Making Sense - Sam Harris - #60 — An Evening with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris (2)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.860 Please forgive me if I croak.

00:00:52.280 I've just had a minor stroke.

00:00:54.200 Basal ganglion on the right makes me walk as if I'm tight.

00:01:02.900 So if my voice descends to squawking, Sam will have to do the talking.

00:01:07.920 Thank you all for coming.

00:01:16.440 This is what a sold-out house looks like when the Cubs are in the seventh game of the World

00:01:20.800 Series.

00:01:23.400 There's a place in hell for those people who bought tickets and didn't use them.

00:01:28.320 Needless to say, it's an honor to be here and a real honor to be doing this with Richard,

00:01:32.080 and I get to do this twice in one week.

00:01:34.520 This is the second night that I think you know.

00:01:37.140 And Richard and I were worried about this.

00:01:40.320 We were worried about this event because we thought we would have a great conversation

00:01:44.360 last night, and then we didn't want to spend an hour in front of you here trying to recapitulate

00:01:50.140 that conversation.

00:01:50.940 So as a way of avoiding that fate, I went out to all of you, I think, online asking for

00:01:58.020 questions, and I got thousands of questions, and I picked many.

00:02:01.420 So the questions we'll track through tonight are different from the ones we did last night,

00:02:05.860 and this is all being videotaped, and you can see what you missed last night once that

00:02:09.960 video is available.

00:02:11.980 And I wasn't actually planning to ask this, but I wanted to talk about your stroke because

00:02:15.820 we haven't spoken about this.

00:02:16.880 And I'm going to guess that the sock choice is not evidence of your stroke.

00:02:24.960 Well, I was explaining last night that at the recent skeptics conference in Las Vegas,

00:02:30.960 we had a workshop on cold reading, which you know that system whereby you pretend to thought

00:02:38.540 read, and all you're doing really is sizing the other person up.

00:02:40.780 And my partner was a young woman who said, I seem to see there's something wrong with 0.88

00:02:48.220 your eyes, maybe colorblind.

00:02:52.640 She was looking at my, sorry, sorry.

00:02:55.880 I am trying to make a point.

00:02:59.100 I'm trying to spread the meme of odd socks.

00:03:02.780 Now, this is not for the reason given in Stephen Potter's lifemanship.

00:03:10.160 Under womanship, he recommends the odd socks ploy as a way of arousing the maternal instincts. 0.86

00:03:19.580 And then there's a footnote that says, buy our patent odd socks brand.

00:03:27.280 But my point is different from that.

00:03:30.040 It is that we should not be compelled to buy socks in pairs, because unlike shoes, which

00:03:37.080 have genuine chirality, you can't switch a left shoe and a right shoe.

00:03:42.920 Socks do not have this property, and therefore it's ridiculous having to buy socks in pairs.

00:03:48.260 If you lose one sock, you have to throw the other one away.

00:03:57.520 So I want to make the point in as vivid a fashion as possible, and encourage everybody

00:04:02.540 to wear odd socks.

00:04:09.620 Tell us about the experience of having a stroke.

00:04:12.820 Okay.

00:04:13.620 Well, it was a bit scary.

00:04:15.040 I just suddenly became aware that my left hand wasn't working.

00:04:20.600 I couldn't pick things up.

00:04:21.640 Or if I managed to pick something up, I couldn't let go of it again, which is sort of kind of

00:04:26.500 scary.

00:04:28.520 And I was sort of staggering about and not able to stand up straight.

00:04:32.120 I couldn't drop buttons.

00:04:34.340 I think I'm pretty much recovered now.

00:04:36.260 I can both do up and undo buttons.

00:04:38.540 This was in February?

00:04:39.980 Yes.

00:04:40.380 The only thing is, I can't sing.

00:04:45.540 I never could sing very well, but I could at least sing in tune, and now I can't.

00:04:51.120 And my voice does tend to croak, so hence my introductory apology.

00:04:56.900 Well, was there any immediate emotional or cognitive or perceptual component to it, or

00:05:04.560 was it just a motor thing that you noticed?

00:05:06.000 No, it was just motor.

00:05:07.740 I mean, I was obviously scared.

00:05:09.800 It's in the basal ganglion, as I said, which doesn't affect cognitive function.

00:05:13.680 So, I hope that will become evident tonight, as I've got to.

00:05:21.260 Well, we will see.

00:05:23.120 If you come out as a Mormon at any point in the next hour. 0.60

00:05:29.640 I think it would take more than a stroke to do that to me.

00:05:31.780 Our first question that one of you may have asked, if you had a time machine and could

00:05:49.540 travel 500 years into the future, what do you think you would find biologically, assuming

00:05:54.900 our direct descendants still exist and haven't uploaded themselves into the matrix, will

00:06:01.380 we be recognizably human?

00:06:03.280 500 years is too short a time to expect any genetic evolutionary change.

00:06:09.680 What about with our own meddling, the genetic engineering that we're surely going to do?

00:06:14.540 Yes, I mean, I suppose that is a possibility.

00:06:17.280 If by then we've colonized Mars, such that there's a barrier to gene flow between the parent

00:06:23.740 planet Earth and the colony on Mars, then it's possible that the Mars colony might have

00:06:30.360 diverged.

00:06:31.460 But 500 years is a short time.

00:06:34.380 But how much of an appetite do you think we will have, given what we currently are, to

00:06:40.440 change ourselves, given the ability to do so in radical ways?

00:06:45.260 Well, we've had the ability to change cows and horses and pigs and cabbages and dogs and

00:06:51.900 roses for hundreds, thousands of years.

00:06:56.520 And although we've changed all those species, almost beyond recognition, when you think that

00:07:00.980 a Pekingese or a poodle or a pug or a bulldog is a wolf, he still thinks it's a wolf.

00:07:07.420 The world's worst wolf.

00:07:09.400 And yet we haven't done that to humans.

00:07:12.020 So it looks as though we don't seem to have had much of an appetite to do that with respect

00:07:18.440 to the selection part of the Darwinian equation.

00:07:22.660 We're now just beginning to have the possibility of doing it to the mutation part of the Darwinian

00:07:27.960 equation, namely genetic engineering.

00:07:30.980 But it's not obvious why, if we didn't have the motivation to selectively breed humans,

00:07:36.220 why we should have the motivation to selectively mutate humans.

00:07:39.800 Kind of a related point, you're obviously very famous for having introduced this concept

00:07:44.880 of a meme.

00:07:46.060 How seriously should we take the analogy to a gene with a meme?

00:07:51.440 It was intended as an analogy to a gene.

00:07:56.100 And the idea is that anywhere in the universe where self-replicating coded information arises,

00:08:05.240 that could be fair game for Darwinian evolution, for Darwinian selection.

00:08:11.580 And I wanted to end the selfish gene by making that point, because the whole of the rest of

00:08:16.120 the book had been extolling the gene as the unit of selection.

00:08:20.480 So I wanted to make the point, it doesn't have to be DNA.

00:08:22.960 It could be anything which is self-replicating.

00:08:25.080 Well, one could speculate about life on other planets being mediated by a replicator other

00:08:34.840 than DNA.

00:08:36.220 But then I thought, or a computer virus would have done the job as well, but I didn't know

00:08:40.540 about them in 1976.

00:08:41.820 So I thought, well, what about cultural inheritance?

00:08:48.100 Anything where we have imitation is potentially analogous to genetic replication.

00:08:53.140 So something like a craze at a school, something like a craze for a particular kind of toy.

00:09:00.540 I introduced to my boarding school a craze for origami paper folding to make a Chinese junk. 1.00

00:09:08.660 And it spread exactly like a measles epidemic through the school, and then died away like

00:09:14.240 a measles epidemic.

00:09:15.680 Interestingly, I had learned to do this from my father, and he had learned it from an almost

00:09:21.680 identical epidemic at the same school 26 years earlier.

00:09:26.100 So the epidemiology of meme spread is very similar to gene spread.

00:09:32.380 But it's only interesting from a Darwinian point of view if the memes that spread are the

00:09:38.100 ones that are good at spreading.

00:09:39.680 If there is some kind of selective effect, and it's plausible that it should be, clothes

00:09:45.840 fashion spread because people find them cool, or something like a reverse baseball cap, which

00:09:54.480 by the way, lowers the IQ by a full 10 points.

00:09:58.140 That's probably the first remark that he's going to get in trouble for.

00:10:07.880 But I think you can probably treat religious memes in the same way.

00:10:14.620 I mean, religious ideas spread like a virus.

00:10:19.060 So I call them virus of the mind.

00:10:20.840 So they either pass down the generations like DNA does.

00:10:27.100 And of course, obviously, religions pass down generations. 0.76

00:10:30.200 But they also spread sideways in epidemics when you've got a particularly charismatic vector

00:10:37.460 of the virus like Billy Graham or one of those types.

00:10:41.900 So I think it's a genuinely interesting question whether the really successful religions like

00:10:48.380 Roman Catholicism and Islam spread because the memes have high spreadability in their own

00:10:55.680 right, like genes in Darwinism, or whether they're spread by Machiavellian priests who get

00:11:02.140 together and work out what's the best marketing strategy to spread them.

00:11:05.820 And I'm inclined to think that the pure memetic spread is plausible, and I'm interested in that.

00:11:12.900 I haven't really run very much with the meme idea.

00:11:15.880 The people who have are Dan Dennett, the philosopher who talks in a very interesting way about memes

00:11:23.340 in most of his recent books.

00:11:25.640 And Susan Blackmore is another one who wrote a book called The Meme Machine.

00:11:29.280 Actually, there are about 20 books now with the word meme in the title, which emphasise various

00:11:35.360 aspects of it.

00:11:37.200 The fact that memes don't change truly randomly, does that run roughshod over the analogy?

00:11:43.560 I don't think that really matters.

00:11:46.360 Genes mutate randomly in the sense that mutation is not directed towards improvement.

00:11:52.940 The only improvement comes from selection.

00:11:57.340 But mutation, nevertheless, is induced by things like cosmic rays, radioactivity, various mutagenic

00:12:04.920 chemicals.

00:12:06.560 The fact that memes are introduced by human creativity doesn't detract from the idea that

00:12:13.140 some memes spread better than others for selective reasons.

00:12:18.220 What do you think your most important contribution to science or culture at large has been or will

00:12:25.060 be?

00:12:25.720 I suppose The Extended Phenotype, which is the title of my second book.

00:12:31.160 It's the only book that I wrote with a professional audience in mind.

00:12:37.000 I could expound it, but this is supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue.

00:12:42.880 The question is for both of us, so I can answer it.

00:12:46.480 Well, you could answer it.

00:12:47.320 Well, okay, you do your answer first then.

00:12:52.280 I can tell you what I hope it will be.

00:12:53.940 I don't tend to think in these terms globally, but I think what I'm doing most of the time

00:13:01.900 and have done in most of my books is attempt to argue for the unity of knowledge and to

00:13:06.980 resist this balkanization of our epistemology by essentially what I view as the dictates of

00:13:14.320 university architecture.

00:13:15.780 The fact that there's the biology department over here where you study biology and then

00:13:19.960 there's the psychology department over there, that seems to articulate two separate spheres

00:13:24.860 of inquiry that in the centers, they do have different methods, but there really are no

00:13:29.560 boundaries between those disciplines.

00:13:31.000 And I see that as true for not just for canonical scientific disciplines, but just fact-based thinking

00:13:40.600 about the nature of reality across the board.

00:13:42.780 And also the distinction that people make between third-person facts, classically physical facts,

00:13:49.300 and first-person subjective facts.

00:13:52.140 And some people think that distinction is so hard and fast that they imagine there are no

00:13:55.920 subjective facts, that I think is a boundary that I am consciously trying to erode.

00:14:01.840 And I think questions about moral truth and the truth of possible human experience or the

00:14:09.640 experience of conscious systems, those are questions that are every bit as grounded in reality as

00:14:17.400 any questions we ask in physics or chemistry or...

00:14:20.060 So introspection is a way of getting scientific data, do you mean?

00:14:24.780 Yeah.

00:14:24.980 I mean, that's...

00:14:25.980 Obviously, there are...

00:14:26.980 You have to issue certain caveats there.

00:14:29.680 I mean, there are ways in which introspection is a dead end.

00:14:33.560 I mean, for instance, I can't tell even with my best efforts, I cannot tell that I have a brain.

00:14:40.480 That's a pretty big blind spot.

00:14:42.040 But there are many things that you can introspect about, which give you scientifically valid data.

00:14:51.180 And in fact, you only...

00:14:53.660 I mean, if you're studying the mind, if you're studying what it's like to be a person,

00:14:57.360 at some point you are correlating third-person, quote, objective methods with first-person report.

00:15:04.740 You know, somebody says, you know, I ask you what it's like to have a stroke, or your neurologist

00:15:08.500 does, and he needs to know what your experience is.

00:15:12.960 I mean, it's not...

00:15:14.080 I mean, with a stroke, it's...

00:15:16.360 The final analysis seems to be looking at your brain at the, you know, actually what has been

00:15:22.860 physically affected, but the cash value of those physical effects is always what is showing up

00:15:29.800 in your experience and what is showing up in your function.

00:15:31.760 So if some canonical language area, say, was affected, but you spoke fine and appreciated

00:15:39.620 understood language fine and there was no discernible change in your language use, well, then that

00:15:46.520 would be the definition of those being non-linguistic areas of the brain being affected, no matter

00:15:51.960 how close they are to, you know, the standard, you know, average atlas of language use.

00:15:57.060 So we do always link up with a subjective report, too, and first-person performance.

00:16:03.240 And so, yeah, I mean, in terms of the contribution I want to make, I want to argue that there's

00:16:09.340 a larger set of truth claims we want to make when we're reasoning about reality, and those

00:16:14.680 include things that we will never know.

00:16:17.020 I mean, they include abstract things like mathematics, you know, which the physical foundation of which

00:16:22.020 is kind of hard to specify, and they include the example I always use is, you know, a question like,

00:16:29.100 what was JFK thinking the moment before he got shot?

00:16:33.260 Well, we know we'll never know, and that's data we'll never get, but there's an infinite number of things

00:16:40.120 we know he wasn't thinking, right?

00:16:41.780 So it would be wrong to say he was thinking, I wonder what Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins

00:16:46.680 think about what I'm thinking right now before I get shot.

00:16:48.880 There's an infinite number of things we could assert about the character of his subjectivity

00:16:55.480 there, which we know are wrong, you know, and we know that as fully as we know anything

00:17:00.500 in science.

00:17:02.620 And there are things that get, it's like, you know, like the mystery or pseudo-mystery of

00:17:06.460 how to integrate free will or experience a free will with our scientific worldview, I think

00:17:12.460 can be easily resolved if you can introspect with sufficient perspicacity and notice that

00:17:18.820 you don't even have evidence for free will in your first-person experience.

00:17:22.640 I think that's, those are subjective data that are available.

00:17:25.760 So there are ways to get access to interesting things through introspection, but they don't

00:17:31.320 actually include the existence of your brain.

00:17:33.000 Very hard to communicate to other people.

00:17:35.620 Yeah.

00:17:36.320 But I mean, that's true of many things that we have, we don't begin to doubt.

00:17:42.100 I mean, just imagine what it would be like if only 1% of the population had vivid dreams

00:17:48.440 at night.

00:17:49.080 So most of us just sleep like animals.

00:17:51.460 There's nothing that it's like to be us for eight hours a night.

00:17:54.760 But then some percentage of the population talk about traveling and meeting people and having

00:17:59.880 all of these illogical encounters, dreams would be much stranger and many people would doubt

00:18:04.520 their existence, but they would exist just as much as they do now.

00:18:07.160 And we doubt the sanity of people who had them probably as well.

00:18:10.020 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:18:11.800 But did you answer, did you fully answer your question?

00:18:14.380 Do you want to say more about the extended phenotype?

00:18:17.240 Well, I'll try.

00:18:19.740 I mean, what is a, to tell people what a phenotype is.

00:18:22.480 The phenotype is the external, not very external, the manifestation of genetic effects.

00:18:29.920 And from a Darwinian point of view, the phenotypic effects by which a gene is selected.

00:18:35.340 So there'll be genes that affect wing size, eye color, hair color, intelligence.

00:18:42.820 These are all phenotypic effects.

00:18:45.400 Conventionally, phenotypic effects are confined to the body in which the gene sits.

00:18:50.800 So genes exert their phenotypic effects by influencing embryonic, embryological processes.

00:18:57.340 And so the shape of the body, the color of the body, the behavior of the body are all influenced

00:19:02.300 by the genes inside the body.

00:19:04.520 That's conventional phenotype.

00:19:06.700 Extended phenotype is phenotypic effects of genes which are outside the body in which the gene sits.

00:19:14.520 And the easiest examples to think of are artifacts, things like beaver dams, birds' nests.

00:19:23.000 These are quite clearly phenotypes.

00:19:25.600 They quite clearly influence the survival of the genes that make them.

00:19:29.660 So a bird's nest is made by genes in the same limited sense, or not so limited sense,

00:19:35.640 as the bird's tail and the bird's eyes and the bird's wings.

00:19:40.520 And the nest contributes to the survival of the genes, which is what matters in the selfish gene view of life,

00:19:49.440 just as surely as the wings and the tail of the bird contribute to the survival of the genes that made them.

00:19:55.820 So although the nest is not a part of the bird's body, it is a part of the phenotype

00:20:01.720 by which the genes lever themselves into the next generation.

00:20:06.820 Well, if you buy that, and I think you have to,

00:20:10.740 then effects that parasites have on hosts, there are numerous examples, fascinating, rather lurid examples,

00:20:17.640 of parasites, which affect the behavior or the morphology of the host in such a way as to improve the survival of the parasite.

00:20:28.980 Well, that means that parasite genes are influencing host behavior and host morphology

00:20:37.480 in the same kind of way as any gene influences phenotype.

00:20:43.200 So when an animal is induced by, there's a thing called a brain worm, for example,

00:20:50.080 which is a worm that gets into a fluke or a snail, or various things like that,

00:20:55.600 and causes the intermediate host, the snail or the fluke.

00:21:01.000 Let's stick to snail.

00:21:03.100 Causes a snail to be eaten by a sheep.

00:21:08.240 Sorry, the brain worm is a fluke, and it gets into the snail 0.85

00:21:12.080 and causes the snail to be more likely to be eaten by a sheep.

00:21:15.780 And it does so by moving into the eyes of the snail

00:21:19.880 and making the eyes pulsate in a sort of rather frightening way

00:21:25.780 and calling the attention of an animal like a sheep or a cow to eating the snail,

00:21:33.960 which means that the parasite, the fluke, then gets into the next part of its life cycle.

00:21:39.400 So the fluke genes are influencing the behavior of the snail and the eyes of the snail.

00:21:48.320 The change in the snail is part of the phenotype of fluke genes.

00:21:55.920 Extended phenotype.

00:21:58.200 And if you buy that, which is a sort of further step,

00:22:00.920 then something like the bird's song,

00:22:06.500 say male bird's song, which, say, influences female birds,

00:22:09.860 actually physically causes the ovaries of the female to swell. 1.00

00:22:13.460 This does happen.

00:22:15.640 The swelling of the ovaries of a female bird

00:22:18.580 is extended phenotype of genes in the male,

00:22:25.100 which make the male sing the song, which has this effect. 0.75

00:22:30.920 So the extended phenotype then becomes a way of looking at the whole of animal communication,

00:22:37.600 where one animal influences the behavior of another.

00:22:42.780 I have not done justice to the extended phenotype.

00:22:46.320 Read it.

00:22:46.880 So what are the prospects that religion or something like it is part of our extended phenotype?

00:23:02.940 Yes.

00:23:03.780 I don't think I want to say that.

00:23:06.820 I imagine you wouldn't.

00:23:08.320 Well, in order to qualify as extended phenotype,

00:23:13.960 it would be necessary that genes...

00:23:19.900 Well, say you took two preachers,

00:23:23.180 one of whom was a very good preacher

00:23:25.880 who recruited lots and lots of people into his church,

00:23:28.820 another of whom wasn't.

00:23:29.760 That could be extended phenotype,

00:23:32.160 but only if there was a genetic difference between these two preachers,

00:23:36.280 which caused one of them to be an effective recruiter and the other one not.

00:23:40.740 That would be, but I don't think that's very likely to be true.

00:23:44.260 Well, wait a minute.

00:23:45.640 Just to quite literally play devil's advocate here.

00:23:48.380 If there's a gene for religious enthusiasm

00:23:54.460 or a set of genes for susceptibility to that range of experience

00:24:00.520 and a fundamental lack of intellectual honesty

00:24:03.780 or a lack of concern that what you're saying is true,

00:24:07.620 so an increased capacity for self-deception

00:24:11.980 and therefore deception of others, say,

00:24:14.420 I mean, that seems to me plausible.

00:24:16.220 So that's a very effective preacher

00:24:18.300 who's filled with the charisma of being absolutely sure

00:24:23.200 about what he's saying

00:24:24.220 and energized by his passion for the whole project.

00:24:27.820 That's true, and I think it probably is true 0.89

00:24:30.980 that there are genetic...

00:24:33.220 When you say a gene for something,

00:24:34.680 all you ever mean is a genetic difference

00:24:37.000 that causes a phenotypic difference.

00:24:39.620 So the best way to show that would be twin studies.

00:24:42.960 If you can show that identical twins,

00:24:45.880 it's monozygotic twins. 0.98

00:24:47.760 If one of them is a religious maniac, 0.98

00:24:49.860 the other one probably will be as well. 0.93

00:24:52.180 If that's true,

00:24:54.600 and if that's not so true of fraternal twins,

00:24:57.420 dizygotic twins,

00:24:59.420 then you've shown that there is a genetic effect

00:25:02.580 on religiosity,

00:25:04.980 and that's probably true,

00:25:06.680 and I think that's certainly true.

00:25:08.620 To be extended phenotype,

00:25:11.440 I think you've got to say

00:25:12.280 that genes engineer

00:25:15.580 their own survival and passing on

00:25:19.740 into the next generation

00:25:20.940 by making their victims religious.

00:25:27.500 And I suppose,

00:25:29.260 well, maybe that works, actually.

00:25:31.860 So quickly,

00:25:35.580 a life's work is undone.

00:25:42.760 Yes, I mean,

00:25:43.460 I suppose that...

00:25:45.320 Let's not go there,

00:25:46.740 is it, though?

00:25:50.680 What do you think

00:25:51.500 are the most misunderstood topics

00:25:54.840 in science

00:25:55.600 by otherwise smart

00:25:57.040 and educated people?

00:25:57.880 Or what's one

00:25:59.520 that you think

00:26:00.020 is often misunderstood?

00:26:01.460 Oh, evolution, surely.

00:26:04.200 Especially in this country.

00:26:09.500 But what do you think,

00:26:11.160 even many people in this room

00:26:12.660 who obviously are well-educated

00:26:14.500 and interested in the topic

00:26:15.680 to even be here,

00:26:17.580 what do you think

00:26:18.560 many people here

00:26:19.440 may be confused about

00:26:21.780 or be wrong about

00:26:23.600 and not know it

00:26:24.260 that's of consequence in science?

00:26:25.740 Have you had to bet?

00:26:27.800 Well, I mean,

00:26:28.780 certainly there are no creationists

00:26:30.520 in this audience.

00:26:31.460 You were screened at the door, right,

00:26:32.720 with that wand?

00:26:35.760 I suppose there may be people...

00:26:38.740 I mean, I would say

00:26:39.680 it was a misconception

00:26:40.800 to...

00:26:42.740 to believe that

00:26:48.360 the majority of evolutionary change

00:26:50.960 as we observe it

00:26:52.480 is non-selective.

00:26:53.880 and there are people

00:26:55.280 who believe that

00:26:56.160 natural selection

00:26:57.400 is relatively trivial

00:26:58.600 compared to

00:27:01.160 random genetic effects.

00:27:05.360 Now,

00:27:06.200 that's a genuine

00:27:07.200 scientific controversy

00:27:08.300 and there may be people here

00:27:09.460 who subscribe to that.

00:27:10.880 And it's true 0.94

00:27:11.840 if you stick to

00:27:13.400 molecular genetic changes.

00:27:16.600 But if you're talking about

00:27:17.740 actual externally visible

00:27:20.140 phenotypic changes,

00:27:21.260 then I don't think it is true.

00:27:22.620 And I think that's a confusion

00:27:24.040 which I would expect

00:27:25.700 to find in this

00:27:27.560 sophisticated audience.

00:27:29.160 So just to

00:27:30.100 traverse that one more time,

00:27:32.580 the belief that

00:27:35.120 much of what we notice

00:27:37.200 about ourselves

00:27:37.960 was not selected for,

00:27:40.180 but just kind of came along

00:27:41.180 for the ride,

00:27:41.900 you think that's very likely untrue?

00:27:43.480 Yes,

00:27:44.940 but you have to be

00:27:46.040 sophisticated about it

00:27:47.120 because you may be

00:27:48.940 looking at the wrong thing.

00:27:50.280 We talked about this

00:27:51.040 last night.

00:27:51.920 Perhaps it doesn't matter

00:27:52.720 doing it again.

00:27:56.240 Many people think

00:27:57.220 that quite a lot of

00:27:58.460 characteristics are trivial,

00:28:01.700 sort of frivolous.

00:28:02.500 I mentioned eyebrows

00:28:03.480 last night

00:28:04.340 as being something

00:28:05.020 which nobody could

00:28:06.400 seriously think

00:28:07.120 that eyebrows

00:28:07.640 are doing anything useful.

00:28:08.580 How could eyebrows 0.65

00:28:09.320 possibly be

00:28:10.040 naturally selected for?

00:28:11.200 Well, I think

00:28:12.520 that's a mistake.

00:28:13.740 It's a very tempting mistake.

00:28:16.540 But something

00:28:17.720 that seems trivial

00:28:19.000 is almost certainly

00:28:20.260 not trivial

00:28:21.120 because the genes

00:28:22.840 that make it

00:28:23.740 have so many opportunities

00:28:25.800 to be selected.

00:28:26.900 They are represented

00:28:27.840 in thousands of individuals

00:28:29.680 and over lots of generations.

00:28:32.600 And this has been

00:28:33.700 worked out mathematically

00:28:35.260 as well.

00:28:36.580 So that is a very

00:28:39.720 common misconception,

00:28:41.020 I think,

00:28:42.060 that very slight effects

00:28:45.560 are too trivial

00:28:46.520 for natural selection

00:28:47.340 to care about.

00:28:49.400 And I think that is wrong.

00:28:50.540 I think natural selection

00:28:51.300 actually does care about

00:28:52.540 even what look to us

00:28:54.220 like very tiny,

00:28:55.280 trivial effects.

00:28:56.920 To make a disconcertingly

00:28:59.160 lateral move here,

00:29:01.120 how can we publicly

00:29:02.200 challenge the more

00:29:03.320 dangerous tenets of Islam 1.00

00:29:04.800 without further inspiring

00:29:06.720 bigotry against Muslims?

00:29:08.880 Now, you and I have both,

00:29:10.660 unlike many scientists,

00:29:13.120 we have sounded off

00:29:16.500 on this.

00:29:17.180 It's been,

00:29:18.360 for as long as I've been

00:29:19.160 an atheist,

00:29:19.720 it's been deeply

00:29:20.400 unfashionable

00:29:21.200 amongst atheists,

00:29:22.840 even atheists who are,

00:29:24.980 who think it's a legitimate

00:29:25.700 project to criticize religion.

00:29:27.140 It's been unfashionable

00:29:28.640 to criticize any one religion

00:29:31.380 more than any other.

00:29:33.260 Yes.

00:29:33.400 And I've noticed...

00:29:34.500 Especially one,

00:29:35.160 any more than any other.

00:29:35.920 Yeah, yes.

00:29:37.940 Yeah, you can go to town

00:29:39.360 on Mormonism

00:29:40.700 or Scientology.

00:29:42.320 But it's...

00:29:44.560 Or Christianity, actually. 0.55

00:29:46.240 I mean...

00:29:47.300 The default assumption

00:29:48.940 is that if you're

00:29:49.520 against religion 0.94

00:29:50.540 or if you think

00:29:51.480 that the evidentiary claims

00:29:53.880 upon which all these

00:29:54.880 revealed religions

00:29:55.620 are founded

00:29:56.100 are unjustifiable,

00:29:58.840 well then,

00:29:59.380 they're all on all fours together

00:30:00.620 and you don't really need

00:30:01.760 to weight your concern.

00:30:05.480 But it just has seemed obvious

00:30:07.520 at least since

00:30:08.740 September 11th, 2001,

00:30:10.800 that one of these religions

00:30:11.820 is producing more

00:30:13.700 than its fair share

00:30:14.560 of conflict and oppression.

00:30:17.080 So, back to the question,

00:30:18.680 how do you,

00:30:20.080 given that you and I

00:30:20.700 both think it's legitimate

00:30:21.620 to focus on

00:30:22.560 the most harmful instances

00:30:24.560 of religion

00:30:25.120 as we see it,

00:30:26.860 how do you avoid

00:30:28.600 energizing those voices

00:30:31.220 who are actually animated

00:30:33.380 by bigotry and xenophobia?

00:30:35.480 Yes, yes.

00:30:36.060 Well, I think we both

00:30:37.180 have this problem.

00:30:39.140 I suppose...

00:30:41.800 I mean, I listened

00:30:42.360 to one of your podcasts

00:30:43.500 about Islam

00:30:46.340 and arguing against

00:30:49.880 the point of view

00:30:50.700 which says that

00:30:51.580 the terrorists

00:30:53.620 which we all

00:30:56.000 know about

00:30:57.140 in the Middle East

00:30:57.760 are not motivated

00:30:59.360 by religion.

00:31:01.360 They're motivated

00:31:02.840 by anything but religion.

00:31:04.100 There's a kind of

00:31:04.740 desperate desire

00:31:06.440 to blame anything

00:31:08.400 but religion

00:31:09.460 for what is going on.

00:31:12.120 This was the podcast

00:31:16.500 where that issue

00:31:17.940 of ISIS's magazine

00:31:19.960 Dabiq

00:31:20.580 where they just

00:31:21.440 spelled out it.

00:31:22.100 They were as fed up

00:31:23.460 with this as I was

00:31:24.680 and they just wrote

00:31:25.500 all of their reasons 0.97

00:31:27.240 for killing infidels. 1.00

00:31:29.600 It was amazing. 0.96

00:31:30.680 It was...

00:31:31.040 I felt like I was

00:31:31.740 in a lucid dream

00:31:32.580 that...

00:31:33.380 It's true.

00:31:35.800 Do listen to it.

00:31:37.040 What's it called,

00:31:37.860 Sam?

00:31:38.040 I forgot what it's called

00:31:39.720 but you'll find it.

00:31:40.680 It's sometime

00:31:41.520 in the last 10 podcasts.

00:31:42.980 I think what...

00:31:43.720 Sorry?

00:31:46.660 What jihadists really think 0.99

00:31:49.040 and it's why we hate you 0.89

00:31:52.060 and why we fight you. 0.73

00:31:53.340 Yeah.

00:31:54.000 And it's absolutely...

00:31:55.200 I mean, Sam could have

00:31:55.920 written the script.

00:31:56.760 It's just completely... 0.98

00:31:59.040 We hate you 1.00

00:32:00.440 because you're not Muslim. 1.00

00:32:02.280 It amounts to nothing

00:32:03.480 more than that.

00:32:04.240 Yeah.

00:32:04.820 And we fight you

00:32:06.040 for the same reason.

00:32:08.040 But what do you do...

00:32:09.660 Actually, I had a podcast

00:32:11.340 that I just released today

00:32:12.520 where I was interviewing

00:32:13.340 our mutual friend

00:32:15.380 Ayaan Hirsi Ali

00:32:16.120 and I asked her

00:32:17.640 a related question.

00:32:19.140 Yeah.

00:32:19.900 Thank you.

00:32:23.520 This is the true

00:32:25.180 feminist hero

00:32:26.040 who was just declared

00:32:27.120 an anti-Muslim extremist

00:32:28.740 by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

00:32:30.940 That's absolutely unbelievable.

00:32:33.760 But as I asked her...

00:32:34.940 And has been disinvited

00:32:36.240 by at least several campuses

00:32:39.440 in this country,

00:32:40.660 including Brandeis.

00:32:41.780 So I asked her

00:32:43.240 more to the point

00:32:45.020 of conspiracy thinking

00:32:47.020 on the right.

00:32:47.960 So it's often...

00:32:49.980 It is simply a fact

00:32:51.200 that Islamists 1.00

00:32:51.940 and jihadists

00:32:52.740 are scheming

00:32:54.540 to spread their views

00:32:56.620 and, you know,

00:32:57.180 both by the sword

00:32:58.180 and otherwise

00:32:58.920 throughout open societies.

00:33:00.760 and they're using

00:33:01.780 the norms

00:33:03.220 and institutions

00:33:04.260 of our open societies

00:33:05.940 against ourselves

00:33:07.680 in a very cynical

00:33:09.020 and calculated way.

00:33:11.200 And it's not even

00:33:12.060 a conspiracy,

00:33:12.940 as Ayaan pointed out.

00:33:13.820 It's just there

00:33:14.480 in the open.

00:33:14.960 This is an agenda

00:33:15.640 that Islamists have. 0.98

00:33:17.100 They're totally open

00:33:18.000 about it,

00:33:18.460 totally honest about it.

00:33:19.520 Yeah, but the issue is

00:33:21.460 you can take this,

00:33:24.060 one's concern about this

00:33:25.660 in truly paranoid directions.

00:33:27.860 So I hear from people

00:33:28.720 who think Ayaan

00:33:31.020 is a stealth Islamist 1.00

00:33:32.660 or jihadist.

00:33:33.760 I hear from people

00:33:34.360 who think that Majid,

00:33:35.280 who I wrote

00:33:35.680 Islam and the Future

00:33:36.660 of Tolerance with,

00:33:37.700 is a stealth Islamist 1.00

00:33:39.160 and jihadist.

00:33:39.780 And so there's no...

00:33:40.520 There's no obvious signage

00:33:44.180 on the way

00:33:44.780 to complete insanity

00:33:46.020 where you're told

00:33:48.060 that you are now

00:33:48.760 too fearful

00:33:49.380 and too concerned

00:33:50.780 about things

00:33:51.440 that actually are contiguous

00:33:53.280 with real reasons

00:33:54.940 for concern.

00:33:55.920 But I asked Ayaan,

00:33:57.880 so where's the boundary here?

00:33:59.600 How do we differentiate

00:34:01.040 a reasonable fear

00:34:03.120 about genuinely scheming people

00:34:05.280 and right-wing paranoia

00:34:08.120 in this case?

00:34:09.480 And she just said,

00:34:10.760 facts.

00:34:12.080 Just one word.

00:34:13.140 It's like you're either

00:34:14.020 talking about facts

00:34:14.960 or you're not.

00:34:15.400 And when you're talking

00:34:15.920 about facts,

00:34:16.680 you can't go wrong

00:34:18.260 in this space.

00:34:19.120 And I thought

00:34:19.660 that was a great answer.

00:34:21.160 I think one point

00:34:21.800 to make is that

00:34:22.460 the main victims

00:34:23.940 of these awful people 0.95

00:34:25.060 are actually Muslims themselves.

00:34:28.580 But what about

00:34:29.460 the attack from the left,

00:34:32.220 which in liberal left circles

00:34:35.100 in America and Britain,

00:34:37.160 where Islam gets a free pass 0.95

00:34:40.640 on all sorts of terrible things 0.90

00:34:42.640 like misogyny,

00:34:43.660 which no liberal

00:34:44.900 would actually sanction,

00:34:47.420 and yet if a Muslim 0.98

00:34:49.680 behaves in horrifically 0.99

00:34:52.320 misogynistic ways,

00:34:53.440 somehow that's ignored,

00:34:55.400 as though that's somehow

00:34:56.140 legitimate.

00:34:56.660 Oh, it's part of their culture,

00:34:58.220 so they're allowed to do that.

00:34:59.840 I must say,

00:35:00.680 I despise that kind of thing.

00:35:03.280 I think it was an anthropologist

00:35:14.960 who's quote this,

00:35:16.340 I'm about to butcher,

00:35:17.260 but it's a great point.

00:35:18.240 He said,

00:35:18.500 when one person

00:35:20.500 grabs a little girl 0.99

00:35:22.520 and cuts off her clitoris 1.00

00:35:25.240 with a septic blade, 1.00

00:35:27.260 he is a dangerous lunatic. 0.99

00:35:29.980 When a million people do this, 1.00

00:35:31.740 it's a culture,

00:35:32.480 and we need to respect it.

00:35:34.480 And that's the little crystal

00:35:37.520 of moral confusion

00:35:38.880 that's just at the center

00:35:40.100 of the liberal worldview

00:35:42.240 that we need to fully crush.

00:35:45.480 I dare to suggest

00:35:46.900 that there's too much respect

00:35:49.340 in the world.

00:35:50.180 If you'd like to continue

00:36:03.020 listening to this conversation,

00:36:04.600 you'll need to subscribe

00:36:05.620 at samharris.org.

00:36:07.240 Once you do,

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 10, 2017

#60 — An Evening with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris (2)

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