The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Interview with Michael Shermer

00:00:00.560 Welcome to this interview. I'm very pleased today to be interviewing Dr. Michael Schirmer.

00:00:07.200 And Dr. Schirmer, hello and thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed.

00:00:12.100 Thanks for having me. Nice to see you.

00:00:14.500 Great. So I think we have plenty of stuff to talk about.

00:00:19.440 Dr. Schirmer is one of the founding members of the magazine Skeptic.

00:00:25.400 And you have written many books. You have written books like Why People Believe Weird Things, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, The Moral Arc, Heavens on Earth, Giving the Devil His Due Reflections of a Scientific Humanist, and also Conspiracy, Why the Rational Believes Irrational.

00:00:43.920 So I think there's plenty of stuff to talk about.

00:00:49.520 And as we have been discussing so far, I think we should definitely talk a lot about skepticism, echo chambers, and especially issues concerning science and morality.

00:01:01.320 So if I may start by asking you a personal question, what made you found the magazine Skeptic?

00:01:08.120 Oh, well, here's what it looks like. Here's an old issue with Carl Sagan on the cover after he passed.

00:01:16.180 And then here's our latest issue on culture wars, which we're going to get into, cancel culture and woke, progressive, trans, race, immigration, abortion, all that stuff.

00:01:26.600 We cover all those kind of topics.

00:01:28.460 In the early days, we mostly dealt with the supernatural and the paranormal, things like science and religion and miracles and superstitions, astrology, UFOs, conspiracy theories, all that kind of stuff.

00:01:43.720 That was kind of old school skepticism about, you know, claims that were being made in the 1960s and 70s about, you know, kind of New Age phenomenon.

00:01:53.700 Since then, in the last few years, we've shifted to talking about more culture, war type topics, like I mentioned, trans, abortion, race, nationalism, education, reform, health care, energy, like nuclear power.

00:02:10.820 All of these are tied together through science and rationality.

00:02:16.600 That is to say, can we determine what's true about anything?

00:02:20.900 So the question, you know, are we being visited by aliens or, you know, can astrologers really predict the future is really no different than asking about, you know, some political hot button topics, you know, like trans.

00:02:35.040 Can a man really become pregnant? 1.00

00:02:37.980 You know, can a man become a woman and vice versa? 0.96

00:02:40.880 You know, these are, in principle, anyway, empirical questions.

00:02:45.500 They're testable.

00:02:46.640 We should be able to get an answer.

00:02:47.760 Even if we don't know the answer now and we're willing to say we don't, but we don't.

00:02:52.420 But in principle, we should be able to know something about it.

00:02:54.860 So that's the kind of the underlying theme of the magazine.

00:02:58.060 We started it in 1992 with my partner right there, pictured on the issue after she died, sadly, a couple of years ago.

00:03:06.880 And it's a quarterly magazine.

00:03:08.760 You can go to skeptic.com slash magazine and order it there.

00:03:11.380 We're still in print, so available in most bookstores in North America, and you can get it otherwise through, you know, online.

00:03:19.740 You can read it digitally and so on.

00:03:21.780 And again, our mission, general mission is promoting doing research and education on science and rationality as a way of really trying to understand the world.

00:03:34.400 And, you know, we want, you know, that's our thing.

00:03:37.880 Great.

00:03:38.280 So when you started, did you have the impression that you would embark upon such a trajectory and about talking issues like whether men can give birth to children?

00:03:51.860 No, I mean, when we started, it was just in my garage as a hobby.

00:03:55.340 I was a college professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and that's all I wanted to do.

00:04:00.840 I just wanted to be a college professor.

00:04:02.680 It's like the Pope job.

00:04:03.560 It's a great job.

00:04:04.560 You know, you get, especially when you get tenure, you get paid to just do research and write and teach.

00:04:09.560 And I mean, that's really what I wanted to do.

00:04:12.600 But the magazine got a lot of attention, and our membership grew a lot.

00:04:19.140 And then my first book, Why People Believe We're Things, came out in 1997, and it did really well.

00:04:23.720 And I got a big advance for another book.

00:04:26.160 And I thought, you know what, this is probably more important for, you know, changing the world through the magazine, through books, through TV, through op-eds, and so on, public intellectual outreach venues, than teaching, you know, 25 students in a classroom.

00:04:46.360 Which I enjoyed, but, you know, I just wanted to reach more people.

00:04:50.300 So ultimately, this is my day job.

00:04:52.120 I mean, I've been a college professor on and off, you know, for 40 years.

00:04:55.100 But my main job is to come to the office here in Santa Barbara, Skeptics Magazine offices, and, you know, just crank out another issue, edit more articles for the next issue, and finish writing my next book, and producing podcasts, and writing op-ed pieces, just all that kind of stuff.

00:05:10.380 And, you know, again, if you want to change the world, I think you have to reach a lot of people.

00:05:14.540 And we're fortunate to live in the age we do, where you and I can reach millions of people online.

00:05:22.240 I mean, that was not available in the 90s when I really started doing this.

00:05:26.820 It was just television and newspapers.

00:05:28.880 And, you know, if they didn't want to have you on the show, there was no other option.

00:05:33.820 That's it.

00:05:34.200 You're out.

00:05:35.080 And now, anybody with a microphone and a camera, you know, can be their own TV producer or whatever.

00:05:41.280 It's a crowded market, but, you know, the options are unbelievably available.

00:05:46.580 So, no, I didn't think I was going to get into any of this full time.

00:05:51.120 But the subjects have always interested me, since I was a college student, you know, the big questions, stuff you study, like free will and determinism, you know, consciousness, you know, is there a God?

00:06:03.460 Why is there something rather than nothing?

00:06:05.340 What caused the Big Bang?

00:06:07.260 You know, what is time?

00:06:08.720 You know, all these questions.

00:06:09.720 You know, of course, when you're in college, it's big fun to study that stuff.

00:06:14.040 But I wanted to see how far I could push it, you know, professionally.

00:06:19.120 Excellent.

00:06:19.480 And I think that this may be rewarding and you feel it's a bit more rewarding than, as you said, talking just to a few people, which is rewarding, but not as I think it's rewarding to a different degree.

00:06:32.960 Am I right?

00:06:34.580 Yeah, that's right.

00:06:35.680 It's it's it is very rewarding.

00:06:38.120 I mean, there's more pushback, you know, college students, at least in my era, didn't complain all that much.

00:06:44.100 You know, they just wanted to, you know, get their grade and go back to their dorms and have fun.

00:06:48.800 And now there's a little bit more protesting.

00:06:51.200 But I haven't experienced that much.

00:06:53.200 The pushback you get online, of course, is pretty harsh.

00:06:56.720 But I have a pretty thick skin.

00:06:58.400 I realize that, you know, not only am I not the only one, you know, if you're not getting a lot of hate on Twitter or X or on social media, then you might you're not doing something right.

00:07:09.420 Right. You know, when I post things about Israel and Hamas or Ukraine and Russia or trans race, whatever, you know, if I don't get a lot of hate pushback, I must not be doing something right.

00:07:22.260 You know, but I would just stay true to myself.

00:07:24.820 I just try to be as honest as I can.

00:07:27.460 Here's what I believe.

00:07:28.900 Here are my arguments.

00:07:30.340 If I'm wrong, just tell me.

00:07:32.320 Great.

00:07:33.160 And so, you know, that's that's how it works.

00:07:34.960 So I think it would be good if we had a discussion that 2A degree is a bit philosophical, because I think that philosophy and, as you said, science, they directly affect how we view the world and also directly affect how we approach a lot of questions, especially those that are ethical.

00:07:57.280 So I wanted to ask you about skepticism, because to my mind, skepticism is a double edged sword.

00:08:06.040 It has some really good things about it, but it can also be a bit corrosive.

00:08:14.480 And I'm thinking particularly of some forms of skepticism that are, for instance, moral skepticism and also the kind of skepticism that a lot of people have when they are so diffident and they cannot rest on their judgment.

00:08:29.780 And it seems to me that it's the exact opposite of what we would expect from thinkers that we want to listen to, who do have the, let's say, the moral standing and the character to stand by their own judgments.

00:08:44.760 So I wanted to ask you, how do you understand skepticism?

00:08:49.500 Yeah, nice.

00:08:50.600 You know, that's always been the question since we started the magazine, you know, and it's called skeptic, you know, so of course, I guess, well, what is that?

00:08:58.380 You know, and it can easily slide into nihilism and denialism and, and cynicism, but that's not how we're using it.

00:09:06.460 We're using it in the scientific sense that the null hypothesis is true.

00:09:11.600 That is to say, your claim is not true until proven otherwise.

00:09:16.180 So all scientists are skeptics.

00:09:18.440 They're skeptical of other people's hypotheses and theories until they get convinced by evidence and arguments.

00:09:25.320 And so everybody should be skeptical, you know, kick the tires.

00:09:28.380 And look under the hood and make sure, you know, that the person making the claim has evidence and reasons for it.

00:09:33.860 If not, then it's reasonable to be skeptical.

00:09:37.480 And now the principle applies, you know, across the board, but it depends on the claim.

00:09:43.660 So, for example, you could be a global warming skeptic or you could be skeptical of the global warming skeptics, which is mostly what I am.

00:09:51.540 You know, I think global warming is real and human caused.

00:09:53.520 I think the doomsayers would probably go too far, but a lot of the climate skeptics, I think, are too ideological.

00:10:00.720 They don't follow the evidence.

00:10:02.200 That's just one example.

00:10:04.580 You know, UFOs, are they, you know, did they represent extraterrestrial visitations?

00:10:09.400 You know, maybe, probably not.

00:10:11.300 But just show me, you know, show me the spacecraft.

00:10:15.080 Show me the alien and I'll change my mind.

00:10:16.700 You know, you think Bigfoot is real.

00:10:18.780 It's a bipedal primate living in the Himalayas or Canada or wherever.

00:10:23.560 I'm skeptical because I haven't seen very good evidence.

00:10:27.080 But I'll change my mind tomorrow if you show me.

00:10:29.880 Right.

00:10:30.140 That's skepticism.

00:10:31.660 You know, keep an open mind, you know, and change your mind when the evidence changes.

00:10:36.080 So it's not a particularly philosophical or technical view of skepticism.

00:10:40.640 It's more of a common sense view, I would say, a watered-down view.

00:10:44.940 Because to my mind, for instance, the skeptic comes in many gradations.

00:10:49.940 So, for instance, we have the pyronist who constantly asks for why, and we have the infinite regress of justifications.

00:10:55.860 And then we have other forms of skeptics.

00:10:58.420 But it seems to me that the kind of skeptic you are talking about is more a person who adopts a particular attitude of disbelief with respect to some large claims.

00:11:12.380 So, for instance, you would say something like big claims require extraordinary evidence.

00:11:18.220 And unless they are supported with those, most probably we should suspend judgment or just say that we don't have good reasons to believe.

00:11:27.120 Is that correct?

00:11:28.420 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:11:29.920 Yeah.

00:11:30.420 So if we want to talk a little philosophy of science, you know, Bayesian reasoning versus Popperian falsification reasoning, you know, if the claim being made is not testable, it's not falsifiable, even in principle, you know, something like maybe panpsychism or are we living in a matrix, you know, a simulation, you know, is consciousness the ground of all being and so on?

00:11:55.100 These are non-falsifiable ideas.

00:11:57.660 There's no way to test them.

00:11:59.040 I mean, I've had guys on my podcast, you know, is that we're living in a simulation.

00:12:04.240 For example, I had some some philosophers to talk about this, like David Chalmers.

00:12:10.160 I said, is is your hypothesis testable?

00:12:12.800 He goes, no.

00:12:13.240 So then what are we talking about?

00:12:15.580 I mean, maybe it's science fiction or it's metaphysics or it's fun, you know, but, you know, for us to take it seriously, there has to be some way to test it.

00:12:24.940 You know, and then in terms of Bayesian reasoning, I like this because it allows us to assign some probability, not zero or not one.

00:12:34.340 You know, Cromwell's rule, never assign a zero or one to any claim because you might be mistaken.

00:12:38.820 Okay, but I doubt that UFOs represent extraterrestrials visitation on Earth, but I'm not 100% sure they're not.

00:12:47.400 You know, it's maybe there's a 1% chance they could be extraterrestrials, right?

00:12:52.200 So I'll change my, I'll adjust my priors and my credence along with it if you show me some evidence.

00:12:58.780 That allows us to be open-minded, not dogmatic, and just open to changing our minds.

00:13:05.840 That's kind of the two ways of thinking about skepticism.

00:13:09.540 Okay, so I have a really interesting question here that I'm sure you will have a good response.

00:13:16.900 So when you're talking about something being testable, I suspect you mean empirically testable, because to my mind, for instance, ethical claims are unnecessarily empirically testable.

00:13:30.000 But we could say that empirical claims could be falsified by data other than presumably empirical data.

00:13:38.280 Now, I come from a very, you could say, traditionally metaphysical perspective.

00:13:44.260 Presumably, you could give an argument against that perspective and reject my claim.

00:13:51.760 But would you say that, for instance, ethical claims here are claims that we could talk about in an empirical matter 100%?

00:14:02.560 In other words, let me rephrase the question for the audience.

00:14:05.020 I'm not implying that empirical evidence are, let's say, something that have nothing to do with ethics.

00:14:15.560 But I'm just asking whether ethics can be 100% studied by science.

00:14:21.580 That's the question that I would have.

00:14:24.900 Yeah, okay, let's get off the 0% or 100% and just think of it as more of a spectrum.

00:14:30.380 Some claims we can test empirically.

00:14:34.460 I mean, just take something simple like, would you rather live in North Korea or South Korea?

00:14:40.380 And, of course, everybody says, well, South Korea, of course.

00:14:42.700 Why?

00:14:44.080 Well, because I want to be free.

00:14:45.440 I want to have choice.

00:14:46.280 I want to have volition and autonomy.

00:14:47.660 And I want to make decisions for myself.

00:14:49.840 And I don't want to live under a dictatorship.

00:14:51.560 I prefer to be healthy rather than diseased.

00:14:53.560 I prefer to be free rather than enslaved and so on and so forth.

00:14:57.640 Okay.

00:14:57.880 Is that an empirical claim?

00:15:00.420 Yes, it is.

00:15:01.640 You know, look what happened in East Germany versus West Germany.

00:15:05.680 Before the unification, they had to build walls to keep their people in.

00:15:09.460 Why?

00:15:09.780 Because the people didn't want to be there.

00:15:11.640 And how do we know?

00:15:12.500 Because they voted with their feet.

00:15:14.040 They left, right, when they could.

00:15:16.800 And, you know, that's kind of an easy example, but it's clear.

00:15:21.900 Historically and empirically, you can just look and see what people actually do.

00:15:26.160 So what looks like a just kind of a, I don't know, a philosophical question about freedom

00:15:31.940 and slavery is actually an empirical one.

00:15:34.440 You know, what do people actually do?

00:15:35.980 And then why do they do that?

00:15:37.740 And there you can drill down into human nature.

00:15:40.080 Why do people want to be free?

00:15:41.640 Why would they prefer to have choices versus no choices?

00:15:45.560 Well, it's obvious why for survival and flourishing, you have to have that.

00:15:49.420 And that's what people want.

00:15:50.740 Anyway, those are the kind of claims I make.

00:15:51.880 Harder ones are something like abortion, you know, pro-life, pro-choice, what's the right

00:15:56.120 position?

00:15:57.420 You know, there we may end up with good arguments on both sides.

00:16:01.400 And, you know, as you see in America, it's roughly split, pretty close to 50-50.

00:16:05.560 Um, and so all the empirical arguments, like when does life begin, when does the heartbeat

00:16:11.440 begin, when is pain perception, when do the lights come on in terms of sentience and

00:16:16.500 consciousness that, you know, 16 weeks or 20 weeks, you know, there we may be bumping

00:16:22.040 up against a kind of an epistemological or maybe even an ontological question of, I'm

00:16:29.220 just deciding life begins at conception.

00:16:31.300 That's it.

00:16:32.060 It doesn't matter what your arguments are about the spectrum of, of, you know, how many

00:16:36.440 cells you have to have or whatever.

00:16:38.320 And, and therefore it could be there's some issues that could only be resolved through

00:16:43.460 a democratic vote.

00:16:45.420 And, um, and, and they just get conflicting rights.

00:16:48.820 One side is going to take one position.

00:16:51.160 Another side takes a different position and we just play it out politically, you know,

00:16:55.280 so there you have kind of a range.

00:16:56.700 So the question is kind of moral, uh, you know, moral ethical issues be resolved empirically.

00:17:01.920 Some can, some maybe not.

00:17:04.700 Okay.

00:17:05.000 Okay.

00:17:05.480 The reason why, for instance, I would be skeptical of an answer that they can is to a degree David

00:17:13.840 Hume and his discussion of the EZOT gap.

00:17:16.640 Um, and it seems to me that, um, where, what is involved in his, uh, ideas there is that

00:17:24.400 when philosophers are trying to, or thinkers are trying to establish a conclusion that has

00:17:30.480 moral language into it, such as for instance, therefore we should do something, they frequently

00:17:37.720 try to derive it from premises that don't involve that normative element.

00:17:42.520 So for instance, it seems to me that if we go full scientific, we won't find it because

00:17:49.000 you mentioned the wants and preferences.

00:17:52.000 So the question would be, how do we go from people want this or people prefer that over

00:17:57.000 the other to therefore we should have it.

00:17:59.100 I'm not saying that they are, they are, uh, not, uh, relevant.

00:18:03.400 I think they are, but I'm just asking whether approaching ethical questions through science

00:18:10.720 alone is, uh, tenable.

00:18:12.880 And, uh, you know, as I don't want to put words on your mouth, it sounded to me that

00:18:18.200 you are, you do have some reservations, but allow, please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:18:24.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:18:25.080 Uh, so I have a chapter in my next book called truth, what it is, how to find it, why it

00:18:28.900 matters on moral science, moral truths.

00:18:32.560 So, and I'll just read you this portion here in my theories case, um, the found foundation

00:18:38.440 is the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings by which I mean the evolved

00:18:43.360 instinct to live and to have adequate sustenance, safety, shelter, bonding, and social relations

00:18:49.220 for physical and mental health.

00:18:50.980 If that's a moral premise, then so be it.

00:18:53.560 But at least it is a premise grounded in empirical science that anyone can observe for themselves.

00:18:59.500 Steven Pinker makes a similar point when he suggests that moral values might be something

00:19:03.720 discoverable, like abstract platonic truth.

00:19:07.020 Here I'm quoting Steve.

00:19:08.500 On this analogy, we are born with a rudimentary concept of number, but as soon as we build on

00:19:13.940 it with formal mathematical reasoning, the nature of mathematical reality forces us to

00:19:19.000 discover to discover some truths and not others, no one who understands the concept of two, the

00:19:24.100 concept of four, and the concept of addition can come to any conclusion, but that two plus

00:19:28.140 two equals four.

00:19:29.600 Maybe we're born with a rudimentary moral sense.

00:19:32.520 And as soon as we build on it with moral reasoning, the nature of moral reality forces us to some

00:19:37.540 conclusions and not others.

00:19:40.000 Again, for example, you know, slavery, you know, the, the vast majority of people do not want

00:19:46.860 to be slaves, why, well, you can just ask them why, and they'll tell you, or you can just

00:19:52.080 see how they vote.

00:19:53.360 Um, and you know, why chains and whips had to be used to keep people enslaved because they

00:19:58.100 don't want to be enslaved.

00:19:59.940 You know, so there again, is a simple example, um, uh, that we can discover that by studying

00:20:05.700 history, by studying human psychology, by studying, you know, behavior genetics and sociology and

00:20:12.200 anthropology and so on, this human, this collection of human universals that are true for all people

00:20:17.440 everywhere in all cultures, as far as we know, okay, there's a reason they're universal.

00:20:22.080 And, and so we need to dig deep into human nature to understand that that's something that's

00:20:26.720 discoverable.

00:20:27.720 So I'm skeptical of Hume's is ought, um, fallacy, but I, I think the naturalistic fallacy is a

00:20:34.800 fallacy naturalist.

00:20:36.140 I call it the naturalistic fallacy fallacy, you know, in some cases, um, yes, it applies.

00:20:43.160 We should be careful.

00:20:44.140 You know, that, that war is natural does not mean we should, uh, endorse it obviously, but 0.50

00:20:49.680 that people don't actually want to go to war.

00:20:52.120 They don't want to die in war.

00:20:53.600 Then, you know, then we ought to do something to prevent that or people don't want to be

00:20:57.040 impoverished.

00:20:57.620 So we ought to do something to increase prosperity.

00:21:01.180 You know, people mostly for the most part, when given the chance would prefer a democracy

00:21:05.660 over an autocracy.

00:21:07.480 So we ought to do something about that.

00:21:09.540 Okay.

00:21:10.160 So I think, uh, this gives me a really good pass to go to a more epistemological angle into

00:21:16.020 the discussion, because I think, I think you're right to, to a very large extent, there are

00:21:20.540 these data that are unbelievably important and overlooking them is definitely not responsible.

00:21:27.520 And sometimes it could be just a crazy or even immoral.

00:21:31.100 So the question is, if there are the data we have when it comes to what people prefer,

00:21:39.920 when it comes to, okay, there's a question, how influenced is the opinion of people by

00:21:47.200 the society that they live in?

00:21:48.920 And the question, the reason I ask this is because with a lot of questions, we have a

00:21:55.600 lot of ethical dilemmas.

00:21:56.780 And you could say that there are all sorts of reasons that come into why people give a

00:22:02.580 sort of, have some moral views that you could say oscillate.

00:22:06.940 There could be some pendulums.

00:22:08.920 So for instance, there are some people who say that whenever you have republics close approaching

00:22:15.940 what seems too many to be their end, some people start thinking, uh, viewing life different

00:22:23.160 way in a different way.

00:22:24.440 And some are a bit more open to the possibility of autocracy.

00:22:27.700 And in some cases, when we have good times, people are forgetting the potential of, um,

00:22:35.620 let's say subversion of institutions.

00:22:37.880 And they think they occupy, they embrace a completely more sentimental way of viewing things.

00:22:44.240 So the question is, do you think that, um, the, the, the view of people is influenced of

00:22:52.160 what is moral and what they want is influenced by factors that are, you could say, non-moral

00:22:58.740 in this case?

00:23:01.140 Yeah, of course.

00:23:02.100 I mean, we're all embedded in a culture.

00:23:03.820 And if I knew how biased my culture is making me, I wouldn't be biased.

00:23:09.080 I'd do something about it.

00:23:10.140 So, uh, I mean, this is true for everybody in all times, you know, but let's, let's return

00:23:16.240 to the slavery question, you know, is it fair for us today in the 21st century to judge

00:23:22.280 people in say the 18th century who endorsed slavery?

00:23:26.660 Um, for the most part, I would say no, because, you know, had I lived then, I can't say I would

00:23:32.040 be an abolitionist any more than if I lived in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, I would be, uh,

00:23:39.180 uh, you know, wanting to protect Jews.

00:23:41.400 I, I don't know if I would do that.

00:23:43.320 Uh, very few people did.

00:23:45.120 And, uh, you know, it's like Milgram shock experiment.

00:23:47.640 You know, I show this to students.

00:23:48.940 They, oh, I would never flip those switches and electrocute these poor subjects. 1.00

00:23:52.740 Yeah.

00:23:52.940 You probably would have, because we're all, you know, product of this.

00:23:57.780 Um, but on the other hand, um, they must've had some sense that this was not right.

00:24:03.180 Uh, that is the enslavers because they had to use chains.

00:24:06.680 They had to lock them up.

00:24:07.780 They had to beat them and use punishment to keep them under those conditions.

00:24:11.720 There was even a, uh, psychiatric diagnosis called drapetomania, which was the propensity

00:24:17.540 for, uh, African slaves to want to escape to freedom.

00:24:20.960 They actually had to make up this diagnosis.

00:24:23.380 Like, why would they want to do that?

00:24:25.540 Right?

00:24:26.140 Yes.

00:24:26.300 Well, you know, all you have to do is apply the principle of interchangeable perspectives.

00:24:30.440 How would you feel if you were a slave?

00:24:33.520 You know, this is Abraham Lincoln famously said, as I would not want to be a slave, I

00:24:37.580 will not want to be a master.

00:24:40.000 It's just, it's so simple.

00:24:41.640 You know, it's just the principle of, of, uh, interchangeable perspectives or the golden

00:24:45.980 rule.

00:24:46.400 You know, how would you feel?

00:24:47.400 Okay.

00:24:47.900 So it's pretty simple to do it that way.

00:24:49.760 And, you know, it's possible, you know, maybe there's some culture somewhere where people,

00:24:54.240 you know, want to be beaten and enslaved and, and, and exterminated in gas chambers and so 0.67

00:25:00.320 on. 0.92

00:25:00.480 But I doubt it, you know, I don't think this is just a quirky Western tradition that we

00:25:05.460 just happen to find ourselves and in, in, in centuries hence, or some other culture,

00:25:09.960 uh, people are going to really want to be enslaved and so on.

00:25:13.760 I don't think so.

00:25:15.540 Yes.

00:25:15.980 So, um, when it comes to how we are influenced, how our views are influenced, we could say that

00:25:24.040 there are echo chambers.

00:25:28.060 So how do we best ask ourselves whether we are in an echo chamber and whether our culture

00:25:35.560 is functioning like an echo chamber?

00:25:39.700 Well, we are in an echo chamber.

00:25:40.860 All of us are right.

00:25:42.140 Okay.

00:25:42.360 This is kind of the whole point of moral agitation and, and civil rights activists and people

00:25:47.420 like Peter singer, who wrote that book, uh, the expanding circle, the first kind of Bible

00:25:52.440 of animal rights, you know, the purpose of that is to kind of jolt you out of your echo

00:25:57.720 chamber to say, Hey, have you looked at it from the perspective of the animals?

00:26:02.520 You know, just take these horrible factory farm, hidden camera videos.

00:26:06.280 They're just horrible.

00:26:07.140 How would you feel?

00:26:08.200 Right.

00:26:08.900 You know, so, or, you know, the, the novels in the 18th century in America that portrayed

00:26:14.260 what it's like to be a slave, you know, uncle Tom's cabin being the classic example.

00:26:18.320 Um, you know, this woke up a lot of Americans and go, I really had no idea what it was like

00:26:24.500 to be a slave.

00:26:25.220 This is terrible.

00:26:26.500 You know, we should do something about it.

00:26:28.440 Right.

00:26:28.880 So to get out of the echo chamber, you have to read, uh, and experience or get the ideas

00:26:35.180 from people that think differently from you.

00:26:37.200 Of course, the internet is highlighted and, you know, exact, exasperated the whole, um,

00:26:42.580 echo chamber thing, but it's also the solution because there's just infinite amount of content

00:26:48.020 that you can read and access that, uh, is different from what you think.

00:26:52.640 That's just what you have to do.

00:26:54.140 I mean, if you like newspapers, like I do, you know, I read the wall street journal, but

00:26:57.480 I also read the New York times.

00:26:59.320 Uh, so, you know, I get different perspectives or I'll, I'll go on conservative.

00:27:03.140 I'm not a conservative.

00:27:04.220 I'm a classical liberal that may be libertarian, but I do read a lot of conservatives because

00:27:09.260 I want to know what are these people thinking?

00:27:11.200 Not just in the sense of what's wrong with them, but what are their actual arguments?

00:27:16.040 Oh, they actually have some pretty good arguments.

00:27:18.540 Okay.

00:27:19.000 I can, I can engage in that.

00:27:21.300 And as John Stuart Mill famously said, he who knows only his own side of the argument

00:27:25.480 doesn't even know that.

00:27:27.200 So I also do it to improve my own case, right?

00:27:29.820 So I'll read pro-choice or pro-life arguments in the abortion issue, just so I, I know what

00:27:35.300 they are.

00:27:35.860 So my own pro-choice position is even stronger.

00:27:39.320 Anyway, that's, that's.

00:27:40.380 Yeah.

00:27:40.520 So there are plenty of, uh, stuff that you're bringing into the table because it seems to

00:27:45.780 me that for instance, one of the good things with the internet is that it sort of gives

00:27:52.200 us a wealth of information that allows us to do this.

00:27:55.260 So for instance, you said that some decades ago, if people didn't invite you on TV, most

00:28:02.680 people wouldn't listen to you, but now you can get a microphone and you, and you can

00:28:06.020 straightforwardly talk to people.

00:28:07.580 And I think that this allows us, this is good.

00:28:11.600 And it worries me when I see that a lot of political, um, positions, a lot of political

00:28:19.180 movements and governments are trying to stifle free speech because it seems to me that it

00:28:24.960 is an essential way of asking whether we are in an echo chamber and also talking to each

00:28:32.180 other and try to make informed judgments.

00:28:35.120 So it seems to me that at the moment, what Singer says about echo chambers and what we

00:28:43.560 said before that we are all in echo chambers is correct.

00:28:47.180 But I think that the degree in which we are susceptible to them is still an empirical matter.

00:28:52.300 So for instance, I think of, I think societies without free speech are more of an echo chamber

00:28:58.800 than those with free speech.

00:29:00.840 So would you say that right now, societies in the Western world, for instance, are becoming

00:29:07.800 more of an echo chamber or are becoming less of them?

00:29:11.180 Because on the one hand, internet, the internet does allow people to think more and be exposed

00:29:17.780 to different perspectives.

00:29:20.060 But on the other hand, there is a very significant and organized attempt to curtail free speech.

00:29:25.320 So what do you think is going on there?

00:29:27.500 Yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's, it's a concern.

00:29:30.120 It's the same concern when the printing press is invented and then books became popular and cheap and readily produced and widely read and literacy rates skyrocketed upward.

00:29:42.740 And, you know, people discovered that, you know, the world was not this tiny little provincial thing that, you know, there was an infinite amount of information.

00:29:51.300 We're going through the same thing now.

00:29:52.960 You know, there were censors that wanted to ban books and did.

00:29:55.800 And people had these kinds of discussions like, is this good or bad?

00:29:59.340 Coffee houses, coffee house debates over the latest book or idea.

00:30:03.600 You know, these are for the most part, I think, good.

00:30:06.420 I'm a, almost a free speech absolutist.

00:30:09.420 You know, there are very few things I think should be banned or censored.

00:30:13.180 The obvious ones, you know, libeling somebody or slandering somebody that harms them.

00:30:18.740 You know, just like leaking the nuclear codes to the enemy.

00:30:22.280 You know, these are probably not things that should be allowed.

00:30:25.880 But, but, but beyond that, not much.

00:30:28.360 You know, I, I would allow pretty much anybody on the X platform, you know, and that's what Elon has done.

00:30:34.220 Fine.

00:30:34.780 Let, let all the voices be heard.

00:30:36.680 You know, what's wrong with Joe Rogan talking to somebody who's a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic?

00:30:41.540 You know, and nothing.

00:30:43.460 It's just, you know, you don't have to watch him.

00:30:45.960 And you can look up somebody else who criticizes it.

00:30:48.740 You know, Rogan is so big that the moment he talks to somebody like this, there's dozens of videos up saying, this is why this guy is wrong.

00:30:55.920 Okay.

00:30:56.460 I'm capable of thinking for myself.

00:30:58.260 I can watch the, the skeptics of the guy Rogan's talking to, you know, come on, just, you know, treat people like adults.

00:31:05.040 You know, part of the problem I think is this kind of patronizing elitists who think we know what's correct.

00:31:13.780 And we don't want the masses to be exposed to these other ideas because they might actually be influenced. 0.99

00:31:20.460 They're too dumb to understand the truth. 1.00

00:31:23.160 Come on. 1.00

00:31:24.100 You know, first of all, that's not true.

00:31:26.620 Right.

00:31:26.800 I mean, there's this whole thing in the media about, you know, people don't like statistics and numbers and we can't have equations. 1.00

00:31:32.220 You know, people are too stupid. 1.00

00:31:33.480 That's not true. 1.00

00:31:34.360 Look at the business section of any newspaper.

00:31:36.540 Look at the sports section.

00:31:37.980 The sports section is full of statistics and equations and numbers and data.

00:31:42.380 Every, anybody's capable of understanding this.

00:31:45.140 Come on.

00:31:45.980 You know, don't treat people like children.

00:31:48.740 And in any case, the moment you do that, they're going to think, well, what are they hiding?

00:31:53.160 What don't they want me to know?

00:31:55.280 I really want to go find out now.

00:31:57.080 Right.

00:31:57.260 So there's a backfire effect there.

00:31:59.900 Okay.

00:32:00.280 So question.

00:32:01.640 Have you encountered, what are your encounters with cancel culture?

00:32:06.380 Well, not too much.

00:32:09.880 Not as bad as some people have it, mainly because I'm an independent operator here.

00:32:15.860 I, you know, I have my own magazine.

00:32:17.740 I have my own nonprofit organization.

00:32:20.500 I have my own office.

00:32:21.660 I get a paycheck and nobody can cancel me really, unless they somehow got all of our

00:32:28.820 tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of members to just quit, which is not likely.

00:32:33.820 I, I would be more concerned if I was, let's say in my late twenties, early thirties, and

00:32:39.180 I wanted to be a college professor and I was teaching and I didn't have tenure.

00:32:43.280 I don't blame people for just keeping their mouth shut and keeping their head down.

00:32:47.080 It is bad.

00:32:47.900 I'm always encouraged people to speak up, fight back.

00:32:50.460 But, you know, when they don't, I have some friends that are in academia and they, they

00:32:55.280 tell me, I don't want anything to do with this whole progressive craziness, but I'm not

00:33:00.140 going to speak up.

00:33:00.980 I'm keeping my mouth shut and my head down.

00:33:03.460 I just don't go to campus if I don't have to.

00:33:07.580 I get that.

00:33:08.580 You know, I mean, not everybody likes doing this kind of confrontational engagement with

00:33:13.100 people.

00:33:14.180 And also you could get fired and that's a problem.

00:33:17.540 Yes.

00:33:17.660 So I, I, I am worried about that.

00:33:20.460 So what I wanted to ask you about this is that, uh, when you're talking about your friends

00:33:26.920 in academia, and, uh, usually I see that it is those who have tenure who are talking about

00:33:33.500 things if they decide to do so.

00:33:35.880 Most who don't, they, they face the problem of they may get instantly fired, but they're,

00:33:41.880 they can also get more than instantly fired because it seems to me that one of the problems

00:33:46.320 with what we can loosely call progressivism is that it subjectivizes things so much that

00:33:54.620 it creates a form of domination in the workplace. 0.92

00:33:58.780 And, uh, this may sound a bit Marxist, I'm not a Marxist at all, but I think that in this case, the, this does create a framework where the customer is always right in a sense.

00:34:12.820 And there are a lot of customers with lots of different things that they want.

00:34:17.280 So it seems to me that those who can, who are in academia have massive problems with respect

00:34:24.580 to teaching their subject.

00:34:26.620 Because the, the way I found it is that teaching philosophy is supposed to be challenging.

00:34:32.300 I'm thinking of the Socrates in the early platonic dialogues.

00:34:36.340 It's not supposed to be necessarily a happy thing for those who are, uh, who, who are once interlocutors, but it seems to me that this kind of education can't be delivered anymore.

00:34:50.260 Yeah, it's a big problem.

00:34:52.000 Uh, professors are afraid of students, uh, who will openly criticize them or turn them in to the thought police on campus, the DEI bureaucracy, diversity, equity, and inclusion, bureaucracy, and so on.

00:35:05.780 Uh, and, or student evaluations, you know, all universities happen.

00:35:10.160 Um, and for good reason, I mean, it's good, you know, how do administrators know what professors are doing in their classroom unless they ask the students what's going on in there?

00:35:17.680 And, uh, but that could backfire, of course, when the students turn on the professors.

00:35:22.280 I think the problem is twofold.

00:35:23.800 One is, um, college campuses are no longer what you just described as they're more, they really are more like homes or a home away from home for these students that are transitioning between high school and adulthood.

00:35:36.780 And, uh, you know, their so-called safe spaces, they're supposed to be safe spaces, like that famous viral video of, of, um, the students surrounding Nicholas Christakis at Yale University screaming at them.

00:35:49.460 You know, and there was that one student, you know, this is our home, you know, you have to, you're supposed to make a safe home for us.

00:35:55.600 And he's like, no, I'm not, that's not what we're doing here.

00:35:58.900 You're in college, you're not at home.

00:36:00.940 And they're like, yes, we are.

00:36:02.600 They're screaming and crying.

00:36:03.880 It's like, oh my God, how did this happen?

00:36:05.980 Part of it may be the coddling, you know, of students by helicopter parents.

00:36:11.020 I'm one of them as a baby boomer.

00:36:13.600 You know, some of that's true.

00:36:14.900 Um, but also I think the shift in, uh, economic incentives for universities that have become so expensive, they really have to, they really do have to make the universities appealing to students.

00:36:25.580 That's why they spent all this money on climbing walls and swimming pools and all this other stuff that has nothing to do with academia or before that sports programs, you know, uh, that is pretty far removed from your Socratic model, which is what we have to get back to.

00:36:42.620 And there's a lot of pushback.

00:36:44.100 I mean, there are a lot of private colleges, um, a lot of the religious colleges.

00:36:48.040 I'm not, you know, I'm an atheist, but I have to admire the Christian colleges that are going, we're not going to do any of this.

00:36:53.540 We're going back to basics.

00:36:55.280 Um, okay, good.

00:36:56.760 Okay.

00:36:57.380 So I want to ask you as a skeptic, specifically as a skeptic, when you listen to all these people who call themselves progressive, and I say this because to my mind, this is not necessarily progress, but when all these people are sort of bombarding others with message that the message that they are so sensitive.

00:37:17.540 They are so sensitive and so much caring about the world and they want to create that safe space.

00:37:24.680 Do you ever have second thoughts about their intentions?

00:37:28.520 Uh, well, I'm a twofold mind there.

00:37:30.560 I think a lot of them, most of them probably do have good intentions, uh, you know, in the old days, we would have called this liberalism, you know, you're supposed to be open and tolerant of people different from you, you know, and in the 1950s, 60s, this was a good value to have because most people were not particularly open and tolerant to people different from them, particularly in America with race.

00:37:53.700 So, so all, so all that's good, you know, and then, you know, say the same, you know, women's rights, same sex marriage, gay rights, you know, the, this kind of openness and tolerance, this liberal, these liberal values were really important.

00:38:07.500 It's what drove those rights revolutions to happen in the case of same sex marriage and gay rights.

00:38:12.700 That's, that's the fastest rights revolution in history.

00:38:15.880 I mean, we went from 2011 examples I give in 2011, both Hillary and Barack Obama were against same sex marriage.

00:38:24.340 At least they said so publicly.

00:38:26.020 And by 2015, just four years later, Supreme Court voted, um, same sex marriage, the law of the land.

00:38:31.820 And it also included, um, you know, sexual orientation as part of civil rights, uh, law that protects, um, these, these people.

00:38:40.600 All right.

00:38:41.220 So, um, what's happened since then is kind of a shift in the subject, um, almost an ontological difference.

00:38:50.220 Uh, when you're talking about trans, the sense on the left is that this is the next revolution, right? 0.97

00:38:57.380 We had civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, now trans rights.

00:39:01.420 Okay.

00:39:01.860 Some of this I get, you know, I, I don't think trans people should be fired just because they're trans or they should be discriminated against.

00:39:07.640 It, you know, just everybody should be protected by the law, treated equally under the law and so on full stop.

00:39:13.640 Doesn't matter what the category is, you know, but the, the idea that then back to your empirical question about morality.

00:39:20.640 Can people actually change sex? 0.97

00:39:23.640 And the answer is no, they can't.

00:39:25.640 This is an ontological question.

00:39:27.640 There are just in a, in a sexual reproducing species like us, all mammals, almost all mammals, you know, you can't change sex.

00:39:35.640 You just can't, it's, you know, it's just an ontological category of its own male or female.

00:39:40.640 They are different gender.

00:39:41.640 There's a little bit more blending and overlap, but, but for the most part, even gender is mostly driven by biology. 0.94

00:39:47.640 So there, I think they're just making, uh, incorrect inference from these previous rights revolutions to what they see as the next one.

00:39:55.640 So I think, uh, in terms of their motives, I think, I think they're mostly wanting to do good.

00:40:02.640 They, they want people to be treated nice and so on.

00:40:05.640 So do I, I think they're going about it all the wrong way.

00:40:08.640 It's making things worse.

00:40:09.640 The whole DEI bureaucracy is a bad idea.

00:40:12.640 It's a terrible idea.

00:40:13.640 Treating people instead of as individuals, but as members of a group that we're going to discreet, we're going to categorize you as, I don't have to know anything about you.

00:40:23.640 All's I know is you're white and that's all I need to know. 0.99

00:40:26.640 This is actually a terrible idea.

00:40:28.640 And that's what they've done.

00:40:29.640 And I don't think that this constitutes progress.

00:40:32.640 So yeah, that's, that's rigorous.

00:40:36.640 So when you're talking about, uh, people who have good intentions, I, I don't doubt that a lot of them do have, but there's a time where you, there's a play.

00:40:46.640 There's a, let's say a question that comes to mind sometimes that if someone has good intentions and they don't even stop to think to, to give, let's say just a few minutes of thought to see what they are suggesting.

00:41:02.640 How isn't that a form of vice?

00:41:07.640 Isn't that a form of criminal negligence in this case?

00:41:10.640 Yes.

00:41:11.640 Because the consequences are terrible.

00:41:13.640 And yes, that's right.

00:41:15.640 Um, well again, so it does sometimes come down to what the law allows.

00:41:20.640 This is why you do have to fight the battle, not only like what you and I are doing battle of ideas, but sometimes you have to do it from the top down through legislation, right?

00:41:29.640 So, um, in your neck of the woods, they're, you know, closing down a Tavistock clinic from doing any more, uh, gender surgeries and hormone treatments and so on.

00:41:38.640 That was good.

00:41:39.640 That was good and necessary because I'm not sure we could have done that just with the battle of ideas.

00:41:44.640 Sometimes you have to do that.

00:41:46.640 I mean, the slavery did not end in the United States until, uh, we fought a civil war and 650,000 people died.

00:41:52.640 Sometimes you have to change the law.

00:41:54.640 Sometimes you need men with guns to make things happen.

00:41:58.640 I mean, this happened in integrating schools in the South in the 19 late fifties, early sixties, that took the president setting in federal troops, men with guns to say, you are going to integrate these schools.

00:42:12.640 And, and that's just the law of the lands the way it goes to bed.

00:42:16.640 Sometimes you have to do that.

00:42:18.640 Yeah.

00:42:19.640 You mentioned classical liberalism before.

00:42:21.640 And I think that the modern variant of liberalism is just the direct opposite in many cases, because first of all, there is no focus on civil society.

00:42:33.640 There is no focus on individuals.

00:42:35.640 There is no focus on individuals.

00:42:36.640 As you just said a few minutes ago, people are just treated as members of groups.

00:42:41.640 And most of the time, even the individual traits and the history of the individual is treated as morally arbitrary by a lot of, by many modern liberals.

00:42:53.640 I can think of John Rawls, for instance, in the theory of justice, who is saying that from a moral perspective, a lot of the influences upon individuals are morally arbitrary and their, their results, the consequences that result from them should be sort of addressed by his principles of justice.

00:43:14.640 So this is, I think, a major departure from classical liberalism to modern liberalism.

00:43:19.640 But one thing that I, that I see, especially when it comes to legislation that you mentioned before, is that there's yet another regress, and there's a regress towards more authoritarian and arbitrary government.

00:43:33.640 Because in my mind, the, the progress in political philosophy ever since the 17th century is to a large extent, a progress that has to do with curbing the arbitrary authority of government.

00:43:47.640 But now it seems to me that the, there are so many elements in council culture that give authority, how should I say, arbitrary authorities to governments, because, for instance, hate speech laws, they are so subjective, that is just to the, is left to the discretion of particular people to under, to interpret what constitutes psychological harm.

00:44:16.640 Because, on the one hand, I do think that there is such a thing as psychological harm.

00:44:21.640 But the, the way that people understand it are vastly different.

00:44:26.640 And it seems to me that once we subjectivize hate speech laws, and we also connect them, combine them with the silence is violence mentality, we have created an extremist ideology, where everyone who doesn't enthusiastically celebrate the latest trend,

00:44:45.640 is basically someone that violence against them is self-defense.

00:44:50.640 Because if disagreement is hate speech, silence is violence, then anything short of waving the latest version of the flag is something that, that constitutes an existential threat.

00:45:05.640 So it seems to me that there are two things going on, and a lot of, a lot of this progressivism is leading to an increase in arbitrary government.

00:45:16.640 Do you think that this is, this has a hint of truth in it?

00:45:19.640 Oh yeah, I, I, you said it even better than I would say it, so I'll just say ditto.

00:45:24.640 I agree.

00:45:25.640 Well, let me expand on it a little bit.

00:45:27.640 I mean, the, you know, progressives are not, they're regressives.

00:45:30.640 You know, they're not liberals, they're ill liberals.

00:45:32.640 Um, the woke, far left woke progressives are not liberals.

00:45:37.640 So they don't represent most people left of center.

00:45:40.640 Um, I think what's going on here is they are a minority with a big voice.

00:45:45.640 Uh, and they get a lot of attention.

00:45:47.640 I mean, part of it's the, you know, the kind of the structure of the news media, you know, you know, you, you send the camera crew to where the school shooting is not where the school shooting isn't.

00:45:57.640 So where there's protests and riots on campus, of course, they're going to get covered, you know, but most college campuses, I used to do a lot of talks on college campuses.

00:46:06.640 Usually nothing's going on.

00:46:07.640 You just walk around.

00:46:08.640 It's this beautiful, bucolic place.

00:46:10.640 Students are just hanging out.

00:46:11.640 Um, you know, so I, I don't, I don't think it's a, it's, it's a big, as big a problem as it looks.

00:46:16.640 Um, if you just follow conservative media, it looks like every campus is just falling apart and just going riotous insane.

00:46:25.640 And that that's not the case.

00:46:27.640 Uh, that said, we do have to push back because even if it's 1% or 5% or 10% causing the problem, um, they can silence the majority who don't want anything to do with that.

00:46:37.640 They're afraid to speak up.

00:46:39.640 They they're afraid they'll be canceled next.

00:46:41.640 You know, one of the things with witch hunts is, is a preemptive denunciation of somebody else before they denounce you.

00:46:47.640 Right.

00:46:48.640 This is an old, very old sociological phenomenon.

00:46:51.640 So to break that, you have to speak up.

00:46:53.640 And the more of us that speak up, the more everybody else can see that they're thinking like the majority us think, not like the minority of the far left.

00:47:03.640 And so in, uh, social psychology, this is called pluralistic ignorance or the spiral of silence where everybody thinks everybody else thinks something when in fact they don't.

00:47:12.640 And until somebody speaks up, uh, nobody knows this, but the more people speak up, this is why you have to have free, free press and free speech.

00:47:20.640 And, you know, people, uh, letting their voices be heard so that everybody can see that actually most people don't agree with these far left positions and then they're freer to speak up.

00:47:31.640 And then they're less likely to be canceled or fired or whatever, when everybody can see what's actually going on.

00:47:36.640 Okay.

00:47:37.640 So I have two questions here.

00:47:38.640 So number one, how did this minority come to have so much political pool? 0.98

00:47:44.640 And number two, what is going to happen with the clash within the protected groups camp between, for instance, uh, the trans group and the, and the pro pro, um, Islam group?

00:48:03.640 Because there seems to me to be in a lot of, I mean, many campuses, there are a lot of people who are talking about the Israel Palestine conflict and they have already picked up a side.

00:48:16.640 And, uh, a lot, many of the times the side they have picked seems to me to be antithetical to the values that they claim to profess.

00:48:25.640 In other words, when we're talking about the movement queers for Palestine, there are several questions as to how important they are, but what's going to happen there?

00:48:35.640 Because the protected groups that a lot of the progressivists that are in fact regressivists are claiming to defend, they, they're fundamentally clashing.

00:48:45.640 So what's going to happen there with that clash?

00:48:48.640 Well, I, of course I don't know for sure, but I do think, um, this too shall pass.

00:48:53.640 I think the pendulum is swinging the other way, maybe not on the Palestine Israel question just yet, but, but soon.

00:49:00.640 Um, I mean, I, I think it's good that we've all been exposed to the rabid antisemitism in, uh, in these college campuses and a lot of these, uh, pro Palestinian, uh, protests, you know, again, an argument for free speech and covering all this stuff.

00:49:18.640 Let everybody have their voices heard.

00:49:20.640 I want to know if you hate Jews.

00:49:22.640 I, I want, I want to know that like, you know, should I be free to read Mein Kampf?

00:49:26.640 Yeah, you should read Mein Kampf.

00:49:28.640 Right.

00:49:29.640 Or the equivalent of it today.

00:49:30.640 I want to know what people are thinking that these hate speech laws, like, well, you know, Holocaust, when I was writing my Holocaust denial book, denying history about the Holocaust deniers.

00:49:38.640 I was astonished.

00:49:39.640 I had no idea that, uh, in most countries, what these Holocaust deniers were writing about was illegal, including Canada.

00:49:46.640 Uh, you know, it's like, I, I can't read what Ernst Zundel or David Irving has to say.

00:49:51.640 I want to read that.

00:49:52.640 I think they're completely wrong and I'm going to debunk it.

00:49:55.640 Right.

00:49:56.640 That's the way to deal with it.

00:49:57.640 And so I think in the case of, um, the, you know, the current crisis with, um, Israel and Palestine on college campuses, uh, you know, I think those recent congressional hearings with the presidents of Penn, MIT and Harvard to not denounce antisemitism was a wake up call.

00:50:17.640 I think this is great.

00:50:18.640 Great.

00:50:19.640 I mean, I'm glad it was televised videos went viral.

00:50:21.640 You know, hundreds of millions of people are now aware.

00:50:24.640 Oh my God, these college campuses have lost their minds, you know, cause they went so far.

00:50:30.640 And so the, the pushback is immediate.

00:50:32.640 Right.

00:50:33.640 Yeah.

00:50:34.640 Denunciations and new groups sprouting up, you know, defending Israel, defending Jews and so on.

00:50:38.640 You know, that I think I'm encouraged by that.

00:50:41.640 I think this too shall pass.

00:50:43.640 I do.

00:50:44.640 Uh, I'm worried about antisemitism in the deeper sense.

00:50:47.640 It's cause it's been around for thousands of years.

00:50:49.640 I don't think it's going to go away completely, obviously, but yeah, I don't know.

00:50:53.640 I'm, I'm optimistic.

00:50:54.640 I agree with you.

00:50:55.640 And I also want to point out something else because you mentioned the conservative media

00:51:01.640 and how they present the situation in, in, um, university.

00:51:07.640 So here at the low seaters, we, we can be called also conservative media.

00:51:13.640 We also have conservatives and classical liberals.

00:51:16.640 And, uh, a lot of the coverage of the, what's going on in the universities is coverage that

00:51:21.140 I have done.

00:51:22.640 And, um, I don't, the, the position for instance, that I'm putting forward is not that every campus

00:51:28.880 is as bad as any other, but, uh, it's more on an intellectual level, uh, more of that.

00:51:35.880 A lot of views are being taught in school.

00:51:38.880 A lot of the decolonization studies that are being pushed forward that are, you could say

00:51:45.880 against Western civilization.

00:51:47.880 And this is something that should be addressed.

00:51:49.880 Obviously the intensity in which this takes place is not the same in every campus, but

00:51:54.880 I think for instance, that the, I read recently that, uh, Plato and Aristotle got canceled in

00:52:02.880 some places and that they said that they need to decolonize the curriculum and stuff.

00:52:07.880 So this is something that I would talk about, but not in the sense that, um, all of the people

00:52:13.880 there are deranged, uh, activists who are burning down the school.

00:52:17.880 I think they're fundamentally wrong, but I was just wanting to say that, that this is not the

00:52:23.880 criticism that I was making of the campuses.

00:52:26.880 Certainly.

00:52:27.880 And, but I'm glad you do make those because we have to know what's going on.

00:52:30.880 Even if it is a minority, I mean, the cancellation of Plato, Aristotle, it goes, you know, back

00:52:34.880 to the late eighties, early nineties and the pushback against the, you know, history of Western

00:52:39.880 civilization, you know, as it was taught, you know, too many old white guys in there. 0.75

00:52:43.880 Right. 0.95

00:52:44.880 Okay.

00:52:45.880 All right.

00:52:46.880 Fair enough.

00:52:47.880 Mix it up a little bit, but don't, you know, don't eliminate Western culture.

00:52:49.880 I do think in terms, I am worried that, um, you know, that the antisemitism we're seeing,

00:52:55.880 it isn't just anti Western values, uh, or anti capitalism or anti, it's something about the

00:53:03.880 Jews and Israel.

00:53:04.880 And here's my example.

00:53:05.880 You know, Israel as a state doesn't, um, deserve to exist because of, you know, they 1.00

00:53:10.880 colonize the land, they're genocidal, they kill innocent people and on and on and on.

00:53:14.880 Well, the United States has certainly has a dark track record, you know, of enslaving 0.53

00:53:20.880 Africans for a long, long time, uh, confiscating the land of native Americans. 1.00

00:53:27.880 I mean, hundreds of millions of square miles.

00:53:30.880 Um, you know, the Louisiana purchase alone, you know, Jefferson bought it from Napoleon.

00:53:35.880 Well, it wasn't Napoleon's to sell.

00:53:37.880 It wasn't Jefferson's to buy.

00:53:39.880 I mean, come on.

00:53:40.880 What is that land worth to native Americans?

00:53:42.880 If we paid reparations, you know, or the bombing of, um, Dresden and Humber mass carpet 0.95

00:53:48.880 bombing that killed tens of thousands, really maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent German

00:53:53.880 civilians or the two, uh, nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:53:59.880 But no one's calling for the elimination of the United States.

00:54:02.880 Like the United States should just give the land back and cease to exist.

00:54:05.880 Nobody is saying that.

00:54:07.880 What is it about the, you know, and you can pick any country.

00:54:10.880 Every country has a dark history.

00:54:12.880 Uh, if you go back far enough.

00:54:13.880 Well, how come only Israel is being targeted as, you know, eliminated, elimination from the

00:54:20.880 river to the sea.

00:54:21.880 What do they mean?

00:54:22.880 They mean no Jewish state period. 0.90

00:54:25.880 There's no two state solution.

00:54:27.880 Not because they don't like the terms, uh, of the different offer, uh, uh, offers that

00:54:33.880 have been made, but that they don't want a Jewish state at all.

00:54:36.880 Full stop.

00:54:37.880 That's it.

00:54:38.880 It's, there's only a one state solution, Palestine. 0.98

00:54:41.880 That's it.

00:54:42.880 No Jews, no Israel. 1.00

00:54:43.880 Okay.

00:54:44.880 That's not normal, right?

00:54:45.880 That's not just, you know, we don't like Germany or we don't like this country or that country

00:54:50.880 because of their capitalists or colonialists.

00:54:52.880 I mean, Germany had colonies as did, you know, the Belgian Congo and France.

00:54:57.880 And, you know, that, that, that was the time.

00:54:59.880 But no one's calling for the elimination of those states.

00:55:02.880 Why not?

00:55:03.880 It's cause of the, it's the Jews, right? 1.00

00:55:05.880 There's something about anti-Semitism that runs deeper than anything else.

00:55:10.880 So I think you mentioned, uh, before I wanted to say something that I think Thucydides said

00:55:16.880 that our ancestors were all thieves.

00:55:18.880 So if we really look down into the history of peoples, we will see that.

00:55:23.880 Well, and in American history, you know, pre-Columbia, pre-Columbian America that is before Columbus,

00:55:30.880 uh, or however far back you want to go for the, you know, Vikings came in here, whatever.

00:55:34.880 It doesn't matter.

00:55:35.880 You know, the Native American groups, there were hundreds and hundreds of so-called nations,

00:55:39.880 really nations as we think of them, but, but, um, you know, tribes and, you know, they

00:55:45.880 fought constantly.

00:55:46.880 We know this from the archeological record that, you know, large percentages of Native Americans

00:55:50.880 died violently at each other's hands.

00:55:53.880 That's just human nature.

00:55:55.880 You find that in the archeological record anywhere around the world.

00:55:58.880 There's nothing particularly noble savages about Native Americans. 1.00

00:56:02.880 They're just like everybody else.

00:56:04.880 So back to what you said about, um, what, uh, we listen about states and on the one hand

00:56:13.380 about the state of Israel and on the other about countries like Germany.

00:56:16.880 Could you, could we explain it in terms of, I mean, there are obviously lots of reasons,

00:56:22.880 but one reason that seems to me is that a lot of Western countries have already been infiltrated

00:56:29.880 by a lot of people who want to subvert them.

00:56:32.880 And they think that they can do this from within.

00:56:35.880 And that's something like that isn't the case in Israel.

00:56:39.880 Because for instance, in, in Germany, I think this is doubtlessly the case.

00:56:43.880 There are a lot of people in Germany from outside Germany who want to, let's say, subvert, subverted. 1.00

00:56:51.880 And perhaps they think that they could just do it from within slowly and steadily and let those

00:56:57.880 people just, um, elect far left politicians who are many times funded by, you could say,

00:57:05.880 actual far right people in the, from the non Western camp.

00:57:09.880 And they do this from within.

00:57:10.880 So, but do we explain the different rhetoric in terms of different tactics in different contexts?

00:57:18.880 It's true.

00:57:19.880 When Angela Merkel opened up the borders, um, uh, back when, almost a decade ago now,

00:57:24.880 um, you know, that, and let in a lot of people that did not share those Western values.

00:57:29.880 It does bring up an interesting, um, question of what is a nation state, right?

00:57:33.880 It's a group of people.

00:57:34.880 It's a language.

00:57:35.880 It's geography.

00:57:36.880 What is it?

00:57:37.880 Well, it's a whole suite of characteristics.

00:57:39.880 Um, and that's the world we live in.

00:57:40.880 We still live in a world of nation states.

00:57:42.880 It'd be nice if we had no political borders at all.

00:57:45.880 Just, you know, just economic free trade across any border and let ideas and, and goods and

00:57:51.880 services spread, you know, but we're centuries away from anything remotely like that.

00:57:55.880 Maybe we'll have it on Mars once Elon sends people there.

00:57:59.880 Uh, but you know, for the, for the most part now, you know, you have to restrict immigration.

00:58:05.880 Not, not just on numbers, but also on economic, um, and social cultural values.

00:58:11.880 Um, and every other, almost every other Western nation does this anyway.

00:58:16.880 You know, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, it's hard to immigrate to those places way harder

00:58:22.880 than America, you know? 0.99

00:58:23.880 So how can we get so much shit and they don't, you know? 1.00

00:58:26.880 Well, because we're the dominant nation, I guess. 0.99

00:58:28.880 I don't know.

00:58:29.880 Uh, but I do think, you know, it's reasonable to say the people we're going to let in, do

00:58:35.880 they share our values as, as a nation state, as a people?

00:58:39.880 And if they don't, well, then that's cause for restricting immigration.

00:58:43.880 I think.

00:58:44.880 But why is there so much backlash about the issue?

00:58:47.880 Because it seems to me that this is just blindingly obvious that when we have people who live

00:58:53.880 in a culture and that culture involves a pattern of, you know, actions, reactions, uh, emotions,

00:59:00.880 and valuations, just importing people from anywhere, especially when they are absolutely adamant

00:59:07.880 about not wanting to integrate, why is that happening?

00:59:11.880 And it seems to me that.

00:59:12.880 I think people's brains are colonized by, people's brains are colonized by viruses,

00:59:18.880 ideological viruses that just impede their critical thinking.

00:59:23.880 They just don't think it through.

00:59:24.880 I mean, it's again, like these kind of man in the street with the camera crew out there at

00:59:28.880 these college campuses, you know, from the river to the sea, what's the river?

00:59:32.880 Uh, I don't know.

00:59:34.880 You know, they don't even, they don't even know what they're chanting.

00:59:37.880 Right.

00:59:38.880 So, you know, not all of them are true believer ideologues out there to, you know, subvert,

00:59:43.880 uh, Western civilization. 1.00

00:59:44.880 Some of them are just idiots. 1.00

00:59:46.880 They're just out there chanting. 1.00

00:59:47.880 They don't even know what they're chanting.

00:59:49.880 Right.

00:59:50.880 All the more reason to turn the cameras on them and let everybody see what's going on

00:59:54.880 and then counter it with better ideas.

00:59:56.880 Yes.

00:59:57.880 Okay.

00:59:58.880 And, um, I wanted to ask you about these viruses.

01:00:02.880 So for instance, you say there are some viruses that affect our thinking.

01:00:07.880 So what are these viruses according to you?

01:00:10.880 Because for instance, according to, yes, I want to hear your answer.

01:00:13.880 Yeah.

01:00:14.880 Oh, well, I mean, you already know the answer.

01:00:16.880 I mean, this postmodernism, this assault on truth that we can't know truth, that, you know,

01:00:22.880 objective moral values and objective empirical truths aren't, uh, don't exist.

01:00:28.880 They're just the subject of, uh, culture bound in a particular Western culture that is no better than any other culture. 0.99

01:00:35.880 All that stuff we've been, you know, talking about and going through, you know, for the past half century.

01:00:40.880 And, you know, it started in academia, but it's filtered out now into the corporate world and culture at large.

01:00:48.880 I mean, these ideas are no longer constrained to classrooms, unfortunately, which is why we have to broaden our audience.

01:00:55.880 And, you know, alert people, this is what's going on.

01:00:58.880 And because we know from polls, most people are not on board.

01:01:02.880 Just say, take a diversity, equity, and inclusion, uh, bureaucracy that started on college campuses.

01:01:07.880 Now it's a $10 billion a year industry just in the United States, just in corporate America, just all corporations putting their employees through these training programs.

01:01:19.880 It's, it's a massive, huge business and they're all required to do it.

01:01:23.880 Um, but if you ask people, how do they feel about it?

01:01:26.880 The vast majority think it's complete nonsense.

01:01:28.880 You know, they're not racist.

01:01:30.880 You know, they don't have a problem with this person or that person.

01:01:33.880 They don't, but they're being assumed and accused of being.

01:01:36.880 So do these corporations really believe it?

01:01:38.880 I think maybe some are true believers.

01:01:40.880 I think most are just going along with it because they're, they're, you know, legally or they're protect themselves legally from lawsuits.

01:01:47.880 They make, they, they look good culturally.

01:01:49.880 They think, um, you know, by saying, look, we, we support DEI or whatever.

01:01:54.880 Most people don't support it.

01:01:56.880 Now that, you know, there's pushback against this from the, both the bottom up by people like me and you, but also top down, you know, where people like Christopher Rufo are agitating politicians to change, um, the law that is legislate DEI out of the world of business and then academia.

01:02:15.880 And that's, that is happening.

01:02:18.880 I think though the problem with this is that, uh, I don't see it going away.

01:02:23.880 I hear a lot of the people, and I think you said it before that it is a sort of fashion and it will go away.

01:02:28.880 I have an argument and I want to hear what you're going to say about it.

01:02:32.880 So it seems to me that it is the wokeness is the perfect divide and conquer tactic because it, and it is the combination of multiculturalism and social justice in a particular understanding of both terms.

01:02:51.880 Because multiculturalism, it says on the one hand that there are many groups within a culture and those groups that are not dominant should not have pressures to assimilate to the dominant culture.

01:03:04.880 And then the instrument of social justice comes and says that we need to address historical, um, injustices.

01:03:11.880 And by doing this, we are going to not just allow the pro the protected groups to be, we're going to actually treat them preferentially.

01:03:21.880 And the question there seems to me that if that, that a lot of the groups that are placed within the protected category have clashing interests.

01:03:32.880 Uh, for instance, the trans, uh, lobby and the radical feminist lobby, they have clashing interests and both of them have clashing interests with a lot of, uh, let's say immigrants who are talking about, uh, completely subverting, uh, some basic institutions of the Western civilization. 0.60

01:03:50.880 So the problem seems to me, and that's where I get very skeptical.

01:03:55.880 And I don't think that this is just, uh, um, this is just an issue of not thinking it through is that every time that we see people from each of these groups clash with each other, the official narrative, at least from the progressives is that the reason why they clash is because they have remnants of the pressure to assimilate to the dominant culture.

01:04:19.880 So in other words, the way to keep clashing groups together and the way to keep them from killing each other is by inventing a common enemy, hold them together and give political support to the progressive parties and constantly demonize the group that is pronounced to be dominant.

01:04:40.880 So it seems to me that this doesn't seem to me to be going away.

01:04:45.880 What, what do you think?

01:04:46.880 Yeah.

01:04:47.880 Uh, well, those are all good points.

01:04:48.880 I'm not sure what's going to happen.

01:04:49.880 Nobody does.

01:04:50.880 I'm not a prophet, but I see the pendulum swinging back the other way, maybe cause I'm overly optimistic.

01:04:57.880 Um, you know, there is pushback against these most people again, survey survey show most people are not on board with these particular movements, the ones you just went through.

01:05:07.880 Uh, and again, the more of us that speak out, the more other people that are afraid to speak out or will then speak out and say, no, I'm not on board with this.

01:05:15.880 A lot of life depends, you know, turns on clashing rights or conflicting rights.

01:05:20.880 You know, Thomas Sowell famously said, you know, there are no solutions.

01:05:24.880 They're just compromises.

01:05:25.880 Most of life is just compromises, particularly in politics.

01:05:29.880 You know, so you have the trans rights versus women's rights. 1.00

01:05:34.880 Just take sports or, or private spaces like bathrooms, prisons and, uh, locker rooms and so on.

01:05:41.880 You can't have both.

01:05:42.880 Right.

01:05:43.880 And by the way, it's just to point out, it's only male to female transit that we're talking about here, you know, female to male trans the other way.

01:05:52.880 It's there's no particular issues that are on the table there.

01:05:55.880 Um, so, you know, I want to support trans rights or human rights.

01:05:59.880 Yes.

01:06:00.880 But if you are a male to female trans and you want to compete against women in women's sports, I'm going to say, no, that's not, that's not fair to the women. 0.95

01:06:10.880 So it depends how we understand human rights to what we understand them doing.

01:06:14.880 Yes.

01:06:15.880 And, and, and, you know, women spent, you know, a century fighting for their rights and to say, we're going to take them away now and let men dominate you again. 1.00

01:06:22.880 You know, this is just perverse, you know, it's just, it's not right.

01:06:26.880 You can't have everything.

01:06:27.880 So you got to vote one way or the other.

01:06:29.880 You know, you got to let these men into women's locker rooms just because they identified as a woman. 1.00

01:06:33.880 No, we're not going to allow that.

01:06:35.880 You're out.

01:06:36.880 I mean, the famous case here is just of Leah Thomas.

01:06:39.880 The swimmer just, um, got, uh, voted down from being allowed in the Olympic swim trials this last weekend.

01:06:45.880 That's good.

01:06:46.880 Right.

01:06:47.880 It's good for women. 1.00

01:06:48.880 It's good for women. 1.00

01:06:49.880 I don't care who Leah Thomas or will Thomas or whatever you want to call her.

01:06:53.880 Yeah.

01:06:54.880 Well, whatever words you want to use.

01:06:56.880 You know, I don't, I don't know anything.

01:06:58.880 I don't know him.

01:06:59.880 Maybe he really has psychological issues and, you know, he doesn't identify.

01:07:04.880 He feels he's in the wrong, but whatever.

01:07:05.880 I don't care.

01:07:06.880 Do whatever you got to do to make your life better.

01:07:09.880 So you flourish.

01:07:10.880 I'm all for that, but you can't just do that at the cost of somebody else's rights.

01:07:15.880 Sorry.

01:07:16.880 That's too bad.

01:07:17.880 Can't have everything.

01:07:18.880 I mean, uh, you know, Caitlyn Jenner famously, formerly Bruce Jenner, you know, she completely supports

01:07:24.880 everything I just said, even though she's a male to female trans, you can't have everything. 0.59

01:07:30.880 Yeah.

01:07:31.880 Okay.

01:07:32.880 And I want us to move to the last question now, because, uh, this is sometimes, uh, uh, sort

01:07:38.880 of, uh, depressing kind of work, but, uh, do you think that there are causes to be optimistic

01:07:45.880 about, uh, the world in the, in the next decades and by world, I mean, not necessarily the entire

01:07:53.880 world because obviously in some places things are going to be good.

01:07:57.880 In others, things are going to be bad, but I'm talking about the, what we call the Western

01:08:02.880 world broadly speaking.

01:08:04.880 Do you think that what we are looking forward to is just further decline, or do you think

01:08:11.880 that there are possibilities of, uh, improvement?

01:08:14.880 Well, further decline, actually further progress.

01:08:18.880 I think the decline you're talking about that we've been talking about here is, you

01:08:23.880 know, is, is part of the three steps forward, two steps back.

01:08:26.880 You know, we're talking about the two steps back, but don't forget the three steps forward

01:08:30.880 we've made over the last several centuries.

01:08:32.880 So I'm, I don't describe myself as an optimist or a realist.

01:08:36.880 You know, what does the data show?

01:08:37.880 The data shows that we've made a lot of progress and we'll continue to do so.

01:08:41.880 Not inevitably, you know, not stepwise.

01:08:45.880 Literally, you know, every single day is going to be better than the previous day.

01:08:49.880 That's not how that would be magic.

01:08:51.880 That's not how the world works.

01:08:52.880 But overall, you know, if we take a, say a decadal timeframe rather than weeks, months,

01:08:58.880 months or years or centuries, we can see it on the time span of decades where the change

01:09:05.880 really does happen.

01:09:07.880 Um, it's slow enough.

01:09:08.880 You don't quite see it.

01:09:09.880 You certainly don't see it in the new cycle or the yearly roundups.

01:09:13.880 You know, it's like, here are all the bad things that happened last year.

01:09:16.880 Okay.

01:09:17.880 Um, yeah, I know it looks bad, but there are websites, you know, that track all the good

01:09:22.380 things that happen.

01:09:23.380 You know, here's how many hundreds of millions of people are no longer in poverty this year.

01:09:28.880 Yeah.

01:09:29.880 This makes no headlines.

01:09:30.880 Nobody covers it except these handful of web pages like human progress.org.

01:09:34.880 Uh, and our world and data.org.

01:09:36.880 That wrote Max Roser's website.

01:09:38.880 There are people that track this, but, um, uh, but the major media sources don't pay any

01:09:44.880 attention because it's not their business model.

01:09:46.880 So I think if we stay the course and keep pushing back against the assaults on progress,

01:09:53.880 freedom, liberty, autonomy, individual rights, equal treatment under the law, rationality,

01:09:59.880 science, objective truth, objective moral values, you know, we will win the day in the

01:10:04.880 long run over the decades, I would say.

01:10:06.880 Great.

01:10:07.880 Okay.

01:10:08.880 Okay.

01:10:09.880 And thank you very much for this optimistic message.

01:10:11.880 And on that note, I want to thank you very much for this interview and I hope everyone

01:10:17.880 enjoyed it and see you next time.

01:10:30.880 Bye.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 05, 2024

Interview with Michael Shermer

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Transcript