The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Gregg Hurwitz - An Invitation to the Intellectual Dark Web

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00:01:18.000 Hi, everybody.

00:01:46.340 I'm here today again with Greg Hurwitz, an old friend of mine, a former student from Harvard.

00:01:52.400 We've talked before and we've got some exciting things to talk about today. I'll give you some background on Greg first.

00:01:58.280 Greg is a New York Times number one internationally best-selling author of 20 thrillers,

00:02:04.140 including Out of the Dark, coming out in 2019, and two award-winning thriller novels for teens.

00:02:09.560 His novels have won numerous literary awards, graced top 10 lists, and have been published in 30 languages.

00:02:17.500 He's written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to many of the major studios, including the Book of Henry,

00:02:23.840 and written, developed, and produced TV for various networks.

00:02:26.760 He's also a New York Times best-selling comic book writer, having penned stories for Marvel, Wolverine, and Punisher, and DC, Batman, and Penguin.

00:02:37.240 He's published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare, taught fiction writing in the USC English Department,

00:02:43.220 and guest lectured for UCLA and for Harvard in the United States and internationally.

00:02:47.120 In the course of researching his thrillers, he sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs,

00:02:53.560 swum with sharks in the Galapagos, and gone undercover into mind-control cults.

00:02:59.360 Hurwitz grew up in the Bay Area.

00:03:01.600 While completing a BA from Harvard and a Master's from Trinity College, Oxford, in Shakespearean tragedy,

00:03:06.920 he wrote his first novel.

00:03:08.580 He was the undergraduate scholar-athlete of the year at Harvard for his pole vaulting exploits,

00:03:14.000 and played college soccer in England, where he was a Knox fellow.

00:03:19.040 So that's Greg.

00:03:21.360 Hello, everybody.

00:03:23.280 It's quite an intro.

00:03:24.240 I think I'm just going to have you follow me around everywhere and read that before I enter a room.

00:03:28.380 Just going to make sure everyone dislikes me.

00:03:30.520 Yeah, exactly.

00:03:31.720 That's right.

00:03:32.140 That's the sort of intro that makes...

00:03:33.580 Everyone hopes you're a real son of a bitch after reading an intro like that,

00:03:36.660 so they can morally dislike you.

00:03:39.320 Yes.

00:03:39.760 The best thing.

00:03:40.640 There's a lot to morally dislike, Jordan, as you know.

00:03:43.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:44.260 So we're not going to talk too much today about Greg's previous exploits.

00:03:49.060 Instead, we're going to talk about some of the work he's been doing in the political realm recently

00:03:52.720 and the reasons for doing that.

00:03:54.400 So, Greg, I'm going to let you take that away.

00:03:57.320 Well, so, look, I write thrillers, and I have...

00:04:01.140 The shorthand that I always give is that about half of my friends are born-again Christian Navy SEAL snipers,

00:04:05.940 and half of my friends are gay ACLU lawyers.

00:04:08.760 And I tour equally in the red and blue states.

00:04:11.080 My readership is very, very diverse.

00:04:13.260 And I think because of that, I have a real ear for the buzzwords and phrases and ideological shorthand

00:04:20.260 that really shut people down, that just make them stop listening.

00:04:25.220 My own politics, I'd say I'm a bit more of a classical liberal.

00:04:29.400 And one of the things that I talk a lot about is there are certain phrases that we've grown up with from both sides

00:04:35.720 that just make people completely stop.

00:04:37.480 And it's not dissimilar to what we're trying to do when we're writing, right?

00:04:40.500 If you write and use buzzwords and catchphrases and cliches, it's less interesting.

00:04:45.360 If you already know what you think before you start writing, and there's no room for discovery along the way,

00:04:50.580 then you're not...

00:04:51.040 It's not real writing.

00:04:52.020 It's propaganda, right?

00:04:53.160 It's Ayn Rand.

00:04:54.040 You're never going to be surprised by something in the third act.

00:04:57.460 And so there's a real overlap for that that I found.

00:04:59.780 And so one of the things that I've been trying to do, given how polarized I have found discourse to be

00:05:05.180 and how I found myself moving between vastly different worlds,

00:05:09.000 is to try and commit myself to ending or contributing to ending polarizing discourse.

00:05:13.880 And so part of that is that I've been focused on trying to rebrand the Democratic Party,

00:05:20.560 working with a lot of different candidates and entities in an effort to get away from gridlock and more towards solutions.

00:05:27.100 I have a view that's a lot like Jonathan Haidt, who you've interviewed at length,

00:05:31.680 who I think gives a great description of the need and necessity for both conservatives and liberals,

00:05:37.340 in that conservatives like walls around things, right?

00:05:40.540 They like walls around gender.

00:05:41.840 They like walls around countries.

00:05:43.740 Build a wall is sort of a brilliant Republican slogan.

00:05:47.040 And the job of liberals is to say, hang on a minute.

00:05:50.260 If that wall is too impenetrable, you're not going to have new ideas and people,

00:05:54.420 and then we'll stagnate and die.

00:05:56.620 And so for me, and you and I have talked before about how it's also the case for inventors and entrepreneurs

00:06:00.920 who kind of create things, which tends to be more of a liberal leaning,

00:06:05.240 but if you want them run effectively, often you need conservative managers to come in.

00:06:08.800 And so I want there to be stronger parties on both sides.

00:06:14.060 I mean, I want there to be better discourse.

00:06:15.900 I think if there's a stronger Republican Party, it makes the Democratic Party have to raise their game

00:06:21.120 and come up with solutions.

00:06:22.480 And out of the one thing I will say that has been in common of everyone who I talk to

00:06:26.340 is nobody is thrilled with the level of political discourse right now.

00:06:29.860 So there's a couple of things there that are really interesting.

00:06:32.740 I mean, you talk about the necessity for high-quality representation on both sides of the political continuum,

00:06:44.940 let's say.

00:06:45.940 And there are really powerful temperamental and philosophical reasons for that.

00:06:50.920 So, you know, you mentioned that the liberal types tend to be entrepreneurs and creators,

00:06:55.480 and the conservative types tend to be managers and administrators.

00:06:58.320 So that's pretty well documented in the psychological literature.

00:07:01.280 But you see echoes of that, and you mentioned the border issue as well,

00:07:05.160 because, of course, to categorize things, we have to put boundaries around them.

00:07:08.980 But boundaries can artificially separate and make things stagnant as well.

00:07:13.080 So we have to have a continual discussion about exactly where the boundaries should be drawn

00:07:16.680 without ever also presuming that we should just do away with boundaries altogether,

00:07:20.720 because that does away with category.

00:07:22.460 And then with regards to hierarchies, well, you know, it seems to be the job of the right wing

00:07:28.260 to put forward the proposition that hierarchies are necessary from an organizational perspective.

00:07:34.780 So if a bunch of people decide to go do something of value,

00:07:38.700 let's say it's of collective value as well as individual value,

00:07:41.940 then inevitably when they operate cooperatively and competitively,

00:07:45.860 they're going to produce a hierarchy.

00:07:47.080 And the hierarchy is actually a tool to accomplish that task in the social arena.

00:07:53.420 But the problem with that is that a hierarchy can become over-rigid and corrupt,

00:07:58.220 and it can dispossess people without that dispossession being a necessary function of the task

00:08:06.840 that the hierarchy is attempting to perform.

00:08:09.360 Yeah, it's always both, right?

00:08:11.240 What's that?

00:08:11.980 It's always both, right?

00:08:13.500 I mean, it's always that we need it to organize, and there always are inequities that are a result of it.

00:08:18.940 That's right.

00:08:19.300 And the thing that I have found is that when people lock in the political conversations

00:08:23.480 from one side or the other, it becomes all or nothing.

00:08:26.340 And for me, nothing gets accomplished in all or nothing.

00:08:29.080 And so to straw man, you know, Democrats that all of them just want to tear down the whole system,

00:08:34.600 and, you know, those are some of the loud voices on Twitter,

00:08:37.540 isn't helpful any more than the claim that Republicans have no interest whatsoever in the people who are dispossessed.

00:08:43.820 And so a lot of what's important is to look at, you know, conservatives who are, you know, thoughtful.

00:08:51.120 It's not like they love the fact that people are dispossessed.

00:08:53.720 So the question becomes, how do we all help that, and how do we actually have a discussion,

00:08:57.500 and how do we get away from the fact that compromise towards solutions is somehow a betrayal?

00:09:05.440 That if you compromise anything from the furthest extreme, you're sort of betraying your own ideology and your own people.

00:09:11.020 Yeah, well, I think partly you do that by focusing on specific problems instead of broader ideological solutions.

00:09:16.200 And that's, so part of what we're trying to discuss today and to contribute to is the re-centralization,

00:09:23.620 let's say, of the political parties, and also to make a case for the necessity of intelligent discourse,

00:09:27.860 knowing that people on both sides of the political spectrum have something intelligent to say.

00:09:32.300 So the conservatives have every reason to put forward the proposition that hierarchies are both inevitable and useful,

00:09:39.620 but also to keep firmly in mind that they can become corrupt and that they do tend to dispossess.

00:09:44.560 And the liberals have every reason to keep in mind that hierarchies are absolutely necessary in order to get things done,

00:09:50.620 but that the dispossessed need a voice so that the system remains both permeable and fair.

00:09:57.260 And it's really necessary for both sides to have some respect for the position of the alternative temperamental type, let's say.

00:10:06.160 Well, that's where we have to meet in rational sort of enlightenment discourse, or else we can't win.

00:10:11.980 You know, you've talked a lot about the big five personality traits and the ways that it orients differently in politics.

00:10:18.620 So it's like liberals are higher in empathy, right, and higher in openness.

00:10:21.740 That's why a lot of artists you find tend to be liberal, you know, at least the good ones.

00:10:27.500 Like we have Bruce Springsteen on the other side.

00:10:30.360 It's hard for President Trump to fill up an arena with people who are the artists of a certain caliber.

00:10:37.280 And, you know, it doesn't mean that that higher empathy is better.

00:10:41.880 And I think often when liberals are talking, they're trying to push through only empathy and higher empathy.

00:10:47.260 And they're trying to educate people in the higher empathy.

00:10:49.320 Well, it's a fixed psychological trait.

00:10:51.280 And the other thing is, you know, Republicans or conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness.

00:10:56.820 And conscientiousness codes for a bunch of things that are really useful.

00:11:00.220 You know, codes for better health, better finances, more stable marriages, and longer lifespan.

00:11:05.480 So one of the things when I'm advising, you know, Democrats is like you can't – if you – you have to win an argument on the merits.

00:11:12.260 You have to make a better argument if you're losing people.

00:11:14.640 You can't just go to them and say, be more empathetic.

00:11:17.460 That's not an argument, right?

00:11:18.920 It's like going to President Clinton and saying, can't you just be an introvert?

00:11:23.440 These are sort of fixed traits.

00:11:24.840 And the other thing is, is a lot of conservatives are doing fine over there with their stable marriages and longer life.

00:11:30.980 Well, and the empathy issue is interesting as well because it's easy for that to be regarded reflexively as a virtue.

00:11:36.720 But an excess of pity, let's say, can be destructive.

00:11:40.660 There's a whole psychoanalytic literature on the negative consequences of fostering over-dependence, let's say.

00:11:46.960 And that's a real problem.

00:11:47.980 And there is a managerial literature, too, that suggests that less agreeable managers do better,

00:11:52.340 as well as less agreeable people in general having higher incomes because they're better at bargaining for themselves.

00:11:58.060 So it is really necessary to give some consideration to the fact that each of these temperaments has marked advantages and disadvantages

00:12:05.080 and a proper niche where it can function and other places where it actually constitutes a problem.

00:12:10.980 Well, and that's where we have to rise above ourselves and meet.

00:12:14.860 Like, where do we meet?

00:12:15.880 We meet in freedom of speech.

00:12:17.320 There's a reason it's the First Amendment.

00:12:18.820 You know, if I was dumb enough to be a single-issue voter, that would be my single issue.

00:12:23.600 Because part of it is, as a classical liberal, I tend to approach things, I have a strong amount of empathy.

00:12:30.880 But I also realize that that's not a trait that I can map on to everybody else when I'm having a discussion,

00:12:35.680 that I have to actually meet and make arguments for people who approach the world in different ways

00:12:41.680 and have different kinds of successes to make higher conscientious arguments in a way that appeals more broadly.

00:12:47.300 And, I mean, that's free marketplace of ideas.

00:12:49.440 We have to meet and figure out and discuss these matters.

00:12:52.640 And if we're not doing it in words, we're doing it with fists and knives.

00:12:55.040 Well, the other problem with agreeableness, let's say, and empathy is that the empathetic identification

00:13:02.440 tends to make the person who's experiencing it feel immediately virtuous because they're on the side of the weaker party, let's say.

00:13:10.640 And there's obviously some utility in that.

00:13:12.600 But it's not really, it doesn't come with a set of solutions to complex problems.

00:13:19.600 You know, it seems to me that agreeableness is a pretty good virtue for small units like the family,

00:13:24.460 where egalitarian distribution is of extreme importance.

00:13:27.780 But it doesn't seem to work very well at higher levels of complexity.

00:13:32.580 So, for example, it's conscientiousness that predicts workplace proficiency.

00:13:37.480 You know, it's the second best predictor after IQ.

00:13:40.160 Agreeableness is actually somewhat negatively correlated unless the domain has to do with direct personal care.

00:13:46.560 And so I don't think agreeableness scales very well, which is why conscientiousness has to enter into the picture.

00:13:52.280 Yeah, I view it as like a very helpful motivator for myself.

00:13:55.780 I look at a problem.

00:13:56.940 My approach tends to be empathy for people who have been left out or have been,

00:14:02.140 who don't have the right end of the dominance hierarchy.

00:14:05.760 And for me, it's a motivator to look at actual solutions and problems and issues.

00:14:10.980 And there's a lot of real concrete things that can be attacked.

00:14:13.920 But if you don't attack them from a perspective that's morally condescending, you can actually get shit done.

00:14:19.020 Well, it also, it's also very helpful to increase the resolution of the problem, right?

00:14:24.100 And to stop trying to solve every problem with one brushstroke.

00:14:28.560 Most things are really complicated.

00:14:30.180 So intelligent political discourse should involve decomposing a problem like poverty,

00:14:36.560 which isn't a problem, but a set of a thousand problems,

00:14:39.400 into each of those thousand problems and then trying to generate creative solutions to each of them and then to test them.

00:14:45.780 And so the resolution of the discussion has to be increased.

00:14:49.580 And one of the things that you and I had talked about was the possibility that these longer form,

00:14:54.040 the longer form discourse avenues that are available on the new media,

00:14:58.540 like what we're doing right now,

00:14:59.880 might enable us to identify and promote politicians who are capable of high resolution discussion,

00:15:05.800 who have real solutions to real problems instead of having to compress everything into a six second soundbite.

00:15:11.400 Well, the other thing that I'm finding really heartening is a lot of the candidates that I am working with,

00:15:16.380 interacting with, and at this point that's in the hundreds, are very focused on actual solutions.

00:15:21.700 And I'm trying to get a handle on, you know, the cultural conversation, whatever the hell that is.

00:15:27.400 It benefits by blowing the extremes up and it feels like that's almost all that we're hearing about.

00:15:32.540 And when I'm dealing with actual candidates, a lot of them are dealing with anti-corruption,

00:15:37.440 healthcare, jobs, and education.

00:15:39.240 Like they're aware that that isn't the play.

00:15:41.180 And so there's this amplifying effect and then we have a lot of sort of like this cultural conversation

00:15:47.120 about the cultural conversation that things become very kind of meta.

00:15:51.140 And the level that candidates are operating at and the level that people are, you know,

00:15:55.620 I'm dealing a lot with candidates in different states.

00:15:58.540 People are having a hard time right now and they need hardcore solutions.

00:16:01.500 And they actually don't give a shit about everyone on Twitter and Facebook who's, you know,

00:16:06.300 preaching everyone hasn't already unfriended them.

00:16:08.220 They need solutions.

00:16:09.940 They need a government that's functional.

00:16:11.360 They need, they want more transparency and lack of corruption.

00:16:14.440 There's a very common set of things that govern people, but there's a sort of amplified effect

00:16:19.740 from the extremes of the party that are gathering the attention.

00:16:25.240 And the biggest tool that we have in a democracy in some ways is our attention and where we focus

00:16:30.180 it.

00:16:30.380 And if that's being hijacked by, you know, bullshit conversations and straw men, I mean,

00:16:36.300 I would love to engage with, with reasonable, you know, Republicans, a lot of whom are my

00:16:42.960 friends and are my colleagues to say, look, I know we can go and push everything to extremes

00:16:47.720 and fight and debate and score points.

00:16:49.840 But like, you don't like some of this shit anymore than I do.

00:16:52.740 Like what's an actual conversation from our different perspectives, assuming I don't have all

00:16:56.760 the answers that we can come up with certain solutions that's going to take care of people

00:17:00.480 who are not doing as well, you know, who are not doing as well, who are not keeping up with

00:17:04.800 the economy because that's not good for anybody.

00:17:07.400 That's not a game that is iterable across multiple games and generations.

00:17:11.300 If more and more people are struggling more and more, that ain't good for anybody, even the

00:17:15.940 people at the top.

00:17:16.720 So how do we seek to kind of balance that out for people who don't have a fair shot and don't have

00:17:21.840 Even from a conservative perspective, you could say, well, how do we stabilize the hierarchy?

00:17:26.740 So the tendency for, or the multiple hierarchies for the tendency, so that the tendency for people

00:17:32.080 to stack up at the bottom doesn't become so extreme that the entire system starts to

00:17:36.080 shake and tremble, which obviously isn't good for anyone at all.

00:17:39.740 We're seeing a lot of shaking and trembling.

00:17:41.500 I mean, I think a lot of people in the last election did not feel heard or seen or represented.

00:17:46.720 In the choices of candidates.

00:17:47.900 And a lot of people were like, I don't care what it is.

00:17:50.680 It's not going to be business as usual.

00:17:52.760 Right.

00:17:53.060 So the solution isn't, in my estimation, to denigrate people who chose to vote for President

00:17:58.000 Trump.

00:17:58.560 I think the solution is to talk about the fact that we need to do better if we want to

00:18:04.460 promote a, if the Democrats want to promote a viable alternative, we have to do better with

00:18:09.080 what our messaging is.

00:18:10.040 We have to do better on messages that are anti-corruption and we have to make a better argument.

00:18:14.280 Yeah.

00:18:14.360 Well, the thing is, you know, I was on Bill Marshall a while back and a lot of the panelists

00:18:19.260 on his show were really taking potshots at the Trump supporters and, and, you know, with

00:18:24.100 the typical sort of pejoratives that are labeled at or leveled at them.

00:18:27.880 And I thought that was extremely dangerous because they're basically dissing, let's say,

00:18:32.060 to use a terrible cliche, about 50% of the American population and the same percentage

00:18:37.160 that's been voting Republican for about 20 years.

00:18:39.440 And to just out of hand dismiss your, the people who are voting differently than you

00:18:44.420 as somehow primitive or primordial or foolish or, or ill-advised is very, very dangerous.

00:18:50.740 And also more than that, it's also an abdication of responsibility because the, the Republicans

00:18:57.240 might've won the last election or Trump might've won the last election, but certainly the Democrats

00:19:01.560 lost the last election.

00:19:03.240 And so I would have, I thought that their discourse would have been a lot more productive if they

00:19:07.620 would have focused on the failings of the democratic party.

00:19:10.180 And that's also a lot more useful because if you can figure out why you didn't succeed,

00:19:15.200 even though it was very close election, if you can figure out what mistakes you made,

00:19:18.340 then you could rectify it.

00:19:19.520 Well, that's exactly, I mean, that's exactly along the lines of the things that you and

00:19:24.500 I talk about at length, which is personal accountability.

00:19:26.760 It's like you get in a fight with your wife or your husband is the best thing to do to

00:19:31.380 point out the 50% or 80% or 90% where they screwed up or to actually reflect and think about

00:19:37.400 whatever percent it is at whatever number that you can do something better.

00:19:40.840 That's actually within your control.

00:19:42.740 And so for me, that's a scalable notion.

00:19:45.560 You know, I have 20 friends, too white and varied and smart who voted for Trump to dismiss

00:19:50.180 them all as idiots.

00:19:51.180 It's a very, you can't denigrate it.

00:19:53.480 And plus we're married to them.

00:19:54.820 That's 50%, 49.9% of our population.

00:19:58.800 We are married to them and we have to figure out how to talk and to come up with solutions

00:20:02.960 that make sense and that everybody can.

00:20:05.920 And so for me, a lot of it is to look at what the impulse was that was underlying that

00:20:10.760 and to figure out where Democrats can be better at seeing and hearing people.

00:20:15.140 And furthering arguments in ways that feel legitimate and connect with people and to

00:20:19.020 figure out what the messaging is.

00:20:20.300 And you always clean up your side of the house first.

00:20:22.900 And it doesn't mean that there's a number of policies that I'm highly critical of President

00:20:27.520 Trump.

00:20:28.000 It doesn't mean that I denigrate his followers or the people who voted for him or that I

00:20:32.840 will dismiss any tendencies that they might have had or hesitations that they might have

00:20:36.460 had about voting otherwise.

00:20:37.480 Well, the right message should be something like not so much why your opponent is worse,

00:20:43.960 but by why you're better, why your solutions are better, why the grass is greener on your

00:20:49.880 side of the fence, why there's less corruption occurring under your watch and also marketing

00:20:55.280 the fact that the solutions that you have are both reasonable and practical.

00:20:59.400 And I mean, that does require a more elevated form of political discourse.

00:21:02.380 And it would be really nice if that could be facilitated by these long forms that are available.

00:21:07.780 Well, we hear the refrain all the time of like, the Democrats don't have a message.

00:21:11.400 Like saying that President Trump is awful is not a message.

00:21:14.700 And I've been really heartened with the conversations that I'm having with candidates right now that

00:21:19.220 there's a huge focus on kitchen table issues.

00:21:21.820 There's a huge focus on trying to tackle health care and education and jobs in ways that are more

00:21:26.760 innovative.

00:21:27.160 When you talk to the actual candidates who I want to start to pull into more and more

00:21:31.480 conversations, I have an enormous amount of optimism.

00:21:35.180 And the other thing is, is your real money where your mouth is stands against corruption.

00:21:39.920 And there's something called the Disclose Act that a lot of Democrats are working on,

00:21:44.040 which is fully disclosing all of your donors, you know, releasing taxes, taking a pledge against

00:21:49.520 no dark money.

00:21:50.820 There's a whole number of different resolutions, you know, fighting voter suppression.

00:21:54.880 And that means whether we lose or not, it's not about fighting voter suppression to sort

00:21:59.300 of tilt the vote in a direction.

00:22:00.920 It's like, we need the right to win elections or lose elections fairly.

00:22:05.420 And so there's a lot of positions that are being put forth right now that I feel are really

00:22:09.620 heartening, including a very strong anti-corruption stance, because you can't, you have to clean

00:22:15.080 up what your side is.

00:22:16.360 And in this wave of candidates that I'm looking at, it's been really impressive to me how they're

00:22:22.340 starting to further and articulate what the argument can be from that side.

00:22:27.180 And I think that's where we can also start to find common ground to talk about, oh, there's

00:22:31.140 a corruption.

00:22:31.740 I mean, there's a lot of Republicans who aren't thrilled with the level of discourse right

00:22:34.800 now.

00:22:35.580 Well, one of the things that struck me when I've been talking to you lately is when we've

00:22:39.980 been talking about what happened with the Democratic Party is also the idea that the radicals,

00:22:44.420 the identity politics types, managed to take over the narrative to a large degree, partly

00:22:48.940 because the extremism is more attractive, let's say, among a dying mainstream media.

00:22:53.780 It's clickbaity and easy to attract attention to and loud and cinematic and all of those

00:22:59.360 things.

00:23:00.020 But also that the centrist Democrats seem to have lost faith in their central narrative or

00:23:05.380 perhaps have failed to produce one over the last 15 years.

00:23:09.540 And that left a void into which the extremist narrative, the oppressor-oppressive, oppressor-oppression

00:23:16.360 narrative, let's say, or oppressor-victim narrative has been able to slide in and dominate because

00:23:22.320 of that void.

00:23:23.560 And so that's another thing that needs to be seriously addressed.

00:23:26.120 It's like the center has lost its narrative.

00:23:28.320 And that's something I'd like to see the Democrats deal with.

00:23:33.200 Now, in the first ad that you generated, you had a farmer talk, if I remember correctly,

00:23:40.040 you had a farmer talk about success and about what that might mean if you could attain

00:23:43.800 it individually.

00:23:45.200 I think where we have fallen down as Democrats and where we are now reorienting is the discussion

00:23:53.100 of aspirational values, meaning, is it a rigged game?

00:23:56.560 Like, we can absolutely point to things that are disadvantages, you know, but to say it's

00:24:00.700 a rigged game, it's a rigged game.

00:24:01.880 The thing that we have to say is all that we're in favor of are fair rules at the starting

00:24:06.260 gate.

00:24:06.660 And if you work harder, if you're an innovator, if you bust your ass, good on you, like go

00:24:12.840 buy a mansion and three cars, you know, go start a second business.

00:24:16.120 We have to be rewarding of success and speaking to people's aspirations.

00:24:20.260 And, you know, we talk a lot about income inequality.

00:24:22.720 And the problem with that is what's the opposite of that is income equality.

00:24:26.440 Well, nobody wants that.

00:24:27.560 If you look at the average salaries and incomes of people in the Senate and Congress, they're

00:24:32.120 doing just fine.

00:24:33.220 They don't want that either.

00:24:34.320 And so for me, I think it's much more powerful to talk about income and justice, because it

00:24:38.720 means that people have a fair shot at the starting gate, and then they can differentiate

00:24:42.900 themselves by their own, you know, abilities and their own willingness to work.

00:24:47.340 And for me, it's about the starting gate and making sure that we look at things that

00:24:50.680 are there.

00:24:52.060 Yeah, well, and also that emphasis that you just placed on rewarding actual achievement.

00:24:56.600 We also have to be in a situation where we can admit that at least one of the factors

00:25:00.520 that differentiates people as they move up competence hierarchies.

00:25:04.920 And we have to admit that some of the hierarchies that exist are actually based on competence and

00:25:09.100 not merely on oppression is the amount of effort they put into things.

00:25:13.200 And, you know, that's become an anathematic proposition on many university campuses where

00:25:19.540 you're not allowed, in fact, to state that hard work is that some of the people who have

00:25:24.840 made it have done it done it as a consequence of working extra hard, because I guess that

00:25:29.720 undermines the narrative that the whole game is rigged.

00:25:31.820 And the truth of the matter is the game is partly rigged, like all games always are.

00:25:37.200 And that is unfortunate.

00:25:38.160 But you can't throw the whole damn game out because it's partly rigged, unless you think

00:25:42.800 you can put in place a game that isn't going to be rigged.

00:25:45.240 And good luck with that.

00:25:46.560 It's yeah, I mean, there is a very interesting interview between Eric Weinstein and Ben Shapiro

00:25:52.240 on the podcast.

00:25:53.280 And what's so interesting is they're from completely opposite sides of the spectrum.

00:25:56.120 I think doesn't Eric define himself as a socialist?

00:25:59.220 Well, he's certainly on the left.

00:26:00.980 Yeah, I mean, so, but you have them discussed and it was very, very civil discourse.

00:26:05.140 And I think Eric can do a much better job than I can of discussing the ways in which

00:26:09.280 the issue isn't that there is a dominance hierarchy and that people differentiate themselves

00:26:13.380 based on their hard work.

00:26:14.900 The issue is sort of what we've seen with the separation of the working class and people

00:26:18.420 at the very, very top.

00:26:19.760 You know, he points to a lot of trends about what's happened with workers' wages.

00:26:23.760 You know, a CEO a few decades ago made 30 times the average worker.

00:26:27.260 Now it's at 300.

00:26:28.660 It's not about overall people doing well.

00:26:30.780 There's an increasing exponential separation between, you know, working people and people

00:26:36.460 who are at the top.

00:26:37.440 And I think that's the skew that's problematic.

00:26:39.280 And the fact of the matter is rather than pushing away and, you know, we could talk a

00:26:44.780 little bit also about, you know, conservatives like Ben, but rather than sort of denigrating

00:26:50.140 it, there's a lot of good brains on both sides of the fence.

00:26:53.060 And like, wouldn't it be absolutely lovely if we have reasonable conversations about what

00:26:58.280 we all want to do about that rather than the position having to be income equality versus,

00:27:03.860 you know, only self-reliance and pull yourself up by your bootstraps?

00:27:06.760 Because there's some people who can't do that.

00:27:08.440 There are some fundamental problems with the system that's leading to people having a lot

00:27:13.060 harder time.

00:27:13.980 And everyone agrees with that.

00:27:15.760 And if we can talk about the details, you know, it's sort of like when we talk about

00:27:19.380 universal healthcare.

00:27:20.420 I feel like you come in the door and the minute you say it, people are for and against.

00:27:24.180 And for me, there's a lot of other arguments to make.

00:27:26.120 It's like, look, we already have universal healthcare in this country.

00:27:30.000 It's called emergency rooms.

00:27:31.240 It's un-American and wrong to let people die on the streets.

00:27:33.900 We don't do that.

00:27:35.240 But if people are uninsured, the hospital passes on the cost to insurance companies who

00:27:39.420 raise our premiums.

00:27:40.800 So the average cost of an emergency room visit in the United States is $1,233.

00:27:45.640 The average cost of a vaccination is $19.

00:27:48.400 We're all paying for it anyways.

00:27:49.840 And there's also a lot less risk of public health hazards and other things if we can

00:27:54.620 figure out a way to come up with a medical system that people are getting the care that

00:27:58.560 they want.

00:27:59.100 Preventative care is infinitely cheaper than trying to play catch up in emergency rooms.

00:28:03.840 And if you don't just walk in the door and say, I'm for universal healthcare, I'm opposed

00:28:08.180 to universal healthcare.

00:28:09.260 Because a lot of people say, look, I was out of work and having a hard time and I had to

00:28:12.960 figure out paying my own healthcare.

00:28:14.740 We have to frame it in a way of saying, this is good for the robustness of the whole community.

00:28:18.420 And I think there's a lot of arguments and discussions from both sides that we need all those brains

00:28:24.340 pulling together.

00:28:25.700 And it's one of the things as I'm watching a lot of the IDW stuff, I would love to see

00:28:30.480 increasingly, increasing conversations like the one that Eric and Ben had, where there's

00:28:34.900 two people from the opposite side who are engaging very reasonably and seeing each other's points

00:28:39.700 and trying to figure out what skills they can bring from their respective sides of the

00:28:43.680 proverbial aisle.

00:28:44.620 So you see, you think you see within the Democratic Party an attempt at least to increase the

00:28:50.920 resolution of the discussion and to move away from the more polarizing discourse.

00:28:54.700 You see that starting to develop.

00:28:56.560 Absolutely.

00:28:57.060 So tell me some of the concrete things you've seen.

00:29:00.760 Well, I mean, you know, I've been meeting with a lot of candidates.

00:29:04.040 I found there's a candidate who I really like called Joseph Kopsler is running in Texas,

00:29:07.820 who's a, you know, 20 year in the army, he's a ranger, I believe he is a bronze star, he's a

00:29:13.180 graduate of, you know, Harvard's Kennedy School, he's a professor at West Point.

00:29:17.440 And what was amazing with him is like, he was talking about universal healthcare, he started

00:29:21.320 his own business, a private business that led to tons of jobs. And he's this incredible person.

00:29:27.000 And he made an argument in a way I haven't ever thought about it. When he's talking about

00:29:30.040 healthcare, he was like, look, I have my healthcare from the army for life, that allowed me to take a risk

00:29:36.240 and to go out entrepreneurially to start a company that then led to tons and tons of jobs.

00:29:41.700 Yeah, you know, there's evidence in Canada, our rate of entrepreneurial development in Canada

00:29:46.180 per capita is actually slightly higher than it is in the US. And analysis has indicated that one of

00:29:51.420 the reasons for that is the provision of universal healthcare. People can take entrepreneurial risks

00:29:56.580 in Canada without losing their fundamental safety net. So you can make a conservative argument for the

00:30:02.180 provision of a certain level of underlying security, let's say.

00:30:07.040 Right. And it was a great argument for me. I mean, the other thing is, I'm seeing a lot of

00:30:11.800 candidates who are Democrats who are very upfront with their support for the Second Amendment. And

00:30:17.060 it's like, look, the Second Amendment is an amendment, you can't just get rid of an amendment. And I know

00:30:22.440 that as a classical liberal, when people come after freedom of speech, I get really pissed, right? And

00:30:28.460 people who are living in different regions, in different states that have different cultures,

00:30:33.320 when they hear people start to attack the Second Amendment, or when it's global, where it's all or

00:30:38.440 nothing, there's an inherent threat that comes with that. And a lot of it for me is to look at and go,

00:30:43.980 look, every amendment has certain limitations on it, right? So you can't stand up on an airplane and

00:30:50.440 scream that you have a bomb. You can't threaten the President of the United States that you're going to

00:30:53.340 kill him. The First Amendment, we have parameters around it. We already have them in place around

00:30:58.440 the Second Amendment. Everybody knows you can't own a bazooka. Everyone knows you can't own a dirty

00:31:02.560 bomb. So instead of coming in and sort of threatening people in their way of life, if they have handguns,

00:31:08.260 if they're hunting, if they are weapons collectors, if we can boil the resolution down to say we're

00:31:13.660 already having every amendment we have, or the First and Second Amendment, we have certain limitations

00:31:18.540 that we've placed on it for the safety of the community. So how about if we just talk about

00:31:22.440 violent history checks? Let's just talk about that one piece. So 90% of Americans are in favor of

00:31:28.960 that and 73% of the NRA. And so to have a candidate stand up and say, you know, I love the First

00:31:35.120 Amendment. I fully support the Second Amendment. Believe me, I have a lot of friends who are Army

00:31:39.000 Rangers, Green Berets, and SEALs. I know that culture well. And rather than having some sort of

00:31:44.260 frontal attack on it, to sort of say, well, what's reasonable? If you can't yell fire in a crowded

00:31:48.860 theater, how about if we only discuss that, and I'm standing with 90% of Americans and 73% of NRA

00:31:54.420 members, it's a much more respectful conversation. And it's a much more solution-based conversation.

00:32:00.280 It's also a humbler conversation, because it requires a certain amount of appreciation for

00:32:06.780 incremental change, right? Because it's very ego-inflating to do a great thing, to make a massive

00:32:14.520 change, and much less so to work in the background to make a small change. But small changes are solid,

00:32:20.660 and they tend not to produce terrible negative consequences. And to work incrementally is to work

00:32:28.020 realistically and properly, and I would also say meaningfully. And that's another element that

00:32:35.660 needs to be introduced back into the discourse. It's like, well, why don't we, you know, the people

00:32:40.980 who established the American system were incrementalists, fundamentally. And they knew

00:32:47.040 perfectly well that we had a flawed system that was always going to be flawed, and the best we could

00:32:50.940 do was tinker away at it incrementally. And that's a really lovely sentiment. I think it's very mature

00:32:57.840 and wise to understand that what you're working on is like a highway. It always needs repair. There's

00:33:02.920 always going to be construction on it. There's always going to be blockages on it, because it needs to be

00:33:06.620 maintained and updated. But you don't, you don't, you don't scrap the whole thing with every move.

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00:35:55.000 shopify.com slash jbp. Part of the problem with the discourse now too is that every issue becomes code for

00:36:04.620 an ideological position. Like I have a real hard time with all the environmentalist noise that I hear

00:36:11.220 on the mainstream media in particular because I always see it as code for a very fundamental

00:36:16.060 anti-capitalist ethos. And so I can't separate the damn wheat from the chaff. I mean, I know because

00:36:21.780 I've read a lot about ecological issues that there are foolish things that people are doing in the world

00:36:26.720 for a variety of reasons. Like overfishing is a real catastrophe and so is deep ocean trawling as far

00:36:32.780 as I'm concerned. But when I read general environmentalist claims, and these include climate change claims,

00:36:38.960 I can't separate it from a fundamental anti-capitalist ethos. And so I can't decide,

00:36:43.800 I can never decide whether I can trust the information.

00:36:46.820 And there's that Rousseauian underlay too, that like man is bad and nature is good.

00:36:52.100 That's not a rallying cry to say, let me pitch original sin to you.

00:36:57.020 That argument is to say, what are short-term effective gains that can be made in additional

00:37:01.380 middle and long-term in business for clean rivers and clean oceans and for fishing industries?

00:37:06.640 And also to talk about the things we've accomplished. I mean, we closed the ozone hole

00:37:11.520 and companies didn't close our business. There are actually solutions. You know, we basically

00:37:17.340 eliminated polio from the face of the earth. There's entrepreneurial and innovative solutions

00:37:22.300 for things that can also be pro-business.

00:37:25.020 Yes. And we've reforested the Northern Hemisphere. You know, there's more forest in the Northern

00:37:29.280 Hemisphere than there was a hundred years ago.

00:37:30.800 So you said this thing about, you know, incremental change. And it's another thing I've been thinking

00:37:35.660 about a lot, which is when we walk in the door and say, I'm for gun control, or I'm pro-life

00:37:42.320 in every circumstance, or, you know, to come in with an absolute position.

00:37:50.760 One of the things that's really tricky is if you're not willing to have a conversation,

00:37:54.360 if you're not willing to see ground, there is no terms under which you feel that the negotiation

00:38:01.120 or compromise can be satisfied. And that gets really dangerous. And it's funny because it's

00:38:06.220 something that I always advocate for when people talk about sort of a broad sweeping systemic

00:38:11.520 problem or injustice. The problem is, is it doesn't boil it down to a level of resolution that you can

00:38:17.080 get traction from all the people that you need because people feel like, well, what's the solution?

00:38:20.680 If the solution is to throw everything away, positive and negative and change everything,

00:38:24.940 you're not going to do it. And it's a problem we saw with Occupy Wall Street. And, you know,

00:38:30.620 it sort of spread from generalized corruption. And incidentally, they were targeting sort of the

00:38:36.200 banks and the bigger systems almost more than they were the government who was allowing a lot of it.

00:38:41.720 But then as it kept rolling into issue after issue after issue, it starts to get very complex of like,

00:38:46.820 well, if we concede and make changes, are there any terms under which you'll be satisfied?

00:38:51.380 And I think that's one of the aspects of coming in on positions of like,

00:38:55.300 pro or against universal healthcare, right? Pro or against the Second Amendment.

00:38:59.120 There's no ground to be had there because everyone's just digging in their heels.

00:39:03.180 And I feel like it's also a bit of a product of social media and the fact that we've all been

00:39:08.320 sort of infantilized to sort of these likes and dopamine hits that keep driving virtue signaling.

00:39:13.800 And that goes for both sides. It goes for both sides. If you can get a real slam or dig in on your

00:39:18.520 opponent, then good for you. And meanwhile, in the middle, there's a ton of Americans,

00:39:22.520 there's a ton of kids in education systems that need real solutions. And it doesn't matter how much

00:39:28.340 we're signaling what our beliefs are in our respective balls. It doesn't come down to real

00:39:33.100 solutions.

00:39:33.400 Well, it's also much more difficult to generate real solutions, because it means you actually

00:39:37.400 have to have some domain knowledge. And it isn't obvious, for example, that the classic

00:39:43.000 forms of media that politicians have used to interact with the populace have rewarded

00:39:49.140 high resolution knowledge, you know, because it becomes, well, it's easy for it to get tangled up

00:39:55.120 in the details for that kind of discussion to get tangled up in the details. But these longer form

00:39:59.660 conversations might allow people to unpack some of that in a more intelligent way.

00:40:04.000 Well, yeah, for instance, there was a great discussion between Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro at

00:40:08.880 one point, talking about abortion, and there are opposite sides of it. And what was really interesting

00:40:13.600 was it was civil, and there was no denigration of the opposing side. And also was saying, look,

00:40:19.500 I don't have an exact answer of when, for me, it becomes uncomfortable. Like there is some point

00:40:25.400 that it moves from something that is into a point that he's not comfortable with abortion. There's

00:40:31.700 a certain date that that would happen or a certain point in trimesters. And so it's hard. There aren't

00:40:38.500 super clear and easy answers. And, you know, Ben has a different position. Obviously, he's much more

00:40:43.720 conservative on that front. But that's a position, it's weird. I have a lot of friends who were born

00:40:48.060 in Christians. And it's like, that's a position, you can't just dismiss, like, you have to talk

00:40:53.680 about it, like, that's a human position for people who have that belief. I mean, so for me, what it

00:40:58.140 really comes down to, when there's these sort of different positions on stuff, that's really

00:41:02.740 fundamental for people is to say, look, I don't we, I feel like Democrats have to talk about at least

00:41:07.600 that are more humanizing, which is I don't actually know what I would do in that circumstance,

00:41:11.580 if my wife, you know, was pregnant or a girlfriend, like, it's a really hard choice. It's not something

00:41:19.780 that's just flippant of like, oh, it's a cluster of cells, and it carries no emotional waves. That's,

00:41:23.860 I just don't find that to be true. But for me, there's a certain point where I don't think that's

00:41:27.960 ever true for anyone who has an experience like that. Right. And I feel right way to approach it.

00:41:33.780 Well, I think that the answer is like, look, I don't know what I would do. I don't claim to have all

00:41:38.160 the answers morally. The one thing that I believe is I don't want the government coming into your

00:41:42.780 house and into your bedroom and telling your wife or you what to do. Like, that's something I feel

00:41:48.380 like it's so deeply personal. And sometimes all you have are shitty choices and choices that aren't

00:41:53.160 good. And the flip side for me is I don't know what the alternative is when we're really talking

00:41:57.640 with specifics. I don't know what government mandated pregnancy looks like. So if a daughter or a niece

00:42:03.500 who's, you know, 18 is pregnant and doesn't want to have a child, I don't know what the solution

00:42:07.900 is to that. Like, how does the government then mandate that and oversee that? And so these are

00:42:13.760 conversations that, that, you know, I think are legitimate conversations to be had, but, but from

00:42:20.420 a position of respect rather than, you know, sort of slogans or the fact that, that, that people who

00:42:26.300 are pro-life are anti, anti-women, because there's a lot of women who I know who, who have, you know,

00:42:31.300 deeply held pro-life positions. I think it has to be a bit of a conversation that for me, I feel like

00:42:35.780 these are really personal choices. I have a strong libertarian reaction to it. And I also don't

00:42:40.660 understand what the solution is going to be. If that does become something that somebody doesn't

00:42:45.920 want to have a child, I don't understand how the government mandates that and what that looks

00:42:49.340 like for those nine months. And so, you know, it's not an approach that's dismissive. That's all or

00:42:54.920 nothing. It's an approach of having a conversation about, you know, differing values and we have

00:42:59.000 differing values and we have to figure out how to, how to talk about them in ways that aren't

00:43:03.240 dehumanizing. So what do you think, what's a good plan for the next few months? What are you,

00:43:09.440 what are you going to try to do? Well, I have a number of plans. I mean, one of them is to keep

00:43:14.060 Democrats focused on nuts and bolts issues. I also really, there's a lot of Republican voices that I

00:43:23.100 think are really important. I mean, I really like Evan McMullin. I really like Rick Wilson. There's a

00:43:28.960 number of commentators who have been, been really interesting and compelling. I listen to the broad

00:43:34.220 spectrum of everything. I wake up every morning and, and also read the Drudge Report and watch Fox

00:43:39.560 News to have an understanding of, of what opposing narratives are so that I can, I can understand the

00:43:45.880 full sort of spectrum on what's bothering people and what isn't. And Shapiro, Shapiro is a really good

00:43:51.140 voice as far as I'm concerned, because he's as intelligent and articulator of the social conservative

00:43:56.600 position as you could hope for. And so he's a great whetstone against which Democrats could

00:44:01.580 sharpen their knives. Well, because if they can, if they can confront him in a reasonable argument

00:44:06.420 successfully, then they've really got the argument down because Shapiro is very fast. And here's the

00:44:12.380 thing with Ben, he's got a great brain. I actually would like it if he was playing less defense and

00:44:19.020 actually could be engaged the way that Eric has to be like, look, what is your, what are your solutions

00:44:23.960 and thoughts on this front? There are some things he said that I deeply disagree with. Like, I don't

00:44:28.720 believe that all trans people are, are mentally ill. He has some positions, but nothing that I've seen

00:44:34.700 indicates to me that he's someone who can't conceivably be reasoned with. He's also pointed

00:44:39.560 out in places where he believes he's screwed up. He's written a whole articles about reversing

00:44:43.660 his position on things or stuff he said that was dumb. And well, that's, that's his words, not mine.

00:44:49.600 But, um, you know, it's like the Ralph Waldo Emerson, a foolish, a foolish consistency is the

00:44:54.960 hobgoblin of little minds. It's like how many of us have a completely consistent set of ideas.

00:44:59.680 And so I feel like with Ben, and there was that big issue where Mark Duplass came out and sort of

00:45:04.860 said, well, why don't we listen to him? And there was a big uproar and then he apologized. And I think

00:45:09.760 that's an interesting thing to discuss because from my perspective, you have three views. If you're

00:45:13.860 liberal on Ben Shapiro, one is that he's an alt-right Nazi, which I don't believe. I don't believe

00:45:18.720 that he's so far alt-right, I should say fascist, not Nazi. Yeah, and that's, we need to define

00:45:24.180 what the hell the alt-right is too. You know, the alt-right is basically a cover story for white

00:45:28.180 supremacy and for an ethno-nationalist state. And to target everybody who's conservative as an alt-right

00:45:33.580 figure, which is something that's happened to me repeatedly, is absolutely counterproductive.

00:45:38.260 Right. Because you have all our lectures on your opposition to the alt-right. I mean, it's very easily

00:45:44.620 disprovable. But with Ben, like, let's say for the sake of argument that that's who he is,

00:45:49.820 which I don't believe, why would you not want to pay attention or follow him or keep an eye on him

00:45:54.780 or know what he's saying? It's not like he's some crackpot, you know, he's someone who's very

00:45:58.740 influential and has a lot of followers. So even if it's the case, which I don't believe it is,

00:46:02.680 I don't understand how not paying any attention to what's going on with him is helpful.

00:46:06.960 You know, I got to say one of the highlights- This is actually the error that I think Apple

00:46:11.200 and Facebook and Spotify and so forth just made with Alex Jones, you know, because they think

00:46:16.300 they banned Alex Jones, but that isn't what happened. What happened was they pushed his

00:46:20.280 millions of followers underground. That was a very bad idea. And they're making a murder out of him.

00:46:26.960 They're justifying, you know, he's a little on the paranoid side, let's say. He's a real conspiracy

00:46:31.760 theorist. And the best, the worst thing you can possibly do to someone who's paranoid is to generate a

00:46:36.960 conspiracy to take him out. Well, and my belief is the best thing you can do, and Alex Jones has

00:46:42.880 said virtually nothing that I agree with on any front, is to give him as much airtime and as much

00:46:47.920 rope as possible. Or to at least allow him access to that in the same way that everyone else has

00:46:53.120 access to it, you know, because like I, I don't watch Alex Jones, but there are a number of people

00:46:57.680 on the right that I keep an eye on, or the farther right, because I want to see what they're up to,

00:47:02.160 you know, and as soon as that becomes impossible, then you have no idea what those people are up

00:47:06.860 to. And how the hell are you supposed to be able to deal with it if you can't figure out what it is?

00:47:11.340 Well, or if you're not watching it. Like, I'm a big fan, like, I'm, I'm a big fan of the aspect of

00:47:16.440 the ACLU that was the Skokie aspect, which was, we show up if Nazis want to march, right? And we will

00:47:22.680 protect their right to peacefully march. And it's like, I, people who I despise, it's like, get out

00:47:29.900 there. At a point, you'll be crushed by the free marketplace of ideas. I have that belief. At a point,

00:47:34.560 but you have to allow for it. And the more that we murder and shut down, I think we don't know how

00:47:41.020 many people were watching Alex Jones to keep an eye on. Right? No, I don't imagine it was a

00:47:46.620 tremendous number of people, but it wasn't none. Right, right. Well, look, you and I have talked

00:47:52.760 about this. One of the highlights of my undergraduate years was when the bell curve came out, and there

00:48:00.100 was a debate at the Kennedy Center, and Dick Harnstein, who I had as a professor, had passed away. And

00:48:06.260 Charles Murray was sort of left to defend it against Stephen Jay Gould. And it was a very high level of

00:48:11.280 discourse. And Henry Louis Gates gave the introduction, things were very, very heated on campus because of

00:48:16.940 the claims about racial differences in IQ. It was a very flashpoint issue. And Skip Gates gave a

00:48:22.740 spectacular introduction. And he said, look, there's a lot of sentiments roiling around this issue. And

00:48:28.920 the best possible thing that we can do is to dispute and defend and dismiss the aspects of this that

00:48:35.180 aren't correct here, openly and publicly. And there was a big debate, a lot of the student groups stood up

00:48:41.780 and walked out after that intrigue from one of the, you know, amazing intellectual minds of, you know,

00:48:50.740 in the country. And so I just went down and sat in the front row because people had piled out. It's

00:48:55.500 like, I wanted to hear the debate. I wanted to hear the sides from all different arenas. And it was

00:49:00.440 totally, totally captivating. But his point was, once if someone's a crackpot, and they don't have

00:49:06.840 any followers, and it's a stupid racist bellowing things, it's fine to ignore people. There's a certain

00:49:12.600 point where when it's Dick Harnstein and Charles Murray, there's a point where that needs to be debated

00:49:17.800 publicly and openly. And the fact that the chair of the African American Studies Department was

00:49:21.660 advocating for that, to me, I thought was really important and should be heeded, that we need these

00:49:26.480 things, these debates to be had, and the aspects that are incorrect need to be disproved in an

00:49:33.460 enlightenment way, in a very intense and public way. And so that's something that I've always sort of

00:49:39.060 held to, is I don't, you know, and I'm, look, I mean, there's also part of this about,

00:49:43.360 it's sort of a toughness argument. My grandfather went down during the civil rights movement,

00:49:48.400 he was a Jewish lawyer from Manhattan, and went down to the deep south to stick up for,

00:49:53.540 to represent African Americans who've been convicted of crimes against white women. There's

00:49:59.160 one case in particular that was totally ridiculous. And he went down and people tried to run his car off

00:50:04.340 a cliff and kill him. And so part of it for me too, is like, I'm from that mindset of like tough

00:50:10.380 liberals who want to, who actually can stand up. We need, we need people to be toughened on all

00:50:16.200 sides of discourse. And I feel like, you know, when people were burning copies of Ulysses,

00:50:21.340 I feel like we're supposed to be the ones with the fire hoses putting out the fires. We're supposed

00:50:25.240 to be the ones who can be really tough and stand our ground. And if we can't do that, if we're going

00:50:29.300 to duck from those fights and that hardening of a, of a, of a sort of intense, positive,

00:50:35.280 really tough version of, of what the points are that we're arguing, then it's not, it's not a

00:50:41.140 legitimate case. We need to be, that's who we need. It's a tough time and we need tough discourse.

00:50:46.160 Yeah. Well then, and that is exactly why you should seek out the most articulate

00:50:49.740 exponents of your, of your opponent's position. You know, I just had that experience talking with

00:50:55.140 Sam Harris and we talked for 10 hours and, you know, there are things we agree about. One of the

00:51:00.040 most fundamental things is that both Sam and I are concerned that our ethical structures,

00:51:05.640 it would be better if our ethical structures were grounded in something that was self-evidently

00:51:10.040 solid. And so he wants to do that. He wants to ground ethics in the realm of fact. And I can,

00:51:15.160 I can understand that. It's, it's a perfectly valid desire. I don't believe it's possible in the way

00:51:19.940 that he sees it as possible. And we talked about that a lot, but I learned a tremendous amount as a

00:51:24.760 consequence of discussing things with him over a 10 hour period, because it really pushed me.

00:51:31.020 Yeah, no, you need to be pushed, man, because absolutely, you know, all the pick all kinds of

00:51:35.960 holes and you need to go in understanding that you might not have all the answers.

00:51:40.000 Well, that you don't have all the answers. And that's what I think is interesting is

00:51:44.480 your approach to that is to ground things in an evolutionary model, which I think is a pretty

00:51:48.780 good bedrock, right? I mean, that's been your sort of approach to this is to talk about like a sort of

00:51:54.700 archetypal and evolutionary underlay. But Sam's unbelievably articulate and sharp. I mean,

00:52:00.620 I had the pleasure of having dinner with you and him and Douglas Murray in London. And it's,

00:52:05.200 it's a vibrant, respectful, sometimes disagreeable mode of conversation that's incredibly fruitful.

00:52:12.280 It's also, it's also stressful as hell, you know, because you can definitely get put on the spot and

00:52:17.700 have your cherished assumptions undermined as well as look like a fool because, you know,

00:52:23.680 some of the time, even if you have an argument well thought through, in that kind of discourse,

00:52:28.980 you don't have it immediately at hand, you forget about it. And then, you know, you appear as if

00:52:34.560 you're a fool. And so you put a lot on the line in the discussion like that. But what you do is

00:52:38.640 at least no one's paying attention to any of this story. So don't worry. Yeah, for you to have a

00:52:43.480 moment where Sam Harris goes, ha, gotcha. Right, right. So, well, so one more thing.

00:52:48.600 One more quick thing before we move on with this. So there's a lot of proposals that I'll get or that

00:52:53.560 are floated. Let's say there's an economic idea that somebody has in my group that wants to be

00:52:59.040 passed on. The first thing that I do with it is I send it to, I have a friend who's a really sharp

00:53:04.520 libertarian. I have a friend who's a hardcore kind of Wall Street Republican. And I have another

00:53:09.540 friend who's kind of a big money person. So they represent sort of the different poles of economic

00:53:15.000 policy from the things that some of the policies that might be interesting to me. The first thing

00:53:20.220 I do is send it to all them and go poke as many holes in this as you possibly can. And tell me what

00:53:24.720 all blind spots are. And that's not only for me to cover all those arguments. It's also for me to be

00:53:30.280 able to learn and see if there's a better approach to it, if it's fundamentally flawed. And then certainly

00:53:34.880 if I'm going to advocate something that's a new policy, I'm not strong on economics. I mean,

00:53:39.240 it's probably my spot, but it's to sort of know if we're going to advocate it, what are all the

00:53:44.060 pitfalls we're falling into and what are we potentially missing? And I find very few people

00:53:48.800 are taking an approach like this. And it's one of the things that I think is exciting. It's funny

00:53:52.880 when the IDW has this sort of fear of an alt-right overlay, but the majority of you guys skew pretty

00:53:59.660 liberal. I mean, if you look at Joe, if you look at Dave, certainly, if you look at Eric and Brett,

00:54:05.140 I mean, it's gotten more of a skew. But what's nice is ideas can be parsed in a way

00:54:09.980 where as much as it is embarrassing when you're put on the spot and you're wrong,

00:54:14.020 no one's looking to twist the knife. You know what I mean? Everyone's kind of saying,

00:54:17.780 yeah, I disagree with this. It's high disagreeableness, but it's respectful discourse.

00:54:22.620 Yeah, well, it's also best based at least to some degree on trust. You know, if I can assume that

00:54:27.780 you're different than me temperamentally, but that you're actually striving towards the truth,

00:54:32.200 then we can have a discussion. And I certainly feel that with Sam. Yes. I mean, I believe that he's

00:54:39.580 an honest person. And, you know, or I believe that he's as honest as me, let's say, which is more to

00:54:46.300 the point. Right. Because, well, maybe an honest person is too high a barrier for anyone to actually

00:54:52.000 achieve, given all of our faults. But I don't believe there's any evidence that he's striving with

00:54:56.780 less intensity towards the truth than I am. Right. Well, to get back to, I think the furthest

00:55:02.900 right in the group is clearly Ben, you know, and to get back to that point, it's like there's sort

00:55:07.440 of three approaches. Either he's a horrible human, and he's a hardcore alt writer, in which case,

00:55:12.960 if you believe that, why from a Sun Tzu perspective, Art of War, would you not want to know your enemy

00:55:17.760 and figure it out? Or he's somebody who has views and ideologies. I disagree with him on a number of

00:55:23.920 fronts, you know, but he's somebody who is interested in the truth and is willing to admit

00:55:29.620 when he has gone too far, or not gone too far, that's the wrong phrase. He's willing to admit

00:55:34.560 missteps that he perceives that he's made, and is also willing to take in new information. And it's

00:55:39.420 like, I'd love to actually have a discussion with him about something, a discussion, not a debate,

00:55:44.180 because he's a world-class debater, and he would probably obliterate me. But an actual meaningful

00:55:48.380 discussion about some of the stuff where I see there to be differences. Yeah. Well, I think he's,

00:55:53.340 I think he might be in for that. Like, you and I have discussed the possibility of finding high

00:55:59.560 resolution, intelligent, centrist Democrats, and getting some of these IDW people to interact with

00:56:04.480 them. Yeah. And so, you know, that looks like it's a real possibility and be interesting to see what

00:56:09.200 that would do to the political discourse. And I guess this is a step on that, a step in that direction.

00:56:13.680 I talked to Ben, and to Dave Rubin, and to Joe, or to Sam, and, you know, hypothetically,

00:56:24.840 they're at least willing to look into this as a possibility. And it would be very interesting as

00:56:29.720 well. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. No, well, it would also be very interesting to see how this would play

00:56:35.520 out with regards to long-form discourse, because we need to find politicians. You know, one of the

00:56:40.000 things Joe told me when I was talking to him, Joe Rogan, when I was talking to him about his three

00:56:45.220 hour interviews, I said, well, does that ever not work out for people? And he says, well, yeah,

00:56:48.800 I've had guests on who just run out of steam at about 45 minutes. They don't have anything else to

00:56:54.120 say. And we don't need politicians who run out of steam at 45 minutes. We need people who can engage

00:56:59.340 in intense discussion for three hours without running out of detail, without running out of ideas.

00:57:03.660 Right.

00:57:04.460 A detailed grasp of the political realm. And we need to be able to see that. So we could move

00:57:09.040 away from these like six minute CNN interviews. And well, yeah, it's moving away from the tweets

00:57:14.500 and the nonsense, which to my mind is inherently polarizing. It's like, look at what this, you know,

00:57:20.960 asshole, hardcore lefty did on a college campus, or look at this most egregious example of something

00:57:26.300 that's over here. And I'm not saying those things aren't important, or that we don't have to pay

00:57:29.820 attention to them. But the vast majority of people in America right now need real nuts and

00:57:35.980 bolts solutions. And there's a corruption. Maybe there's a technological rule here.

00:57:42.640 So imagine that this is like, we could call this the Peterson principle, let's say. The narrower the

00:57:47.880 bandwidth, the more likely polarized information will be delivered over it. I think it's great,

00:57:52.880 but I think we should call it the Hurwitz principle. You'll have to come up with a more elegant

00:57:58.540 formulation then. But it seems to me that that's highly probable, because if you have to compress

00:58:03.300 complex information into a very narrow channel, and broadcast TV would certainly qualify, and Twitter,

00:58:09.860 of course, even worse, is that you have to radically oversimplify it.

00:58:15.520 Right. And I'm always torn between this, because like I said, I have a lot of friends, I mean,

00:58:21.720 across the gamut of political orientations. I read a lot of news and follow a lot of people

00:58:26.140 across the political orientation, like all the way left to right, not far right or very far left,

00:58:32.100 but I'm talking about within the reasonable polls. And it's just, it's amazing to me how skewed it is.

00:58:40.660 If you turn on MSNBC and then Fox News, we're in two different worlds. If you read the Huffington

00:58:45.160 Post and the Drudge Report. And so it's very easy to get, like, I think I have more of awareness of what

00:58:50.820 the triggers are for conservatives and what the triggers are for liberals, but also the fact that

00:58:57.100 these triggers are getting this outsized airtime constantly by this condensed means of information.

00:59:03.780 And I think that's where, like, the IDW view, like, there's way more listeners to you guys than

00:59:11.000 makes any fucking sense. Like, the fact that you had 10, two and a half hour lectures on the

00:59:15.620 psychological underpinnings of the Bible, and that more than two people watched that makes no sense.

00:59:21.160 And so there's a ton of people who are really curious for more in-depth analysis and it's not

00:59:25.640 being met elsewhere. And I think that's where the polls have been missing. I think that that's

00:59:29.500 proverbially the group of people who are being missed and who aren't being discounted.

00:59:36.360 And, you know, it's really important that we have these more in-depth conversations about it.

00:59:43.060 So that's our little conspiracy plan, so to speak, then, is to take the IDW.

00:59:47.280 Right, right, is to inquire if the people who've been loosely grouped together as the IDW are willing

00:59:57.040 to engage in serious discourse with, to begin with, with centrist Democrats. It doesn't have

01:00:01.800 to be limited to that, but I think that's a nice counterplay, too, because-

01:00:04.820 Well, for me, it can even be Democrats who aren't centrist, who are tilting even left

01:00:09.720 of that, who are willing to engage in reasonable discourse and might even have, like, different

01:00:16.000 districts and states have different notions. And it might really make sense for an aspect

01:00:20.820 of the party that's further left to test something in San Francisco or New York and see what new

01:00:25.220 ideas come out of it, right? It's just, for me, it can't be with moral condescension and it can't

01:00:30.420 be a purity test. You know, you and I've talked so much about how the left and the right get off

01:00:34.300 track in different ways. Yeah. The right gets very fascistic and you see them coming. And it's,

01:00:39.500 it's, you know, fascistic overlay. We know what that is historically. It's, it will go heavily

01:00:44.960 towards voter suppression. There's a lot of issues that are very highly problematic on that side of

01:00:49.140 the fence. And when the-

01:00:50.420 It gets, it gets, it gets ethnocentric in the superior sense, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know,

01:00:57.220 or, or, you know, illegal or hardcore power grabbing in a way that's effective, let's say.

01:01:03.460 And with the left, the left, you know, cannibalizes and it's purity tests and it goes kind of crazy

01:01:08.600 that way. I think that we are seeing from the Democrats now an awareness that real solutions need

01:01:14.220 to be offered. Again, anti-corruption is a huge thing that I'm seeing Democrats start to tackle in a

01:01:19.020 very serious way, healthcare, jobs, education. And it's really important that these things get

01:01:24.060 brought out. And so for me, it's like, we can test things that are further, that are further left and

01:01:29.220 see if they work or don't work. Yeah. But we also need to do that from a position that isn't morally

01:01:34.100 condescending in a position that's also appreciative of different cultures in different places around

01:01:38.620 the country. What's going to work in New York isn't going to work in Alabama. And liberals are so good

01:01:44.680 at, I think it understanding and appreciating other cultures, you know, like it's one of the things

01:01:50.800 that is sort of a trademark, but it's interesting to me that, that, I think we have fallen down on

01:01:55.440 our understanding of different cultures within the United States. And so it's this very interesting

01:02:00.040 divide that like, if it's foreign or perceived as exotic, it's all good, but like we need a better

01:02:04.920 understanding of certain cultures also, you know, Alabama and Texas. And the right certainly is guilty

01:02:11.860 of this too. I mean, the right treats Chicago as if it's some like horrible, you know, no man's land.

01:02:18.560 I'm not saying this is a problem only of the left, but I'm saying we can really benefit with

01:02:22.260 conversations. I'm talking to a lot of candidates in Oklahoma, in Orange County, in Texas, who have an

01:02:28.540 understanding of their constituents and what they want to do is help them and to present a reasonable

01:02:33.080 alternative of real solutions to them about real issues and not the bullshit that everybody is

01:02:37.700 engaging in. It's absolutely essential. And if we, if we offer all that and lose, then tough luck,

01:02:43.600 we got to make a better case. We got to make a better argument. Like we screwed up. We got to try

01:02:47.780 harder. Yeah. And by the way, the other thing, Jordan, that's really heartening. I'm seeing with a lot

01:02:53.720 of the actual candidates, as opposed to the noise is more and more of an emphasis on personal

01:02:58.780 accountability. You know, it's, it's about helping people and creating new opportunities

01:03:02.780 for them economically, but in a way that empowers them with the freedom to sort of make their life

01:03:09.340 or make their mark. If that's a freedom that they can seize, it's about sort of trying to level a

01:03:14.020 baseline. Like we talked about how healthcare can be super helpful for business and for entrepreneurial

01:03:18.400 ventures. We talked about why it's essential for the robustness of communities, but it's about

01:03:23.620 setting the terms under which people can be free to make choices and to perform at a level that they

01:03:29.280 want to, to build their whole future. So it's not that it's a shift from sort of us running ahead

01:03:34.540 and blocking for people to us trying to, to lift the constraints so that people can have better

01:03:40.020 choices for their, for their families, for their kids and their education system, for their own work

01:03:44.820 so that they can do better and make their own mark. And because a lot of what we're standing on,

01:03:49.600 a lot of the successes that we're standing on as a country are on the shoulders of working men and

01:03:53.980 women. That's a lot of what's accounted for the things that we've done well. And in fact, a lot

01:03:58.520 of the world, frankly, a lot of the world has benefited enormously from the working people of the United

01:04:03.500 States. Yeah. You know, in a way that I don't think gets nearly enough recognition. And so we,

01:04:08.860 I, I, I see the, the accruing financial success of the poor around the world, which is happening at a

01:04:15.800 very rapid rate is in large part, a consequence of the, the sacrifices made either willingly or

01:04:23.460 unwillingly by the American working class over the last 30 years. Absolutely. The working class

01:04:28.200 that's, it, it, it's competition with the world has been opened up at the level of the working class

01:04:34.540 first. And that's been unbelievably beneficial to the rest of the world and probably a pretty good

01:04:39.600 medium to long-term strategy because, well, and the American working class, it's like they have,

01:04:44.640 they've built affluence for people around the globe. Like they're heroes. There's no,

01:04:51.080 there's no infantilizing of them in a way that's derogatory. And it's like, it's our job to make

01:04:56.860 sure that they can have choices for their future, that they, that they are free to compete, at least

01:05:01.700 with the same rules that everybody else competes to differentiate themselves because they've always

01:05:06.260 kicked ass. I mean, it's an, it's an amazing, amazing workforce and they've always done well.

01:05:11.180 And it's like, if people are complaining about, you know, entitlements, it's like,

01:05:15.520 we can also look at corporate subsidies. It's like, it's not about one tilt or the other. It's

01:05:20.680 about the same rules that people need to differentiate themselves. And it's about creating

01:05:24.740 more freedom for them to reach their accomplishments. Well, it seems to me that the Democrats would have

01:05:29.100 a lot more success and, and, and also be able to generate a counter narrative to the radicals on the

01:05:36.280 left if they made the assumption that there's all sorts of good things about free market capitalism,

01:05:42.000 but crony capitalism is not one of them. No, and that's part of your emphasis on, let's call it

01:05:48.900 regulation of corruption. It's like the free enterprise system works real well, except when it gets warped

01:05:56.200 and twisted. And so we have to remove the warping and twisting so that people do have the opportunity

01:06:00.940 to compete and to cooperate as freely as possible. And that's in everyone's interests, including

01:06:05.860 radical capitalists, because to the degree that the system is corrupt, then that reflects badly on

01:06:11.460 the system and produces a tremendous amount of opposition towards it. Absolutely.

01:06:16.000 We want that.

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01:07:30.580 And you want to be, it's like, if you can't win fairly, what are you doing in the game?

01:07:39.340 Like, that's it. It's, to me, it's a very tough argument. That's like, if you can't sign a pledge,

01:07:44.540 which, which has been put forth, it's called the Disclose Act. There's a number of variations of it.

01:07:49.160 It's no dark money, you know, no, it's a strong stance against interference by hostile actors.

01:07:55.800 It's no voter suppression. It's getting universal health care, universal voter registration.

01:08:02.000 There's a lot of stuff of like, let's get everybody out voting. Let's lift the suppression

01:08:05.820 and voter intimidation, and then win fair or square. And it's like, for me, it's like, I want

01:08:10.600 the right to win fairly, and I want the right to lose fairly. If we make a better argument,

01:08:15.440 then let's do it. But, you know, it's also anti-gerrymandering, which is a really big problem.

01:08:19.800 And there's a lot of people who vow to not participate in gerrymandering,

01:08:23.000 and to also have it be either bipartisan committees, or judges who determine the

01:08:27.720 boundaries. Yeah, well, it's really, it's really quite an outrage that it's not bipartisan committees.

01:08:32.060 It's ridiculous. I mean, imagine stepping onto, you know, into a boxing ring and telling someone

01:08:36.840 that you're going to fight them, but they can only step in certain areas and you can go anywhere.

01:08:40.320 And they can only hit you with a jab, but you get to use your full battery shots. It's like,

01:08:44.380 man up, right? Step into the arena. If you think you can win, then win fair and square. And there's a,

01:08:49.560 there's a big emphasis, I think, that's not getting enough press and Democrats cleaning up

01:08:54.220 our side of the aisle in a way that is accountable and that is, is going to be clear. And there's no

01:09:02.820 way you should disagree with that. I believe if you're a heart, you're a Republican and you want

01:09:07.080 to win, you should be aware that you can win fairly and under the same rules. And that, I mean,

01:09:11.660 we can all agree on that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it would be nice if the Democrats too,

01:09:16.280 could help everyone figuring out, figure out what the problems actually are. Because right now,

01:09:21.960 mostly what we see in the media is a discussion of pseudo problems. Exactly. And so I'd like to see

01:09:28.920 what, what are the, what are the real challenges that confront us at the moment? And what are the

01:09:34.380 proper solutions to those challenges? Yeah. It's so funny because I feel like the, the racial

01:09:40.160 discourse or discourse around racism has gotten so loaded and so complicated since president Trump

01:09:48.160 has, his, his run or has taken office. And it's, I feel like all sides of the issue are like, there's

01:09:55.220 nowhere you can step without being a landline. And for me, it's really important to boil down to,

01:09:59.340 I went with a program called the five that goes and runs an entrepreneurial program in the prison

01:10:05.840 system. And it's absolutely unbelievable how, you know, what I call the, um, the prison industrial

01:10:13.800 complex works, the privatization of prison. And you can sidestep all the arguments about who's doing

01:10:18.640 what and who's responsible. African-Americans in, you know, who are up for drug charges, the exact

01:10:24.840 same drug charges as, as whites are 600% more likely to get put in prison. Like that's a straight

01:10:31.320 step. That's not, well, they're doing more crime. There's no argument to be had about that.

01:10:35.080 There, there are certain unbelievable biases of how, you know, African-Americans and people of

01:10:40.980 color are put into a prison system, which profits from them and which they're doing a lot of work

01:10:46.320 and basically, you know, no wages. It's very problematic. Anybody would agree with that across

01:10:52.460 the spectrum. I think if you look at those numbers and it's patently unfair, if there's one thing,

01:10:57.220 we need to have a intelligent discussion about drug policy. That would be a real start.

01:11:01.700 And about the prison system and who it's stewed towards and the ways in which it is unfairly

01:11:07.040 implemented. And that's a no shit major problem. And if you, if you discuss the actual hardcore facts

01:11:13.980 and if you can boil it down to those things, no one's going to disagree with that.

01:11:18.400 So, you know what, you know what Bjorn Lomborg did? This is really interesting. He's a,

01:11:22.280 he's a Scandinavian. Um, he used to be an environmentalist. He still is, but he calls

01:11:27.260 himself the skeptical environmentalist now. And I really liked Bjorn Lomborg. He wrote a great book

01:11:31.780 called how to spend 50 billion. And then a few later, years later, 75 billion to make the world

01:11:37.540 a better place, a book I would highly recommend it. This is what he did. And this is really nice

01:11:41.140 procedural, um, uh, achievement. He looked at the UN. I hope I got this story right. It's a while since I,

01:11:49.040 since I read it over the UN puts out a lot of development goals, say like, I think they have 150

01:11:54.420 development goals, something like that. And that's too many goals. You can't do 150 things.

01:11:59.480 And I worked on a UN committee for a while and we were trying to prioritize the goals because you have

01:12:04.300 to prioritize things in order to accomplish them. And one of the things we discovered was that you

01:12:08.620 couldn't prioritize the goals because every goal had its constituents and they were outraged if any other

01:12:14.100 goal was prioritized over theirs. And that was a terrible thing because, well, that's like tragedy of

01:12:19.500 the commons because the goals couldn't be prioritized and they couldn't be, then they couldn't be

01:12:23.820 accomplished essentially. So Lombard figured out a way around this. So his idea was this. Okay. So

01:12:30.800 there's a bunch of things that need to be done because there's a bunch of problems out there in

01:12:34.720 the world. And, uh, but there's too many to simultaneously address. So we have to figure out

01:12:39.160 where we're going to start. So what we're going to do is a cost benefit analysis. So we're going to

01:12:43.620 concentrate on doing as much good for the least amount of money as we can. And that's going to be our

01:12:48.320 initial, um, strategy because why not? Right. Um, because money is a scarce resource and it involves

01:12:54.980 human labor and human intelligence and all of that. And so you don't want to waste it. And, but he

01:12:59.580 didn't believe that he would be capable of doing the prioritization. So what he did was get 10 teams

01:13:04.600 of economists together, some of which were headed by world-class economists, people who'd won Nobel

01:13:09.380 prize. And he had them organized teams and then he had them go through the development goals and

01:13:14.660 prioritize them and make an economic case. And so then you had 10 separate cases. He said, here's

01:13:19.520 the rule. You've got $50 billion. You can spend it on whatever you want, but you have to justify it in

01:13:25.080 terms of cost benefit analysis. And they have to choose from this list. And so then he got each

01:13:29.240 economist to generate a list of their priorities. Then he averaged across the lists and came up with a

01:13:33.960 final list of, of both problems, which is a big deal, right? Because the first issue is what are

01:13:40.080 the problems that we need to solve? Like, you know, you might think, well, what politicians should be

01:13:45.240 generating his answers. It's like, no, no, no, that's not right. If you're trying to solve a complex

01:13:50.000 problem, a set of the complex problems, the first thing you want to do is formulate the problems

01:13:54.080 properly. And then you work towards, towards defining what the solutions might be. So it'd be really

01:13:59.560 interesting to see if we could have an intelligent political conversation that would concentrate on

01:14:03.920 on defining what the actual problems are. And it's not capitalism versus socialism, right? That's

01:14:10.680 not a problem. That's fun is everyone gets to scream at each other and then be superior and get

01:14:16.800 in zingers and get in retweets. Without having to know anything about anything, right? And there's no

01:14:22.600 actual motivation towards trying to come up with solutions to the vast majority of people who have

01:14:27.780 who are dealing with real problems. And that's the part that pisses me off is it's like, it's this

01:14:32.100 masturbatory venture of discussing the overall culture. And, you know, if you turn on the news,

01:14:37.100 it's these little soundbites of the most, you know, sort of tabloid nature of the furthest extremes

01:14:43.500 versus nuts and bolts discussions of what actually makes sense.

01:14:46.580 Yeah. Okay. So what we need to do, let's say, generally speaking, is we got to figure out what the

01:14:51.140 problems are. Like what are the most serious problems that currently confront us as a society?

01:14:55.640 That'd be a nice start. Like what are the 15 most, most crucial problems that confront us as we move

01:15:02.760 farther into the 21st century? That's a hard, that's a hard question. And then

01:15:06.840 I think the first, okay, no, go ahead. Well, I mean, the first thing for me looking at the system is

01:15:14.240 political corruption. And I'm not aiming that at either party. I mean, I have my opinions about

01:15:20.080 which party does that more, but neither one is perfect. And the average rating of Congress right

01:15:25.300 now is 15%. I'm sorry, it's 18% is the approval rating of Congress, which is better what Rourke says

01:15:31.160 is slightly above syphilis. It ain't good. And if you don't believe that the people in government

01:15:36.500 are serving your needs and are instead, you know, more interested in furthering the big money donors

01:15:42.400 over the interests of people, which is proven out time and time again, that's a huge problem.

01:15:47.520 When trust is eroded that the people representing you are representing rich donors rather than average

01:15:52.440 Americans and seeing to your needs, you can't get anywhere. And I think that's part of what's so

01:15:57.720 important about this pledge that a lot of Democrats are working on. It's not, it's a pledge to say,

01:16:02.400 here's what we, here's what we will disclose. And here's ways that we will clean up our side of the

01:16:06.740 aisle. And I think if it's, it's essential, it's essential that you start with your own reflection

01:16:11.760 of fixing the things that you need to fix in order to make a better argument. I, for me, corruption

01:16:16.600 in government's the top of the list here. But go ahead.

01:16:21.020 Well, I was thinking more of it procedurally, not, not so much in terms of what the problems might be.

01:16:27.860 I mean, one of the problems I see emerging, well, one of them would be this increase in political

01:16:33.100 polarization, which I think is very, very dangerous. I think another potential problem on the horizon is

01:16:38.220 something like, as our society becomes more cognitively complex, which is happening very,

01:16:43.200 very rapidly, the number of people, the proportion of people who are likely to be dispossessed as a

01:16:48.160 consequence of, of, of, of, of lesser ability to deal with that kind of complexity, that problem is

01:16:58.340 going to increase. And that's across the board. And it isn't obvious what to do about that. I don't

01:17:03.500 really buy guaranteed basic income solutions, in part, because I don't think that money is actually

01:17:08.960 the solution to the problem of what to do in life. Like money can stave off.

01:17:13.240 Well, in some ways, it's the opposite. If you lose a goal that you're striving for, that makes life tough.

01:17:20.080 And this is a conversation that I think should be a roundtable with Democrats and conservatives and

01:17:25.600 Republicans to say, what's a pro capitalist argument for how we're going to train people and bring them

01:17:30.700 along? Right? What's, what's, what's a, you know, a liberal argument for having concern for people

01:17:36.240 who don't have the same advantages from the same background? Yeah, well, you know, that the Silicon

01:17:39.880 Valley types, they tend to skew pretty heavily liberal. And that's because they're generally creative

01:17:44.220 and entrepreneurial. But they're very rapidly building a world in which people who are at the

01:17:49.280 lower end of the cognitive distribution are going to be adrift. Right? And we need to fix that from both

01:17:54.780 sides. So rather than saying, all or nothing, right? Like tough luck, capitalism, free market,

01:18:00.680 forget it. Or, you know, we need to support every single person in every single way. That has to be

01:18:06.340 the subject of complicated, in-depth conversations with people weighing in from a variety of different

01:18:10.460 political views. It just has to be. In order, it's so complicated. It's so complicated that we need,

01:18:17.320 we need opinions and brains from all sides of the issues. That's for sure. We definitely might also

01:18:22.040 need different test cases. Well, you can also think about that, those tough conversations,

01:18:27.940 you know, like between someone who leans very liberal and someone like Ben Shapiro. You can think

01:18:32.220 about those as stress tests. Right. Your damn stupid solution, which you've put a lot of effort into

01:18:37.940 elaborating, let's say, can't withstand the stress of a single argument with someone who disagrees with

01:18:43.220 you. What the hell do you, what makes you think that's going to work when you implement it in the real

01:18:46.760 world? Obviously, it's going to fail merely because those people are going to object to it,

01:18:52.400 independent of its objective merits. And so if it can't fly with your opponents, I mean,

01:18:58.820 I'm not talking about the fringe opponents, because nothing flies with the fringe except what the fringe

01:19:03.940 believes. But it's... I also think that the fringe is overly represented, and that's what's so hard.

01:19:09.860 Like when Mark Duplass apologized for saying people should follow Ben Shapiro, right? There

01:19:16.040 was an apology he put forth. It was... I haven't worked with Duplass. I mean, I've heard he's a

01:19:21.260 terrific guy, and I think that his aim was sort of a furtherance of an ending of polarization and

01:19:27.580 discourse. I don't know who... Who are all those people who are personally deeply wounded by him

01:19:34.440 saying that you should just follow somebody, whether you agree with him or not? And I also don't know

01:19:38.500 who the apology is geared towards. Like, who is he apologizing to? And if we have sort of a mob

01:19:44.760 dictate... I mean, the one thing I say a lot, and this is especially true in Hollywood, is there's a

01:19:49.680 huge and widening gap between conversations that people are having in public and what they really

01:19:53.840 believe in private. Yeah, that's the sign of a creeping totalitarianism. That's really, really

01:19:58.560 dangerous. Yeah. And it's also from both sides. I'm not just saying that this is a liberal value. I

01:20:03.960 think there's a lot more people who have more complicated views that they don't feel safe to

01:20:09.200 articulate because fear of complete reputation, slandering, right? They'll be out of work. It'll

01:20:15.880 be everything else. And so I don't... It's a very interesting thing. I have a lot of sympathy for

01:20:22.500 people who step out and say something and then sort of retreat and apologize because I feel like the

01:20:27.480 force of a mob response from the fringe, even if it's sort of pluralistic ignorance, right? I mean,

01:20:34.060 90% of people might agree with you, but if the 10 are allowed and it's all that you're seeing

01:20:38.060 everywhere, it has the power to warp reality. Yeah. That's how mind control cults function.

01:20:43.560 You know, mind control cults, one of the first things they do if they can get you off to a complex

01:20:47.140 is privacy deprivation. And everywhere that you look, if there's two versions, they try and split me.

01:20:52.780 I went undercover into mind control cults to research one of my knowledge. And when you're there,

01:20:57.040 everything that I say that is cult Greg, they're splitting cult Greg from Greg, Greg.

01:21:03.220 And everything that I say, I'm like, wow, this is fun. It's sort of love bombing. Everyone leans in,

01:21:07.660 it's direct eye contact. It's sort of like non-sexual touching. Everyone's engaged. But if I say,

01:21:12.340 you know, this is weird, I kind of, you know, miss being in contact with some of my other friends.

01:21:16.240 It's the sort of wind chill that everyone's back. And it's what I think is happening, but from a

01:21:23.120 smaller percentage of people that, but they're really, really loud. And if you see it all of a

01:21:29.220 sudden, it seems to be the reality when you're getting harder. And there's this sort of apologies

01:21:33.740 that I don't believe when a lot of people make the apologies. They read flat to me. It doesn't feel

01:21:39.360 heartfelt. And also like, let's say you really did screw up. Like part of what we need to do is screw

01:21:45.740 up. Part of what we need to do is think about things and say things and overstaff and go, wow,

01:21:50.100 that was kind of a screw up. But what's a blanket apology to society versus individual stuff to say,

01:21:56.740 hey, I forwarded this position. I wish I'd articulated it better. I don't always articulate

01:22:01.640 myself perfectly. Which is probably what I should have said. Rather than I'm so sorry to have had a

01:22:06.600 thought that isn't appropriate. And we're seeing this across the boards. And I think it's really

01:22:11.620 being... Well, part of what needs to be done, and this is something we've already talked about,

01:22:15.000 is to generate better dialogue that isn't like that. And hope that the mere fact that it's of

01:22:21.660 much higher quality is sufficient to attract people to it and away from this other nonsense.

01:22:26.680 Yes. It's hard because as you said, the shorter the span. Like I have people

01:22:30.460 who know that we're good friends. You know, our work is kind of tangled up. We mention each other

01:22:35.940 in our books. We've known each other shit since I was, you know, 20 years old. And people will say,

01:22:41.380 well, he believes in coerced monogamy. Like dismissed. It'll be one thing. And it's like,

01:22:46.740 it's an anthropological term or sociological term with specific meaning that takes one Google search

01:22:53.420 to sort of prove that it's not that Jordan Peterson is running around like in a World War

01:22:58.060 II propaganda poster, like dragging women off into the caves of...

01:23:02.820 Giving them to useless men.

01:23:04.920 Right. I mean, but it's so disprovable. But it's also so damning on a format like Twitter,

01:23:09.820 where you have, you know, 280 characters.

01:23:12.380 Yeah.

01:23:12.880 And so it's that reputation thing where like, if you associate with you, you should never

01:23:19.040 be discussed again. If you should follow Ben Shapiro, whether you agree with him or not,

01:23:24.120 you have to be bombarded and shamed until you apologize for even saying that you'll do that.

01:23:28.360 And it's like, look, I've learned the most from my friends who disagree with me the most.

01:23:33.680 I have a wide range of friends. It's so funny that one of the stories that I tell

01:23:37.420 after President Trump was elected, I was in Vegas on a book tour. And one of my friends

01:23:42.160 was a crusty old armor and sniper from the spec ops community. He passed away recently,

01:23:47.880 but he was just a great friend and a great guy. And I did a lot of shooting with him for the

01:23:53.820 books. I did a lot of research and he wanted me to see his ranch. And we pull up to his ranch

01:23:57.440 and he has a tank parked in his front yard and sticking out of the end of it is a Trump

01:24:03.700 pent sign. So at that exact moment, my wife sends me a text and it's her and my daughter

01:24:10.500 at like one of the, you know, a thousand women marches and they just come up on Miley Cyrus.

01:24:15.420 So they're like, my daughter's posing with Miley Cyrus. And the text sort of comes in and my buddy

01:24:19.700 looks at me, he goes, what's that? And I looked up at him. I said, nothing. But then I showed him

01:24:25.500 and we had a good laugh about it in sort of this way that, that it's like, you need people around

01:24:31.980 who have a whole variety of things. And one thing that was interesting with him was around

01:24:35.000 the time of the Muslim ban. And I was talking to him a lot about that. And I, I'm, I'm personally

01:24:39.660 very opposed to Muslim ban for instance, but there's, there's a lot of reasons. If you talk

01:24:43.900 to people in the military, there's a lot of problems recruiting translators now, like that

01:24:49.480 has a negative effect that rippled through the intelligence community. It's not good. And you

01:24:54.680 know, and whether I have friends who are vehement advocates of it, but I'm arguing with them

01:24:59.400 saying, what is the actual ground truth of how that is affecting things? And then there's other

01:25:03.880 people in the military who were like, this has been a total shit show. It's really hurting our

01:25:07.900 intelligence efforts and our allies. I feel like that's the level of the discussion. Or one of the

01:25:12.920 other things for me, that's very relevant is, you know, I don't know if you, if you know this,

01:25:17.260 but there's 15,000 Muslim physicians from the seven banned Muslim countries in America,

01:25:22.200 and they predominantly work in, in rural red state districts. They're providing the majority of,

01:25:28.820 not the majority, they're providing a ton of medical care to a lot of people in red states.

01:25:33.380 And by the way, those are the people, if they fled Aleppo, they hate Bashir al-Assad and extremism.

01:25:39.220 Like this is, this is, this is exactly the sorts of people who you want to have in these areas.

01:25:44.580 And if they're pulled out, we're going to have a lot of rural areas that more affluent physicians

01:25:49.600 are not going to have access to medical care. Because more affluent physicians or people from America

01:25:56.300 don't always want to go to these regions. There's a lot of like bigger recruiting of physicians.

01:26:01.020 So you have these people who are, who are great sort of citizens and representatives who hate

01:26:06.220 extremism, who are treating people in deep red states. And it's like, that's really important.

01:26:10.460 And you pair that with the Intel picture that I think is deeply problematic.

01:26:14.860 And you have a sort of argument that isn't just, you should have more empathy for Muslims,

01:26:20.300 which then just deteriorates into, well, they're terrorists. And like, it just evolves rather

01:26:24.940 looking at sort of the temperament of the people who are here. And you have to have conversations

01:26:29.180 with people from all sides of the, like, I had a lot of conversations with people in the military

01:26:33.740 who support it or against it to kind of start to zero in on what, where my position is.

01:26:38.780 Okay, so the plan is something like this. So we'll, we've recorded this video, I'm going to post it as

01:26:46.380 a public invitation to the intellectual dark web. I think that's what I'll title it or subtitle it.

01:26:51.340 The idea would be to bring on people, Democrats, at least to begin with, because that would

01:26:57.900 kind of run counter to the IDW reputation, let's say. Democrats who are capable and will capable of

01:27:05.340 and willing to engage in long form discussions about complex high resolution issues, and to provide

01:27:11.580 a more, at least in part, a more centrist alternative to the radical leftists, but also to bring on

01:27:17.340 people with more left leaning views to have them try their arguments out in a more, in a more fully

01:27:26.380 fledged manner, something like that. Yeah, I mean, I think, how does anyone lose? Like if someone's

01:27:31.820 conservative and not moving, they should know what the reasonable version is of the argument

01:27:36.140 they're rejecting. Like, good for you then, you know? Yeah. All that they're seeing is reports of

01:27:41.260 like students gone wild on college campuses and the craziness that I believe, I believe is a problem.

01:27:47.340 I mean, you've certainly, you've dealt with protests and you've dealt with that sort of

01:27:52.540 like brutal groupthink and anti-First Amendment, you know, like sort of shutting down speech. It's always

01:27:59.980 tricky to talk about freedom of speech and First Amendment because it's unclear always where that

01:28:04.860 lapses into being legal or constitutional versus just people articulating things loudly. But I have

01:28:10.220 no question that that's a problem. But I think that there's, I think that it is overrepresented and

01:28:14.940 amplified by the media and by both sides of the media. Yeah, I think so too. Sexier topic. And I think we

01:28:21.020 should get people in who are willing to have conversations that are solution geared so that if people

01:28:26.780 realize that, you see, for me, part of what my interest is, is in sort of trying to transcend

01:28:31.820 politics and getting to a place where like, I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat

01:28:36.140 as much as I care if you're offering real solutions. Yes, right. Exactly. So then the other element of

01:28:40.780 this would be to figure out what the problems are, to see if we can come to some sort of consensus about

01:28:45.660 where the challenges that confront us really lie. Right. And if there's a Democrat running for office who is

01:28:51.820 very dark money embedded and beholden to donors and there's somebody who's a cleaner

01:28:59.020 choice who's running, who's a Republican, it's like, let's have that out. You know, it's not,

01:29:03.340 this is, this is about actually starting to figure out solutions for, for, for people in terms of the

01:29:09.900 level of discourse that we can have and the solutions that need to be offered. Because while

01:29:13.340 we're here talking about all this stuff, there's a lot of people dealing with a lot of real life problems.

01:29:17.900 Okay. Okay. So I've started to introduce you to a number of people. You've met Sam and you met Dave

01:29:25.900 Rubin. Um, you met Douglas Murray briefly. Who else, who else have I introduced you to?

01:29:32.460 Um, a number of other peripheral people or, or other crews, but I think, you know, I, I,

01:29:39.660 there's a number of people I'd like to talk to to start to get this viewpoint. Um, and the viewpoint

01:29:45.340 that's more aligned with my politics represented. Um, so, you know, we'll keep, we should, we should

01:29:51.420 keep at it. And we, I think that the aim for me, there's a couple of aims. I mean, the aim is to sort

01:29:55.500 of end polarizing discourse, raise the level of conversation that can be had for actual solutions

01:30:01.420 that we need for actual people. And sort of long-term aim for me is just to, to, to eliminate

01:30:09.660 the levels of corruption in the government. And that's the boards either side. That's a long-term

01:30:14.460 aim for me is like, who's willing to sign on to a disclose act? Who's willing to say that they're

01:30:18.460 going to disclose all their donors? Everyone paid for an app. Who's willing to not take PAC money as

01:30:23.820 individual candidates? Um, you know, who's willing to stand up against gerrymandering? And that to me

01:30:29.260 is party agnostic. That's who's willing to stand on to that. Yep. Okay. Well, sounds like a plan.

01:30:39.580 All right. All right. I'll start, I'll start the ball rolling on my end. I've got some people that I

01:30:45.340 want you to meet on the Republican end of the distribution as well. Great. I'm happy to meet

01:30:50.540 with anyone who is, you know, reasonable and willing to have discourse instead of chest beat.

01:30:55.580 Yep. Okay. Good. Good talking to you, Greg. Bye.

01:31:25.580 Bye.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 30, 2018

Gregg Hurwitz - An Invitation to the Intellectual Dark Web

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