#450 — More From Sam： Resolutions, Conspiracies, Demonology, and the Fate of the World
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Summary
In this episode of the Making Sense Podcast, I sit down with author and speaker Sam Harris to talk about what it's like to live life as though it were your last year, and how to make the most of the last few days of the year.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing
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the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
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Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore
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it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're
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doing here, please consider becoming one. Okay, we're back with another episode of More
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from Sam, where we get more from you, Sam. Yes, good luck. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. How
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are you doing? I'm good. Good to see you. Before we get into things, I just want to quickly remind
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everyone that you will be giving talks in a number of cities in 2026. Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin,
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Portland, Vancouver, Palm Beach, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Last time we warned
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Portland to start buying tickets or we were going to cancel, and that seemed to work. So
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good news, the show is still happening. If you want to see Sam live, this is the time to
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do it, and it's a really great talk. Republicans and Democrats alike will be thrilled.
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Both hate it. Yeah. And annoyed, just like this podcast. Okay, on to our first topic. Last
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year, you made a New Year's resolution where you essentially planned to live like you were
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dying. I want to know how that went for you, and if you're making any adjustments to that plan for
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2026, or is that just the plan for the rest of your life? No, no. I think our phrase is this,
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live as though it were my last year. Yeah. I mean, it was a great frame to put over the year. The year
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didn't quite become what I expected because seven days into it, half the city burned down, and I had to
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flee my house, which didn't burn happily, but we still haven't been back. So the year got jiggered
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around by real estate concerns way more than I was anticipating, and I wouldn't expect to spend the
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last year of my life on that. Did that help you actually sharpen up your goal a little bit more?
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It played a little havoc with it. I mean, in terms of actually the content of what I was paying
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attention to, it was more terrestrial and practical than I would have hoped for. But it was, I mean,
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I would give myself maybe a B on this aspiration. I mean, I think I did have my priorities pretty
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straight. I mean, it's always, I mean, the filter for me with respect to the podcast is, I mean,
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there would be less, if I could really do this, I think there would be less politics, or I mean,
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the level, the cut would be higher. I mean, it would really be sort of emergency politics more
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than just, okay, here's another thing in the news that I can't help but respond to.
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Yeah, exactly. It's going to be, this is probably not going to be a moment of me walking my talk,
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but no, it was good. I would do the same. I think I'll do the same year after year because it's
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really, you know, obviously one doesn't know how many one has left. And yeah, I mean, no regrets
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that that was my resolution. All right, good. I think we're all addicted to social media and our
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phones at this point, and our attention has become so fragmented that it's almost impossible to fully
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be anywhere anymore. Is there a quick pitch for the Waking Up app you can throw in here?
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Well, I mean, you know, we often demonize the smartphone as the locus of all of our fragmentation
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and collective derangement. I think that's true, but obviously there are different uses of a
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smartphone, and this is certainly one that I can stand behind as being just categorically different
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from the other stuff that's driving us crazy. And I view most, certainly most of the audio I consume
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on a phone, which is a lot, as some version of, you know, kind of very productive and unifying of my
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attention. I mean, you know, I listen to good books and good conversations and, you know, obviously,
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you know, listening to guided meditations and meditation instruction is, I think, kind of the
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ultimate example of a good use of attention on this device, which is just not at all analogous to
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having your attention, you know, shattered on the regular by social media engagement and kind of the
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dopaminergic checking in to the response, to the response, to the response. So yeah, I think waking up
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is, I mean, I love what we've created over there, and I think it's a great use of the device, you
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know. Can you give us some examples of what types of results one could expect once they develop this
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skill that could, I think, honestly take somebody about a week to really begin to see something,
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but, you know, what kind of results can one expect? Yeah, I love these questions. These are,
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this is exactly the way I come at it. Hope the irony was detectable there. I mean, so there are kind of
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two sides to this topic, right? There's the conventional mainstream pitch for mindfulness
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that, you know, here's a list of benefits you can expect from the practice, and most of what is
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claimed there, I think, is true. I mean, some of it is, you know, poorly researched, or at least the
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research is kind of thin, and, you know, some of it might wash out, but the thing that is obviously
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true is that virtually everyone, until they learn to practice mindfulness in some form, is spending
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their life perpetually distracted, and they're so distracted they're not even aware of that,
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right? They're thinking every moment of their lives, their moment-to-moment experience of being a self
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in the world is being filtered through this discursive, conceptually framed conversation
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they're having with themselves. And again, the conversation is so incessant and so loud that it
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achieves this kind of white noise status where people aren't even aware that they're distracted.
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Half the people hearing me say this who have never tried to meditate will be thinking,
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what the hell is he talking about, right? But it's that voice in the mind, what the hell is he
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talking about that feels like you? That's the endless conversation that is defining your experience
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moment-to-moment. It's the medium on which all of your dissatisfaction and frustration and regret
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and annoyance and, you know, everything that makes you an asshole in the world, it is the medium that
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transmits that and makes it actionable emotionally and behaviorally moment-to-moment. It's the capture
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by thought unwittingly, right? The impulse that you can't see creep up from behind that just becomes
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you, that becomes your, you know, the next thing you say, the next thing you reach for, the next thing
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you aspire to become. I mean, it's just, again, we're living in a dreamscape and virtually nobody
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notices. So when you try to practice meditation for the first time, really any form of meditation,
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but, you know, mindfulness in particular, initially you're given this very basic exercise of just try
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to pay attention to the breath, you know, try to pay attention to sounds, you know, moment by moment,
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and every time you notice you're lost in thought, come back to the feeling of breathing or the sounds
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in your environment or the sense of your body resting in space or just some sensory experience that
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you can use to try to build some concentration on. And it is, you know, it's, if you persist in it long
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enough to notice how hard that is and how vulnerable your attention is in every present moment to the
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next thought arising unrecognized and just seeming to become you, it is a kind of revelation. I mean,
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I'll be a negative one. I mean, you just, what you, you, what you recognize in yourself is this
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pervasive incapacity to pay attention to anything for more than a few moments at a time without being
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distracted. And it's very hard, but whatever you think about meditation from that moment forward,
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maybe you think it's just too much of a hassle, you're, you know, you're too restless, it's too
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hard, you don't have a talent for it, you know, you're going to move on to other things, and you
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kind of bounce off the project. Even if you're falling to that condition, it's, I think it should
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be very hard to, to argue to yourself that, that this is somehow psychologically optimal to not be able
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to pay attention to something for more than a few moments at a time and to be helplessly buffeted by
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the winds of your own distraction. I had a good thought actually about that. I wanted to run by
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you. There's this idea of sort of like a dealer dealing cards like thoughts. And imagine sitting
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at the card table, blackjack table, just every time, just waiting for the cards and just, no,
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don't want to play that card. No, just, you can wait for a blackjack every time. If you know how to
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wait for the cards, you don't have to play the card that's dealt. You can say, I don't want that one.
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Don't want that one. And everyone at the table is looking at you like, this guy's cheating and it's
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kind of like cheating, but if you have that skill, it's kind of cool.
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Oh yeah. The cards are thoughts, right? Thoughts taken seriously. So, you know, the, the voice of
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your mind says, I can't believe how you fuck that up. Right. And so, okay. So how much, so what does
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that, what does that convey, right? Like how much shame or regret or what do you do with that? You
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don't have to do anything with it. You tell the dealer to give you another card.
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Yeah. I mean, there's this image in Tibetan Buddhism of, you know, ultimately thoughts are
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like thieves entering an empty house, right? There's nothing for them to steal, right? So
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that like, just imagine what that's like. Imagine, just imagine the, the scene of, you know, thieves
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come, you know, storming into a house that has nothing in it, right? I mean, there's no implication
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of their presence there, right? That there's nothing for them to do. Thoughts recognized are just
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these mysterious mental objects, right? I mean, they really don't, you know, it is just a bit
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of language or a bit of imagery. And it is, it is genuinely mysterious that, you know, this next
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thought can so fully commandeer your physiology and your, your whole sense of being in the world.
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I mean, your, the next thought taken seriously could define the next decade of your life if you
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can't see some reason not to take it seriously. So meditation on some level is a way of relaxing
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the hold that thoughts automatically have on us. Yeah. As we move into 2026, I hope people will
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develop a practice or give this a look, check out waking up. And if not waking up, there are plenty
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of other apps where you can learn to meditate because it really is a basic skill that you should,
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you should just, if you don't go super deep, that's fine, but you should have a basic understanding
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and just explore that for yourself. And it's life-changing. So if anyone's focused on nutrition
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and physical fitness and sleep, you're missing this aspect. If you care about those three and
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you're not caring about your mind, you're missing this. All right. On to our next topic. I really
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liked your podcast with Ross Douthat, that recent one. He's very likable and very smart. I think it
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was the first time I liked an argument for why God, a perfect God would put a bad idea like slavery
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in the Bible, where he basically had said that he knew it was bad, but wanted to allow room for
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Christians to evolve and to sort of put their fingerprints on it over time. Now, he says-
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No, he said, you know, if that's not good for you. No, I wasn't persuaded by it, but I actually
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liked it. I thought, oh, that's a well-made argument that he's explaining that God wanted to
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Well, it's well-made in the sense that it's totally unfalsifiable and it could absorb anything,
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any possible contents of the Bible, you know, even mathematical errors, right? I mean, you know,
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I think pi is calculated somewhere in the Bible as three, you know, full stop. I think I have that
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right. I mean, I think it's just said that the, you know, the circumference of a circle is with a
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diameter one is three or something like that. But, okay, so God can't do math while he's waiting for us
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to get better at math. I mean, that's, he's leaving room for our own genius to explore that topic. It's just idiotic.
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I mean, I guess maybe I'm in an uncharitable mood around this, but I mean, as at a certain point,
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we have to run out of our patience with these dodges. I just don't know how they, I don't know
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how you spend your life circling that specific attractor again and again, year after year. I mean,
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it's just so obviously wrong and foolish. I mean, we'd have no patience for it. If this wasn't
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grandfathered in by this tradition, I mean, again, you just look at the crazy, you know, it's,
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it's Scientology. I mean, you look at, you watch Alex Gibney's documentary on Scientology and look
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at that whole project and how embarrassing it was and look at those exit interviews, right? And it's
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on some level more sophisticated than what we're talking about when you talk about, you know, any,
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Yeah. And you guys also talked about AI. And for some reason, I find myself much less scared now
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than I was earlier this year, simply because I believe the problem is going to be so big that
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it will get addressed quickly. Where are you on that now? How are you feeling? I mean, I know at
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some point earlier we were both thinking, how is everybody not talking about this every second of
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the day? You still there? Well, I continue to be impressed about how hard it is to maintain one's
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concern, even when one hasn't found a rational argument that should give you comfort, right? I mean,
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it's, it is a sort of unique threat. I mean, this was the, at least the starting point of the talk I
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gave on it now nearly 10 years ago, the TED talk in 2016, I think. But it's just, there's something
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entertaining about it. It's fun to think about the downside. I mean, it's, there's something kind
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of sexy and, and interesting about it that is, it's not like a coming plague or, you know, an asteroid
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impact or something that you like, that was just, that's just scary and depressing, right? So even if you
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think the risk is, is undiminished, I mean, you can't figure out how to, to be more comfortable
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with the probabilities or the possible negative outcomes, it's just, there's something very
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elusive about it. I mean, part of it is that the upside is also very compelling, right? I mean,
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unlike the threat of nuclear war or anything else that is any other technological self-imposed risk,
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I guess synthetic biology is slightly different. It's a little bit more like AI because there's
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obviously some real upside to our breakthroughs in, in biology. But I mean, it's just, there's
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something so, you know, in success, it looks like it could be amazing, you know, leaving aside
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total unemployment and, and this, the social challenge of trying to grapple with that. But yeah,
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I don't, I don't, you know, I think it's frankly terrifying when you look at the arms race condition
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we're in and the people who are the, the, um, the moral quality or lack thereof of the people who
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are making the decisions for us. I mean, it's like, you can count on two hands, the number of people
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totally unregulated by a kleptocratic government at this point to speak of the United States.
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Don't you believe we have to somewhat be unregulated at this point in order to win this arms race?
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Well, I, I just think that if we had a morally sane and competent government, I think we would be
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forcing some sort of global approach to this global problem, right? I mean, we, that, everything
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would be bent toward that. I'm not talking about stopping development of AI. I don't think that's in
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the cards under any regime, but clearly we need, we need to get out of this arms race condition. I mean,
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we're, we're just merely in an arms race and that's it. I don't, I don't consider myself very close to
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the, the behind the scene details here. So I just, I don't know how scary it actually is, but you know,
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from what people say in public, it should be alarming that the people who are doing this work
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and people who are closest to it, when asked, you know, what probability they give to our destroying
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ourselves with this technology, they, I think to a man, they all say something terrifying. I mean,
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they're all like, Oh, maybe 20%, you know? I mean, it's just not, it's like, you're not hearing
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people like Sam Altman say, Oh no, no, no, no. We've got this totally in hand and we're being,
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you know, really safe and scrupulous. And yet people just have misunderstood this technology.
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There's no way, there's no self-improving thing on the horizon that could conceivably get away from us.
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No, no, no. Like this has just been way overblown. I would put the risk as we, you know, one in a million
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virtually, I mean, maybe, maybe Jan Lacoon is still somebody who talks that way, but virtually nobody
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in a position to make decisions says anything like that. So just imagine if all the people
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developing nuclear technology at the time were saying, okay, we're probably, we're running a
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20% chance of destroying everything. And yet we can't stop, you know, we're doing this as fast as
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possible. And we're in, now you're going to witness a multi-trillion dollar build-out that is
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going to basically subsume every other economic concern for us and environmental concern. I mean,
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where did, where did climate change go? You know, you got, you got all these people building these,
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the most resource intensive technology anyone ever dreamed of. And, you know, even some of the,
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the, the, the real climate change focused people like Elon in the past are, you know,
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there's none of that, right? It's just, you know, we're going to use all the water and all the
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electricity and, and let's go. Well, what's the alternative? Weren't we given a 10% chance
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for just total destruction with nuclear war with you creating the bomb?
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I mean, there was a, a very small chance that the actual, you know, the Manhattan Project
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principles thought that we might, uh, I mean, they, they did, they did some final calculations
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and put it, I think it, a truly small chance, like, you know, like, you know, one in 10,000
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or something, it was not 10%, but they were still placing bets on whether we would ignite
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the atmosphere and destroy everything. And that wasn't 10%? I thought that was 10%. No,
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no, no. I mean, they didn't think it was 10% at the time, but imagine if they had,
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imagine if they had been willing to pull the trigger at Alamogordo on the, on the Trinity test,
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thinking there was a 10% chance that they were going to ignite the atmosphere and kill all life
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on earth. That would have been irresponsible. That would have been pretty shocking if they had done
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that. The fact that they thought that any of them thought it was within the realm of possibility
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is still a little alarming. And that's always been held out as a moment where scientists showed
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their capacity to whatever the real probabilities were. You can hold that aside. Within their own
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minds, they showed their capacity to roll the dice with the future of the species in a way that
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should have kind of shocked everyone. But here we're in a completely different game, right? I mean,
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again, whatever the actual probabilities are aside, there's no way to know that. You have the people
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who are doing this work, funding this work, making the decisions on a daily basis, the closest to the
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engineering understanding that should govern one's sense of the probabilities here. They're telling us,
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yeah, this is, we're sort of in coin toss land, you know, or at least dice roll land. You know,
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a single die may come up, you know, six and we cancel the future, right? That's insane. And yet somehow
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we're not even in a position to have an emotional response to it. I think, but what's the alternative?
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Don't you want Sam Altman or the U.S. to get whatever that is first? No, I think we do need
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to navigate this growing, you know, superpower contest with China. We need whatever, you know,
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economic levers and military levers we can get in hand. But, you know, there should be some
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impossible version of a carrot, which is we figure out how to solve truly global problems jointly,
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right? I mean, so we need an American president who could have conceivably unified the world's
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democracies on this and other points, right? Like all of our, all of our European allies in Australia
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and Canada could be on the same page vis-a-vis Russia and the war in Ukraine, vis-a-vis China and
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the AI arms race. We need leverage, right? We need to be able to hit the stop button somehow. We need to,
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we need a system of alliances where we can actually credibly threaten China with a plunge back into
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poverty when we take back all of our supply chain, you know, and we can't just be America, right? We
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has to be, you know, every other democracy that cares about the fate of civilization. We just don't,
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we, we're not in a political environment where we can collaborate globally in, in those kinds of
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ways. And the reason why we're not is, it's not exclusively Trump, but it's, you know, it's Trump to
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an extraordinary degree. We're not in a position to absorb this kind of shock to our system. You know,
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it's like you're going to have Tucker Carlson talking about the rise of the machines. Is that
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really the, the information diet that half the country got to have Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson
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chopping it up for four hours and making sense of this? We're not ready for the political and
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economic pivot that will be required in success, right? In perfect success, again, without any
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downside risk. I mean, if all of the catastrophic concerns are pure fiction, the alignment problem
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was never a problem. And the malicious use of this powerful technology is never significant,
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right? You don't have cyber terrorism. It's AI, you know, weaponized, you know, China doesn't turn
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out the lights on us, et cetera, right? None of that happens, right? It's all just the good use of
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this technology, just curing cancer all day long, you know, you know, curing cancer, playing chess,
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making things, you got AI, you know, Hollywood, Netflix gets to make movies that cost $14 to make,
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but they're the perfect, you know, wide release summer confections, right? That everyone wants to see
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because they've been algorithmically tested on a billion brains. And, uh, you know, the next Tom
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Cruz looks 32 for the rest of his life and it's all, you know, it's perfect. And yet where's the
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economy around all of that? Who edited it? Who shot it? Who, you know, who catered it? None of that
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happened. It was made for $14 and, you know, on a laptop. You don't think government intervenes
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quickly and says, okay, wait, we got to reset. I mean, it would be amazing if we had the foresight
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to make the changes politically and economically that we would have to make to spread the wealth
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around. That would be amazing, right? But I just see nothing in our history or in our, in the present
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that makes it seem like we're capable of doing that, right? I mean, you, what you would need,
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you, you, you would need people to be able to, um, agree about the questions of fundamental value,
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right? Like what is good for people? What kind of lives do we want to live, right? We can't even
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agree about the ethics of universal basic income. Like the moment you, you've raised, I mean, there's,
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I think there's some question as to whether UBI is the right remedy for a situation like this.
00:22:26.080
Um, and there's certainly debatable points. I think the research on, on UBI, the actual practical
00:22:30.960
and psychological and social effects of UBI are, that research is somewhat ambiguous still.
00:22:36.040
Although I would point out it's being conducted in a context where these changes haven't been forced
00:22:41.360
on, you know, culture across the board, right? But we can't agree about it. So, you know, you,
00:22:46.800
the moment you mentioned UBI, half the people will say, you know, this is obviously what we're going
00:22:52.160
to need, some version of this, you know, and it's, it has no, it should have no moral stigma attached to
00:22:57.040
it. And then the other half will say, no, this is a catastrophe because people need to work. The
00:23:01.820
people derive their meaning from work and they should derive their meaning from work. And I can't
00:23:06.000
imagine any other system of norms or expectations where you wouldn't get your meaning from work.
00:23:12.180
And they're, you know, good Christian anchors to a lot of that thinking. If we can't even have that
00:23:17.980
conversation and agree about what we should do, again, under conditions of perfect success, where
00:23:24.000
it's analogous to the creator of the universe, just handing us the ultimate labor-saving device
00:23:28.820
right here, just become as wealthy as you want to be. Here's the hardware and here's the software
00:23:33.400
that cancels the need for human drudgery until the end of the world and, and, and will produce
00:23:39.340
every scientific insight of which, which nature admits is possible, right? Here, here's kind of the,
00:23:46.640
here is an intelligence explosion in your hands, you know, go have at it. In our current condition,
00:23:52.520
we seem totally incapable of absorbing that, you know? We, I mean, I, that, that, that would be the
00:23:58.320
kind of the final irony. It's like, give us the best thing that could ever be invented and we will
00:24:04.600
turn it into the worst thing that has ever been invented, right? It's like, you know, the, the,
00:24:09.140
the Chinese would nuke us if they knew we had it now kind of thing. I got that, that's how politically
00:24:14.700
combustible we are as a species. Like if we knew that China had it, right? If China had the,
00:24:21.180
the AI that was, could cancel all of our efforts because it's perfect, right? And, and, and it's
00:24:27.660
perfectly, is again, perfectly aligned to their use, right? Like it's not going to get away from
00:24:32.260
them, but they can decide to just enjoy a winner take all spoils situation. They've got there first
00:24:39.560
and they've proven it. What would we do? Given the level of antagonism in our world, given how zero
00:24:46.820
some we are, what would we do? I mean, would we just bomb them? I mean, I think that's, I think
00:24:52.120
I would put the chances at 50-50, right? I mean, like we're so far from even having a conversation
00:24:58.520
about how to have a global civilization that, that works because, I mean, and, and this, again,
00:25:05.040
that I, this comes back to our own domestic politics and how it is so much worse than the
00:25:11.300
alternatives. I mean, say what you want about Biden and, and what could have been true under,
00:25:15.620
you know, Kamala Harris presidency. Lots of awful things I would, I could also whinge about, but the
00:25:22.300
one thing we wouldn't have is this plunge into America first, no nothingism, this retreat from
00:25:30.760
the world, the sense that even our allies are contemptible, right? I mean, we don't, we don't even
00:25:38.040
like our allies, you know, and, and we sort of like our enemies. If we can get our enemies to
00:25:42.180
pay up, we kind of like them more than our allies because they have our ethics, you know? It's like
00:25:47.000
that, like we don't want to hold ourselves to any standard of decency globally. So we actually are
00:25:54.060
more comfortable doing deals with other countries that don't hold them to themselves to any standard
00:25:59.620
of decency, right? Like, yes, of course we can do a deal with the UAE or Qatar, you know, that's just,
00:26:06.600
it's just bakshish, right? I mean, like, so that change, the stepping back from alliances and
00:26:12.400
imagining that we can go it alone on some level and, and the fact that half of our, of our society
00:26:16.900
is celebrating that and is just trying to figure out, you know, whether they can suffer the, the
00:26:21.960
Jews in their midst as they become more and more selfish and more and more oblivious to what's
00:26:27.740
happening in the rest of the world. I mean, that, that is far worse than the alternative, right? I mean,
00:26:34.160
again, Kamala Harris was not a good candidate. The wokeness is as terrible as everyone on the
00:26:40.160
right has said it is. I'm not, I would never minimize any of that, but we would have continued
00:26:45.960
being a country that is looking to solve global problems in a sane way under President Harris.
00:26:51.900
There's no question about that. Well, we know you'll have job security because you're going to
00:26:55.420
have to help us think through all this continually on the podcast. And then maybe on the other side,
00:27:01.220
you're going to have to help us figure out what to do with all this time with the, with the
00:27:05.020
meditation app. So let's, let's shift gears now to Tucker and his demons.
00:27:13.360
Yeah, no, I just thought, I think this is kind of funny. I saw him tell this story. I know he's
00:27:17.360
told it before about him being clawed by demons while asleep in bed with his wife and four dogs.
00:27:23.100
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