The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Book Club #66 ｜ James O'Brien's How Not To Be Wrong

00:00:00.000 Hello there, friends, and I think it's time to finish off the trilogy, shall we?

00:00:05.980 It's time to look at how not to be wrong, the art of changing your mind,

00:00:12.140 the most humbly titled James O'Brien book.

00:00:15.020 Now, I have covered with Carl and Josh now being replaced for this episode by Luca Johnson.

00:00:22.220 Thank you for joining us.

00:00:23.100 Thank you. I think this is my real initiation, isn't it?

00:00:25.820 Yes, this is the trial by fire, is talking about James O'Brien for half an hour to an hour.

00:00:33.160 And this will be a shorter one because we've covered the other two books in this unholy trilogy,

00:00:38.800 which are How to Be Right, which is his book on how to berate your friends and family

00:00:44.420 into becoming an insufferable Britlib centrist, and How They Broke Britain,

00:00:50.460 which I was hoping to give some kind of insight into the legitimate criticisms that leftists may have

00:00:57.340 towards some right-wing figures, like actually going through their history,

00:01:01.800 pointing out legislation and actions they've taken which have reasonably damaged the country

00:01:07.480 in very legitimate ways, but it was instead just James O'Brien whining about people that he didn't like

00:01:12.600 for personal reasons, this is going over the same kind of arguments.

00:01:18.520 There's nothing in here in terms of like what he's talking about in the subjects that isn't

00:01:23.140 well-trodden ground, especially there is a chapter at the end of here called Trans.

00:01:27.840 It's the second to last chapter before the conclusion.

00:01:30.340 And if you remember the How to Be Right book club, there was a chapter on Trans in that as well,

00:01:35.520 which completely negates this one.

00:01:37.260 It's the same chapter.

00:01:38.400 It's the laziest thing ever.

00:01:40.960 What is more interesting in this book, outside of the arguments, which aren't what I'm going

00:01:44.740 to be focusing on, just assume you'd be correct, they are the same

00:01:48.280 bad faith, low information, low IQ arguments that we've seen in the other ones.

00:01:56.500 Just a quick thing, is he still like putting transcripts of his LBC chats?

00:02:00.460 Oh yes, I'll mention that in a moment. 0.78

00:02:03.100 What a lazy, lazy...

00:02:04.400 Yes, what's most interesting about this book is in the way that How to Be Right, 0.88

00:02:08.400 How to Be Right was about how to berate and morally grandstand to your friends and family.

00:02:13.200 How not to be wrong is much darker than that, because it's how to berate and gaslight yourself 0.98

00:02:20.300 into being an insufferable shitlib. 0.90

00:02:25.240 In a really, really dark way, what you're reading here is essentially is a transcript of a mind 0.98

00:02:30.460 at war with itself.

00:02:32.980 Before I get into any more details on that, I will point out, as Carl said, there is still

00:02:40.060 an incredible amount of laziness in this book.

00:02:42.240 So not only is the overall page count lower, this one's 219 pages, about 30% of the book,

00:02:50.540 65 roughly, of those pages are reproductions of the calls from his shows, or letters from

00:02:57.620 fans and other non-original material.

00:03:00.120 One's a reproduction of a large promo that he delivered at the beginning of a show back

00:03:05.420 in, like, 2009.

00:03:06.560 So a lot of this is unoriginal material, like the same one.

00:03:09.880 It might be a little bit off, because one of them, here again is where it gets very,

00:03:14.640 very dark, is not a reproduction of a transcript of a call.

00:03:19.080 One of these is a new original piece that he wrote for this, where he is creating a call

00:03:25.840 between himself as presenter versus his own internal monologue, where he berates himself

00:03:34.240 via this fake call into taking on more progressive, more liberal opinions, whereas clearly through

00:03:42.860 his internal monologue, he would still be on the left, but there's a part of him that is

00:03:48.260 still heavily influenced, somewhat at least, by his, like, Christian-Catholic upbringing into

00:03:54.140 having some kind of traditional values, which he feels to be right, but which his alternative

00:04:00.580 call presenter persona berates him into abandoning.

00:04:05.680 It's very dark.

00:04:07.200 That's amazing.

00:04:08.000 Very, very dark.

00:04:09.400 So I'll go through some of that.

00:04:11.720 I'll go through it chapter by chapter and highlight some of the stuff.

00:04:14.800 Luca, if you'd like to just flip through, we've done this the last few times, I've made

00:04:19.260 plenty of notes.

00:04:20.460 You have.

00:04:21.120 In the margins, not all of them flattering.

00:04:25.120 Not all of them flattering.

00:04:26.420 Not all of them flattering, no.

00:04:28.060 There's one here where you've just got a note that says, nope.

00:04:32.260 Nope, yeah.

00:04:34.160 Again, the actual arguments that he's presenting are the same that you've seen in all of his

00:04:38.400 other books, so they can easily be dismissed through a basic rudimentary understanding of

00:04:43.500 either human nature or the facts of what he's talking about, which is why it's very easy

00:04:47.560 to just go through the margins and write, that's wrong, you're lying, various expletives.

00:04:53.780 But so let's start off with the introduction is just him introducing everything.

00:04:59.220 He's letting everybody know that he's such a good person.

00:05:02.240 He's lampshading all of this with, if I get anything wrong, just know it's because I'm

00:05:08.560 not, I'm still ignorant in a few things.

00:05:11.200 I've read my own book.

00:05:12.000 Yeah, I've not yet become as left-wing on some subjects as I should be.

00:05:18.660 Yeah, the book on how not to be wrong hasn't yet been written, that's why I am writing it.

00:05:22.600 Yeah, and it's this very strange perspective, which I think we can see through all Brit

00:05:28.120 Libs, Lib Dem types like this, which is that your own instincts are inherently wrong.

00:05:34.020 The instincts that you've been developing through generations and generations of hereditary

00:05:41.180 and evolution are somehow honed to be the exact opposite of what they should be, because what

00:05:47.600 they should be is towing the leftist regime line on every subject.

00:05:52.280 And if, like James O'Brien, there's still just a small holdover bit of you, which is

00:05:57.380 holding on to those instincts.

00:05:59.260 Like, for instance, one of the later chapters is called Tattoos, Private Schools and Marriage.

00:06:05.440 And he says that he has this kind of instinct, it's chapter five if you want to go to it.

00:06:10.780 He's got this instinctive feeling that he doesn't like tattoos and doesn't think they look

00:06:15.720 professional.

00:06:16.280 He thinks that private slash public schools, as they are in the UK, are a good thing and

00:06:22.360 shouldn't be taxed too much and they shouldn't be taken away from the options of parents who

00:06:27.620 can afford them.

00:06:28.580 And he thinks that relationships based around marriage are more legitimate than ones based

00:06:33.840 around just, oh, we're going out.

00:06:35.860 Fully reactionary there.

00:06:36.880 Yeah, fully reactionary.

00:06:38.420 So he holds those views instinctually, and I can imagine they're a holdover from his Catholic 1.00

00:06:44.080 upbringing.

00:06:44.600 Yet.

00:06:46.760 Yet.

00:06:47.260 If you can pass me the book, I'll just read it here.

00:06:51.700 It seems unlikely that the three subjects under scrutiny here have ever been lumped together

00:06:55.960 quite like this before, but for me at least, they have something important in common.

00:06:59.960 I am quite wrong about all of them.

00:07:07.340 That is amazing.

00:07:08.820 So literally, literally, what you get there is this weakness in character, which is that

00:07:16.140 I feel this way, but my liberal pals at afternoon dinner parties disagree with me and use my own

00:07:26.340 tactics from how to be right to morally berate me about them.

00:07:29.960 So I must go internally and convince myself that they must be right because I'm not being open and

00:07:36.960 tolerant enough.

00:07:37.920 And lower the few standards I actually have.

00:07:40.400 It's a very strange weakness of character.

00:07:43.120 What's interesting there, though, is that a preference for private schools, tattoos...

00:07:49.080 What was the other one, sorry?

00:07:50.300 Marriage.

00:07:50.780 Marriage.

00:07:51.800 These aren't actually, like, yes or no questions.

00:07:55.040 These aren't deductively true or false.

00:07:56.900 I mean, maybe the marriage one is, actually.

00:07:58.340 But, like, they're not, like, deductively true or false.

00:08:01.160 These are more based in our prejudices, right?

00:08:04.120 These are more based in what we feel is the right way to do things.

00:08:07.360 And there are certain reasons.

00:08:08.540 I mean, like, you know...

00:08:09.560 I mean, I would say with tattoos, and this is from somebody who is engaged to a woman

00:08:14.060 with quite a few tattoos...

00:08:15.320 Yeah, my wife's got loads of them. 1.00

00:08:16.020 I quite like the look of tattoos.

00:08:17.480 I do, too.

00:08:18.160 It depends how they look.

00:08:19.540 But with a lot of people who I've seen with tattoos, you can tell from the kind of tattoos

00:08:23.740 that they get and the reasoning that they give for them, even with my missus in a few

00:08:27.380 cases, it's literally just spur-of-the-moment, quick judgment.

00:08:31.540 I just wanted it.

00:08:32.640 Yeah.

00:08:33.200 Which can show a certain kind of character, which is that you are impulsive.

00:08:37.000 You're impulsive, quick-to-snap judgments, which isn't always going to be a good reflection

00:08:42.680 on you.

00:08:43.580 And that's why you can have those inbuilt prejudices.

00:08:46.480 It's not that it doesn't have validity, but what it is is what we're aiming to accomplish,

00:08:52.560 right?

00:08:52.700 What we are aiming to accomplish is a certain level of standards, right?

00:08:55.680 And a certain...

00:08:56.440 We're trying to cultivate a certain kind of character, right?

00:08:58.980 But the kind of character we're trying to cultivate is exclusionary, right?

00:09:02.520 Oh, yeah.

00:09:02.800 It is deeply exclusionary.

00:09:04.420 It's like, no, we believe there are certain kinds of character that are superior to other

00:09:09.160 kinds of character.

00:09:09.960 Yes.

00:09:10.300 Now, these are all aesthetic and prejudicial judgments of our own.

00:09:14.120 Because, I mean, you know, technically, it's not necessarily that someone who has tattoos

00:09:19.360 is a bad character or anything like this.

00:09:20.940 It's just a general indicator that there are other issues.

00:09:24.480 But, like, logically or, like, mathematically, you know, you can't deduce one from the other.

00:09:33.460 What we do is we take a kind of holistic approach to the subject and make these kind of prejudicial

00:09:39.560 judgments based on it.

00:09:40.800 But generally, they're correct.

00:09:42.520 And it's generally correct for us to do this because we want to cultivate the certain kind

00:09:46.400 of character over the other kind of character.

00:09:47.980 And so there is no actual wrong in this.

00:09:50.960 He can't say, oh, you wanting someone who's, you know, married without tattoos, that's wrong.

00:09:56.320 You can't say that.

00:09:57.720 All you can say is, I don't share that prejudice.

00:10:00.140 Well, he says inherently that, you know, he's got a couple of daughters and that he will be

00:10:05.580 very unhappy and he won't be able to help it when they...

00:10:10.480 He says it like it's just in the stars.

00:10:13.440 It's just set, it's destined to happen, that they will get tattoos at some point.

00:10:20.080 And that he will be unhappy, but he'll be wrong.

00:10:23.240 He'll be wrong to be trying to set standards for his daughters, which is the opposite attack

00:10:28.900 that you should take as a father, especially a father of daughters, which is you need to

00:10:33.020 be the one setting these standards.

00:10:34.720 You can't just let your children walk all over you because, you know, children are very

00:10:38.760 willful.

00:10:39.280 They'll just do what they want unless you set the boundaries for them, and they'll keep

00:10:43.940 pushing those boundaries unless you enforce those boundaries.

00:10:47.040 So actually, if he actually follows through with the kind of parenting that he's going

00:10:51.580 to go through here, and this feels like a very personal way to go about it, but this

00:10:55.920 is just how I see it.

00:10:57.400 He's going to be setting his daughters up to make bad decisions in the future if he doesn't

00:11:02.260 set those and enforce those standards right now.

00:11:05.060 And he also says that, you know, he feels bad that when he sees his friends who aren't

00:11:10.480 married, that he feels like his relationship is in some way better than that.

00:11:15.340 It is, that's why.

00:11:16.160 Yeah, you've made a far stronger commitment than they have.

00:11:19.940 So there are reasons.

00:11:21.120 And it's born through.

00:11:22.040 Yeah, and there are reasons for this.

00:11:24.200 But again, he posts, unlike the last book where he's reproducing these calls in which he's

00:11:31.100 the one berating the evil bigot, he's the one who's taking the soapbox and standing

00:11:36.860 on it and letting everybody know what a good person is, he's the one taking the reactionary

00:11:42.400 position in many of these calls.

00:11:44.300 And he's going, oh, I'm not quite so sure about that.

00:11:47.560 I can't really logically explain it.

00:11:49.560 But there's something in my gut that tells me I disagree with you.

00:11:52.840 And he's the one getting browbeaten about these positions.

00:11:56.940 The Berkey in defense of prejudice is so true, though. 1.00

00:11:59.480 So for anyone who doesn't know, basically, Burke pointed out that the stock of wisdom

00:12:04.400 of any individual man is actually relatively small.

00:12:06.800 And so it's slightly less trustworthy.

00:12:09.280 It's informed by his personal prejudices and biases, particularly his prejudices, but his

00:12:14.320 biases and his blind spots.

00:12:16.780 But prejudice is the collective stock of wisdom that's been passed down to us through the

00:12:20.820 ages.

00:12:21.260 And so it's gone through many hands and through a long process of trial and error to find

00:12:25.360 that actually that's probably not good, even if we can't rationally explain on a

00:12:29.280 direct and immediate level why that's bad.

00:12:31.700 If the general trend has been against it, then there's got to be a reason for that.

00:12:35.660 And so it's probably safe to actually trust the prejudice in that case.

00:12:39.340 And actually, it's hard to think of a prejudice in which that's not kind of true.

00:12:43.380 Well, that's the thing.

00:12:44.440 Even coming down to just different things being appropriate for one sex more than the other

00:12:51.620 as well.

00:12:52.420 It's like, you know, I'm not a tattoo guy.

00:12:54.520 I don't find them in any way appealing.

00:12:56.500 However, I can appreciate the fact that generally they're a masculine thing and that they've

00:13:01.680 historically been associated with men.

00:13:04.540 And but now it's because, you know, we can't, you know, we can't break.

00:13:09.400 Well, it'd be sexist to say that, you know, they were more for one than the other.

00:13:13.120 Then the women have to be entitled to them, too. 1.00

00:13:15.380 And it just looks very unfeminine.

00:13:17.520 I personally like tattoos.

00:13:20.840 Yeah, I was going to say, I personally like them.

00:13:22.940 That's a thing of mine, you know.

00:13:24.840 But the thing is, I actually agree with the prejudice against tattoos.

00:13:28.660 Well, that's the thing as well.

00:13:30.080 And that's what I was going to follow up on.

00:13:32.660 Appropriately, because I think he is quite a Berkian himself, Thomas Sowell has a very

00:13:36.040 similar defense of prejudice in his book, Discriminations and Disparities, where he's

00:13:40.680 taking it from more of an empirical stance on the amount of information that you can

00:13:46.580 absorb relating to any one thing.

00:13:49.720 And he says, listen, in your day to day, if you're going around doing the thing that

00:13:54.820 you're supposed to, golden rule, judging everybody purely as an individual, then not

00:14:00.940 only are you going to put yourself at risk because you're going to be putting yourself

00:14:04.600 closer to people who might have bad intentions for you, you're also simply on a logical level,

00:14:10.280 not going to have enough time in the day to be able to do that kind of thing.

00:14:14.380 So the prejudices that we have built up based on stereotypes will be correct nine times out

00:14:21.280 of ten because they do give you an indication of the character of somebody.

00:14:25.300 So if you see somebody who is in broad daylight, say, got a face covering in a hoodie looking

00:14:33.560 like they're trying to hide themselves, you're better off avoiding them rather than going and

00:14:39.660 approaching them and trying to make them your best friend.

00:14:42.380 So it's better.

00:14:43.240 It's just a more efficient way to pass the information that we experience in our day to

00:14:49.740 day life and also to keep yourself safer.

00:14:52.860 That's one of the one of the reasons.

00:14:54.140 So you look at somebody with tattoos and yeah, you can think of exceptions like my missus,

00:14:59.120 your missus, people who have good character who've chosen to do them for their own reasons.

00:15:03.360 But again, nine times out of ten, the kind of people, especially when they have them all

00:15:08.680 the way up their neck and on their face, you can see that and go, okay, you're somebody

00:15:15.080 who kind of doesn't respect your own body in a way and makes these snap judgments and

00:15:20.540 also snap judgments that pile on top of one another because you run out of space on the

00:15:24.940 rest of your body.

00:15:25.840 So there's a way to judge people off the back of that.

00:15:29.280 But James O'Brien has decided that it's wrong to do so because that would be judgmental.

00:15:35.840 Okay.

00:15:36.000 But the thing is, like most of what we do every day is basically habitual anyway, right?

00:15:40.720 As in you've just, you know, I don't know.

00:15:42.680 What did you have for breakfast this morning, Luca?

00:15:45.060 Sardines on toast.

00:15:46.100 Yeah.

00:15:46.200 How much did you think about it?

00:15:47.440 Not at all.

00:15:48.280 Exactly.

00:15:48.560 What I had in the cupboard.

00:15:49.480 Exactly.

00:15:50.260 You just, from habit, right?

00:15:51.600 It's morning.

00:15:52.080 I need some food.

00:15:52.800 I'll hear us some food.

00:15:53.780 I'll make it and I'll eat it.

00:15:55.120 No rational calculation went into it whatsoever, right?

00:15:57.940 I did the same.

00:15:58.680 I'm like, oh, I've got some olives and some hummus in the fridge.

00:16:00.720 I'll just have a few of those before I walk to work, right?

00:16:03.060 Like, I didn't think about it at all.

00:16:05.080 No rational calculation.

00:16:06.200 And 90% of our daily lives is basically this.

00:16:08.940 Yeah.

00:16:09.140 And that's all entirely formed by prejudice.

00:16:11.700 Everything that we do.

00:16:12.700 And it's just, you would, like, Thomas Sowell's absolutely right.

00:16:15.420 You would have to spend so much of your day actually sitting down right now.

00:16:18.880 I have to think about this.

00:16:19.840 I have to weigh up the pros and cons of both things and calculate what I'm going to do.

00:16:23.420 No one does that.

00:16:24.280 No one does that.

00:16:24.920 You're prejudicial about the small things, so it's even more important that you're prejudicial

00:16:28.940 about the larger things.

00:16:30.240 Yeah.

00:16:30.540 And again, the fact that stereotype accuracy is so accurate all of the time just bolsters

00:16:38.360 all of these arguments.

00:16:39.820 But again...

00:16:40.380 Sorry, just a quick thing, right?

00:16:41.700 Like, you know the Bob Villain stuff?

00:16:43.740 Mm-hmm.

00:16:43.980 Where he's like, oh yeah, I had to go talk to my white mum and say, why didn't you talk 0.97

00:16:46.760 to your black dad?

00:16:47.660 Yeah. 0.94

00:16:49.660 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters, head to our website

00:16:54.080 where you can find more.

00:16:55.400 Thank you.

00:17:08.660 Thank you.

00:17:11.440 Bye.

00:17:11.760 Bye.

00:17:13.920 Bye.

00:17:22.880 Bye.

00:17:23.340 Bye.

00:17:23.520 Bye.

00:17:23.640 Bye.

00:17:24.280 Bye.

00:17:24.360 Bye.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 23, 2025

PREVIEW： Book Club #66 ｜ James O'Brien's How Not To Be Wrong

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