#92 — The Limits of Persuasion
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. David Pizarro and Dr. Tamler Summers join me to discuss the moral panic that has swept over American universities and colleges, and how they can do something about it. They talk about their own experiences with it, and why they think it s a problem, and what they do to try to fix it. We also talk about what they think about the lack of free speech on campus, and whether or not it should be a problem at all. And we answer some of your questions. Sam Harris is a professor of psychology at Cornell University, and is the author of The Moral Landscape: A Guide to Moral Relativism and the Emotion of Disgust. He is also the co-host of the podcast The Very Bad Wizards, and hosts a movie review podcast called "Free Will" hosted by Tamler and David. Please consider becoming a supporter of their podcast by becoming a patron patron. We don t run ads on the podcast, and therefore it s made possible entirely through the support of our listeners, so if you enjoy what we re doing here, please consider becoming one! If you re not a patron, you ll get access to the full-length episodes of The Making Sense Podcast wherever you re listening to the podcast. Thanks to our sponsorships, we don t need ads, we re making the podcast available, and you can support the podcast wherever you like the podcast is available. Sam and I hope you enjoy the podcast! . Make sure to become a patron of Making Sense by becoming one of our sponsors, and we re getting the most out of this podcast by listening to Making Sense. and listening to our podcast. . . . and I look forward to hearing the Making Sense, and of course, making sense! by you re making sense by by Sam Harris in the making sense. by me, Sam Harris and I by the podcast by you, too! - Sam Harris, by: Tamler & David Pizzarro to make sense on this podcast, by: Dr. Pizaro ( ) , and I do & Tamler - and I think you ll like it. , I look out for people who are on the front lines as well, and they are making sense? And so on, and so on and so forth, and all too much more.
Transcript
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Today I am speaking with the very bad wizards, David Pizarro and Tamler Summers.
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They have a podcast by that name, which I've been on, I think, twice.
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We debated free will at great length, so if you're interested in that topic, you can listen
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to us there, and I recommend you listen to their podcast.
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They touch fascinating subjects and in quite the irreverent way, and they do fantastic movie
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David Pizarro is a professor of psychology at Cornell.
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He focuses on morality and moral judgment and the emotion of disgust, and needless to say,
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all of that is incredibly relevant to this time and any other.
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And his partner in crime, Tamler Summers, is a professor of philosophy at the University
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And he focuses primarily on ethics and political philosophy and the philosophy of law.
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And he specializes in topics like free will and moral responsibility, punishment, revenge,
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In this podcast, we essentially took questions from Twitter.
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People had heard us on the Very Bad Wizards podcast and had topics they wanted us to address.
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We do a fairly long post-mortem on my podcast with Scott Adams.
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So if you haven't heard that, you might listen to that first.
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Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead, especially if you're sick to death of hearing me talk about
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And then we get into things like meditation and the sense in which the self may or may not
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Again, I encourage you to subscribe to their podcast because they are quite good.
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David Tamler, thanks for coming on the podcast.
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I will have introduced you, and people may have heard our previous interviews on your
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show, but remind everyone where you are and what you guys tend to focus on when you're
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Well, I am a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston.
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And when I'm not podcasting on Very Bad Wizards with David, I am working on this book, which
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I've been working on for quite a while, for the last few years, that's coming out in the
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spring, in the early spring, called In Defense of Honor.
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When I'm not podcasting with Tamler, I'm losing my cool on occasion.
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I do research on moral judgment, and especially on the effects of emotion on judgment.
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So the emotion of disgust is something that maybe for the last 10 years I've been researching
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and how that can influence judgment, political judgment, and moral and social judgment.
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And then just trying to teach the young minds, trying to sucker them into getting PhDs.
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Our listeners want us to talk about the moral panic on campuses as one of the items.
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And I know you guys disagree with some people who think that it's a huge problem.
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And so I want to get into that because you guys are also on the front lines as professors.
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I'm a huge fan, and I'm a fan, even though it seems every other time I tune in, you've
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I think early on, I was disparaging of certain remarks from your book, The Moral Landscape
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Since then, I think we've been very even-handed and balanced.
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Your podcast is great, and people should check it out, and we will provide a link, or all
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But I'm just wondering, so your podcast, you're both professors full-time, and you have a fairly
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I mean, you guys, you get into topics, and you express opinions that I would think could
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And this does actually connect with this first topic that has been suggested to us, this
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idea of a fundamental and spreading intolerance to free speech that's taking hold at the universities.
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Do you guys ever worry about what you're doing on the podcast with respect to your jobs?
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How do you think about your life at this point?
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Okay, well, I'll start by saying, I think that at first it was what some people refer
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to, to use an analogy if I may, refer to as security through obscurity.
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I was sort of convinced at first that nobody would be listening, and therefore it would
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So as our listenership has grown, thanks to the many wonderful guests, including Sam,
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and as our audience has grown, I do not think, and Tamler, you can correct me, I think one
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of the things that is so nice about the long-form podcast sort of discussion format is that people
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can hear, they get to know you in a way that the things that you say are in a context of
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And for lack of a better word, I think they get to know your character a little bit.
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And some of the crazy things we say, people really are good at taking it in context.
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Specifically devoted to taking us out of context.
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One time I expressed the fear that we'd be taken out of context, and that Twitter account
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And I don't know, you know, I think maybe one or two times we've had somebody email us
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From our own institutions, I genuinely think, I mean, part of it is I haven't, I haven't made
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it sort of anything that I talk about too much in my own institution, in part because
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Honestly, to connect it to the topic, this is one of my points of evidence when I say
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that I think people exaggerate the degree to which there's a chilling effect or that
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people can't express their views if they don't toe the line with, you know, the progressive
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I think, you know, maybe me even less than Dave.
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And I haven't heard one single, not a single complaint from any colleague who listens to
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it, from any person at my institution who listens to it.
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Nobody has taken umbrage by a single thing that we've said.
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And we've said some repugnant shit as, you know, that's part of our, that's part of our
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And I think it's for the reason that Dave says is, you know, people get to know us and
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they know, I think that our hearts are in the right place.
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And so as long as they know that they're going to allow you to be a little edgier or more
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And so this is one of the things that makes me think that these incidents are not as, it's
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not as widespread a phenomenon as it's portrayed by some in the media.
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But there's a relevant part there that we didn't answer, which is we both have tenure, but we,
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we, I think we got them, we got tenure after maybe like, what were you, a year of doing
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When we started, I don't think we had tenure, but we do have tenure, just to add that.
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Are you guys as irreverent or edgy in the classroom, or is there a very big difference
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between your podcast persona and your, your professor hat?
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I teach a course intro psychology, which is largely freshmen, uh, with about 800 students
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enrolled for many of them, it's their first experience in a lecture course in college.
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And while I probably tone it down, um, I don't purposefully, I mean, part of it is you're
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a person that kind of changes depending on the situation.
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We, we raise it up a notch on the podcast sometimes, but, but largely I say crazy things in my class
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Um, and I've had students who take delight in writing it down.
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Um, the, there was once a, uh, somebody on Facebook who would, who would quote me, um,
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Well, I got a word document at the end of one semester from a student with a list of all
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the crazy things I had said, but usually again, I think not on the first day, sort of you,
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you build, you build yourself up and always, I think at least I try in the, in an attempt
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So if I drop an F bomb, it's usually because I want somebody to remember something.
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When I, when I talk about evolutionary psychology, for instance, um, I remind students that if
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a claim is made that natural selection costs something, it has to be directly tied to the
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mechanism of survival and reproduction, um, or else, or else it doesn't work through natural
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So I just remind people, unless it leads to more fucking, um, it's the, it's not an evolutionary
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argument, like adaptiveness, and I say that in an, in an attempted song.
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Well, it's an attempt to, much to the chagrin of my mother, it's an attempt to solidify a
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So, so that's one difference, but every once in a while for the podcast, we, uh, we put
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down a few, um, probably me again, a little more frequently.
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Plus some other things, which, but, um, but anyway, so, uh, I think it's exactly what Dave
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You build up a little trust over the course of the semester and they sort of get you and
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you're, you know, like I, I'm somebody that likes to go up and approach the line.
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I get bored when everybody is talking and it's a little too, everyone's being too polite
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And especially now when I think a lot of these students, at least at my institution, which
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is a public institution and they're, and they're working jobs and they're, uh, stressed out
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taking five classes and a lot of them have family issues that they're dealing with and
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It is nice to just have a place where people can, you know, not watch what they say and not
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So that's at least the kind of environment that I try to build.
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And again, in classes, I have yet to find that, uh, to be a problem, even remotely, like
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not one single complaint, at least one that has reached me.
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Now we have to reconcile our worldviews because, and you know, many of these principal experts,
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How do I square what you guys have just said with what Jonathan Haidt is saying and, and
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really canonizing in the, the heterodox academy, you know, worrying about this creeping moral
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panic that is fundamentally antithetical to the, the core values of a university.
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I'm sure David knows Jonathan, but perhaps you do too, Tamler.
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You guys really should have him on your podcast to talk about these things because I'd like to
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hear what he would say, but he's really worried about this.
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And then you have the cases of like Nicholas Christakis, who I'm sure at least David knows
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You have Brett Weinstein who at Evergreen University, which has gotten a lot of attention.
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Uh, as far as I know, he's, he's, I'm not even sure he, his family is back in town yet
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And then you have the, the, the Rebecca Tuval incident.
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And I actually had lunch with her to talk about her experience not that long ago.
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So it's totally possible that you guys are right.
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And that these are, are individual cases that suggest very little about the rest of what's
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How do you think about how height is describing this?
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It's a tough question because I think this is one of those cases where two things can
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And one other thing, Tamler, I should say that you see your, your step-mom is Christina
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Hoff Summers, who is just this, basically as far as I can tell, she has a cult following
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on the right, you know, or center right for the way she's brought attention to, to this
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Especially as it relates to gender and, uh, yeah.
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And so, yes, this is a debate I have often and certainly every Thanksgiving, you know, I'm
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You know, it's funny, like if you listen to us talk about it, I think we can both concede
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a little bit of, and this is how I feel about height too.
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You know, I thought the coddling of the American mind was, you know, one of those first sort
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of overhyped pieces that captured the attention and the imagination of everybody.
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And I think people aren't good at, at looking at a video like the Christakis video or the
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Evergreen State video and, and, and, and they're bad cases.
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I mean, there's no denying it if that was going on in every, or the, or the Charles Murray
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If that was going on in, in the universities, then people would be right that, that, to,
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But what's I think difficult for people to process is day in and day out, how many things
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happen at the thousands and thousands of universities, uh, across the country where there's no stifling
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of speech, there's no chilling, there's no, there's none of that.
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You know, Charles Murray successfully gave that same talk at a hundred universities probably
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And, you know, Evergreen State is a little bit of a whack job, uh, liberal arts college
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to begin with, you know, and for a while, this isn't true anymore, but for a while, anytime
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there was an article written about this, they, it was Oberlin, like something happened in Oberlin
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It's been like that for 50 years and it'll probably be like that for another 50 years.
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What's wrong, what's legitimately wrong, uh, that's going on at, at, at these particular
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institutions for what is going on in quote unquote, the American university.
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Cause I think those two things are different, but, you know, I understand like height will
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kind of could concede some of that and say it is at these more privileged private institutions
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that this is occurring, but that's still a significant worry.
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And, and just to, to make clear, I think that, that, um, there, Tamler and I disagree about
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Um, although, although we share a lot of the sentiment, uh, you know, I think that it's
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important to separate arguments about frequency with arguments about importance.
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And, and I, I do think that there is a probably measurable chilling effect in that, um, that
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some professors are less willing to say some of the things that they used to say, um, or
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And I do think there's probably a measurable difference in the average undergrad, um, in
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the way that they think about a lot of these things.
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And then we can separate whether the reaction of panic, which I think with Tamler is, is
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responding to is, is the right, the right sort of reaction to, to the problem as it currently
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stands, which I, I agreed is, is probably not, it, it does get overblown and it captures
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And I do think that, um, that we are creating, um, an environment in which people pause before
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But I, I always try to emphasize that there's, there's a way in which a lot of this is actually
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I do want people to pause before they say some things.
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And so if that's, what's called chilling, then, then good.
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I, I, I think I mentioned this on one of our podcasts.
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I don't know if it made the final edit, but, um, I did have a professor once tell me that
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he, he really felt like he couldn't tell the same jokes that he used to.
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And then he, he gave me an example and it was a pretty racist joke.
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In his defense, he wasn't from the U S and he didn't think it was a racist joke.
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You know, it hasn't stopped Dave from his, you know, constant stream of antisemitism.
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So, so, you know, it's, I feel like, I feel like that's the canary in the coal mine.
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The minute, you know, that gets squashed, I will, I will announce to the world.
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I just want to add that I think sometimes, like, I think Dave's right that sometimes professors
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feel like they have to watch what they say, but sometimes that's their fault, not the environment's
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Like they've been reading too much of the Atlantic and too much, you know, whatever the latest
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And now they've convinced themselves that they can't say anything that might border on
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Sometimes you just have to man up and just say the thing that you want to say.
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And if there's any blowback from that, then you'll deal with it, you know, or, or woman
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So, so I do think I was having this talk with a professor, um, at a conference and he was,
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he said, you know, I was in this faculty meeting and then, you know, an hour later, this faculty
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She didn't use my name, but something that I had said in the faculty meeting.
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So maybe she'll tweet out something that you said at a faculty meeting.
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It's life that when you say something, sometimes people will react in a certain way and you
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I mean, the problem is that there, we have these cases, which may certainly on your, your
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account are outlier cases where this stuff just goes completely haywire and you have someone's
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career destroyed, or there's at least a, just a massive public shaming experience that
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If you have a tweet sent from a otherwise private meeting or what was that incident where
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the guy, a guy wore a shirt to a conference and he was just vilified endlessly for the
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Again, we have these cases that get media attention and at minimum advertise how haywire this can
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So it's easy to see how this would propagate back and cause everyone to choose their words
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I guess it's partly, it's easy, but it's not, it's not an excuse.
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You know, professors generally are smart enough to understand the difference between a widespread
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phenomenon and some cases that still, I think, can reasonably be called isolated.
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And, you know, like anything, like a terrorist attack, you don't want to overreact to it.
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You don't want to completely take away everybody's freedoms just because there was this one terrorist
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I will say that I think it's important to say that in, in the, many of the incidents that
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we've described, these people were treated horribly and unfairly and, and there's no lack
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of assholes who, who are, who are causing people grief.
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But I, I always think that this is, the response to me is more important than, than the, whatever
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growing number of, of undergraduates who are easily offended.
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I think that this is actually, what, what do we make of this?
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And if it is anything like a trend, if it's not isolated incidents and it is the beginnings
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of a, you know, some zeitgeist changing, um, more so than ever, I think that the, the role
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of the professor is, I think we've failed our students.
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If, if by the end of our classes, for instance, um, they, they still, uh, don't, I think part
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of the training of say a seminar in mind is for students to come out of there comfortable
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with expressing opinions and not vilifying others who they disagree with.
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And I think that the response to any claims of alarm and, and, and these trends or whatever
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being dangerous ought to be met with open and clear conversation with our students and not
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with a response that it's just these, these students who are like completely progressive
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liberals on the left who are ruining things because of post-modernism.
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You know, I would want to talk to that student to, you know, bring them in, let them teach
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by example, what it means to have a respectful disagreement.
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The issue with post-modernism connects us to another item that many have suggested we talk
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And I think this is something that you slammed me for on one of your podcasts, the conceptual
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I don't think we slammed you on the podcast about that.
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Well, what happened is I was among the people who forwarded this hoax.
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I think I read a piece of their paper on my podcast and then retweeted it.
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And then many people have now judged it to have been a false hoax or at least a misfired
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I mean, we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but I think you guys saw it as an example
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of skeptics not being nearly skeptical enough because they just practice their own version
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of confirmation bias by spreading this thing, which in the end wasn't what it seemed to
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Because I think the authors both defended themselves, right?
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And I think even Alan Sokol wrote a fairly appreciative piece about it, or at least partially
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I think what was like, and we had James Lindsay on our podcast and we talked at length about
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it and I think that, not that I'm encouraging you to listen to it, but at the end of that,
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I was more disappointed with his response than ever.
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And I think it is a case where, yeah, we were taking to task many in the, you know, whatever
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skeptic community, if you want to call it that.
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I don't know how you feel about the label, for falling prey to confirmation bias.
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And I think our point was just generally that this was, you know, published in a really
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low tier journal after being rejected from a mid tier journal.
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And I thought, well, what would be evidence of a good scholarship if not being rejected
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They were rejected from an unranked gender studies journal and got it published in a paper
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I mean, I think we're all on record as saying this is like spectacular bullshit coming out
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of some of these fields, but there's something about the arrogance and the quickness of mockery.
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But I did want to talk to you about the, in this broader context of moral persuasion about
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the role of this mockery and, and I don't think I've been struck maybe, especially in
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the last few, few weeks or few months as, as our audience has grown and we get more and
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I don't know if it's just some belief that this is an effective way of convincing others
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But I've, I found the authors or at least the one author we talked to of the hooks to
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be very dismissive and, and, and quite, quite arrogant about the way that he presented his,
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his case in a way that Sokol himself was not right.
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And I find, for instance, you to be very reasonable when you talk, but you have a wide
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And so I don't know how you feel about when you see, you probably get so many tweets that
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it's hard to keep up, but, but when you see people who sort of on your behalf are acting
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in ways that I don't think that you would ever act.
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One, one is whether mockery is ever useful and, and, and persuasive to the people you're
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mocking or whether, I think, I think you guys have even more global doubts about whether
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just hard criticism is ever persuasive to the people you're criticizing.
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Whether a frontal assault atheist style on religious faith ever wins hearts and minds.
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I think that's something that at least Tamler has doubted in the past.
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Well, I mean, it depends what you mean by frontal assault, but.
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Then there's the issue of, of how one's fans or, or listeners or readers in, in my case,
00:28:13.920
represent me in how they respond to, to people who criticize me or, or, or my podcast guests.
00:28:20.080
And on that second point, I, for me, it's very clear.
00:28:24.040
And I, I've, with some frequency, I mean, I can't keep doing this, but with some frequency,
00:28:34.080
And I've said on a few podcasts, listen, you, you're doing me no favors, no matter how much
00:28:40.540
you hate what someone said on my podcast, no matter how wrong you think they are, you're
00:28:45.960
not doing me any favors if you now just flame them on social media.
00:28:51.440
I don't want a person's experience coming on the podcast to be that that was the worst
00:28:56.200
thing they ever did in their lives because of how they were treated by, by a fairly large
00:29:03.800
I want everything that comes their way to be really smart and civil, no matter how hard
00:29:10.000
hitting it actually is, or no matter how critical it is of their position, it has to be civil
00:29:17.200
And so, yeah, I'm fairly clear about how I wish people would represent my audience.
00:29:24.680
But I, you know, I have very little control over what people actually do apart from saying
00:29:29.560
I guess the, so, I mean, and there's, right, you don't have control over what the people
00:29:37.420
who are fans of yours do, and all you can do is model good behavior, you know, which I think
00:29:44.780
I mean, you did win the Scott Adams, you know, almost to the point where it was heroic, the
00:29:54.320
We'll see if I can still model it, and now that we talk about it.
00:30:01.500
But the question that Dave alluded to before about whether mockery is an effective tactic
00:30:09.840
to change people's minds, I think is a, you know, it's something that I think skeptics and
00:30:19.080
sometimes atheists, I guess maybe I just disagree with them because I don't have any great
00:30:26.480
evidence on whether mockery changes minds or not.
00:30:30.000
Certainly in my experience, mocking somebody, calling them stupid, calling them, you know,
00:30:36.740
obviously irrational or whatever is not a, it just makes people more defensive.
00:30:42.240
It makes people dig their heels in more, and the, the way I think to, to change minds is
00:30:51.540
to be respectful of their opinion and to really try to, you know, see the best side of it
00:30:59.220
as, and, and, and to engage with it, even if you find it indefensible on, on some level,
00:31:08.440
just as a purely practical, instrumental goal of changing somebody's mind, you know, in my
00:31:17.460
experience as someone who's no stranger to mockery, that's not what I want to trot it
00:31:25.660
It can get the people who already agree with you to agree with you more and to be more proud
00:31:34.060
of themselves for being on the right side of the view, but it doesn't change the minds
00:31:41.780
I would just say that that assumption is pretty readily disconfirmable.
00:31:48.400
I mean, it doesn't change some people's minds, I'll grant you that.
00:31:51.720
It might not, it might not even change most minds and, and most minds, depending on what
00:31:56.760
the belief system is, might just not be available for change, right?
00:32:01.420
So there's nothing you're going to say on a podcast or in a book, however well-tempered,
00:32:08.280
that's going to change the mind of a, you know, a real jihadist or get him to question
00:32:14.360
But, you know, I, I've been amazed to learn that some of the most hard-hitting stuff I've
00:32:19.580
put out there, you know, the stuff I've said about Islam and the end of faith or in various
00:32:24.080
YouTube videos has actually penetrated and reached even totally devout conservative people
00:32:33.600
Where the people are, you know, are now closet atheists, right?
00:32:37.020
Based on what I or Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens have said about their religion.
00:32:42.180
And obviously that's not, those people themselves must be outliers.
00:32:46.360
But you have to picture people at every point on the spectrum of credulity with respect to
00:32:54.340
And so there's, there are the people who are, you know, fundamentalists and have never questioned
00:32:58.840
And there are people who are halfway between that and being, you know, fairly just nominal
00:33:09.120
And if they see something very hard-hitting, but also obviously well thought out, directed
00:33:16.880
at this thing that they have been told is so important and so beyond doubting, you don't
00:33:24.920
And I can just say that, you know, having done this for more than a decade, there's personally
00:33:30.060
a kind of an endless stream of confirmation that minds get changed through confrontation with
00:33:38.220
evidence and argument, however, actually disrespectful and hard-hitting.
00:33:43.640
And I, I, maybe some, there were some distinctions that came to mind as, as we continue to talk
00:33:49.940
And, and one is that, that, that I don't, at least what I know of the discussions that
00:33:57.540
Um, and I find even, even in instances of strong disagreement, I don't think that you are
00:34:06.180
disrespectful, but, but I think that the question of, of whether mockery is effective may be
00:34:11.280
just the wrong way for me to think about it, because it may very well be that you change
00:34:16.700
some minds through mockery, but that, that isn't the way that I want to, to do it.
00:34:21.320
And maybe there are some tactics that just are so, I mean, there are some issues that
00:34:24.620
are so important that you, you might adopt a by any means necessary approach, but I, I
00:34:33.940
I don't know how we define mockery, but so for instance, the way I speak about Trump,
00:34:41.440
I mean, obviously Trump supporters who are totally incorrigible hate what I say about Trump
00:34:48.060
and they, they must be unreachable, but I think, I gotta think even there it reaches somebody.
00:34:56.280
And, and on certain points, there is just no other way to say it.
00:34:59.680
I mean, to fail to convey the feeling of moral opprobrium that, that seems to me just central
00:35:10.900
I mean, to delete, to leave that off the table is to actually not communicate what I think
00:35:15.240
about Trump and what I, what I feel everyone has good reason to believe about him.
00:35:19.840
And so I guess the, the, the respect side comes in where I can give a sympathetic construal
00:35:26.840
of why someone didn't see it that way at first, or maybe even doesn't see it that way now.
00:35:33.680
And I can certainly sympathize with someone who hated Clinton and felt for their own reasons
00:35:41.460
There's, there's definitely a, a, a discussion to be had that they can dignify the other side.
00:35:46.140
And I, you know, I spent a whole podcast running down Clinton with, with Andrew Sullivan.
00:35:50.020
So I'm, I'm sympathetic with the other side, but to actually just focus on a specific example,
00:35:56.380
like Trump and Trump university, as I did with Scott Adams and to not express just how despicable
00:36:04.980
that was and how despicable it is not to find it despicable.
00:36:10.380
Now, I was somewhat hamstrung in my conversation with Scott because I have to play host and debate
00:36:18.720
At least I'm using it as a heuristic now that the host has to win in those moments and,
00:36:23.900
and keep it, keep it civil at, at, at all costs.
00:36:26.800
But to give him a pass on that, I feel is a moral failing in itself and an intellectual
00:36:33.860
one. So, and to not communicate that is, is dishonest.
00:36:38.120
I guess, um, what you did with Scott Adams is, as I see it different, you weren't mocking him.
00:36:46.020
You weren't, I, I'm not saying you shouldn't express your feelings or you should sugarcoat
00:36:51.820
how you feel and what you believe about Donald Trump.
00:36:55.820
But when you look at what you did with Scott Adams, you were very deliberately trying to see
00:37:01.680
his perspective, trying to understand why he was defending the positions that he was defending.
00:37:08.880
And, um, I don't know, like, I see that more as an example, even though he wasn't going to be
00:37:14.960
persuaded either way. I see that as an example of more what I'm talking about than what you're
00:37:23.200
talking about. And I think this is what doesn't happen with Trump, with liberals and Trump voters
00:37:28.680
is they are dismissed in like the basket of deplorables. They're just dismissed as this
00:37:34.920
monolithic group of racist idiots who vote against their own interests constantly. And
00:37:41.560
just to be clear, I'm highlighting not what I said to Scott or about Scott, but what I say about Trump.
00:37:49.460
Trump, there's no way to sugarcoat it. I am being as disrespectful as you can possibly be
00:37:55.420
about Trump. So imagine what I would have to say to Trump to his face if I ever met him to square
00:38:02.920
I'm talking about a Trump voter and trying to convince a Trump voter to change their mind. Say,
00:38:09.240
we get to the next election time and you're canvassing with the Trump voter,
00:38:14.280
the way to change their mind both as a party and as an individual person isn't going to be,
00:38:22.340
I don't think, to make fun of them because that's what was tried. And that's what seemed like almost
00:38:31.820
a galvanizing, it had a kind of a galvanizing effect to the voters.
00:38:37.840
But what do you think of something like the SNL sketches against Trump and Sean Spicer?
00:38:42.700
Yeah. So I was going to get to another distinction about humor because there's not a clear line.
00:38:54.020
And all I can do, I think, is point to the sort of attitude that somebody holds toward another human
00:39:03.720
being where humor is actually a great way to satirize and to condemn. And by the way,
00:39:10.700
I also agree with you that what I'm not saying is that there aren't cases of just sheer moral
00:39:16.240
condemnation that we shouldn't pull our punches. We should be very, very comfortable to say,
00:39:21.480
I agree with you. I think Trump is somebody who I wouldn't have anything good to say about him.
00:39:27.040
And I think so much of what he's doing is wrong and setting the wrong example. And with humor,
00:39:32.220
I think humor, there is often a line there. And I find that I can distinguish the kind of humor that I
00:39:41.800
think is good satire for me in my reaction from stuff that just gets nasty in some way in the tone
00:39:49.800
with which it's being done. And I think the power of humor is that it tells a truth in a way that
00:40:00.440
disarms people. It doesn't bring their walls up. Not always, but it has the power to do that.
00:40:07.540
I think I've gotten so much more insight from people like Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K.
00:40:12.120
because they tell some pretty difficult truths in a funny way. I think, though, that it can get to a
00:40:21.880
mean spirit. And then I just don't like it as much. I don't like that feeling that somebody's
00:40:28.420
disrespecting. And I think when I said mockery, for instance, what I meant was somebody who is
00:40:32.500
unwilling to engage. And I found, I think, in our James Lindsay interview about the hoax,
00:40:40.040
I found an unwillingness to engage or just a stopping point at their willingness to talk about
00:40:48.140
opposing views that is what distressed me or what bothered me, I guess.
00:40:53.020
I haven't listened to that, so I'll have to do that. So let's open it up to this larger
00:40:58.140
issue of moral persuasion. And this follows rather directly from what Scott Adams was claiming on my
00:41:06.400
podcast, that Trump is this brilliant persuader and that persuasion is really not about facts and
00:41:16.040
needn't be about facts. I mean, it's not a bad thing that it's not about facts. This is one thing that
00:41:23.020
again, in my role as host, I couldn't fully communicate how reprehensible I feel this position
00:41:31.420
is. And I'm not saying anything about Scott that I wouldn't say to him. It's just hard to kind of
00:41:37.980
split the baby in real time when you're on your own show. And I say this now fully aware that it will
00:41:43.500
get back to Scott. But I just feel like this, he seemed totally comfortable. In fact, he seemed
00:41:49.560
fairly jubilant about caring not about what is true, but about what people can be led to believe.
00:41:59.240
It just matters what people can be led to believe. Don't you understand, Sam? That's the game we're
00:42:04.140
all playing. That's what this life is about. It's about persuading people to get what you want out of
00:42:09.540
life. And Trump is great at that. And that, as a kind of the linchpin of an ethical worldview,
00:42:16.300
there's so much, where do I start? Everything is wrong with that. As a scientist, as a philosopher,
00:42:22.920
as a journalist, as a compassionate person who just wants to have his or her beliefs track
00:42:28.520
reality. I mean, whoever you are attempting to build a better society, I don't see how you can
00:42:35.880
be comfortable with that as your starting point. And yet, he does have a point. I mean, the fact that,
00:42:42.660
one thing that was astonishing after our podcast was to see how differently our two respective
00:42:49.020
audiences perceived it. I mean, my audience vilified him and his audience vilified me. And I mean, it was
00:42:56.480
clear that they thought he had destroyed me. What an embarrassment. You know, it was like career
00:43:02.760
suicide for me to have someone as brilliant and as persuasive as Scott on my podcast to just,
00:43:08.900
you know, do the Jedi mind trick on me. By the way, we've had some of your followers listen to our
00:43:14.440
long podcast on free will and say, Sam destroyed you guys. And I always sort of laugh because I'm
00:43:19.680
like, you know, I don't think that the destruction of it. I did destroy you guys. I was like, you know,
00:43:26.580
I don't, I think that they, that that was, that was me. I have another account.
00:43:29.800
You have like an account with six followers. The Scott Adams interview, it's a, it's a, it's,
00:43:37.920
it's a funny thing to listen to. You get kind of disoriented and, and, and there was a kind of
00:43:43.220
postmodern feel to it. There was a kind of postmodern critical theory kind of perspective that he seemed
00:43:52.260
to be inhabiting with facts and, and, and reason-based arguments or at least sort of, you know,
00:44:00.600
objective reason-based arguments that could be independently evaluated just didn't play the role
00:44:07.500
for him that it played, that it plays for you and that it's, you know, mostly we think plays for,
00:44:14.600
for all of us. And there was a meta level as trying to, when, you know, when you two would
00:44:22.140
debate, say the Russia investigation or climate change, and he would say, well, you know, the
00:44:28.600
Paris deal was a hoax and you weren't, but Trump said climate science was a hoax. And, you know,
00:44:33.580
all of a sudden there were shifting terrain. And then you start to wonder, is Scott Adams treating
00:44:40.600
this very debate as something to be like a vehicle for persuasion? Not of you. He probably knew that
00:44:51.220
you weren't going to be persuaded, but, so he's not trying to win the argument in the, or the debate
00:44:57.620
in the sense that we understand that. He's trying to do what he says Trump is a master at doing,
00:45:03.280
which is persuade people to appreciate Trump or to find something in him that they haven't found
00:45:13.140
before. And then it was like, now I don't, it's like, how do you assess this, uh, this argument
00:45:20.140
at all if he's not even trying to win the argument as I understand winning arguments, you know?
00:45:25.300
No, I think that's true. I think he's very sincere about his insincerity. I think he's got,
00:45:30.440
he's got this bad faith structure to his game and he's fine with that. And I feel that there is an
00:45:38.940
immense number of, of intellectual and ethical problems that follow from that. And, and we
00:45:45.140
couldn't fully get into it, but it's a, I do find it very frustrating, but in his defense,
00:45:51.080
the aftermath and just everything we see around us proves at least one part of his thesis,
00:45:58.400
the two movies analogy, our audiences, my audience and Adam's audience are, were clearly watching
00:46:05.780
different movies of that podcast and perceived it totally differently. And the question of,
00:46:13.120
of moral persuasion, how do you bridge that gulf? Honestly, I'm at a loss when you can't get
00:46:20.920
facts that would be morally salient in another context to matter to someone for the purpose of
00:46:31.340
a political discussion. I mean, like when, when I, when one point I made with him, which, to which he
00:46:35.460
didn't have a rebuttal. I mean, I think he basically agreed with me. You know, I said, listen, if I did
00:46:40.720
any one of these things that I just named that you're not disputing Trump has done, if I did any
00:46:46.940
one of these things, it would be the end of me. And for good reason, I mean, you would not come
00:46:51.820
on this podcast if you had heard that I have a, had a Trump university in my backstory, or if I had
00:46:57.220
been, you know, barging into the dressing rooms of, of the beauty pageant contestants under my sway,
00:47:02.740
or I mean, any, any of these things. And, you know, you would rightly recognize that I'm a schmuck
00:47:08.080
who shouldn't be taken seriously. He does sort of split the difference here. And in other moments,
00:47:13.200
he says, well, who am I to judge any of that? And I'm not the Pope. And I, you know, when he's
00:47:16.800
talking about Trump, he's, or he says, oh, he's lived more publicly than you sort of implying
00:47:21.800
that who knows. But, and I do wonder about someone who feels that he is in no position to judge
00:47:30.700
the litany of abuses to morality and reason we see just pouring out of Trump's life.
00:47:38.200
I think his better argument was that you shouldn't, like, we're not hiring him to model,
00:47:46.620
to be a model citizen, good behavior, where it's like, you want that dirty lawyer, or as
00:47:52.980
Dave would say, the Jew lawyer to win your case for you.
00:47:59.260
You don't want the lawyer that's the most upstanding citizen when you're in a battle,
00:48:06.100
you know, for your, you know, whether you're going to go to prison or not, or for a lot of
00:48:12.280
There's so much to disagree with him about. And, but I'll tell you what I found the most
00:48:17.880
distressing. And, and, and again, I actually found him to be like an interesting, respectful
00:48:26.100
dude when he was discussing. So this isn't this, but, but I, but I get, I reserve the right,
00:48:31.320
as Sam, you were saying before, to just fundamentally disagree with him. And what I found the most
00:48:34.840
distressing in his whole, in the whole interview was, as you point out, the amorality of his,
00:48:43.100
of his arguments, but another one, just the insistence on praising Trump for his persuasive
00:48:48.320
powers and unwillingness to talk about what he was persuading people about, that he was avoiding
00:48:54.300
any discussion of content. So, so it's fine if you want to get in what he wants. And that's
00:49:00.860
intrinsic good. Intrinsic good. And it made me think, you know, for some people, this is an insult.
00:49:06.240
Some people, it might be a compliment, but, but I, it was very Anne Randish. And I was, I, I was struck
00:49:13.140
by that being a good in and of itself that, that sort of, you know, we've reached 33rd level persuasive
00:49:20.460
powers. And so you got to admire the guy, but if your persuasive powers are being used to not care
00:49:27.540
about the, the, the future of the environment, um, or, or to, to discriminate against people
00:49:34.400
or whatever, um, how, how is that a good, I mean, but you couldn't get him to discuss that.
00:49:41.580
And it was always bringing it back to, well, this is just part of his masterful game.
00:49:46.920
Um, which is like, great. You might be a really, really great marksman, but if you're shooting
00:49:51.820
people, I don't like you. And, and I, at this point he would tell me, well, the, I've failed
00:49:57.380
because my use of analogy, um, but, but, but I think I, I, I found it when it's all said
00:50:07.340
and done, I found it almost monstrous to, to think of a president and endorsing him for,
00:50:16.180
Yeah. Well, yeah. Also not to see the cost or forget about what he's persuading people
00:50:20.240
toward the fact of just having this style of communication that is so, so dishonest that
00:50:28.760
more or less there's just every assumption now is that there's something false in what he said.
00:50:36.180
Even if you're his fan, you have to bracket everything he says with this basic uncertainty
00:50:41.800
about whether he means it and the cost of, of, of that to our society and to our politics.
00:50:46.900
The downside of that is, is so obvious, but, you know, he clearly doesn't care about it.
00:50:53.980
Your question about, you know, there are these two movies and the movies seem to be operating
00:51:01.540
according to different principles too, just in terms of what counts, you know, if the whole,
00:51:09.100
the media takes Trump literally, but not seriously, people take Trump seriously, not literally.
00:51:19.380
And it's like, and this, and I guess that serious part on the Trump voters is that idea of kind of
00:51:24.680
emotional trust or the, you know, they, they trust him emotionally. And so when they, when he goes off
00:51:33.260
on some bullshit tweet storm, they know it's bullshit. They know he's lying, but he has their
00:51:39.840
emotional trust. I mean, I think that there is something right about that, at least as a
00:51:46.360
descriptive explanation for what's going on. And.
00:51:51.020
I actually think that's mostly untrue. I mean, I think I want to call bullshit on that claim too.
00:51:57.860
I mean, for instance, when Trump gets up there and says, you know, my inauguration crowd was bigger
00:52:02.300
than any that had ever been seen. I think most of his fans think that's true when he says it.
00:52:10.160
And they think it's the fake news media out to get him that is disputing it. And if they ever come
00:52:16.040
around to being convinced by the photos, which, you know, half of them probably think are doctored,
00:52:22.300
they think, well, who gives a shit? You know, he's great anyway. And so it's like, there's.
00:52:26.800
But why do they say he's great anyway? Because they trust him. They trust him. He's a fighter.
00:52:31.520
He's a businessman. He's going to fight for their.
00:52:33.460
The way Scott views him is a very unusual way of viewing him. I think people are.
00:52:39.300
They think everyone's out to get him so that most of the criticism about him and most of the fact
00:52:45.020
checking has to be purely malicious. And most of that is just a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories.
00:52:53.000
And there's probably nothing untoward happening with Russia. And, you know, he's he prize almost
00:52:58.960
certainly this really good guy who's just getting hammered by the left wing elite. But then when it
00:53:05.760
when any one piece of this shifts into the certainty column where, OK, no, Trump clearly was lying there,
00:53:14.380
then they have a piece of the Scott Adams view, which is, well, who cares? He's just you know,
00:53:20.180
that's just for effect or that's easy that that works. He did it because it works. Get used to it.
00:53:24.400
But for the most part, I don't think they're there. That's not their first perception. The first
00:53:28.820
perception is he's just under attack. There's a siege. And it's it's driven not by how far from normal
00:53:37.440
and ethical and professional and competent he is. It's driven based on just pure partisan
00:53:44.120
rancor. I mean, people like me are just unhappy to have lost an election.
00:53:48.300
Yeah. No, I mean, I think you're you're right about that. I guess I didn't want to build too much on
00:53:54.680
the psychology of the Trump voter as much as in terms of getting people in that movie to sort of
00:54:04.800
be able to talk and debate. There is something in this idea of building emotional trust. And one of
00:54:12.900
the one of the reasons why the fake news, you know, liberal skewed biased media, you know, all those
00:54:23.540
charges seem so effective. They're very effective on convincing Trump voters that he's being treated
00:54:30.820
unfairly, as he loves to say, is because there is no trust right now for those kinds of institutions.
00:54:39.120
You know, the establishment Republicans, the establishment Democrats and and the news media
00:54:44.420
in general. And so to you know, that's the I think the work that has to be done is building some of that
00:54:53.660
trust back, because without that, there's no terrain to persuade people to revise their opinion of a man
00:55:02.040
that they've put a lot of stake in. A lot of these voters, they it's they they're really motivated to
00:55:09.640
not look like they got played for a sucker to not look like they've been conned. And so only somebody
00:55:16.880
who they have a tremendous amount of trust in and and also I think some some degree of respect for
00:55:25.720
is going to be able to make progress in in changing their minds about that, because there's a lot of
00:55:31.680
biases. I think I think you're being I don't I don't think that there is on that the liberal media
00:55:39.160
has eroded trust and that this is why the people went for Trump. I think it's a much simpler story,
00:55:45.040
which is he was saying shit. A lot of people wanted to hear. They were voting in their self
00:55:49.580
interest for Trump because they really believed it. And one way to take Scott Adams view is and I
00:55:55.000
agree with both of you. I don't think this that Scott Adams represents in any way the average Trump
00:56:00.740
supporter. One way in which I think he's right is that Trump has persuaded a substantial portion of
00:56:08.480
people that he is to be trusted. And I think that that is despite all of the evidence that he is
00:56:14.680
not to be trusted. And so you say to yourself, well, how can people trust him despite all of
00:56:19.460
this evidence that he's a liar, that he makes decisions based on self-interest, not even on
00:56:24.580
principle. And I think it's because he has said a few things that people really, really wanted to
00:56:29.740
hear. And I don't think it's the liberal media has eroded trust and it needs to build it back up.
00:56:38.360
Well, the thing is, though, it has, I mean, I can attest to the failings of the liberal media or
00:56:44.480
the mainstream media on certain topics that are so reliable that I do have a window into how a right
00:56:53.920
wing Fox and Breitbart fan could view the editorial page of the New York Times or even just the news
00:57:03.020
pages, because I've seen them commit errors of fact or to shade their discussion of facts so
00:57:11.040
reliably on certain topics. I mean, the topics of, you know, the link between Islam and terrorism
00:57:16.520
is one where I can just guarantee you I will find in an article some way in which political correctness
00:57:23.280
is distorting the presentation of stark facts. There are whole articles in places like the New York
00:57:29.980
Times talking about terrorist suicide bombings as though the motive were a mystery that is bound
00:57:38.760
to remain impenetrable until the end of time. And there's no mention of Islam. There's no mention
00:57:44.160
of religion. There's just that you have generic words like extremism and all of this to someone
00:57:49.520
who's been paying attention to this problem and is worried about the spread of specific ideas
00:57:55.240
relative to jihadism. It's a very fishy way to describe what's going on. And so it is with something like gun
00:58:02.140
control and gun safety. There'll be a shooting at a school and you'll have the response in the New York
00:58:09.220
Times and you'll just see, you'll see positions being articulated by people who know nothing about guns,
00:58:17.020
who have never shot a gun, who don't, who get everything wrong. I mean, the names are wrong. I mean,
00:58:21.660
we hear them on CNN talking about guns. They pronounce the names of gun manufacturers wrong.
00:58:26.980
I mean, it's just the level of cluelessness is so obvious. And so I can see that it's possible that
00:58:34.200
even in the valid reaction to Trump, there's something demeaning about having to respond or
00:58:43.080
feeling that you have to respond again and again and again to Trump's dishonesty and indiscretions,
00:58:48.860
because every time you do it, you're running the risk of making an error yourself, however small,
00:58:58.980
which seems to put you on all fours with Breitbart or with Trump himself. Or it's just that there's
00:59:07.280
something that erodes your credibility by just taking the time to be endlessly criticizing
00:59:13.400
someone like this for the same points. And so you, when you look at the New York Times now,
00:59:19.200
there are days where the whole paper looks like the opinion page, because they have to take a
00:59:24.200
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