Making Sense - Sam Harris - #450 — More From Sam： Resolutions, Conspiracies, Demonology, and the Fate of the World

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

00:00:11.740 hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing

00:00:15.720 the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

00:00:20.060 Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore

00:00:26.240 it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're

00:00:30.200 doing here, please consider becoming one. Okay, we're back with another episode of More

00:00:38.600 from Sam, where we get more from you, Sam. Yes, good luck. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. How

00:00:45.160 are you doing? I'm good. Good to see you. Before we get into things, I just want to quickly remind

00:00:49.320 everyone that you will be giving talks in a number of cities in 2026. Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin,

00:00:55.600 Portland, Vancouver, Palm Beach, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Last time we warned

00:01:02.860 Portland to start buying tickets or we were going to cancel, and that seemed to work. So

00:01:07.400 good news, the show is still happening. If you want to see Sam live, this is the time to

00:01:11.300 do it, and it's a really great talk. Republicans and Democrats alike will be thrilled.

00:01:15.800 Both hate it. Yeah. And annoyed, just like this podcast. Okay, on to our first topic. Last

00:01:21.620 year, you made a New Year's resolution where you essentially planned to live like you were

00:01:25.080 dying. I want to know how that went for you, and if you're making any adjustments to that plan for

00:01:29.800 2026, or is that just the plan for the rest of your life? No, no. I think our phrase is this,

00:01:35.840 live as though it were my last year. Yeah. I mean, it was a great frame to put over the year. The year

00:01:40.900 didn't quite become what I expected because seven days into it, half the city burned down, and I had to

00:01:48.580 flee my house, which didn't burn happily, but we still haven't been back. So the year got jiggered

00:01:55.060 around by real estate concerns way more than I was anticipating, and I wouldn't expect to spend the

00:02:00.120 last year of my life on that. Did that help you actually sharpen up your goal a little bit more?

00:02:04.740 It played a little havoc with it. I mean, in terms of actually the content of what I was paying

00:02:08.620 attention to, it was more terrestrial and practical than I would have hoped for. But it was, I mean,

00:02:18.080 I would give myself maybe a B on this aspiration. I mean, I think I did have my priorities pretty

00:02:25.460 straight. I mean, it's always, I mean, the filter for me with respect to the podcast is, I mean,

00:02:33.340 there would be less, if I could really do this, I think there would be less politics, or I mean,

00:02:37.280 the level, the cut would be higher. I mean, it would really be sort of emergency politics more

00:02:43.440 than just, okay, here's another thing in the news that I can't help but respond to.

00:02:47.660 Well, you're going to hate this episode then.

00:02:49.080 Yeah, exactly. It's going to be, this is probably not going to be a moment of me walking my talk,

00:02:55.900 but no, it was good. I would do the same. I think I'll do the same year after year because it's

00:03:01.540 really, you know, obviously one doesn't know how many one has left. And yeah, I mean, no regrets

00:03:07.880 that that was my resolution. All right, good. I think we're all addicted to social media and our

00:03:12.060 phones at this point, and our attention has become so fragmented that it's almost impossible to fully

00:03:16.720 be anywhere anymore. Is there a quick pitch for the Waking Up app you can throw in here?

00:03:21.040 Well, I mean, you know, we often demonize the smartphone as the locus of all of our fragmentation

00:03:27.120 and collective derangement. I think that's true, but obviously there are different uses of a

00:03:32.880 smartphone, and this is certainly one that I can stand behind as being just categorically different

00:03:37.320 from the other stuff that's driving us crazy. And I view most, certainly most of the audio I consume

00:03:45.020 on a phone, which is a lot, as some version of, you know, kind of very productive and unifying of my

00:03:52.900 attention. I mean, you know, I listen to good books and good conversations and, you know, obviously,

00:03:57.440 you know, listening to guided meditations and meditation instruction is, I think, kind of the

00:04:01.740 ultimate example of a good use of attention on this device, which is just not at all analogous to

00:04:07.480 having your attention, you know, shattered on the regular by social media engagement and kind of the

00:04:14.040 dopaminergic checking in to the response, to the response, to the response. So yeah, I think waking up

00:04:19.560 is, I mean, I love what we've created over there, and I think it's a great use of the device, you

00:04:25.680 know. Can you give us some examples of what types of results one could expect once they develop this

00:04:30.720 skill that could, I think, honestly take somebody about a week to really begin to see something,

00:04:36.740 but, you know, what kind of results can one expect? Yeah, I love these questions. These are,

00:04:40.800 this is exactly the way I come at it. Hope the irony was detectable there. I mean, so there are kind of

00:04:46.400 two sides to this topic, right? There's the conventional mainstream pitch for mindfulness

00:04:52.500 that, you know, here's a list of benefits you can expect from the practice, and most of what is

00:04:59.220 claimed there, I think, is true. I mean, some of it is, you know, poorly researched, or at least the

00:05:04.440 research is kind of thin, and, you know, some of it might wash out, but the thing that is obviously

00:05:08.820 true is that virtually everyone, until they learn to practice mindfulness in some form, is spending

00:05:15.840 their life perpetually distracted, and they're so distracted they're not even aware of that,

00:05:20.840 right? They're thinking every moment of their lives, their moment-to-moment experience of being a self

00:05:25.760 in the world is being filtered through this discursive, conceptually framed conversation

00:05:34.220 they're having with themselves. And again, the conversation is so incessant and so loud that it

00:05:39.700 achieves this kind of white noise status where people aren't even aware that they're distracted.

00:05:45.040 Half the people hearing me say this who have never tried to meditate will be thinking,

00:05:50.040 what the hell is he talking about, right? But it's that voice in the mind, what the hell is he

00:05:54.220 talking about that feels like you? That's the endless conversation that is defining your experience

00:06:00.220 moment-to-moment. It's the medium on which all of your dissatisfaction and frustration and regret

00:06:06.280 and annoyance and, you know, everything that makes you an asshole in the world, it is the medium that 0.96

00:06:11.260 transmits that and makes it actionable emotionally and behaviorally moment-to-moment. It's the capture 0.98

00:06:17.580 by thought unwittingly, right? The impulse that you can't see creep up from behind that just becomes

00:06:24.640 you, that becomes your, you know, the next thing you say, the next thing you reach for, the next thing

00:06:29.820 you aspire to become. I mean, it's just, again, we're living in a dreamscape and virtually nobody

00:06:36.120 notices. So when you try to practice meditation for the first time, really any form of meditation,

00:06:41.660 but, you know, mindfulness in particular, initially you're given this very basic exercise of just try

00:06:47.220 to pay attention to the breath, you know, try to pay attention to sounds, you know, moment by moment,

00:06:51.340 and every time you notice you're lost in thought, come back to the feeling of breathing or the sounds

00:06:56.180 in your environment or the sense of your body resting in space or just some sensory experience that

00:07:01.500 you can use to try to build some concentration on. And it is, you know, it's, if you persist in it long

00:07:07.660 enough to notice how hard that is and how vulnerable your attention is in every present moment to the

00:07:14.960 next thought arising unrecognized and just seeming to become you, it is a kind of revelation. I mean,

00:07:21.600 I'll be a negative one. I mean, you just, what you, you, what you recognize in yourself is this

00:07:26.280 pervasive incapacity to pay attention to anything for more than a few moments at a time without being

00:07:31.300 distracted. And it's very hard, but whatever you think about meditation from that moment forward,

00:07:36.800 maybe you think it's just too much of a hassle, you're, you know, you're too restless, it's too

00:07:40.200 hard, you don't have a talent for it, you know, you're going to move on to other things, and you

00:07:43.320 kind of bounce off the project. Even if you're falling to that condition, it's, I think it should

00:07:48.900 be very hard to, to argue to yourself that, that this is somehow psychologically optimal to not be able

00:07:54.860 to pay attention to something for more than a few moments at a time and to be helplessly buffeted by

00:08:00.080 the winds of your own distraction. I had a good thought actually about that. I wanted to run by

00:08:04.740 you. There's this idea of sort of like a dealer dealing cards like thoughts. And imagine sitting

00:08:10.260 at the card table, blackjack table, just every time, just waiting for the cards and just, no,

00:08:16.240 don't want to play that card. No, just, you can wait for a blackjack every time. If you know how to

00:08:20.440 wait for the cards, you don't have to play the card that's dealt. You can say, I don't want that one.

00:08:24.660 Don't want that one. And everyone at the table is looking at you like, this guy's cheating and it's

00:08:27.940 kind of like cheating, but if you have that skill, it's kind of cool.

00:08:31.300 Oh yeah. The cards are thoughts, right? Thoughts taken seriously. So, you know, the, the voice of

00:08:37.380 your mind says, I can't believe how you fuck that up. Right. And so, okay. So how much, so what does 0.99

00:08:43.080 that, what does that convey, right? Like how much shame or regret or what do you do with that? You

00:08:49.380 don't have to do anything with it. You tell the dealer to give you another card.

00:08:52.220 Yeah. I mean, there's this image in Tibetan Buddhism of, you know, ultimately thoughts are

00:08:57.140 like thieves entering an empty house, right? There's nothing for them to steal, right? So

00:09:01.340 that like, just imagine what that's like. Imagine, just imagine the, the scene of, you know, thieves

00:09:06.460 come, you know, storming into a house that has nothing in it, right? I mean, there's no implication

00:09:11.720 of their presence there, right? That there's nothing for them to do. Thoughts recognized are just

00:09:18.180 these mysterious mental objects, right? I mean, they really don't, you know, it is just a bit

00:09:24.020 of language or a bit of imagery. And it is, it is genuinely mysterious that, you know, this next

00:09:29.800 thought can so fully commandeer your physiology and your, your whole sense of being in the world.

00:09:37.220 I mean, your, the next thought taken seriously could define the next decade of your life if you

00:09:42.200 can't see some reason not to take it seriously. So meditation on some level is a way of relaxing

00:09:48.080 the hold that thoughts automatically have on us. Yeah. As we move into 2026, I hope people will

00:09:54.620 develop a practice or give this a look, check out waking up. And if not waking up, there are plenty

00:09:59.700 of other apps where you can learn to meditate because it really is a basic skill that you should,

00:10:03.680 you should just, if you don't go super deep, that's fine, but you should have a basic understanding

00:10:08.500 and just explore that for yourself. And it's life-changing. So if anyone's focused on nutrition

00:10:14.260 and physical fitness and sleep, you're missing this aspect. If you care about those three and

00:10:20.220 you're not caring about your mind, you're missing this. All right. On to our next topic. I really

00:10:26.180 liked your podcast with Ross Douthat, that recent one. He's very likable and very smart. I think it

00:10:31.940 was the first time I liked an argument for why God, a perfect God would put a bad idea like slavery

00:10:38.760 in the Bible, where he basically had said that he knew it was bad, but wanted to allow room for

00:10:44.600 Christians to evolve and to sort of put their fingerprints on it over time. Now, he says-

00:10:49.520 Is that a good argument?

00:10:50.360 No, he said, you know, if that's not good for you. No, I wasn't persuaded by it, but I actually

00:10:55.820 liked it. I thought, oh, that's a well-made argument that he's explaining that God wanted to

00:11:00.980 make room for Christians to evolve and to- 0.97

00:11:03.400 Well, it's well-made in the sense that it's totally unfalsifiable and it could absorb anything,

00:11:08.420 any possible contents of the Bible, you know, even mathematical errors, right? I mean, you know,

00:11:13.620 I think pi is calculated somewhere in the Bible as three, you know, full stop. I think I have that

00:11:19.540 right. I mean, I think it's just said that the, you know, the circumference of a circle is with a

00:11:24.340 diameter one is three or something like that. But, okay, so God can't do math while he's waiting for us

00:11:30.780 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.

00:11:38.420 I mean, I guess maybe I'm in an uncharitable mood around this, but I mean, as at a certain point, 1.00

00:11:43.000 we have to run out of our patience with these dodges. I just don't know how they, I don't know

00:11:47.500 how you spend your life circling that specific attractor again and again, year after year. I mean,

00:11:53.060 it's just so obviously wrong and foolish. I mean, we'd have no patience for it. If this wasn't 0.99

00:11:57.660 grandfathered in by this tradition, I mean, again, you just look at the crazy, you know, it's,

00:12:02.080 it's Scientology. I mean, you look at, you watch Alex Gibney's documentary on Scientology and look

00:12:08.420 at that whole project and how embarrassing it was and look at those exit interviews, right? And it's

00:12:14.680 on some level more sophisticated than what we're talking about when you talk about, you know, any,

00:12:19.360 any defense of Christianity.

00:12:21.340 Yeah. And you guys also talked about AI. And for some reason, I find myself much less scared now

00:12:26.740 than I was earlier this year, simply because I believe the problem is going to be so big that

00:12:31.080 it will get addressed quickly. Where are you on that now? How are you feeling? I mean, I know at

00:12:35.080 some point earlier we were both thinking, how is everybody not talking about this every second of

00:12:39.400 the day? You still there? Well, I continue to be impressed about how hard it is to maintain one's

00:12:48.360 concern, even when one hasn't found a rational argument that should give you comfort, right? I mean,

00:12:54.680 it's, it is a sort of unique threat. I mean, this was the, at least the starting point of the talk I

00:12:59.820 gave on it now nearly 10 years ago, the TED talk in 2016, I think. But it's just, there's something

00:13:05.840 entertaining about it. It's fun to think about the downside. I mean, it's, there's something kind

00:13:10.480 of sexy and, and interesting about it that is, it's not like a coming plague or, you know, an asteroid

00:13:18.740 impact or something that you like, that was just, that's just scary and depressing, right? So even if you

00:13:24.120 think the risk is, is undiminished, I mean, you can't figure out how to, to be more comfortable

00:13:28.780 with the probabilities or the possible negative outcomes, it's just, there's something very

00:13:33.800 elusive about it. I mean, part of it is that the upside is also very compelling, right? I mean,

00:13:39.840 unlike the threat of nuclear war or anything else that is any other technological self-imposed risk,

00:13:45.840 I guess synthetic biology is slightly different. It's a little bit more like AI because there's

00:13:49.280 obviously some real upside to our breakthroughs in, in biology. But I mean, it's just, there's

00:13:55.080 something so, you know, in success, it looks like it could be amazing, you know, leaving aside

00:14:01.420 total unemployment and, and this, the social challenge of trying to grapple with that. But yeah,

00:14:07.320 I don't, I don't, you know, I think it's frankly terrifying when you look at the arms race condition 1.00

00:14:12.820 we're in and the people who are the, the, um, the moral quality or lack thereof of the people who

00:14:20.700 are making the decisions for us. I mean, it's like, you can count on two hands, the number of people

00:14:25.400 totally unregulated by a kleptocratic government at this point to speak of the United States.

00:14:31.340 Don't you believe we have to somewhat be unregulated at this point in order to win this arms race?

00:14:35.560 Well, I, I just think that if we had a morally sane and competent government, I think we would be

00:14:42.900 forcing some sort of global approach to this global problem, right? I mean, we, that, everything

00:14:49.040 would be bent toward that. I'm not talking about stopping development of AI. I don't think that's in

00:14:54.140 the cards under any regime, but clearly we need, we need to get out of this arms race condition. I mean,

00:15:00.900 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

00:15:06.740 the, the behind the scene details here. So I just, I don't know how scary it actually is, but you know,

00:15:13.140 from what people say in public, it should be alarming that the people who are doing this work

00:15:17.460 and people who are closest to it, when asked, you know, what probability they give to our destroying

00:15:24.100 ourselves with this technology, they, I think to a man, they all say something terrifying. I mean,

00:15:30.060 they're all like, Oh, maybe 20%, you know? I mean, it's just not, it's like, you're not hearing

00:15:34.180 people like Sam Altman say, Oh no, no, no, no. We've got this totally in hand and we're being,

00:15:38.720 you know, really safe and scrupulous. And yet people just have misunderstood this technology.

00:15:43.180 There's no way, there's no self-improving thing on the horizon that could conceivably get away from us.

00:15:48.980 No, no, no. Like this has just been way overblown. I would put the risk as we, you know, one in a million

00:15:53.860 virtually, I mean, maybe, maybe Jan Lacoon is still somebody who talks that way, but virtually nobody

00:15:58.620 in a position to make decisions says anything like that. So just imagine if all the people

00:16:04.340 developing nuclear technology at the time were saying, okay, we're probably, we're running a

00:16:09.240 20% chance of destroying everything. And yet we can't stop, you know, we're doing this as fast as

00:16:14.740 possible. And we're in, now you're going to witness a multi-trillion dollar build-out that is

00:16:19.360 going to basically subsume every other economic concern for us and environmental concern. I mean,

00:16:25.300 where did, where did climate change go? You know, you got, you got all these people building these,

00:16:29.480 the most resource intensive technology anyone ever dreamed of. And, you know, even some of the,

00:16:35.200 the, the, the real climate change focused people like Elon in the past are, you know,

00:16:40.140 there's none of that, right? It's just, you know, we're going to use all the water and all the

00:16:43.880 electricity and, and let's go. Well, what's the alternative? Weren't we given a 10% chance

00:16:47.900 for just total destruction with nuclear war with you creating the bomb?

00:16:51.140 I mean, there was a, a very small chance that the actual, you know, the Manhattan Project

00:16:55.520 principles thought that we might, uh, I mean, they, they did, they did some final calculations

00:17:01.300 and put it, I think it, a truly small chance, like, you know, like, you know, one in 10,000

00:17:05.460 or something, it was not 10%, but they were still placing bets on whether we would ignite

00:17:09.780 the atmosphere and destroy everything. And that wasn't 10%? I thought that was 10%. No,

00:17:14.000 no, no. I mean, they didn't think it was 10% at the time, but imagine if they had,

00:17:17.560 imagine if they had been willing to pull the trigger at Alamogordo on the, on the Trinity test,

00:17:23.720 thinking there was a 10% chance that they were going to ignite the atmosphere and kill all life

00:17:30.140 on earth. That would have been irresponsible. That would have been pretty shocking if they had done

00:17:35.720 that. The fact that they thought that any of them thought it was within the realm of possibility

00:17:39.840 is still a little alarming. And that's always been held out as a moment where scientists showed

00:17:46.000 their capacity to whatever the real probabilities were. You can hold that aside. Within their own

00:17:53.160 minds, they showed their capacity to roll the dice with the future of the species in a way that

00:17:58.420 should have kind of shocked everyone. But here we're in a completely different game, right? I mean,

00:18:05.400 again, whatever the actual probabilities are aside, there's no way to know that. You have the people

00:18:10.900 who are doing this work, funding this work, making the decisions on a daily basis, the closest to the

00:18:16.440 engineering understanding that should govern one's sense of the probabilities here. They're telling us,

00:18:22.180 yeah, this is, we're sort of in coin toss land, you know, or at least dice roll land. You know,

00:18:28.220 a single die may come up, you know, six and we cancel the future, right? That's insane. And yet somehow

00:18:36.400 we're not even in a position to have an emotional response to it. I think, but what's the alternative?

00:18:41.180 Don't you want Sam Altman or the U.S. to get whatever that is first? No, I think we do need

00:18:47.740 to navigate this growing, you know, superpower contest with China. We need whatever, you know,

00:18:54.360 economic levers and military levers we can get in hand. But, you know, there should be some

00:19:02.920 impossible version of a carrot, which is we figure out how to solve truly global problems jointly,

00:19:09.160 right? I mean, so we need an American president who could have conceivably unified the world's

00:19:17.080 democracies on this and other points, right? Like all of our, all of our European allies in Australia

00:19:23.100 and Canada could be on the same page vis-a-vis Russia and the war in Ukraine, vis-a-vis China and

00:19:29.800 the AI arms race. We need leverage, right? We need to be able to hit the stop button somehow. We need to,

00:19:37.260 we need a system of alliances where we can actually credibly threaten China with a plunge back into 0.99

00:19:43.760 poverty when we take back all of our supply chain, you know, and we can't just be America, right? We

00:19:49.800 has to be, you know, every other democracy that cares about the fate of civilization. We just don't,

00:19:55.180 we, we're not in a political environment where we can collaborate globally in, in those kinds of

00:20:00.820 ways. And the reason why we're not is, it's not exclusively Trump, but it's, you know, it's Trump to

00:20:06.440 an extraordinary degree. We're not in a position to absorb this kind of shock to our system. You know,

00:20:13.560 it's like you're going to have Tucker Carlson talking about the rise of the machines. Is that

00:20:17.080 really the, the information diet that half the country got to have Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson

00:20:21.080 chopping it up for four hours and making sense of this? We're not ready for the political and

00:20:27.380 economic pivot that will be required in success, right? In perfect success, again, without any

00:20:35.140 downside risk. I mean, if all of the catastrophic concerns are pure fiction, the alignment problem

00:20:41.000 was never a problem. And the malicious use of this powerful technology is never significant,

00:20:47.460 right? You don't have cyber terrorism. It's AI, you know, weaponized, you know, China doesn't turn 0.91

00:20:53.220 out the lights on us, et cetera, right? None of that happens, right? It's all just the good use of

00:20:58.340 this technology, just curing cancer all day long, you know, you know, curing cancer, playing chess,

00:21:02.740 making things, you got AI, you know, Hollywood, Netflix gets to make movies that cost $14 to make,

00:21:09.740 but they're the perfect, you know, wide release summer confections, right? That everyone wants to see

00:21:14.760 because they've been algorithmically tested on a billion brains. And, uh, you know, the next Tom

00:21:19.680 Cruz looks 32 for the rest of his life and it's all, you know, it's perfect. And yet where's the

00:21:26.580 economy around all of that? Who edited it? Who shot it? Who, you know, who catered it? None of that

00:21:33.440 happened. It was made for $14 and, you know, on a laptop. You don't think government intervenes

00:21:38.640 quickly and says, okay, wait, we got to reset. I mean, it would be amazing if we had the foresight

00:21:45.480 to make the changes politically and economically that we would have to make to spread the wealth

00:21:52.500 around. That would be amazing, right? But I just see nothing in our history or in our, in the present

00:21:59.160 that makes it seem like we're capable of doing that, right? I mean, you, what you would need,

00:22:04.060 you, you, you would need people to be able to, um, agree about the questions of fundamental value,

00:22:10.680 right? Like what is good for people? What kind of lives do we want to live, right? We can't even

00:22:15.740 agree about the ethics of universal basic income. Like the moment you, you've raised, I mean, there's,

00:22:20.080 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 1.00

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 0.89

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 0.91

00:24:14.700 combustible we are as a species. Like if we knew that China had it, right? If China had the, 0.99

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, 0.78

00:26:06.600 it's just bakshish, right? I mean, like, so that change, the stepping back from alliances and 1.00

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 1.00

00:26:27.740 happening in the rest of the world. I mean, that, that is far worse than the alternative, right? I mean, 0.99

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.

00:27:11.260 You're determined to keep me in a good mood.

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 If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

00:27:29.640 samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full length episodes of the Making Sense

00:27:34.920 podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support. And you

00:27:41.180 can subscribe now at samharris.org.

00:27:53.100 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - December 30, 2025

#450 — More From Sam： Resolutions, Conspiracies, Demonology, and the Fate of the World

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