, right? Because he, they were clearly preparing the ground not to accept the results of the

00:42:02.220 election. But when he won, you know, all of that, all of the concern around election fraud evaporated.

00:42:07.440 And it seems like all the machines that Elon assured us could not be trusted. It could now be

00:42:11.940 trusted, et cetera. I mean, there's no penalty paid for this kind of behavior right of center. This is

00:42:18.760 just the new normal. And again, this is a normal where you, you have someone like Elon promoting

00:42:27.640 literally the people who engineered Pizzagate and that lunacy right there in the conversation with

00:42:33.900 Elon and Tucker and Don Jr. and Trump himself. And there's no, there is no reputational penalty

00:42:39.900 for having gotten something that wrong right of center. And I don't, I mean, as, as much as I

00:42:47.380 criticize the left, there are some journalistic and scientific and academic standards that people

00:42:54.240 are, are anchored to, and they're, they're, they're still capable of embarrassment.

00:42:58.640 I think I would agree with you until COVID coverage, I would say. Although you're right,

00:43:04.840 you're the one thing I would say, there is a price to be paid for the right of center conspiracy

00:43:10.320 theorizing and lying, but it's paid by us, the American people, and it's paid for in our trust.

00:43:16.520 And, and there is the erosion of trust, I think, particularly on the right and particularly not,

00:43:22.600 not, not even their erosion of trust in media, but the erosion of trust in all of our institutions

00:43:26.900 of government is very worrisome because it's that over time, as that builds, that erodes stability

00:43:33.320 because people feel like not just that their government isn't working for them, but that

00:43:38.320 it might be actively working against them. And that's where conspiracy theories can become

00:43:43.920 quite dangerous for, for people who've been marinating in that mindset. What was one of

00:43:48.800 the things I'm very, I'm fascinated by conspiracy theories. And I spent some time reading police

00:43:53.280 reports and transcripts, a few of, I cited one or two of them in the book of some of the people

00:43:57.940 who've been arrested, you know, who, who, you know, the Pizzagate situation. And this is a guy who came to a,

00:44:03.320 bookstore here in Washington, DC, and started, well, near a bookstore, started shooting at this

00:44:07.660 restaurant because he thought Hillary Clinton was part of a pedophile ring and keeping people

00:44:11.800 in the basement. The restaurant didn't even have a basement, does have excellent pizza. So you should

00:44:15.200 try it if you're in town. But what was fascinating to me is that he really became radicalized because

00:44:20.660 he was lonely, isolated, and got an internet connection and started just digging around.

00:44:26.100 And he needed a sense of purpose in his life. And this gave him a sense of purpose. When he was shown

00:44:32.240 that everything he believed was a lie, he's like, wow, I just, I really didn't have good intel on

00:44:37.500 this. I mean, he recognized that he'd been had, but it was too late at that point. He could have

00:44:41.340 killed someone. He certainly, you know, he was then sent to prison as, well, he should have been.

00:44:46.840 But I think that sometimes we get to, I think there are some underlying problems here in our society

00:44:53.440 having to do with isolation and trust and loneliness. And particularly among young men,

00:44:58.800 they are far more receptive to that kind of conversation, not because there's a, you know,

00:45:04.380 deeply rooted toxic masculinity or anything like that, but because they have spent a lot of their

00:45:08.660 life being told that being a male is dangerous and bad, or being told their country is not a place

00:45:14.800 that stands for important ideals that the rest of the world admires. And people are desperate to come

00:45:20.040 here because of those ideals. They're being raised on a diet of really cynical ways of looking at the

00:45:25.840 world and particularly when it comes to politics. So I agree with you that the, there should be some

00:45:31.280 penalty. I think our system, and because our system is now playing out politically and in the

00:45:36.480 information ecosystem with people getting most of their information on social media, even about

00:45:41.320 politics, those platforms really reward the most extreme views. And that's true on the right and the

00:45:47.360 left. And until we can en masse step away from those platforms as a place where we have political

00:45:53.220 discourse, the problem will continue. And, and it's a very difficult thing to remove oneself from

00:45:59.080 because you get a lot of positive feedback. You can be sitting alone in your house and watch on

00:46:04.480 Instagram or on X or any platform, all of the people who are telling you, yes, exactly. I totally

00:46:10.060 believe that. And it, the emotional experience you have, and again, embody, like you, you actually will

00:46:15.160 feel good because you feel that's a real feeling, but it's an unreal environment on which we're,

00:46:21.540 you know, which is, which is rewarding things that really are not good for us and certainly not good

00:46:26.080 for our political culture. So I do think, I mean, we'll see again, this is where more independent

00:46:30.860 outlets fact-checking Elon Musk. I mean, Tucker, I think is a lost cause. That's, that's really,

00:46:35.460 someone should, it's, it's, it's almost, it's a tragedy, but also farce. What, what has become of

00:46:40.840 him? I knew him back in the Weekly Standard days. He was actually a very good writer and journalist

00:46:45.320 when he was young. That's a really difficult story there.

00:46:49.120 Well, what do you think, let's drill down on that because I really do think Tucker's character arc

00:46:55.460 is the whole problem in Microcosm because it's not, I mean, I take your point about young men

00:47:01.940 not finding purpose and being demonized by the culture and all that, but you take someone like

00:47:06.980 Tucker, there are many other examples I could give you, but I mean, he's the perfect one. Obviously

00:47:11.760 he's self-actualized in, in some ways, right? He's a, he has a successful career. He's wealthy.

00:47:18.220 He can do what he wants with his time and attention. He's talented. He's a very talented performer.

00:47:23.780 He's a very talented actor, I would say, though I don't think I ever read his writing. He's rumored

00:47:29.720 to have been a very talented writer, which you can confirm, but there's something quite deranged

00:47:35.620 about his priorities at this point. I mean, his ethical compass is in a perpetual spin and it's,

00:47:41.840 it's not tracking anything like real integrity or compassion or wisdom, though he would profess to

00:47:49.020 be a deep student of those virtues, above all humility and self-doubt and circumspection. I mean,

00:47:56.860 he's, he's a master at framing the next crazy and divisive and invidious thing he says with

00:48:03.580 this false humility of, listen, I've gotten so many things wrong and you wouldn't believe how

00:48:08.780 ashamed I am to have been so wrong on so many important things. And so now I'm, here's the

00:48:13.820 pivot right now toward this next odious thing I'm about to foist on all of humanity, but I'm doing

00:48:19.920 it from a place of real humility and self-criticism and intellectual honesty. And here it is some awful

00:48:25.640 piece of pablum that you maniacs right of center are going to lap up. And now I'm ready for the

00:48:31.460 fourth Reich to be born for all the antisemitic nonsense. I just replatformed somehow. Don't get

00:48:38.540 me started on Tucker. Tell me what the hell happened with Tucker Carlson. You know, I don't,

00:48:43.760 I don't know. And, um, what does John think? I, can you, can you, can you play, uh, play act like

00:48:49.280 John Pothoritz? Well, I think John feels deep regret that he gave him his first job. And I know people

00:48:54.760 who remain, you know, friendly with him. I, I, I was never his friend. I just kind of interacted in DC,

00:49:00.740 especially in Weekly Standard, may it rest in peace circles. Here's the thing about Tucker. I think

00:49:06.040 he did believe he was humble and he did want to, uh, reach directly, especially once he left Fox

00:49:13.440 News, reach directly an audience of, of, uh, sort of disaffected people. And he's a very intelligent

00:49:19.640 guy. And what he quickly realized is that that was not going to keep him front of mind, as people

00:49:25.840 like to say today. And that's where he needed to be. And you can see this progression over the

00:49:30.600 course of those YouTube videos he started doing from his cabin in Maine with its sort of Unabomber-esque,

00:49:35.960 uh, decorating style where he's, he became more and more hyperbolic, angry, really a lot of the time.

00:49:43.460 And I thought, well, surely this, people don't really want to consume this, do they? And it turns

00:49:47.780 out they do. And I think now he's pivoted both in his online presence and at these, you know,

00:49:53.900 rallies he's been having all over the country, which in the lead up to the election, he's the

00:49:58.780 guy who's going to tell you what's behind the curtain, right? It's very conspiratorial in tone.

00:50:04.180 It's, you know, they're trying to do this to you. I know, I know. And because as you say, he's,

00:50:09.120 he's a very good actor. He has a, he has a way of connecting. That's why he was very good on

00:50:13.900 television. It's believable to people who have already lost faith in the institutions. And so

00:50:21.220 in a weird way, they're now in a feedback loop where he's confirming their priors, but doing it

00:50:28.500 with a lot of performative zeal and with a lot of, you know, sort of in the know winks and nods.

00:50:33.620 And where that ends up is, as you say, him platforming a guy who claims to be a historian,

00:50:38.640 but is not, who writes anti-Semitic, you know, fanciful rewritings of the history of World War II.

00:50:45.520 And now that what that means because of the reach of his platform is that people now are

00:50:51.300 starting to think, oh, you know, Hitler, let's give him a reputational rethink. And that is really

00:50:56.740 bad. That is just bad. And that comes on the heels of an educational system that actually has

00:51:02.920 encouraged students for several generations to think counterintuitively, thinking that would make

00:51:08.580 them more critical. You know, let's look at the things that, you know, the narrative history never

00:51:12.260 taught us, but in fact might have primed them, some of them for this sort of way of viewing the

00:51:17.480 world and particularly viewing the past. But on this point of the double standard reputationally

00:51:23.600 and epistemologically that I think I detect as you move right of center, I mean, in Tucker's case,

00:51:29.940 we know, or I think we have good reason to know that he was quite duplicitous at Fox News and on the

00:51:37.900 one hand shilling for Trump for years, but on the other in his private communications

00:51:42.560 saying that he thought he was, literally as a quote, that he's a demonic force and he couldn't

00:51:49.360 wait to be rid of him. After January 6th, he couldn't wait to see this guy disappear from our

00:51:55.260 politics. We, you know, we have those texts based on the Dominion lawsuit. How is it that his audience

00:52:03.200 doesn't care about that level of hypocrisy? That's a very good question. I think a lot of

00:52:09.760 them probably didn't follow in detail some of those stories or those were the things that were

00:52:15.740 reported in media outlets that they don't consume, for one. And for another, I think...

00:52:21.360 If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

00:52:25.500 samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense

00:52:30.780 podcast. The podcast is available to everyone through our scholarship program, so if you can't

00:52:35.980 afford a subscription, please request a free account on the website. The Making Sense podcast

00:52:41.020 is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at samharris.org.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 19, 2024

#392 — Technology & Culture

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript