Making Sense - Sam Harris - Making Sense of Encounters With Violence ｜ Episode 4 of The Essential Sam Harris

The goal of this series is to organize, compile, and juxtapose conversations hosted by Sam Harris into specific areas of interest. This is an ongoing effort to construct a coherent overview of Sam s perspectives and arguments, the various explorations and approaches to the topic, the relevant agreements and disagreements, and the pushbacks and evolving thoughts which his guests have advanced. Along the way, we ll point you to the full episodes with each featured guest, and at the conclusion, we'll offer some reading, listening, and watching suggestions which range from fun and light to dense and densely academic. We don t run ads on the podcast, and therefore, therefore, it s made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers, we re making possible entirely by the support from our subscribers.So if you enjoy what we re doing here, please consider becoming a supporter of what we're doing here. You'll hear plenty of crossover into other topics as these dives into the archives unfold, and your thinking about a particular topic may shift as you realize its contingent relationships with others. And you'll hear the natural overlap with theories of free will, political philosophy, the foundations of morality, and more. So, get ready to make sense of encounters with violence. This is a series of compilations that presents harrowing scenarios and situations. Some of this compilation will be difficult to hear, and much of it will be hard to hear. But thinkers like Sam often intentionally wander to the dark edges of possibility and behavior, not just out of a penchant for the macabre, or for the public shock value, but to hopefully make genuine and important discoveries that have many implications for all aspects of life. Let s make sense, right? I mean, you'll never really be in the dispatcher s room when an out-of-control trolley barrels towards various people tied to the tracks. Get ready to become a member of The Essential Sam Harris by becoming one! -- Sam Harris, . The Making Sense Podcast is made possible through the work of Sam Harris. -- This is making sense of violence, and so on and so that you can be a part of the Making Sense community and so you can learn how to be a better human being. and a better thinker or a better all-around human being in the making sense that s better at being a better friend of the world so you don t become one.

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

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

00:00:10.880 Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber

00:00:14.680 feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.

00:00:18.420 In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at

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00:00:24.060 There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with

00:00:28.360 other subscriber-only content.

00:00:30.520 We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support

00:00:34.640 of our subscribers.

00:00:35.900 So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

00:00:48.700 Welcome to The Essential Sam Harris.

00:00:51.760 This is Making Sense of Encounters with Violence.

00:00:55.240 The goal of this series is to organize, compile, and juxtapose conversations hosted by Sam

00:01:04.060 Harris into specific areas of interest.

00:01:07.000 This is an ongoing effort to construct a coherent overview of Sam's perspectives and arguments,

00:01:12.760 the various explorations and approaches to the topic, the relevant agreements and disagreements,

00:01:19.020 and the pushbacks and evolving thoughts which his guests have advanced.

00:01:22.440 The purpose of these compilations is not to provide a complete picture of any issue, but

00:01:29.600 to entice you to go deeper into these subjects.

00:01:33.020 Along the way, we'll point you to the full episodes with each featured guest, and at the

00:01:38.240 conclusion, we'll offer some reading, listening, and watching suggestions, which range from fun

00:01:44.160 and light to densely academic.

00:01:46.140 One note to keep in mind for this series, Sam has long argued for a unity of knowledge where

00:01:53.780 the barriers between fields of study are viewed as largely unhelpful artifacts of unnecessarily

00:01:59.340 partitioned thought.

00:02:01.260 The pursuit of wisdom and reason in one area of study naturally bleeds into, and greatly

00:02:06.700 affects, others.

00:02:07.880 You'll hear plenty of crossover into other topics as these dives into the archives unfold.

00:02:14.680 And your thinking about a particular topic may shift as you realize its contingent relationships

00:02:19.720 with others.

00:02:21.360 In this topic, you'll hear the natural overlap with theories of free will, political philosophy,

00:02:27.880 the foundations of morality, and more.

00:02:30.500 So, get ready.

00:02:34.220 Let's make sense of Encounters with Violence.

00:02:41.720 Violence is an area of interest for Sam from several perspectives, and in this compilation,

00:02:47.520 we're going to explore two main tracks.

00:02:50.460 The first track will be Personal Contact with Violence.

00:02:53.940 This will look at the areas of Self-Defense, Surviving a Hostage Situation, Personal Participation

00:03:02.300 in War, and Sam's involvement with the practice of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

00:03:07.880 We will then transition to the second track, the more philosophical and political considerations

00:03:13.560 of violence in general.

00:03:15.880 This will take a look at Sam's critique of pacifism, along with the controversial topics

00:03:21.100 of profiling, torture, and gun ownership.

00:03:25.420 This section will lean heavily on Sam's strongly consequentialist moral framework.

00:03:31.580 We recommend listening to our compilation on the foundations of morality to fully dissect

00:03:36.780 just how Sam reaches his politically relevant advocacy.

00:03:41.000 Some of this compilation will be difficult to hear, and much of it presents harrowing scenarios

00:03:45.980 and situations.

00:03:46.780 But thinkers like Sam often intentionally wander to these dark edges of possibility and behavior,

00:03:54.700 not just out of a penchant for the macabre, or for the public shock value, but to hopefully

00:04:00.200 make genuine and important philosophical and psychological discoveries that have many implications

00:04:05.960 for all aspects of life.

00:04:09.460 Moral philosophers are fond of imagining wild, hellish scenarios that sometimes seem to spring

00:04:15.540 from the mind of a troubled writer of horror films.

00:04:18.960 Their imaginings fill the pages of textbooks with long, obscure titles, as well as philosophy

00:04:24.680 seminars inside university walls the world over.

00:04:29.240 While detailing these thought experiments, they claim to be exploring the boundaries of moral

00:04:34.180 frameworks and unearthing the decisive exceptions to previously upheld philosophies.

00:04:39.440 Often, the scenarios are dismissed as too unrealistic and impossible to be relevant.

00:04:46.700 I mean, you'll never really be in the dispatcher's room when an out-of-control trolley barrels towards

00:04:52.220 various people tied to the tracks, right?

00:04:55.860 Well, many of Sam's guests on making sense come from intellectual circles like philosophy

00:05:01.640 and psychology, and they regularly explore these kinds of fanciful thought experiments.

00:05:06.520 But, this group doesn't constitute Sam's complete list of guests.

00:05:15.200 Some of the most important and challenging episodes of Making Sense come from Sam's engagement

00:05:20.720 with people like Chris Voss, the man in our first clip.

00:05:25.720 Voss sports a thick, tough guy, Midwestern accent that sounds like it comes straight from central

00:05:31.020 casting, like it belongs to a hard-boiled FBI hostage negotiator.

00:05:35.600 And, in fact, that's exactly what Chris Voss is.

00:05:40.420 He's actually lived through some of these philosophers' wildest thought experiments.

00:05:45.780 Throughout his 28-year career, Voss has negotiated a variety of hostage situations, from bank heists

00:05:52.440 to international kidnappings and everything in between.

00:05:56.120 He's also been tapped by the corporate world to apply his insights and teach the skill of deal-making.

00:06:01.420 He co-wrote a book called Never Split the Difference—Negotiating Like Your Life Depended on It—which brought

00:06:09.640 those same lessons into the home—to the familiar, small stakes, commonplace negotiations that

00:06:15.980 happen every day in families and relationships.

00:06:18.580 His conversation with Sam spanned the entire range of considerations when it comes to hostage

00:06:24.880 situations, including the moral considerations of paying ransom.

00:06:29.480 We'll revisit that philosophical aspect of moral philosophy and violence in the latter

00:06:34.120 half of this compilation.

00:06:36.120 But for now, we'll look to this episode for a more intimate engagement with violence.

00:06:40.720 In particular, we're going to get advice on what you might want to do if you ever happen

00:06:46.380 to be violently kidnapped.

00:06:49.100 This is Sam with Chris Voss from Episode 132, Freeing the Hostages.

00:06:57.500 So, given what you know about negotiating from outside the crisis, what would you do if you

00:07:06.840 were taken hostage that it might not occur to the average person to do?

00:07:11.040 Well, since I know the chances are I'm going to come out, you know, it's up to me then to

00:07:15.600 engage in a psychological approach that maintains my sanity as much as possible, makes me treated

00:07:22.680 better.

00:07:23.420 You know, make sure the kidnappers know my name.

00:07:26.300 Don't resist what they want me to do. 0.97

00:07:28.340 Don't be a pain in the neck.

00:07:29.560 But if they grab me and they try to drag me to the other side of the room, I just look 0.72

00:07:34.760 at them and I say, I'm Chris.

00:07:36.500 You know, I will repeat my name to them as much as possible so that they figure out eventually

00:07:42.360 I'm going to condition them to say, Chris, come over here and I'll go over.

00:07:46.760 Right.

00:07:47.380 Instead of them dragging me over because then I'm Chris.

00:07:50.560 And as soon as I become Chris, the chances are that they're going to harm me hurt.

00:07:54.960 I become a person.

00:07:55.860 And now at some point in time, when they see me as a person, they're actually going

00:07:59.600 to want to make friends with me.

00:08:00.600 They're stuck with me too.

00:08:02.220 You know, there was a Mark Wahlberg movie a number of years back where he was running

00:08:06.340 a facility where they were using chimpanzees for science experiments in space flight.

00:08:11.840 And they had all the chimpanzees numbered and he came in and he gave them names.

00:08:15.760 And the guy stopped him and he said, as soon as you give them names, it's going to be harder

00:08:19.160 to walk them out to the experiments.

00:08:20.720 You're going to get attached to them.

00:08:21.820 You're going to treat them better.

00:08:23.160 That's human nature.

00:08:24.140 So I'm going to, I'm going to exploit what I know to be the case in human nature.

00:08:28.880 And I'm going to sit back and I'm going to, I'm going to develop a relationship with my

00:08:33.600 captors.

00:08:35.000 And then I'm going to think about who I'm going to sell my story to when I come out.

00:08:39.620 So it is such a high probability of, of a successful resolution that you would view it as unnecessarily

00:08:47.980 risky to attempt to escape.

00:08:49.780 And what, what are the conditions under which you would decide you should be running the

00:08:53.400 risk of violent conflict by attempting to escape yourself?

00:08:57.580 Well, um, all right.

00:08:59.200 So, uh, when they first grab you, they expect you to fight back.

00:09:02.820 Now that's the only time you can get away with fighting back. 1.00

00:09:06.200 It's still a stupid idea. 1.00

00:09:07.580 Cause since they expect you to fight, they're also prepared to beat you senseless. 1.00

00:09:13.620 That's a separate issue as to whether or not you run away.

00:09:16.040 The issue is not whether or not you try to get away.

00:09:18.480 The issue is whether or not you use violence to do it.

00:09:21.860 They're not going to blame you for getting up, uh, trying to get away.

00:09:24.740 They would too.

00:09:25.520 They're just going to blame you.

00:09:26.400 If you, if you use violence to do it, you walk away, run away, they catch you.

00:09:31.600 They'll be mad at you, but they won't beat you unconscious for it.

00:09:35.060 You know, we had one hostage walked away in Ecuador a couple of times because, uh, you

00:09:39.800 know, uh, they let him go to the bathroom by himself.

00:09:42.420 And every time he went to the bathroom by himself, he'd stay away for a few minutes longer.

00:09:46.220 He conditioned to them to expect him to be away for a while.

00:09:50.040 Then when he built the time period up, he walked away when he went to the bathroom.

00:09:54.660 Now, when they caught up with him, their anger response was they took his claws away for

00:09:59.700 a while.

00:10:00.120 That was, that was the extent of their punishment.

00:10:02.920 Other hostages who've tried to escape by the means of violence have gotten themselves

00:10:07.080 killed.

00:10:08.760 So a walk away, a run away, they don't blame you for that.

00:10:11.800 They expect you to do that as long as you don't do it with violence.

00:10:14.520 This is interesting because this advice is diametrically opposed to what I consider to be the conventional

00:10:21.020 wisdom in self-defense situations that are, that are not classical hostage situations.

00:10:26.880 But if you have, you know, if you're, you're getting into your car in the parking lot and

00:10:31.720 someone comes up with a gun and says, you know, get in.

00:10:35.360 And the advice I've always gotten from law enforcement, from martial artists, from people

00:10:40.920 who just know these situations is to resist violently and explosively as quickly as possible.

00:10:49.780 And that, you know, above all, never let yourself be taken to a secondary crime scene.

00:10:54.400 You might not agree with that self-defense advice in the first place, but assuming you do,

00:10:58.680 it sounds like the rules could change if you are in a situation where hostage takers just

00:11:04.780 have a sufficient control that then your marshalling violence is virtually guaranteed to work against

00:11:11.840 you.

00:11:12.620 Yeah.

00:11:12.820 Well, you know, there's, there's a couple of nuances to that question.

00:11:15.460 You got to be careful about generalizations and, but that is a great question.

00:11:19.700 All right.

00:11:20.240 So first of all, uh, the common theme at all times is to get away.

00:11:25.080 Now your choice is to how you want to get away.

00:11:27.460 Um, and what you're faced with.

00:11:31.300 And there's a big difference between a domestic U.S. hostage kidnapping and an international

00:11:35.980 kidnapping, massive difference.

00:11:38.580 Principally in a domestic U.S. kidnapping, the bad guys know they're going to get caught.

00:11:43.520 They assume they're going to get caught and you are the number one witness against them.

00:11:48.480 So domestic U.S. kidnapping is a very dangerous affair.

00:11:52.280 So let's, let's unspool that a little more slowly.

00:11:54.760 What is fundamentally different in terms of what you'd assume the outcome would be domestically?

00:12:00.920 Yeah.

00:12:01.460 The domestic guys know that we've got this great, not only do we have a great law enforcement

00:12:05.400 infrastructure, we've got a prison system that holds people for a long period of time.

00:12:09.760 And most kidnappers still believe that you get the death penalty for kidnapping.

00:12:14.220 Now you only get the death penalty for kidnapping.

00:12:16.300 If your victim dies and the state has the death penalty, but the bad guys are not studying up

00:12:22.460 on U.S. history and the changes in the laws.

00:12:27.220 So they figure that at a bare minimum, they're going to jail for a very long time.

00:12:31.180 If not receiving the death penalty, that is not the case in other countries where kidnapping

00:12:36.280 exists.

00:12:37.760 That you don't go to jail in Mexico for kidnapping.

00:12:40.160 If you do, you stay there just long enough to get a meal.

00:12:44.060 The domestic, Brazil, same way.

00:12:46.340 You don't, you know, you don't, you don't do any jail time in Brazil.

00:12:49.460 And if you got jail time, there's going to be a prison break.

00:12:51.840 You're going to get out anyway.

00:12:53.140 So they know that they understand how long they're going to stay in jail.

00:12:56.940 So domestic U.S.

00:12:58.140 Kidnapping, very dangerous affair.

00:13:00.980 They, and you are the biggest threat to their freedom as a witness.

00:13:04.520 And they do not want that witness to live.

00:13:06.340 In, in the third world, the developing world, they could care less. 0.99

00:13:11.620 They're more interested in getting paid.

00:13:13.560 They're not worried about getting caught.

00:13:15.100 Otherwise, there wouldn't be so much kidnapping in Colombia, Ecuador, Central America, South

00:13:21.100 America, Mexico, Iraq.

00:13:24.120 So you got to know where you are.

00:13:25.660 But that might cut both ways.

00:13:27.340 Might.

00:13:28.060 In the sense that in, let's put it in Colombia for the moment.

00:13:31.340 If the risk of being caught and prosecuted is so low, then I would think the, the life

00:13:38.380 of the hostages would be commensurately cheap there too, because you're presumably, you're

00:13:43.400 not getting easily caught and prosecuted for murder either.

00:13:46.960 Right.

00:13:47.200 So now the question is, and you got to be careful about projecting the wrong set of values into

00:13:51.720 the wrong place.

00:13:52.780 So you're, you're in a commodities game.

00:13:55.700 You're in a commodities business.

00:13:57.420 It's not what it is to us.

00:13:58.840 It's what it is to them.

00:14:01.060 Any business that doesn't deliver its product, what happens?

00:14:04.480 It doesn't last very long.

00:14:05.480 They go out of business.

00:14:07.160 And that's, if you're a kidnapping gang and you develop a reputation for not delivering

00:14:11.680 hostages, that's going to get out.

00:14:14.260 It sounds insane, but it doesn't matter what it is to us.

00:14:18.000 It matters what it is to them.

00:14:19.960 Right.

00:14:20.440 And if they don't deliver, they don't get paid.

00:14:22.420 And they're much more interested in getting paid because to them, it's a business.

00:14:25.040 Is there any frequency with which people are kidnapped for ransom in the U.S.?

00:14:30.960 Or is this, I picture most hostage situations in the U.S. to be these, you know, extremely

00:14:37.600 emotional, in many cases, attempts on the part of the hostage taker to commit suicide by

00:14:44.360 cop.

00:14:45.040 What would you expect if you heard that someone had been kidnapped in the U.S.?

00:14:51.220 Yeah, and a great question because, you know, what type of hostage situation is it?

00:14:57.180 You can't broad brush a kidnapping and suicide by cop are as different as zebras and giraffes.

00:15:05.240 Yeah, but they're both from Africa.

00:15:06.660 Well, they're a giraffe and a rhino.

00:15:08.920 They're both African animals, right? 1.00

00:15:10.580 Suicide by cop takes place principally, primarily at banks, secondarily, any situation where the 0.97

00:15:18.380 bad guys are trying to get the police's attention.

00:15:21.720 That's one of the first elements of suicide by cop.

00:15:24.220 Did they create a provocation they know the police are going to show up to?

00:15:28.180 Why does that happen at banks?

00:15:29.540 Banks got bank alarms.

00:15:30.900 Cops show up really fast.

00:15:33.300 Kidnapping, completely different animal.

00:15:34.920 They're not trying to get the police's attention.

00:15:36.560 They're trying to get the family's attention.

00:15:38.300 That domestic U.S. kidnapping, because they figure they're going to get caught, and if

00:15:43.760 they get caught, the primary witness is the victim, different game entirely.

00:15:49.720 The victim is now a threat.

00:15:52.860 Kidnapping internationally, who's got a robust penal system, jail system, in comparison to

00:16:00.000 the United States in the third world?

00:16:02.420 Nobody.

00:16:02.860 Okay, so that should get your mind sufficiently geared up for some of the unpleasantness of

00:16:11.340 this topic, as we zoom out from the personal to the philosophical.

00:16:16.240 Boss has navigated the thought experiments and discovered a raft of interesting psychological

00:16:21.240 techniques geared towards de-escalation and rescue.

00:16:24.440 In many ways, his job is to be a speed-dating therapist, tasked with hijacking whatever vulnerabilities

00:16:32.180 the target might be harboring in order to bring the situation to the best possible conclusion.

00:16:39.000 As we go forward, much of our examination of violence will attempt to strike a tenuous

00:16:44.500 balance between moral reasoning and frantic urgency.

00:16:48.540 Because in thinking about violence, we must also consider a particular emotion that's almost

00:16:54.860 never absent when violence is present.

00:16:57.760 That emotion is fear.

00:17:01.560 Any situation that includes the following ingredients is a recipe for fear.

00:17:07.140 There are many uncertain outcomes.

00:17:10.420 Nearly all of them are extremely undesirable.

00:17:12.840 The path towards desirable outcomes is narrowed by a high risk of failure.

00:17:19.860 There's a rapidly declining time frame before the undesirable outcomes materialize.

00:17:25.280 And there's a necessity to break moral norms to try to bring about the better outcomes.

00:17:31.480 This recipe comes together when an animal is being cornered by a predator, or when humans

00:17:36.980 read a news report about an approaching hurricane.

00:17:39.360 Fear usually isn't high on people's lists of favorite emotions to experience.

00:17:45.820 But our next guest wrote a book entitled The Gift of Fear, which attempts to give fear some

00:17:52.140 love.

00:17:53.760 Fear, he argues, is a message from within ourselves to another part of ourselves, and it serves

00:17:59.980 a tremendously important and underrated role.

00:18:05.540 Evolution favors animals with a good deal of fear.

00:18:09.360 All of us animals currently living are trailing a long line of the evolved behavior of fearful

00:18:15.320 animals who utilized this fear to avoid death.

00:18:19.680 The dead ends on the family tree are much more likely to be the animals who are most numb to the

00:18:25.480 threat of something truly dangerous, rather than the ones who reacted to the first rustling

00:18:30.700 in the leaves as if it were a poisonous snake.

00:18:32.920 But, of course, there's a balance to strike.

00:18:38.880 An animal who was too jumpy and ran away in fear every time the leaves rustled may have

00:18:44.220 missed out on a lot of good feeding opportunities, and may not have had the privilege of passing

00:18:49.060 on its genes.

00:18:49.900 So, this evolved fear meter has been calibrating its accuracy within us for quite some time,

00:18:57.940 but it's not a perfect instrument.

00:19:01.820 Evolution, as always, is merely a blind process, seeking the path of least resistance suitable

00:19:07.960 enough to keep the genes going.

00:19:10.820 Evolution also moves at a much slower pace than the technological and societal evolution of

00:19:16.640 our modern civilization.

00:19:19.200 The overwhelming majority of the fear meter's evolution took place in an environment when

00:19:24.860 we were around similar-looking and sounding kin, and took place in the absence of technological

00:19:31.160 threats like guns, bombs, and radiation.

00:19:35.320 Our fear meter may therefore be calibrated to be hypersensitive to encounters with new and

00:19:40.800 unfamiliar devices.

00:19:41.900 To make this point, imagine plucking a human out of history from 300,000 years ago.

00:19:51.380 You and this earlier human decide to go for a walk in the woods.

00:19:56.060 Imagine coming across a discarded blender by the side of the path.

00:20:00.440 You would recognize the object right away, and though you may have some questions as to

00:20:05.260 how it ended up there, you'd be pretty confident that it posed no danger.

00:20:09.500 You could see the rusted plug laying harmlessly in the dirt.

00:20:16.220 But your caveman friend might be startled and mystified by it.

00:20:20.640 The sharp blades on their own may scare him, and if you weren't there to encourage him

00:20:25.000 to inspect it, he might take extraordinary caution towards the thing.

00:20:31.040 Next, imagine that a human 300,000 years from now plucks you out from history and takes you 0.96

00:20:37.820 on a walk in his world.

00:20:40.520 Imagine coming across a strange device in the grass with a shape and material that made

00:20:45.200 little sense to you.

00:20:47.080 Your internal fear meter may be beeping and sending all kinds of fear chemicals your way

00:20:52.700 to urge you to be very careful with the strange thing, even while your futuristic hiking partner

00:20:59.080 assured you that the thing was harmless in this context.

00:21:01.920 Fear of the unknown may not be entirely universal or felt as strongly by everyone, but it seems

00:21:10.020 to be the default for humans.

00:21:12.400 The blueprint of evolution reads, better safe than sorry.

00:21:17.040 But it's not just new and unfamiliar kinds of objects that can trip our fear response.

00:21:22.920 Our fear meters can also be hypersensitive to new and unfamiliar kinds of people.

00:21:28.420 This wrinkle is what often drives all forms of bigotry and racism.

00:21:34.280 When we feel that fear of other people, it seems to spring from a mysterious source.

00:21:40.360 We may experience it as just a bad feeling or something that doesn't feel quite right.

00:21:47.700 So what are we to make of this?

00:21:50.600 That's Gavin DeBecker's area of interest.

00:21:54.040 DeBecker is an expert in the prediction and management of violence.

00:21:57.400 He's worked in security details for celebrities and investigated stalkers.

00:22:02.380 He's developed threat assessment systems for governors and U.S. Supreme Court justices.

00:22:08.040 And he's frequently been brought in as an expert witness in high-profile cases.

00:22:13.380 He's also managed security for Sam's public events.

00:22:17.820 Here, he and Sam will focus on fear and the mysterious concept of intuition.

00:22:23.140 You'll hear DeBecker give a robust defense of this inner sense and the nearly subconscious form of intelligence it represents as it has been molded through countless trial runs of evolution.

00:22:35.100 This is Gavin DeBecker from episode 90, Living with Violence.

00:22:40.760 Let's talk about intuition because we have just said that people are fairly confused about violence and tend to be bad at dealing with some of the information that's out there about it.

00:22:57.460 But this point you make again and again, you've made it here, and it's the very title of your book, The Gift of Fear.

00:23:04.520 There's one thing that we are actually very good at.

00:23:08.280 Evolution has made us experts at detecting danger and detecting shady people, feeling uncomfortable in the presence of people who are liable to do us harm.

00:23:19.540 Talk about intuition here and what it means to trust it and why so many people are unaware of the validity of trusting it, the reasons given for not trusting it.

00:23:34.160 Talk about the primacy of intuition for a moment.

00:23:36.720 Well, here we get to, I think, the biggest gift we can give to listeners.

00:23:41.440 And this goes for female listeners and male listeners.

00:23:44.140 This goes for decisions you make in your work and decisions you make for your safety.

00:23:49.580 Ultimately, the biggest decision we all make is who to include in our life and who to exclude from our life.

00:23:55.740 That's choosing friends, spouse, neighbors, you know, co-workers, et cetera.

00:24:01.280 We make those choices.

00:24:02.340 Those choices aren't made for us.

00:24:03.740 And so my advice always is to make very slow and careful decisions about whom you include in your life and very fast decisions about whom you exclude.

00:24:16.680 So if you have that nanny that you're uncomfortable about, she goes quickly. 0.52

00:24:22.540 There's no reason to keep her around.

00:24:24.520 I mean, I've had people through my career say, you know, should we put in a nanny cam?

00:24:28.280 Because we're worried that this nanny is doing something dangerous with our kids. 1.00

00:24:33.820 And I say, no, you should get rid of the nanny because no kid is going to thank you in 20 years. 0.98

00:24:39.340 Gee, mom, thank you for having that video of me being hit by a spoon on the head by that crazy nanny you guys hired. 1.00

00:24:45.720 And so the concept of listening to intuition is what I want to focus on for a moment.

00:24:50.300 Because America particularly, or Western societies, we look to government and we look to experts and technologies and corporations to solve our problem for us.

00:25:01.140 And I am very glad to tell everybody here that the police are not going to protect you because they're not going to be there during the moment that you face an intruder or you face a violent situation.

00:25:12.440 And government's not going to protect you.

00:25:14.400 It can't.

00:25:15.360 It tries to pretend it can, but it can't.

00:25:17.400 And the only thing that's going to protect you is your own intuition, which is your own ability to recognize that something is up while it's right in front of you or while it's in your environment.

00:25:29.300 And I think, as you said, Sam, it's super hard for people to accept the importance of it because intuition is usually looked on with some contempt.

00:25:38.860 It's described as emotional or unreasonable or inexplicable.

00:25:42.200 And husbands make fun of wives for feminine intuition and they don't take it seriously. 0.98

00:25:46.060 But what I can tell you about intuition, I learned from the origins of the word itself.

00:25:53.240 The root of the word, inter, means to guard and to protect.

00:25:57.760 Super interesting that that's what it means.

00:25:59.760 We think we're using intuition to make a thousand other decisions, but what it's built for, what it's in this system for, is to guard us and to protect us.

00:26:09.580 And what it, you know, what it does is, and I'm really going to quote you for a second here, because you said a moment ago that evolution has really honed this.

00:26:20.260 True.

00:26:20.980 We didn't get the biggest claws.

00:26:22.640 We didn't get the sharpest teeth or the biggest muscles.

00:26:25.500 What we got is the biggest brains.

00:26:27.420 And the idea that we use the, you know, the expression gut feeling, well, the gut actually has more brain cells than a dog.

00:26:39.400 So the gut is literally where a lot of that thought is going on.

00:26:43.220 That's why, you know, you get that bad feeling in your stomach about this employee, this friend, this thing somebody said to you, this danger.

00:26:50.760 Uh, and that's a very meaningful thing.

00:26:53.120 Gut feeling is, is the perfect word for it.

00:26:55.180 And it's visceral.

00:26:56.300 It's in the tissue.

00:26:57.960 And it isn't just a feeling.

00:26:59.520 No, I mean, it's called the enteric nervous system.

00:27:02.260 Well, you've given it, you're smarter than I am.

00:27:04.060 You gave it a better name.

00:27:05.340 The, the idea is that this is a process.

00:27:08.100 This, this process we ridicule intuition is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical.

00:27:15.240 In the natural order of things, it's more logical than the most fantastic computer calculation.

00:27:21.480 And it's our most complicated cognitive process.

00:27:25.020 Uh, and, and it's also in some ways, it's the simplest, which I'll explain.

00:27:28.460 But what it does intuition is it connects us to the natural world and to our nature so that when we are free from judgment and we've got only perception, we say that thing, you know, in, in recounting what happened to us, somehow I knew.

00:27:43.920 So if people will do these two things, one is to pay attention to intuition.

00:27:51.400 It's, in my opinion, it's always right in two important ways.

00:27:55.760 One is it's always based on something.

00:27:58.380 And two, it always has your best interest at heart.

00:28:02.440 And so give you a fast example.

00:28:04.700 You're in an airport and you get that feeling.

00:28:07.500 I shouldn't get on this plane.

00:28:08.960 And, uh, millions of people have had this feeling.

00:28:11.200 This plane's going to crash something, they get anxiety about it and I shouldn't get on this plane.

00:28:15.340 So what I ask people to do is look introspectively for a moment at where that feeling's coming from.

00:28:22.120 And if it is coming from a news story you saw, you know, two weeks ago on television of an ugly plane crash in Peru, that is not in your, based on your, your, uh, environment or your circumstance.

00:28:37.960 It's based on your memory or your anxiety, and that's not actual fear.

00:28:43.660 If, however, the feeling is based on seeing the pilot stumble out of the bar at the airport and, and, you know, make his way slowly down the jet walk, now you've got something that's in your environment.

00:28:55.840 And the question to ask always, this is how you tell the difference between true fear, like I'm afraid of getting on this plane and unwarranted fear, worry, anxiety, et cetera.

00:29:08.700 This is how true fear will always be based on something in your presence and will always be based on something you perceive it.

00:29:19.660 The signal comes from your perception, from your senses, unwarranted fear will always be based upon memory.

00:29:28.720 And, uh, and so it's something you remember, something you recall, something you're, you're worrying about or something you're thinking about, but something based on your actual environment is a gift.

00:29:38.620 Hence the title of that book.

00:29:39.960 There's not an animal in nature that would say, oh, I don't want that gift.

00:29:43.760 Don't tell me when I should be worried about my safety.

00:29:45.660 It's, it's, it's so much trouble, you know, there's no antelope that suddenly is filled with fear and says to itself, it's probably nothing.

00:29:54.400 But human beings every day are engaged in the constant prosecution of their own feelings.

00:30:01.120 And, you know, the, the most vivid example I'm aware of is a woman alone in a building late at night.

00:30:08.020 She's working late in the office and she goes to the elevator, the elevator door opens, and there's a guy inside who causes her fear.

00:30:14.600 She's afraid of him.

00:30:16.520 And so what does she do? 0.85

00:30:18.700 Most women get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone who causes her fear, something no animal in nature would do.

00:30:27.260 And why does she do it? 1.00

00:30:28.700 Because she says, I don't want to be the kind of person who makes a decision because of the guy's race or because his clothes look shabby.

00:30:35.120 I don't want to be like that, or I don't want to offend him, or I don't want to make him angry.

00:30:38.460 She talks herself out of what I call prosecutes her own jury's conclusion, and she talks herself out of it and gets into the elevator.

00:30:48.440 And as I say, these are things that no animal in nature would ever even remotely contemplate, and human beings do it every day, participating in their own victimization.

00:30:57.080 The elevator example brings up some other issues here that are hugely important, and this is the other side of the balance that causes people to not value intuition or to prosecute their feelings, as you say.

00:31:13.740 And it's that these moments of negative intuition can be in contradiction to a variety of social norms that well-intentioned people want to adopt.

00:31:25.980 And so, yeah, you just named one.

00:31:27.420 You don't want to be racist, right?

00:31:29.160 So, if you're a white woman, and the elevator door is open, and the man on the elevator who makes you uncomfortable is black, well, you may just get on that elevator perversely to prove to yourself and to him that you're not racist, right? 0.76

00:31:47.560 You override your intuition.

00:31:50.080 And in fact, I know someone who was in a circumstance like this, and it didn't end well.

00:31:55.340 And we can make it even more provocative than that.

00:31:58.360 There are certain circumstances where the race of the person is obviously relevant information.

00:32:06.380 It is in and of itself a pre-incident indicator or a statistically relevant fact, regardless of any other messages that are coming.

00:32:15.840 There are places where it's more surprising or less surprising to see a person of a certain race.

00:32:21.860 And people feel very bad.

00:32:23.860 We've all been trained to ignore those facts, which, again, we can, in many cases, just instantly and intuitively surmise.

00:32:33.080 So, what are good people to do with that?

00:32:37.360 We're going to let that question from Sam hang in the air for a bit.

00:32:45.380 Because you must be hearing how unafraid Sam is to take the logic of fear and poke at some strong societal taboos.

00:32:53.020 Sam's line of questioning takes us directly toward one of the most precarious moral and political tightropes out there at the moment, the topic of profiling.

00:33:04.600 We'll be taking a little time to walk that tightrope now, so let's see if we can keep our balance.

00:33:09.900 Our sense of evolved, intelligent intuition sometimes mixes with other forms of embedded biases that are unhelpful or immoral.

00:33:23.180 And that can create a jumbled emotional brew within us.

00:33:27.300 The elements of this concoction are sometimes hard to distinguish and differentiate.

00:33:31.360 That's why, when fear is felt, de Becker encourages a moment and method of introspection.

00:33:39.540 It's invaluable to sharpen our internal tools so as to better heed the strange alarm bells that sound from our guttural, enteric nervous system.

00:33:50.360 So, when we get a bad feeling about someone who's walking toward us on the same side of the street, what's really happening there?

00:33:58.240 Well, in a generic sense, we are engaged in profiling.

00:34:06.020 If we allow ourselves to drain the political ugliness from this term, we can simply define it as the process of gathering information about a potential threat in our environment, so as to inform our interaction with it.

00:34:19.960 What kind of information can be gathered from seeing a figure on the same side of the street as us?

00:34:25.280 Well, there's the likely sex of the person to start.

00:34:30.840 There's the height and build of the person, which may be easier to track depending on the clothing they're wearing, which can itself reveal important information.

00:34:40.260 Are the clothes appropriate for the weather?

00:34:43.060 Do the clothes look expensive?

00:34:44.360 Does that signal that this person has a lot of money and likely isn't thinking about robbing someone?

00:34:51.960 Or are the clothes extraordinarily trendy and expensive, which makes you suspect that they're more likely to target you and your very trendy shoes?

00:35:01.980 Are they wearing a suit?

00:35:04.120 A torn and stained t-shirt?

00:35:06.720 Is the stain fresh?

00:35:08.900 Are they stumbling?

00:35:10.500 Does that indicate intoxication?

00:35:12.100 There's information to gather about their hands.

00:35:16.880 Are they holding something?

00:35:18.420 Do they have pockets that could be concealing anything?

00:35:21.960 Does the person have tattoos?

00:35:24.300 Are they on the forehead or on the forearm?

00:35:28.120 There's even non-visual information to gather, like the odor that might be coming from the person.

00:35:34.300 Is it alcohol or cologne?

00:35:37.040 And there's contextual data to incorporate.

00:35:39.500 If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org.

00:35:45.840 Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber-only content, including bonus episodes and AMAs, and the conversations I've been having on the Waking Up app.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris

Making Sense of Encounters With Violence ｜ Episode 4 of The Essential Sam Harris

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