00:01:01.660No, and you've been in there quite a bit yourself.
00:01:04.540It's almost like an Easter egg where I'm reading a thread and then I see a comment from you.
00:01:08.900We don't have a follow feature, and I think that works out better because we didn't want
00:01:12.960to build this community to be dependent on you, and it certainly hasn't been.
00:01:16.700So for today's episode, I'm going to try something a little different.
00:01:19.620Rather than running down a bunch of topics related to the news cycle, I'm going to grab
00:01:23.320a sampling from the posts in our community and get you to comment on them here.
00:01:29.080We'll also get your reactions to the Iran deal, whatever's happening over there, and to whatever
00:01:34.060current events are necessary. So for those of you who are looking for that, don't worry.
00:01:38.820And just a quick note before we get going, if you want to join community or become a subscriber to
00:01:42.800the podcast, you can find subscription options by going to samharris.org slash subscribe.
00:01:49.200Okay, let's get started. One world government. Is global political unification inevitable?
00:01:54.620and would it be good? Should nation states eventually operate the way U.S. states do
00:01:59.880under a federal umbrella? Yeah, actually, this is not something I've thought about recently,
00:02:04.880but now that you mention it, this is probably something I've changed my mind about. I think in
00:02:09.120my first book, The End of Faith, I wrote somewhere, probably in an end note, that it was just obvious
00:02:14.860that the end game for civilization is some version of one world government. What we want
00:02:20.420in the end, if things work out, is for the prospect of war between China and the U.S.,
00:02:27.180say, to be just as ridiculous and therefore unthinkable as the prospect of war is now
00:02:32.040between Vermont and Massachusetts, right? It's like, it's just not going to happen. Nobody's0.93
00:02:36.360worried about it. And that's the case because they're unified under a single government that
00:02:43.600has a monopoly on the use of force. So something like that for the entire world must be where
00:02:49.940we're headed unless we're going to keep killing one another i don't think i believe that now or
00:02:56.180if i if i do believe it i think that goal is far enough away and you're quixotic enough that
00:03:02.340you really can't argue for it in the current environment the idea that you know in our case
00:03:08.440the united states could ever be truly subordinate to the political whims of of uh europe or or you
00:03:15.920say nothing of going further afield and greater cultural distance from us. Our own society is so
00:03:24.860dysfunctional politically at this point that the idea of a global version of this just seems
00:03:30.300genuinely unthinkable to me. You don't think some super AGI of some kind would be able to
00:03:36.880solve that for us? Or you're saying maybe? Well, I could imagine the dystopian version of this,
00:03:43.540One world totalitarianism, tech enabled, I could well imagine that being in our future. But in terms of a desirable future where we realize that we've converged so fully on our cultural priorities that we're just going to un-Brexit the whole world because it's just obviously good and we really trust our brothers and sisters over there in Belgium and Congo and everywhere else.
00:04:13.380I mean, it's just, it's not going to happen in the lifetime of, of, uh, our children or their
00:04:18.560children or any of their robots. I just don't, don't see it. Really? You just, you really think
00:04:23.420there's just no version where AI comes up with like all the best answers and we've all just
00:04:27.380gathered around and said, Oh my God, this is just, this is not comparable. You can't, if you're going
00:04:31.900to put it all on AI, then successful, perfect super intelligence that then I really don't know
00:04:38.000what the world looks like. I mean, then, and the whole thing perhaps becomes a self-driving car
00:04:42.220and we forgot we ever wanted a steering wheel. But the dystopian versions of something like that
00:04:47.840are, I think, so much more numerous and easier to think about that I just don't see us overcoming
00:04:55.220our political fragmentation to a degree that makes even the aspiration for one world government
00:05:01.880something that you can talk about with a straight face. Okay, next topic. Are you a hard materialist
00:05:07.040or do you leave room for genuinely unexplained phenomena? How do you handle people you trust
00:08:47.840If anyone's going to be left standing, it's going to be the massage therapists and the people with good taste intellectually who can kind of point in the right direction toward the robots that make more sense rather than less sense.
00:09:00.300I mean, I've always felt it was a good degree to get and prepared you for anything else that you might want to do pretty well, even if you're going to go into science.
00:09:09.700Because when you go into science at the graduate level, you basically have to relearn everything anyway.
00:09:14.660I mean, you take all the same basic courses to get started.
00:09:17.580So, yeah, I don't think it has much gravitas. I think it should have more. It's true that it depends what philosophy you focused on. I think there are corners of philosophy that are just word salad or mostly word salad. And yeah, those are, I think, rightly denigrated. But yeah, I've averted my eyes from most of that stuff.
00:09:38.460All right. Thanks for that. Why are we here? Can you live a genuinely examined life without
00:09:44.180arriving at a satisfying answer to that question? Or is the asking itself the point? Or is neither
00:09:50.080the point? I think it's the wrong question. I don't think you can extract much of value out of
00:09:56.200that question. It's certainly not the question that science asks. I mean, it's much more of a
00:10:02.340how question. How are we here? How did this happen? That's a scientific question. The why
00:10:08.200question attributes a or seeks to attribute a reason behind all of this and perhaps an intention
00:10:14.120it's a very theistic framing of the nature of the problem what about the what what is the meaning of
00:10:20.380life well again that just sort of smuggles in the same question under what it's um there need not be
00:10:26.780a meaning to life it's just why should there be you know without people you would never be tempted
00:10:34.500to ask that question it's like you know just let's say people become extinct you know there's
00:10:39.820just a world filled with with non-human animals you know look at look at that creation look at
00:10:47.440the wolves and the owls and the cockroaches you would never be tempted to wonder well what is the
00:10:52.820what's the meaning of this you know why did this happen it's interesting it's no less interesting
00:10:59.300to consider how it happened and what's actually happening and but um purpose that's just it's a
00:11:05.760very anthropomorphic lens to look at all of this through there's just the fact that the cosmos
00:11:12.720exists and you are part of it right and the whoa like why ask why in the face of that mystery the
00:11:20.600mystery isn't resolved let me just imagine the answer that if you could believe it if an answer
00:11:26.260were given to you, would it really resolve that mystery? You know, if a voice boomed out of the
00:11:31.360heaven saying, oh, why? Because I wanted to, or why? Because this is what I thought was beautiful.
00:11:36.180Does that really answer anything? Certainly just, it just throws up more questions than you want to
00:11:39.980ask that maniac in the sky, you know, what about smallpox? It can't possibly satisfy that it's not
00:11:46.000going to scratch the itch that anyone thinks it's going to scratch. So what is the right question to
00:11:50.520ask, or is there just no question to ask? Yeah, I think that, I think this questioning mode,
00:11:54.980So the emotional question, you know, the feeling that there's a problem here emotionally that has to be solved, you know, on the other side of which your happiness and tranquility will be found, that's an illusion and that's the cramp introduced by the question itself, right?
00:12:09.960I mean, that's a failure of your attention to actually contact the mode of feeling good enough in the present moment, right?
00:12:18.620Like you're distracted enough, you don't recognize thoughts as thoughts, you don't recognize any space around thoughts.
00:12:24.980you don't know how to meditate, you don't know what your mind is really, you know, you're just
00:12:28.580being used by it in each moment, you know, you're effectively asleep and dreaming, and now you're
00:12:34.840dreaming that you're sitting in a classroom wondering, you know, what's the point of it all?
00:12:38.560It's not the place from which you're going to answer this question, and it's not the place
00:12:42.180where you could receive an answer that would be satisfying. I mean, your problem is you just don't
00:12:46.660feel as good as you might feel if you paid closer attention to what it's like to be you in each
00:12:52.700moment, right? If you broke the spell of your identification with thought, it can actually
00:12:56.880rest, right? And you glimpse that kind of experience, you know, when you, you know,
00:13:03.220are really working out hard or, you know, thrown into the, in some, you know, collision with the
00:13:09.780beauty of nature or you're having sex or you're, you know, appreciating art or something has moved
00:13:15.640you out of yourself and, or you've taken the right drugs, right? Something has placed you in
00:13:20.940a quote non-ordinary state of consciousness or a peak experience and then you just this you've
00:13:27.060forgotten you've certainly forgotten this question you're not asking any questions you're just
00:13:30.420you know if the mind is going to come online again at that moment it's going to you'll be
00:13:35.700asking questions like well why can't i feel like this more of the time or how do i maintain this
00:13:40.000experience or maybe you know is it possible to to move here where they i can have this beautiful
00:13:45.220beautiful view of the ocean or like the thing you think you that has moved you into that
00:13:51.600profound embrace of the present moment you think it's exogenous to yourself right again it's the
00:13:57.900landscape or it's the relationship or it's the you know whatever it is that the fun you're having
00:14:02.280in the company of friends it's you're going to attribute that as its cause and then you'll be
00:14:08.220left thinking how can i get more of that and again that's a failure to understand the attentional
00:14:12.980basis of these changes and experience. So how do you answer this question if your seven-year-old
00:14:18.900nephew says, Uncle Sam, why are we here? What is the purpose of all of this?
00:14:25.680Then I would say, I don't know, but the mystery isn't the problem. And the mystery can be the
00:14:33.020source of a very fun exploration of the world, right? That's everything, whether you're going
00:14:38.780to explore the mountains, or you're going to explore a jungle, or you're going to explore
00:14:42.760science. Your curiosity is not something you're ever going to get rid of. Curiosity is not a
00:14:49.680problem. All right. In a recent episode of Making Sense, Noah Smith says, fixing the debt means
00:14:54.900cutting healthcare for the poor while the wealthy give up a vacation or two. Is that the, we're all
00:15:00.460in this together, or is it obscene? And is this exact frustration what's actually driving the
00:15:07.720populist wave. I guess I don't understand the connection there. We think the populist wave
00:15:12.960might, you're asking whether wealth inequality is driving populism? Well, he's saying in the
00:15:16.920recent episode, I believe the question is, is that when Noah was talking about saying, look,
00:15:21.520we're all going to have to be in this together, the poor are going to have, not the poor, but the
00:15:25.360middle class are going to have to handle this and the wealthy are going to have to give up a vacation
00:15:29.080or two. And he's, I think he's, the question is, is that really what it means? We're all in this
00:15:34.220together that the wealthy are going to have to give up a vacation or two and that's i forgot he
00:15:38.020said that i mean i would quibble with the definitions of the cohorts here i mean the wealthy
00:15:42.280when you're talking about the wealthy you're talking about well the people who are not going
00:15:45.640to give up anything right no matter how much we tax them they're not going to have to give up a
00:15:50.920vacation or two i would draw the line at wealth where you're not you're there's not a conceivable
00:15:57.120change in your style of living that could matter i mean that most of your money is always just
00:16:03.360going to be numbers on a spreadsheet. It's never going to be implicated in how you spend your
00:16:08.940money, right? Those are the truly wealthy people in our society. The question I think is directly
00:16:14.040toward those people. Why can't those people bear more of the burden? I think what Noah was saying
00:16:19.580though, is that even if you manage to tax those people quite onerously, it's still not enough
00:16:26.580money, right? Like the middle class is going to have to pay more in taxes too, right? And the
00:16:31.600almost wealthy, the people who will feel it. We're not going to tax our way successfully out
00:16:39.320of a $40 trillion hole. And I think he was saying, as many people have, that really it's going to
00:16:45.480require growth and inflation to get us out as well. You can't redistribute your way out of it,
00:16:51.620but there's going to have to be a fair amount of redistribution too.
00:16:56.660A 26-year-old is about to start medical school and wondering if it's a mistake. In eight years,
00:17:01.440will there still be a meaningful role for human physicians or is this the wrong career bet at the
00:17:07.080worst possible moment? It seems as good a bet as any, really. I mean, if you're going to worry that
00:17:13.640being a doctor is a dead end now, I think almost everything else is on that list at the same level
00:17:22.500as it's just as likely that there will be no lawyers and there'll be no, you know, even,
00:17:28.320you know, CEOs of companies, right? It's like, do you want to found a company? Well,
00:17:32.860what's to say that two years from now, that company won't even be more successful if a
00:17:37.080robot were running it, right? So it's not, I think, I don't think you can close the door on
00:17:41.700most professions like that at this point. It's just that there's going to be some way of being
00:17:45.900a doctor and using all the AI tools. And if there's not, there's going to be some role for
00:17:52.260a person who almost became a doctor to use those, you know, use these tools better than
00:17:56.880most other people. I mean, there has to be some human layer to this. Otherwise, we're going to
00:18:03.420have to solve everybody's problem all at once by just spreading the trillions of dollars around
00:18:09.360that the robots have produced for us. So it's, yeah, I mean, I can't say that you should be
00:18:15.020pessimistic about whether being a doctor is even going to be a thing in a few short years,
00:18:19.560because if that happens, basically everything is gone, I would say.
00:18:24.340Well, but if the doctors are gone, that's probably, I mean, there's an upside to that
00:19:20.560There's something great about the college experience because it gives you four years to be a student and to just be interested in anything that you find interesting and to be surrounded by people doing the same thing.
00:19:35.640It's not that there's no pressure, but it's a very specific type of pressure.
00:19:39.000It's not the pressure to make your life work out in the world.
00:19:41.780It's not the pressure to find a career immediately.
00:19:44.700It's, it's a very, it's a very useful crucible and it's over far too fast for most kids,