The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - Dr. Michael Shermer-＂Truth： What It Is, How to Find It & Why It Still Matters＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_958)

00:00:00.000 I'm delighted to report that I have joined as a scholar the Declaration of Independence Center

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00:01:05.240 Hi everybody this is Gadsad for the Sad Truth. I went back and checked to see if my current guest

00:01:12.460 is the most frequent guest that I've ever had on the Sad Truth and I think I can say that this might

00:01:18.160 be the case. Put that on your CV Michael Shermer. Wow I didn't know that. Hey I'm a returning champion.

00:01:24.460 You really are. I think I've had maybe one or two three-peats. Matt Ridley has been one. Dave Rubin has

00:01:31.360 been one. And I think because in your case we've also crossed when I've been on your show I also posted

00:01:37.720 it on my show. So we might be over counting but it's definitely in the four to six range. So congrats.

00:01:43.760 Michael before we get going I just want to do a quick bio for the six people who don't know who

00:01:48.960 you are. Are you ready? So you are the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, the executive director of the

00:01:54.600 Skeptic Society and the host of the popular podcast The Michael Shermer Show. Your previous books although

00:02:01.200 how many this is the current book right here which we're going to talk about in a second is book number

00:02:05.340 what 418? 14. 14. 14. Boy I gotta get busy. Clearly I've been slacking. But let me just mention

00:02:13.660 a few that are relevant to this book. Conspiracy, Why the Rational Believe the Irrational. Another book

00:02:19.600 Why People Believe Weird Things, Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time.

00:02:24.860 And The Believing Brain from Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies. And this book which will

00:02:31.640 drop on January 27th. Plain and simple. Truth. But you can go and pre-order it now. Maybe we

00:02:38.440 could start there. Give us the big premise Michael. Well it's an extension really of the conspiracy

00:02:43.620 book. That is Why the Rational Believe the Irrational for anything. Not just conspiracy theories.

00:02:49.440 And you know that the premise of that book was that it's a signal detection problem because there

00:02:54.600 really are conspiracies. So the theories about them may or may not be true. So we just have to treat it

00:02:59.900 like any proposition that may or may not be true. So in truth I'm just saying let's just apply that to

00:03:06.160 everything. You know claims of miracles or the supernatural, the paranormal or religion or you

00:03:12.680 know politics. Anything really. And so I start with the premise that with what's called fallibilism.

00:03:22.820 Any of us might be wrong. So you know whether or not there's an omniscient God, I have my doubts. But

00:03:28.780 I know one thing for sure. It isn't me. I also know it isn't you, Gad. Even though you're a smart

00:03:34.380 cookie. But you're not omniscient. So I'm too short to be God. But you got the beard. You got the beard

00:03:41.380 going. You could be. Yeah. So we start with the premise that neither of us knows with 100 percent

00:03:48.240 certainty. So in a Bayesian way we have to set our priors somewhere between one percent and say 99

00:03:53.940 percent. And then work together to figure out what is likely to be true based on the evidence,

00:03:59.780 our priors. You know what is our credence or confidence in the particular claim. And because

00:04:04.920 we tend to be fallible and we get things wrong, cognitive biases, my side biases and that sort of

00:04:11.060 thing, it's best to not work in isolation. It's best to bounce your ideas off of other people.

00:04:18.860 And that's what the kind of the mode or system of science was originally set up to do. That is

00:04:24.900 peer review, you know, open peer debate, going to conferences, giving talks to your colleagues and so

00:04:32.160 on. You know how this works because that's what you do for a living. But that whole system was designed

00:04:37.520 to get around the problem of the confirmation bias and the my side bias and the hindsight bias and so

00:04:42.900 on. And even though it gets it wrong occasionally, as we saw with the replication crisis in 2010,

00:04:48.900 probably half of all psychology experiments should have never been published. They were unable to be

00:04:53.700 replicated. And quite a few biomedical experiments, famous ones, were not replicable. But even there,

00:05:01.360 the self-correcting mechanisms built into science are the ones that caught those errors. And so the

00:05:08.400 people that tend to be on the outside of things and say, well, I don't trust peer review or I don't

00:05:15.140 trust science or whatever. OK, then what's the alternative? I mean, you just you have your opinion

00:05:20.860 and I have my opinion and we yell at each other. You know, that's not very productive. So, you know,

00:05:26.500 there is a reality. We can know something about it. Not 100 percent. And then you go from there.

00:05:31.680 OK, give me your best arguments. I'll give you my best arguments and we'll go back and forth. We'll

00:05:36.020 red team it. We'll debate it. You know, and I go through all the different systems of how science

00:05:40.860 works, but also how other systems work. Like in journalism, you have fact checking and editors

00:05:46.920 or you have multiple sites, multiple sources. You know, I'm going to I'm going to read the New York

00:05:51.780 Times op eds and I'm going to read the Wall Street Journal op eds or I'm going to, you know,

00:05:55.940 go on half a dozen different platforms or podcasts and and make sure I'm getting a smattering of

00:06:01.520 different opinions because, you know, again, nobody knows for sure, but there has to be some way to

00:06:07.720 get at it. And the legal system, you know, it's an adversarial system. So they determine truth in the

00:06:13.920 law based on two lawyers fighting it out. And this is an interesting case study because the job

00:06:21.680 of the lawyer is not to find the truth. The job of the lawyer is to win the case for his side.

00:06:27.400 And that's the job of the other lawyer. Right. So in this case, the judge or the jury, they're the

00:06:31.840 peer review. They're the colleagues that, you know, are going to determine, you know, this is what we

00:06:36.380 think is, you know, where are the consensus here? Something like that. And again, is it perfect?

00:06:41.780 No, of course not. They get it wrong all the time, but not all of the time. I mean, they get it wrong

00:06:46.220 a lot, but not all of the time. And it works. It's better than the way it used to be in the

00:06:50.160 Middle Ages where they just, you know, as they said, just hang them all and let God sort it out 1.00

00:06:55.020 later. Right. And yeah, so anyway, and then I do go through different kinds of truths. Like I talk

00:07:03.720 about empirical truths, like in science, you know, how do you know when the Big Bang happened? You

00:07:08.400 know, that it's 13.8 billion years ago. How do they know that? So, you know, here's the arguments and

00:07:12.620 evidence for it. And here's why that explanation is better than the competing explanations. And you arrive

00:07:18.000 at a consensus. The vast majority of scientists think X. You're always going to find one or two

00:07:23.180 or a full handouts, sorry, holdouts that are hanging on for the other one. But for the most

00:07:30.280 part, we could get consensus on a lot of different topics. And where we can't, then we just have to

00:07:34.500 say, well, we don't know. Like I talk about the hard problem of consciousness. You know, there's no

00:07:39.360 consensus at all. You look in the Wikipedia page, there's, you know, like 20 different theories for

00:07:43.460 the hard problem of consciousness. What that tells me is that we just don't know. And it may not be a

00:07:49.540 soluble problem the way it's configured. But then I talk about religious truths, which I'm trying out

00:07:56.500 something new here, Gad. You can tell me what you think about this, that, you know, my whole career

00:08:02.260 has been as an atheist, like religious claims are just nonsense. They're just bullshit. They're myths. 1.00

00:08:07.620 They're false. But then I got to kind of rethinking this. If we think of biblical stories as literature

00:08:16.500 rather than as claims of empirical reality, then you can think of it as, well, maybe these stories

00:08:24.380 in the Bible or any particular religious writings as carrying deeper truths like great novels, right?

00:08:32.860 So Jane Austen or Dostoevsky or the Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, you know, is there really a

00:08:39.360 Middle Earth? No, he just made that up. But it's a story. It's a story that has, you know, meaning and

00:08:45.800 purpose and truths about it, the Brothers Karamazov. There weren't really four Brothers Karamazov in 19th

00:08:51.620 century Russia. He just made that up. But the story carries truths about the human condition, about love

00:08:58.220 and jealousy and deception and power and hierarchy and society and all that stuff. And that's what

00:09:05.380 makes great literature great, is it touches on the deepest themes of the human condition. Well, you

00:09:09.640 know this from evolutionary psychology, kind of branching off into literature. Why do certain

00:09:14.620 things come up over and over in literature? Because they're true. They're true about us. The stories are

00:09:20.980 just made up. Okay, so there I take a more respectful perspective on religion. Like, let's not just say

00:09:28.040 it's all bullshit. Let's just say these stories carry a different kind of truth to them. Now, I've been 0.99

00:09:33.600 trying this out for the last year or so, again, and some religious people, particularly Christians, will go

00:09:39.160 along with me a little ways. Like, was there really—did Jonah really get swallowed by a great fish and spend

00:09:44.080 three days? Well, you know, that's just the story. Yeah, we know that's a story. You know, it carries some

00:09:49.880 other kind of meaning. You know, sort of a Jordan Peterson kind of mythical truth, okay? They're with me there

00:09:56.560 and for some other stories. But when I get to the resurrection of Jesus—

00:09:59.980 That was true!

00:10:01.380 Oh, no. Oh, no, no. Uh-uh. Because Paul himself said, you know, if Jesus is not risen, then there's no reason

00:10:07.640 to be a Christian. And it's like, yeah, well, then—you know, so they're putting that into the empirical

00:10:13.980 scientific truth claim bin, saying, this really happened, and here's our evidence and arguments for it.

00:10:19.880 And, you know, there's tons of books about this. And so my first cut at that is, okay, if it really

00:10:26.620 is true, because you have really good arguments, the empty tomb and the women were there, and the

00:10:30.880 post-death appearances and apparitions to the disciples and so on, why don't Jews believe it? 1.00

00:10:38.200 Right.

00:10:38.520 You can't say, oh, these rabbis, they just don't understand our arguments. Really? Come on. These 1.00

00:10:44.040 are some of the greatest learned scholars in history. They don't understand your arguments?

00:10:47.500 You know, and we know why Jews don't believe it, because that's not what the Old Testament, 0.92

00:10:52.740 the Jewish scriptures say, that the Messiah would be like. It's not going to be some carpenter

00:10:56.900 from Nazareth that gets crucified. That's not what it says. It says the Messiah is going

00:11:02.360 to rescue the Jews against the oppressive Romans and so on. That's not what happens, so they don't 1.00

00:11:07.100 think it is. Anyway. And so, you know, to me, they're making a mistake. The same mistake atheists 1.00

00:11:13.420 make when they say, you know, we're going to find natural explanations for all these biblical

00:11:18.220 stories. Oh, you know, the plague of locusts, that was some ecological disaster. There was

00:11:23.520 an earthquake or a tsunami and the splitting of the Red Sea. Oh, that actually happened,

00:11:28.040 but it was an earthquake or what. How about it never happened? It's just a story that carries

00:11:33.140 some other kind of meaning. In the case of the resurrection, I don't know, starting over,

00:11:37.020 being born again, redemption, forgiveness, you know, and pushing back against evil and

00:11:42.040 oppression. And, you know, the heaven is within you. We're going to build our own community

00:11:47.080 of justice in this life, all that stuff. And yeah, so far, the Christians are going, no, 0.99

00:11:54.380 we're not buying that. So I don't know why that is.

00:11:57.960 Well, there's a lot to unpack there. As you were speaking, I was saying, oh, I'd like to

00:12:02.100 talk about this. I don't know if I'll remember. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So of course, what you said

00:12:06.220 about the, you know, the Bible and religious narratives, having some underlying evolutionary

00:12:12.400 basis truths, I wholeheartedly support that. Although it becomes difficult to know which

00:12:17.600 ones to pick and choose. So for example, if you say there are a lot of wonderful moral edicts in

00:12:22.560 the Bible, but there's also take your insolent child to the gates of the city and stone them to 0.96

00:12:28.860 death. Oh no, but that one is allegorical. It's metaphorical. It's not really real. Not that one, 0.86

00:12:33.560 but the one that says don't sleep with another man's wife, that's a real one. Because short,

00:12:38.040 you know, otherwise, if I didn't, if I didn't learn that moral principle there, I would just be going 0.98

00:12:42.740 around raping and pillaging everybody. So, but notwithstanding that, there is actually a study

00:12:48.600 that looked at the Darwinian insights within a particular slice of the Bible. And I don't think

00:12:56.600 you, you know, that study. So let me mention it to you. So Laura Betsick, do you know Laura,

00:13:00.980 by the way? I don't know her personally, but I know her. Oh, you know of her. So she's a Darwinian. 0.64

00:13:04.880 She did the whole thing on the Old Testament patriarchs and how many children and wives they

00:13:08.800 had. Exactly. That's, that's actually the study that I was going to talk about. Right. So,

00:13:12.440 so you know it, but let me just mention it for our viewers and listeners. So what she did is she are,

00:13:17.200 she said, okay, look, we know that as a man's social status increases, that increases the

00:13:23.860 opportunity to the number of women that he has sexual access to since women choose men largely

00:13:29.560 based on their social status. And so we can go to the Old Testament, code the status of different

00:13:37.560 male protagonists and see how many women are associated to them. So if I'm a, if I'm a king

00:13:43.100 or, you know, a general or a prophet, I get more wives than if I am a farmer or a slave. And she did 0.97

00:13:50.240 an empirical study and found that. So that speaks to, to your point that the question that I was

00:13:54.540 going to ask you. So when you talk about different types of you know, a taxonomy of truth, historical

00:14:00.760 truth, religious truths, and so on, are you arguing that there are different epistemologies to get at

00:14:09.360 the truth in each of those subcategories, or is there a meta epistemology that I could deploy to all of

00:14:18.300 these different truths? Yeah, that's a hard one. Probably more of the latter, I guess, if I followed

00:14:24.980 that. I'm not saying that religion is a viable epistemological system to get at the truth about

00:14:33.380 nature. I'm arguing that they're doing something different. And it was never intended to be a work

00:14:41.720 of history and science in the first place, these books of the Bible say. That because the age of 0.99

00:14:47.940 science is relatively new, since the scientific revolution and the enlightenment, age of reason,

00:14:51.780 all that. Since then, it's become kind of, the emphasis has been on religious people to make

00:14:58.520 the claim from some scientific perspective. Like, we're not just saying this is my truth. It's

00:15:03.820 actually, it is true, true. Whereas people, you know, before science, most, mostly would not have

00:15:10.000 made that kind of argument. It's like, this is what we think is true, and you think something

00:15:13.960 different, and whatever, you know. There was no method at it. So, you know, I would argue that.

00:15:18.520 By the way, let me just quote the Betsig details, because it's really actually kind of amusing.

00:15:23.800 I had this in the Moral Arc. In the Old Testament, this is her. She had no less than 41 named

00:15:31.400 polygamists, not one of which was a powerless man. In the Old Testament, powerful men, patriarchs,

00:15:37.120 judges, and kings, have sex with more wives. They have more sex with other men's women. 0.99

00:15:41.660 They have sex with more concubines, servants, and slaves, and they father many children. 0.99

00:15:47.040 And not just the big names. According to Betsig's analysis, men with bigger herds of sheep and goats

00:15:51.440 tend to have sex with more women than to father more children. Most of the polygamists, patriarchs, 0.91

00:15:58.340 judges, and kings had two, three, or four wives with a corresponding number of children.

00:16:02.320 Although King David had more than eight wives and 20 children, King Abijah had 14 wives and 38

00:16:09.100 children, and King Rehoboam had 18 wives and 60 other women, who bore him no fewer than 88 offspring.

00:16:16.520 But they are all lightweights compared to King Solomon.

00:16:19.220 I was going to say, you're missing King Solomon, yes.

00:16:21.980 700 women.

00:16:23.560 Yes, sir.

00:16:24.440 There were Moabite and Ammonite and Edomite and Sidonian and Hittite women he married,

00:16:29.880 then for good measure added 300 concubines, which he called man's delight.

00:16:34.920 What Solomon's concubines called him was never recorded.

00:16:40.260 You know, I know that I should probably not say this on record, but when you hear of such

00:16:48.400 conquests, do you feel as though monogamy can suck at times?

00:16:55.480 Uh, well, I will cite a new study that was just given to me by, um, the head of the Kinsey

00:17:02.680 Institute, uh, Justin Garcia, Justin Garcia.

00:17:07.160 I published a paper with him when he was a graduate student.

00:17:10.560 You did?

00:17:11.300 Yes, sir.

00:17:11.960 Small world.

00:17:12.640 Okay.

00:17:12.880 Well, he would, I just recorded, we haven't even released it yet.

00:17:14.980 He was just on a couple of days ago.

00:17:16.240 The book, I think his book comes out next week.

00:17:17.860 Um, but basically he said this new research shows that sex is better if you're in love

00:17:23.700 with the person that is in, you have an intimate relationship.

00:17:26.700 You love them.

00:17:27.660 It's long going.

00:17:28.480 I said, you mean for women? 0.88

00:17:29.660 He goes, no, no, actually even for men.

00:17:31.220 I go, oh, okay.

00:17:32.140 Well, that's good because I love my wife. 0.66

00:17:34.600 Yes.

00:17:35.160 You know, so, well, look, I think it's, it's a, it's a, there are always sort of two sides

00:17:40.400 to the coin.

00:17:41.000 I, and I, I discussed this in, in my happiness book.

00:17:43.600 I have a chapter on variety as the, you know, the spice of life and both men and women have

00:17:49.720 evolved a desire for monogamy and a desire for, uh, multiple partners.

00:17:57.280 Now, of course, the drive for sexual variety is greater in men and women.

00:18:01.800 Those studies have been done by David, David Schmidt, who was a former student of David

00:18:07.040 Buss.

00:18:07.660 And there is no culture where women place a greater desire on sexual variety, but it is 0.56

00:18:13.240 not true that women love monogamy and men love, you know, polygyny, but therein lies

00:18:19.440 the tension in a monogamous union, which is, you're right, there is an intimacy that is

00:18:24.240 built into the trust of having a long-term partner.

00:18:27.860 You, you know, you feel comfortable with them.

00:18:29.520 Therefore, the sex might be better, but you also can see this gorgeous other creature over 0.99

00:18:34.660 there. 0.62

00:18:34.940 And you say, oh my goodness.

00:18:35.940 Right.

00:18:36.260 So let's call it, let's call it the Sydney Sweeney effect.

00:18:39.200 Uh, okay.

00:18:41.060 So, uh, a couple of, a couple of more questions before we, we go into any other areas.

00:18:46.040 Um, one of the things that I talk about in, in parasitic mind, I have a chapter called

00:18:51.440 how to seek truth.

00:18:52.600 So, you know, very relevant to your own book, uh, called truth, where I basically at the

00:18:58.340 start, I differentiate between axiomatic truths and scientific or, or empirical truth.

00:19:04.160 Do you, and what I mean by axiomatic truth, I mean, it, it could well be that I simply

00:19:09.900 tell you what the properties of a prime number is, that is an axiomatic truth.

00:19:15.600 Or I could tell you, say from psychology of decision-making, the transitivity axiom, if

00:19:20.460 I prefer car A to car B and I prefer car B to car C, I must prefer car A to car C. Do

00:19:26.580 you talk about these kinds of axiomatic truths?

00:19:29.280 And I guess you're looking at the page.

00:19:30.760 Yeah.

00:19:31.060 And so it's coming.

00:19:31.800 Yes, here's, I, I put it here, um, let's see, uh, so the page 33, I defined, uh, scientific

00:19:39.400 truth as a claim for which the evidence is so substantial that it is rational to offer

00:19:43.940 one's provisional assent.

00:19:45.820 Oh, yeah.

00:19:46.020 Provisional is the, uh, key word here.

00:19:48.160 Scientific truths are temporary and could change with changing evidence.

00:19:51.720 Provisional truths differ from proofs as in mathematics.

00:19:54.780 For example, in Euclidean geometry, the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is always

00:19:58.940 equal to 180 degrees, nor are scientific truths the same as logical inferences or analytic

00:20:04.000 truths, as in the famous syllogism, all men are mortal. 0.83

00:20:06.920 Socrates is a man.

00:20:08.060 Socrates is mortal.

00:20:09.840 Uh, here, if by proof one means analytic truth claims, such as all, as cardiologists are

00:20:14.680 doctors, then yes, you should believe it because you just have to know what the words mean,

00:20:18.460 right?

00:20:18.780 But, you know, our cardiologists are rich.

00:20:22.120 You actually have to go look it up to see if that's true, right?

00:20:25.080 It's not, it's not by the definition, right?

00:20:27.180 So most of the claims, most of the truth things that we're interested in, in the world are not

00:20:33.140 of that category.

00:20:34.000 They're more of the empirical.

00:20:35.200 You got to go look, look out the window.

00:20:37.920 And, um, yeah, so, you know, this is why, this is what bothers me.

00:20:41.140 This is why I'm not a philosopher.

00:20:42.420 You know, philosophers, they go through these long thought experiments, you know, Dan Dennett,

00:20:46.620 Sam Harris, these people, they just go on for pages and pages and pages.

00:20:49.780 They end up at some conclusion.

00:20:51.480 And it's like, you know, I'm just, there's something off here.

00:20:54.260 Did you look out the window to see if that's what it's actually like?

00:20:57.460 You know, like we could be living in the matrix.

00:21:00.620 Yeah.

00:21:01.100 Does it look like we're living in the matrix when you look outside?

00:21:03.840 Well, that's just what they would want it to look like if they designed it that way.

00:21:07.660 And there's no way to know if we are not.

00:21:10.000 It's like, okay, then what are we talking about?

00:21:12.280 Right.

00:21:12.400 I wanted to mention that I recently finished a biography on Francis Bacon, who many people

00:21:21.440 have argued is the, you know, sort of the grandfather of the scientific method.

00:21:26.740 Have you read any biographies on him or any of his original work?

00:21:31.940 Because I was blown away by his ability to be such a polymath.

00:21:35.780 I mean, he had a whole career as a lawyer and as, you know, a guy who's, you know, navigating

00:21:41.680 through the intricacies of the royal courts.

00:21:44.820 And, you know, he had very earthly desires to be respected as a jurist and so on.

00:21:49.660 And on the side, he's doing all this other crazy stuff.

00:21:53.420 Are you familiar with him?

00:21:54.560 And is there?

00:21:55.380 Yeah.

00:21:55.500 So, yes.

00:21:55.840 Well, of course, I read Novum Organum.

00:21:57.440 You know, I'm a historian of science.

00:21:58.520 But I've never read a biography of him, so I don't know about his personal life.

00:22:02.540 Oh, let me show you which one it is.

00:22:04.140 I got it right here.

00:22:05.160 This is gorgeous.

00:22:06.940 Okay.

00:22:07.380 Yeah, nice.

00:22:08.020 Yeah.

00:22:08.560 Yeah, he's one of the greats.

00:22:09.620 Well, that comes at this time in that kind of transitional period from, well, this is often

00:22:15.940 called the Battle of the Books, the Book of Authority, which could be not just the Bible,

00:22:20.180 but Aristotle.

00:22:21.340 Yeah.

00:22:21.580 Or, you know, the great theologians like Aquinas and the Book of Nature, you know.

00:22:25.860 And so a lot of the great scholars derive, through thought alone, a lot of claims about

00:22:31.320 the empirical world that were not true, you know, like all bodies in space must be perfectly

00:22:36.200 round and perfectly smooth, and they travel in perfect circles.

00:22:39.460 Well, none of that was true.

00:22:41.160 I mean, just Galileo said, look through the telescope.

00:22:44.240 And, you know, a lot of his colleagues said, I don't need to look.

00:22:46.620 I already know what they're like.

00:22:48.040 Yeah, but look, there's shadows cast on the moon from mountains.

00:22:50.880 And there's, you know, these little moons that are going around Jupiter.

00:22:54.040 How can that be?

00:22:55.420 Right?

00:22:55.860 And then Kepler comes along and says, you know, orbits are not circular.

00:22:59.540 They're elliptical.

00:23:01.360 And, okay, so there, you know, you have to balance reason and rationality with empiricism,

00:23:07.060 like actual data.

00:23:08.220 Let's look it up to see what it looks like.

00:23:10.520 But your point about sort of having reverence for ancient wisdoms is really on point in that

00:23:18.640 it almost has a religious dogma to it.

00:23:22.680 And when I read Francis Bacon, that was the first time that I found out that he had quite

00:23:27.840 a, you know, spicy hostility to those who wanted to say, oh, Aristotle said it, therefore it is true. 1.00

00:23:35.400 In the same way that if, you know, a religious figure has said it, it's a revealed truth.

00:23:39.540 And so are there other ones within that era that had that kind of hostility towards the ancient Greeks?

00:23:47.880 Or did he sort of lay the original ground of saying, you know, not everything that Socrates said is true necessarily?

00:23:53.840 Well, before Bacon, there were the humanists that began their literary criticisms of the Bible.

00:24:00.900 So it actually begins there.

00:24:02.900 Like, let's actually read this in the context of translating the words and where do these come from

00:24:07.520 and where do the ideas come from and so on.

00:24:09.680 But in Bacon's time, yeah, Aristotle was just called the philosopher.

00:24:13.780 Everybody's like, oh, yeah, the philosopher says.

00:24:16.260 And that was it.

00:24:17.180 You know, it's sort of a done deal.

00:24:18.420 And, you know, Aquinas famously, you know, took Aristotle during the Renaissance and made him, like,

00:24:24.500 the central core feature of, you know, kind of resurrecting that train of reason and logic and to biblical ideas.

00:24:34.380 You know, Aquinas is, you know, his five proofs of God and all that.

00:24:38.820 That's all Aristotelian logic.

00:24:41.060 And there's still people that argue that way.

00:24:43.180 You know, theists today send me books and it's basically, you know, here, this is true,

00:24:47.960 and this is true, and this is true, and this is true.

00:24:49.700 Then you end up at this conclusion, you know, that, you know, I mean, one of them, you know,

00:24:53.940 is like the ontological argument that, you know, if you can conceive of something, it must exist.

00:24:59.940 And it exists in some degrees of perfection.

00:25:04.480 Therefore, there must be an absolutely perfect being and that being we call God.

00:25:08.720 I'm sort of shortchanging that argument, but that's basically it.

00:25:12.060 Sorry, let me turn that off. 0.99

00:25:12.920 And it's like, yeah, but I can conceive of, like, the ugliest person ever, the stupidest or the smelliest thing ever. 1.00

00:25:22.720 Does that mean it exists? 1.00

00:25:23.840 I mean, again, look out the window to see if the world actually looks like that.

00:25:28.480 And that was kind of what that was all about.

00:25:30.700 You know, so from the kind of the humanist into the Renaissance, Bacon, the scientific revolution, you know,

00:25:36.360 Kepler, Galileo, those guys, and then Newton kind of unifies it all.

00:25:39.860 And then after that, the emphasis was on let's apply that kind of Newtonian mechanical universe

00:25:46.600 and that line of reasoning, you know, to everything.

00:25:51.140 And so that included politics and economics.

00:25:54.020 You know, the French physiocrats openly said we're going to—the French economy, like Vesalius, treated the human body.

00:26:05.760 You know, it's a series of organs and blood vessels, and the blood's flowing through the body,

00:26:12.180 just like currency flows through the economy in France.

00:26:16.140 And too much blockage by the government of this smooth flow of currency is really bad for the economy.

00:26:23.200 This is pre-Adam Smith.

00:26:25.280 Right.

00:26:25.580 You know, it was really Adam Smith that said, hey, let's put all this together into one book, The Wealth of Nations.

00:26:30.280 But Smith's book is not called The Wealth of Nations.

00:26:32.920 It's the nature and causes of The Wealth of Nations.

00:26:36.840 It's a science book.

00:26:38.060 It's saying, let's define what we're talking about here and then figure out what the cause of it is.

00:26:43.060 It's a very rigorous scientific work.

00:26:45.240 That was new.

00:26:47.740 Yeah, I actually—I was at University of Chicago in November.

00:26:51.920 I was giving a talk, and I ended up at a used bookstore where I stocked up on biography on Adam Smith,

00:27:00.180 one on Ludwig von Mises, another—I had stuff on Hayek.

00:27:04.880 And so, yeah, I went down that rabbit hole.

00:27:09.200 It's a good rabbit hole to go down.

00:27:10.680 I mean, I have all those books, you know, von Mises and Hayek and Milton Friedman and the Chicago School,

00:27:16.320 which were really derivatives of the Austrian School of Economics.

00:27:20.060 And, yeah, so, I mean, a lot of, you know, a lot of people are critical of that.

00:27:24.300 Okay, fine.

00:27:25.280 But, you know, at least there's a sound basis for collecting evidence to test their hypotheses.

00:27:31.620 Indeed.

00:27:31.700 And that's what was new.

00:27:33.060 Now, you and I saw each other last in Oxford, not Oxford, Mississippi, where I'm currently affiliated with Ole Miss,

00:27:41.520 but Oxford, the original Oxford in the U.K., where we had the pleasure of having a—

00:27:49.300 and you'll see in a second, I'm going to tie it to your book, Truth.

00:27:52.200 We had the pleasure of sitting, or not, rather standing, in an outdoor park with the great David Deutsch.

00:28:01.140 And we had, like, a three-hour conversation about all sorts of things.

00:28:04.420 Okay, what are you looking up now?

00:28:05.680 Is there a way that I could talk to you without you looking up your book?

00:28:08.900 I'm looking up that great quote from David Deutsch.

00:28:11.700 I know you're getting to it because he's so good.

00:28:15.700 He really is.

00:28:16.780 I have it somewhere here.

00:28:17.820 Anyway, continue.

00:28:18.580 Yeah.

00:28:18.840 Just ignore me.

00:28:19.440 So, when he came on my show, he came twice on my show, and it's arguably two of the best conversations I've ever had with someone on my show.

00:28:29.540 At one point, we were discussing both Turing, who argued that there is a machine that could be created to calculate anything,

00:28:39.060 and the opposite direction, you have Gödel, who says that there are, within any axiomatic system, things that you could never prove.

00:28:48.520 And so, both of those statements can be incorporated within a broader term called truth.

00:28:56.740 Do you talk at all about either Turing and or Gödel in this book?

00:29:02.420 No, but I do talk about David Deutsch.

00:29:05.000 I was just looking it up.

00:29:06.220 I mean, I see what you're getting at.

00:29:07.900 What I like about Deutsch's work in his Beginning of Infinity is his discussion of explanations.

00:29:13.980 So, rather than thinking of, you know, your hypothesis is true or false in some definitive way, let's think of it, how good of an explanation is it for the problem we're interested in solving?

00:29:28.160 The question we want to answer.

00:29:29.560 And, you know, his argument, let me see if I can find the exact quote here, you know, Deutsch's view, which closely parallels my own philosophy, science is about offering explanations for the world.

00:29:41.280 Statements, quote, about what is there, what it does, and how and why, and as such, there are good and bad explanations.

00:29:48.580 Good explanations start with the recognition that they could be wrong, fallibilism, and thus must be open to revision, Popper's conjecture and refutation model of science.

00:29:57.620 Here's Deutsch.

00:30:27.620 Given the right knowledge.

00:30:29.060 That's his Beginning of Infinity, which is just a mind-blowing idea.

00:30:33.500 It's like anything is possible as long as it doesn't violate the laws of nature.

00:30:37.460 So, you know, when Theus asked me, you know, explain, you know, morality.

00:30:41.640 You know, how do you know what's right and wrong, good and evil?

00:30:44.580 And I offer the, you know, evolutionary ethics explanation.

00:30:47.720 And this goes on for like 10 or 15 minutes if you really lay it out carefully, right?

00:30:52.120 If you're standing on one foot, maybe I could do it in five minutes.

00:30:54.420 Their answer, so I go, okay, all right, that's my explanation, which you're not mine.

00:30:58.520 What's yours?

00:30:59.740 And their answer is some version of, well, God did it.

00:31:02.540 It's like, okay, I offered you an explanation.

00:31:05.160 Your explanation is worse because it doesn't say anything.

00:31:08.160 It doesn't explain anything.

00:31:09.260 How did God do it?

00:31:10.380 Why did God do it?

00:31:11.440 Exactly how does it operate in the world?

00:31:15.420 You know, how did God reach into the, from outside of space and time to stir the particles

00:31:19.820 to make the RNA become DNA?

00:31:21.780 Whatever it is you think it happened.

00:31:23.380 Your explanation just doesn't.

00:31:24.660 It's not that it's wrong.

00:31:26.300 It's not even wrong.

00:31:27.760 It's just, it doesn't do anything, right?

00:31:30.200 So that's what I like about that.

00:31:31.640 Yeah, I was going to say, as you were mentioning the theist, do you know that famous quip by

00:31:37.100 J.B.S.

00:31:37.900 Haldane?

00:31:38.380 He had many wonderful quips, one of which when he, somebody was saying, oh, you know,

00:31:42.860 how could you explain all of the exquisite adaptations that are, if there wasn't sort of

00:31:48.560 an intelligent designer or something to that effect?

00:31:50.900 And he answered, and I'm slightly butchering it.

00:31:53.440 He said, well, God must have a unique predilection for Beatles, not Beatles, the musical group,

00:32:00.920 but because there are something like 300,000 exquisitely, you know, the designed species

00:32:08.040 of Beatles.

00:32:08.780 So he really must love Beatles.

00:32:10.640 So I think that's a beautiful quip.

00:32:12.520 Okay, another question that's a bit technical.

00:32:15.340 So I hope that our listeners and viewers won't get bored from our geeking out.

00:32:19.620 So in my doctoral dissertation, the main topic of my dissertation was, and before I even explain

00:32:27.600 what it is, I want to link it, use the term signal detection theory.

00:32:31.220 And that got my ears perked because my doctoral dissertation was on when is it that you know

00:32:38.180 that you have acquired enough information between competing alternatives to cross a threshold,

00:32:45.900 which is known as a stopping threshold or an absorption barrier.

00:32:50.040 This comes from the statistical decision theory from Abraham Wald, but then was later applied

00:32:55.180 in signal detection theory, right?

00:32:56.900 When is it that you've seen enough of a stimulus to be able to say that the dot is green or blue?

00:33:03.740 And so I took that framework and I argued that we could apply it when we're choosing between,

00:33:09.100 for example, two political candidates.

00:33:10.620 I acquire one piece of attribute information at a time across these two alternatives, and

00:33:16.040 I keep accumulating evidence until I cross a threshold that makes me say, I'm ready to

00:33:21.940 vote for Hillary Clinton or for Donald Trump.

00:33:25.360 And then you could apply this to any decision.

00:33:27.840 So that was my doctoral dissertation.

00:33:29.660 So I took that principle and, you know, many, many years later, I applied it to the nomological

00:33:36.040 networks of cumulative evidence, which you might remember we talked about, I think it was

00:33:39.900 on your show.

00:33:40.400 So in chapter seven of the parasitic mind, I argue, look, you can get all these distinct

00:33:45.060 lines of evidence, cross-cultural, cross-temporal, cross-species, cross-methodologies, if all of

00:33:53.480 which triangulate to demonstrating that your fundamental explanation is correct, well, then

00:33:58.100 I argue that is akin to having that threshold model where one stopping barrier is I now have

00:34:05.980 enough evidence to say that there is a provisional truth.

00:34:08.820 There's enough evidence to show that evolution seems to be correct, veridical, or I now have

00:34:13.920 enough evidence to refute it.

00:34:16.100 What are your thoughts about using that model, which you would have called signal detection

00:34:20.820 theory, as an epistemological test in testing the veracity of a hypothesis?

00:34:27.820 Yeah, nice.

00:34:28.280 That's such a great setup there.

00:34:29.560 And also, that is a little bit similar to the just noticeable difference in psychophysics.

00:34:34.440 If you have 10 lights and you add one, that's quite noticeable.

00:34:38.540 If you have 100 lights and you add one, you don't really notice, right?

00:34:41.260 So it depends on very much on the context as well.

00:34:44.400 So I think there is something to that.

00:34:46.400 And I like that because it's also pragmatic in the sense that if you have to make a decision

00:34:52.120 by a certain time, like November 4th, that's the election day, you got to go and pull the

00:34:56.900 handle for somebody so, you know, you could spend the rest of your life gathering more

00:35:00.260 data or, you know, like the, you know, the brain damaged people that stand there in front

00:35:06.880 of the toothpaste section in the supermarket and they can't decide.

00:35:10.320 Don't quote Oliver Sacks, though.

00:35:13.560 That's right.

00:35:14.420 That was one of his patients, right?

00:35:16.200 Well, that's why I'm saying it because you got to be careful now.

00:35:20.540 I mean, anyways, go on.

00:35:21.700 We'll talk about that after.

00:35:22.520 Yeah, so I think for most propositions, most of us go along with the consensus of what the

00:35:30.400 experts in a particular field say.

00:35:32.220 How do they arrive at it?

00:35:33.300 Through a convergence of evidence or a consilience of induction, as William Ewell called it in

00:35:39.120 the 19th century.

00:35:40.160 He actually, you know, you've quoted E.O.

00:35:42.760 Wilson's book, Consilience.

00:35:44.160 That's an old idea from William Ewell in the 19th century.

00:35:48.320 So, you know, you have these.

00:35:48.920 That's why, by the way, sorry, forgive me for interrupting you.

00:35:50.900 That's why I will always say E.O.

00:35:54.500 Wilson reintroduced that word into the lexicon.

00:35:58.860 It's a nice word.

00:35:59.560 I like it.

00:35:59.980 It's the most gorgeous word.

00:36:01.560 But anyways, go on.

00:36:02.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:03.380 Yeah, so there's a convergence of evidence for multiple lines of inquiry, particularly

00:36:07.300 if the lines of inquiry are independent labs, say, or independent scientists or something

00:36:13.640 like that.

00:36:14.380 You know, like just take the age of, you know, the Earth or, you know, when the dinosaurs

00:36:18.560 went extinct 65 million years.

00:36:20.040 How do you know it's 65 million years?

00:36:21.820 Well, because, you know, you have a lava flow here, which you can date based on the potassium

00:36:26.780 argon dating technique, which is that potassium atoms decay into argon atoms at a particularly

00:36:32.940 known rate that chemists can show us and physicists and so on.

00:36:36.420 And then you have the dinosaur footprints in the mud here and then another lava flow here.

00:36:41.000 And above that, there's no more dinosaur fossils or footprints or anything.

00:36:45.280 What's the age of those?

00:36:46.400 Well, between 64.5 and 65.5 million years ago.

00:36:50.460 So, you know, anyway.

00:36:51.580 But how do you know that that guy that did that got it wrong?

00:36:54.100 Because he's not the only one.

00:36:55.560 You know, hundreds and hundreds of different geologists and labs have run these experiments.

00:36:59.700 So you get this convergence of it.

00:37:01.380 Yes, you'll find one guy, some creationist that goes, no, no, no.

00:37:04.640 The Earth is actually only 10,000 years old, and here's why these arguments are wrong, and

00:37:09.820 here's my theory.

00:37:11.240 God did it.

00:37:12.340 And so on.

00:37:13.140 It's just not a good explanation.

00:37:14.900 But also the consensus all says, sorry, you're wrong about that.

00:37:19.140 Or the Big Bang Theory.

00:37:20.320 You know, when I, my first class in, my first year in college was astronomy class in 1972.

00:37:26.780 So by then, the Big Bang Theory had pretty much won out over the steady state theory.

00:37:30.680 You know, Fred Hoyle's steady state theory.

00:37:32.200 And, but how?

00:37:34.020 How does it win out?

00:37:34.960 Well, it's a kind of a social process.

00:37:36.740 You know, again, we have to work in a community of experts in a particular field, and we reach

00:37:41.620 a consensus.

00:37:42.400 Well, it looks like the Big Bang Theory is winning out.

00:37:45.320 The steady state theory doesn't have much going for it.

00:37:47.880 But, you know, by the 90s, when we started Skeptic, I was getting letters from this guy

00:37:51.680 that said, the Big Bang never happened, and here's why.

00:37:54.200 So I checked with, you know, some of my cosmology friends at Caltech, like Kip Thorne.

00:37:58.200 And he's like, okay, here's how we know this guy is, you know, he's just sort of the only

00:38:03.900 guy, right?

00:38:05.100 Now, maybe he's right, and all the experts are wrong.

00:38:07.980 This has happened in the past, but rarely, right?

00:38:11.080 You know, because every, every one of the Fringers, they all think, I'm Galileo against 0.99

00:38:15.300 the church, right?

00:38:16.340 Like, yeah, but, you know, there were a lot of other people in Galileo's time that had

00:38:20.020 alternative theories, and we don't even know who they are.

00:38:22.600 You don't, because you're not a historian of science, because they were wrong, and no

00:38:26.080 one knows about them except that you study this stuff, right?

00:38:28.660 So in general, that works pretty well.

00:38:30.820 Now, sometimes the consensus is wrong.

00:38:33.020 You know, masks, closing schools, all that stuff during COVID, it looks like the consensus

00:38:38.880 was wrong, all right?

00:38:40.240 So this is why, you know, you and I share this free speech and open debate.

00:38:43.860 We have to let the Jay Bhattacharyas and the Robert Malones go on, Rogan, and talk about

00:38:50.100 the alternatives.

00:38:51.060 That's good, right?

00:38:52.560 They may be wrong, you know, but what if they're right?

00:38:55.480 Yeah.

00:38:55.780 And, you know, what if the consensus is wrong?

00:38:57.660 So again, usually the consensus gets it right.

00:38:59.800 I talk about it in the book.

00:39:01.700 The problem most of us have is that we offload our beliefs onto experts or communities or institutions

00:39:08.720 because none of us can actually fact-check everything, right?

00:39:11.720 You know, how do I know the 2020 election wasn't rigged?

00:39:15.580 I didn't go to the Arizona voting building and look at the boxes to see what was in there.

00:39:20.880 Yes, I've seen the grainy videos on YouTube, you know, oh, what are they doing?

00:39:25.060 Okay.

00:39:25.680 But I have trust that the Department of Justice, when it was run by Bill Barr, who was a lifelong

00:39:30.920 Republican, Trump supporter, looked into it, didn't find any fraud.

00:39:35.340 Okay.

00:39:35.720 You know, that's probably the case.

00:39:37.580 Or the Chinese spy balloon, right?

00:39:40.200 It's a UAP, you know.

00:39:41.460 No, it's a Chinese spy balloon.

00:39:42.980 Did I see it?

00:39:43.980 No, I didn't see it.

00:39:45.620 But I trust the institutions.

00:39:47.200 They usually get it right.

00:39:48.640 Okay.

00:39:48.860 So then here I cite research on, like, Bill Stuhlman's research on asking college, these

00:39:57.760 mostly college students, you know, do you accept Darwin's theory of evolution?

00:40:00.980 Oh, yeah.

00:40:01.460 Yeah.

00:40:02.100 Explain it.

00:40:03.580 Oh, well, you see, the giraffe stretches its neck and the baby giraffes have longer necks.

00:40:07.800 No, that isn't it.

00:40:09.640 You know, or, you know, are you for or against NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement?

00:40:13.960 Oh, yeah, I'm for it.

00:40:14.900 Or no, I'm against it.

00:40:15.920 Okay.

00:40:16.160 What is it?

00:40:17.040 And who's in it?

00:40:18.940 I forget.

00:40:20.120 Right.

00:40:20.680 So, you know, or even simple stuff like, you know, explain how a zipper works.

00:40:25.040 Well, you put the doohickey into the thingy and you put, you know, it's like most of us

00:40:29.120 don't really understand in detail what's really going on, the illusion of explanation.

00:40:34.260 But for the most part, we get it right because experts and institutions usually are right.

00:40:39.560 Right.

00:40:39.740 So I know that sounds like a, I don't know, like a, it's not as confident.

00:40:45.420 It's, I'm not arguing from authority.

00:40:47.120 I'm arguing that these institutions over the centuries have evolved in a way to get

00:40:53.160 around the problems of making mistakes.

00:40:56.680 Again, the judicial system, we better really have all these rules in place about evidence

00:41:01.260 and who constitutes an expert.

00:41:04.220 You probably know about these, you know, if you want to serve as an expert in court, you

00:41:09.240 know, paid by the defense or whatever, they're going to want to know your credentials and so

00:41:13.520 on.

00:41:13.700 Are you really a scientist?

00:41:14.740 You know, not just somebody they hired that they think is going to say something.

00:41:17.880 Right.

00:41:17.960 So there's all kinds of rules about that.

00:41:19.480 Or the jury must now leave the room while we discuss this because whether or not they

00:41:24.060 can hear this piece of evidence, you know, we have to debate that.

00:41:27.880 Right.

00:41:28.040 So all this has happened like peer review, the replication crisis I mentioned, all that

00:41:32.440 was internal by the institutions and scientists themselves going, okay, we have a problem, P

00:41:39.580 hacking, the file drawer problem, and so on and so on.

00:41:42.720 And now here's what we're going to do.

00:41:43.880 And before you publish, before you run your experiments, you have to post them on this

00:41:47.760 website and said, this is everything I'm going to do, and I will report all the results so

00:41:52.220 there's no file drawer problem or hiding the non-significant results and so on.

00:41:56.800 You know, so the reason I'm making this argument is because I do get people, I'll just mention

00:42:02.100 a name, you know, Brett Weinstein, who we both know.

00:42:04.620 Oh, yes.

00:42:04.860 And I like Brett, you know, but he's got this thing, like, I do not trust institutions of

00:42:10.240 science, peer review, none of that.

00:42:12.540 We got into it on his show just recently, and, you know, they ripped me off, they did

00:42:16.140 this, they did that.

00:42:17.340 Okay.

00:42:18.560 But what's the alternative?

00:42:21.280 I mean, we have to have some way or else we're just going to yell at each other and

00:42:25.460 get nowhere, right?

00:42:26.460 Yeah, you know, I just recently, again, I have so many things I want to say as you're

00:42:30.380 speaking.

00:42:31.040 Number one, before I come to the file drawer problem and some of that stuff that you talked

00:42:36.180 about, you mentioned Kip Thorne earlier.

00:42:38.940 Did I ever tell you my Kip Thorne story?

00:42:41.380 Does that mean?

00:42:41.840 I don't think so.

00:42:42.400 No.

00:42:43.040 So I think it was maybe, I could be off by a year or two.

00:42:46.840 It was maybe 2015.

00:42:48.740 Do you remember the old, I think it was kind of billed as the Latin America TED thing?

00:42:56.520 It was Suedad or something with Andres Romer.

00:42:59.940 Do you remember?

00:43:00.440 Yes.

00:43:00.940 Do you remember that?

00:43:02.060 Ciudad, the city of ideas.

00:43:03.460 Ciudad, whatever.

00:43:05.060 Yes.

00:43:05.440 So I had been invited to speak at that, and it's an incredibly impressive federal police

00:43:10.700 with machine guns and the whole thing.

00:43:12.560 And at one point we were going to, we meaning the, you know, the main speakers, were going

00:43:18.460 to some event, and there were these kind of cars that were coming to take us to it.

00:43:24.200 And I get into a car, and there's a gentleman in the back.

00:43:27.120 I said, oh, do you mind if I share the ride with you?

00:43:28.900 He goes, sure, whatever.

00:43:30.740 We start chatting.

00:43:32.280 Now, I have no idea who he is.

00:43:34.080 It's Kip Thorne.

00:43:35.160 And then later, I'm telling someone the story, and they're like, you were with Kip Thorne in

00:43:41.180 a thing.

00:43:41.760 Do you know who this guy is?

00:43:43.700 And meanwhile, of course, he ends up winning the Nobel Prize. 1.00

00:43:46.140 I'm like, oh, shit. 0.99

00:43:47.600 I clearly did not show enough awe and reverence. 0.98

00:43:51.220 So then I ended up writing to him.

00:43:52.860 I said, hey, Kip, you remember we met in Ciudad, whatever.

00:43:55.340 Hey, why don't you come on my show?

00:43:56.580 But I think it was just after he had gotten the Nobel Prize, so he was probably, you know,

00:44:01.380 bombarded with endless things.

00:44:03.200 But that's my brush with Kip Thorne.

00:44:05.960 That's a great story.

00:44:07.200 I love that.

00:44:07.780 Yeah.

00:44:07.920 I mean, it was-

00:44:08.500 Yeah, you never know who you're sitting next to.

00:44:10.780 You always have to be-

00:44:11.800 Yeah.

00:44:12.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:44:13.320 That's why I would never want to be super famous, because then everyone's always looking

00:44:17.780 at you, and you can't ever just kind of relax.

00:44:20.500 But on the other hand, it's always good to be nice just in case.

00:44:24.060 Exactly.

00:44:24.700 No, no.

00:44:25.000 I was very nice.

00:44:26.060 I just didn't, you know, it wasn't like, oh, my goodness, it's such a pleasure to meet.

00:44:30.540 I'm like, oh, yeah, okay.

00:44:31.400 How you doing, buddy?

00:44:32.400 But anyways, so, but I want to talk about the file drawer problem.

00:44:36.360 So I have a great story about that.

00:44:38.980 So there are several ways by which science could be corrupted based on this particular

00:44:46.900 bias.

00:44:47.900 It could well be that someone runs 10 different things, the nine things that didn't work go

00:44:55.540 into the file drawer, the one thing that worked you reported, and therefore science has been

00:45:01.680 corrupted and that we'll never know about the nine things that didn't work.

00:45:04.280 And I can tell you, in my reading papers, I can smell that coming from a thousand miles

00:45:10.840 away.

00:45:11.460 And then oftentimes, I have told people, I bet you this person's entire research program 1.00

00:45:17.700 is bullshit. 0.98

00:45:18.460 And then we find out later that it was. 0.99

00:45:20.560 Because having been, you know, swimming in data my entire life, I know that it's never that

00:45:27.700 clean.

00:45:28.320 So that, you know, study one, study one, be study two, everything is perfect. 0.97

00:45:32.960 Holy shit, you must be an amazing experimentalist to get everything so perfectly tight. 0.96

00:45:38.280 Okay, so that's kind of a more nefarious problem. 0.99

00:45:41.480 It's a willful sort of, you know, corruption of science.

00:45:45.920 There is another kind that may not seem as sinister, but has as much harm.

00:45:50.720 This is where you file something in the drawer because of the null effects bias, right?

00:45:58.080 So contrary to that, where because it didn't work, you file it, you report all of the null

00:46:06.160 effects.

00:46:07.060 And then yet the editors will say, but hey, buddy, it's all full of null effects.

00:46:10.740 I'm not publishing this.

00:46:12.280 So there's a famous, I mean, famous psychologist in an academic sense.

00:46:16.500 He would not be recognized in a cab.

00:46:18.960 A very well-reputed psychologist who now is actually at a Southern California university 0.69

00:46:25.580 turns out to be an unbelievably unhinged Trump derangement syndrome kind of guy.

00:46:31.440 Anyways, theoretically, I shouldn't have the courtesy to not mention who his name is because 0.96

00:46:38.160 he turned out to be a complete degenerate, but I will grant him the courtesy.

00:46:40.940 Many years ago, I had submitted a paper to a journal called Cognition and Emotion, and

00:46:48.260 the special issue was on how emotions can affect decision-making.

00:46:54.980 And so remember my threshold model, how much information do you acquire before you commit

00:47:00.340 to a choice?

00:47:01.260 So I wanted to find out whether dysphoria has an effect on where you set those thresholds.

00:47:08.980 And so let me give you the background to that.

00:47:12.620 So if you set the thresholds higher, that means you need to collect more information,

00:47:18.860 more evidence before you hit that threshold.

00:47:21.380 Now, there are several school of thoughts when it comes to how dysphoria might affect decision-making.

00:47:27.860 One school of thought would say when you're dysphoric, by the way, for those of you who don't

00:47:32.220 know, dysphoria is not quite clinical depression, but you're getting there. 0.94

00:47:36.280 My life sucks, my dog died, my wife left me.

00:47:39.540 So I'm in an enduring state of blueness, right? 0.97

00:47:42.020 And there's an easy psychometric skill that you could give to measure people's dysphoria.

00:47:46.080 It's the every country Western song ever made.

00:47:49.820 Fair enough.

00:47:51.020 Exactly.

00:47:52.500 And so one school of thought in the literature said, look, when you are dysphoric, you have

00:48:00.220 no energy, including no cognitive desire to, you know, be effortful in your choice.

00:48:06.180 So based on that, I would, I probably hypothesized that I should put the thresholds lower.

00:48:11.540 There is another school of thought that says, well, when you are feeling helpless in your

00:48:16.780 dysphoric state, one of the ways that you could regain control is by expanding more effort

00:48:22.040 in your search.

00:48:22.840 So you should put the threshold higher.

00:48:24.440 So being an honest academic, I said, look, the research is very confusing.

00:48:30.140 I can go either way with the hypothesis.

00:48:32.080 I'm not going to propose any a priori hypotheses.

00:48:35.520 Let's see what happens.

00:48:37.000 So I do this very, very incredibly rigorous, elaborate study comparing dysphorics and non-dysphorics.

00:48:44.380 I think it was on 17 different dependent measures.

00:48:48.160 And on all but one, Michael, I got no difference between the dysphorics and non-dysphorics, meaning

00:48:55.800 16 out of 17, if I'm remembering my numbers, I got nothing.

00:49:00.680 So I submit the paper exactly as it is, right?

00:49:04.580 Being an honest guy.

00:49:06.560 That editor whom we says, hey, God, gorgeous paper, gorgeous theoretical thing, gorgeous

00:49:13.440 methodology, buddy, sorry, null effects.

00:49:16.420 I go, but what do you mean?

00:49:17.860 The pervasiveness of the null effects is a very powerful effect.

00:49:23.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:49:24.440 And by the way, it never got published.

00:49:26.520 This was probably 1998.

00:49:28.700 I sat on it.

00:49:29.780 I mentioned the study.

00:49:31.020 I think it was maybe on one of my Rogan episodes.

00:49:33.760 I got a journal, an open access journal that wrote to me and said, oh, we'd love to publish

00:49:39.480 it.

00:49:40.020 And I never followed it.

00:49:42.020 But so having said all that, do you view these two, I hide the nine that didn't show

00:49:50.040 anything versus the one that I just met, that I just mentioned, are they equally corrupting

00:49:56.300 science or is one more sinister than the other?

00:49:59.580 Oh, I definitely err on the side of just put it all out there and let's find out all the

00:50:04.420 results that you just document everything.

00:50:06.760 Document everything.

00:50:07.680 Yeah, I thought you were going to bring up the example of Daryl Bam.

00:50:10.980 I don't know if that's who you're talking about, but.

00:50:12.700 Oh, from Cornell.

00:50:13.720 That's where I went to see.

00:50:14.960 I know.

00:50:15.620 I know.

00:50:16.740 Well, so, you know, the longstanding thing in skepticism with the paranormal is, you know,

00:50:20.900 do you have any peer reviewed scientific papers, you know, in legitimate journals by real

00:50:25.020 scientists support this?

00:50:26.560 And the answer has always been pretty much no.

00:50:28.300 So, but then in 2010, Daryl Bam publishes this paper in the Journal of Personality and

00:50:35.460 Social Psychology.

00:50:36.580 Which is a top, top journal.

00:50:38.120 Top journal.

00:50:39.100 And he's the real deal.

00:50:40.560 You know, Cornell University, lifelong, you know, has like 500 published papers or whatever.

00:50:45.400 I mean, he's big.

00:50:46.380 And he runs this study in which he discovers backward causality. 0.88

00:50:50.160 Basically, he's got subjects in front of a computer screen that's split.

00:50:55.300 And the computer screen is going to put up randomly on one side of the screen or the

00:51:00.140 other, a neutral photograph image, you know, landscape or just people standing there or

00:51:06.280 whatever, and then an erotic image. 0.95

00:51:09.480 And so, and then the subjects have to press the button, which side they think it's going

00:51:13.720 to come up on.

00:51:14.940 And, and then the computer then has a random number generator to decide which side it's going

00:51:20.040 to put the erotic picture on.

00:51:22.380 Okay.

00:51:22.900 Anyway, so long story short is, you know, the subjects did slightly better, statistically

00:51:27.620 significant, better at guessing which side the erotic picture was going to come up on.

00:51:33.860 And so this got published in this journal.

00:51:36.560 And, you know, he, Ben even went on the Colbert Report before he went to CBS.

00:51:41.220 Then it was just his own show on Comedy Central.

00:51:43.900 And Colbert called that, you know, extrasensory pornception, you know, because these college students

00:51:48.680 were able to, you know, identify these porn images, you know, before the computer decided

00:51:54.160 which side of the screen it was going to go on.

00:51:56.900 That, that was the key there, right?

00:51:58.280 So he interpreted this whole thing of like backward causality.

00:52:01.920 How could this be?

00:52:02.640 All of physics is out the window.

00:52:04.560 Newton, Einstein, it's all going to be overturned.

00:52:07.020 And I just remember thinking at the time, you know, what's more likely that, you know,

00:52:10.980 Newton and Einstein in 400 years of physics is wrong.

00:52:13.980 And that these college students looking at porn images on a computer screen by the social

00:52:19.500 psychologist got it right.

00:52:21.400 And it turns out no one was able to replicate it.

00:52:24.860 Richard Wiseman and another guy, his colleague, to your point, they ran the experiment exactly

00:52:31.260 the way he did it.

00:52:32.080 And they got no results.

00:52:33.340 They sent it to the Journal of Personality Social Psychology.

00:52:35.780 They said, but it's a no result.

00:52:38.100 We don't want it.

00:52:39.280 It's like, but that's the point.

00:52:41.360 Yeah, amazing.

00:52:42.300 And then no one else was able to replicate it.

00:52:44.800 Then there were criticisms.

00:52:46.060 Turns out he ran nine different experiments, per your example, the only one of which came

00:52:51.260 out distinctly significant.

00:52:52.880 The rest did not.

00:52:54.240 Okay.

00:52:54.440 And then there were some flaws about how he determined which pictures were erotic or

00:52:57.940 whatever.

00:52:58.200 There's something like that.

00:52:59.320 Any case.

00:52:59.940 But that launched the whole replication crisis.

00:53:02.560 Maybe we should look at some of the other famous psych experiments, like Amy Cuddy's power

00:53:07.140 pose.

00:53:07.860 Yes.

00:53:08.020 I was at the TED conference when she gave that talk.

00:53:11.160 And it was unbelievably well received.

00:53:14.120 And all the women afterwards were walking around with their shoulders back and they're 0.66

00:53:17.600 strutting like, oh, I'm going to power pose my way into business and my testosterone is

00:53:22.360 going to go up and all that stuff.

00:53:23.540 And she wrote a book about it.

00:53:24.680 She got a big book contract and, you know, speaking engagements and all.

00:53:28.420 But no one was able to replicate it.

00:53:30.000 Now, she claims somebody has.

00:53:31.440 But last I checked, no one's been able to replicate this consistently.

00:53:34.720 And then there's a whole bunch of those.

00:53:36.720 You know, if you ask people for donations at the top of the escalator versus the bottom

00:53:40.460 of the escalator, they get more money.

00:53:42.420 Or if your desktop is clean versus not clean.

00:53:44.880 Or you hold a warm cup of coffee and then you meet somebody, you perceive them to be

00:53:49.400 warmer and more likable versus a cold cup.

00:53:54.120 Fail to replicate.

00:53:55.240 Fail to replicate.

00:53:55.780 Probably half of the most famous psych experiments should have never been published.

00:54:00.660 Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

00:54:02.000 Well, that's kind of an, it sounds like an indictment of the scientific method and the

00:54:05.240 whole system.

00:54:06.460 But really, it's not because it's the scientists themselves.

00:54:09.840 Yeah, it's an indictment of the darkness of the human heart.

00:54:15.040 Yes.

00:54:16.140 Or just our fallible nature and that the process is actually working.

00:54:20.840 You know, that these are the people that discovered they're wrong.

00:54:23.220 You know, so, I mean, I made this point to Brett, you know, he's kind of running down

00:54:27.700 the whole peer review system.

00:54:30.320 But even somebody like Jay Bhattacharya, it turned out to be right about closing the schools

00:54:36.400 and the social distancing and the masks and all that stuff.

00:54:39.600 But how do we know he's right?

00:54:40.820 Well, because he's in the system.

00:54:42.500 He's a professor at Stanford.

00:54:43.840 Now he works Trump administration.

00:54:45.620 But, you know, he published in journals.

00:54:47.360 You know, he gives public talks.

00:54:49.100 He engages with people.

00:54:50.620 This is how it works.

00:54:51.780 You can't just be on the outside and say, I don't trust anybody.

00:54:55.740 Well, then what are you going to do?

00:54:57.740 Because, you know, you got to get into the system.

00:55:00.540 What?

00:55:01.660 Sorry, finish your point.

00:55:02.940 No, no, I'm done.

00:55:03.520 Yeah.

00:55:03.880 Yeah.

00:55:04.760 So we're talking about truth.

00:55:06.860 And now I'm going to come at you sort of with a more pessimistic lens.

00:55:12.160 So I was recently asked, and you may have seen it, and you were kind enough to be one of the

00:55:18.500 blurbers on my forthcoming book, Suicidal Empathy.

00:55:21.640 And there I tell the story of having gone on a show of a British psychiatrist.

00:55:29.000 His name is Alex Kermy.

00:55:31.520 And at the end of the show, he asks me, you know, you've been a professor, you know, a behavioral scientist for, you know, three plus decades, blah, blah, blah.

00:55:42.220 What is the single, you know, phenomenon that has most surprised you about, you know, human behavior, about human nature?

00:55:49.800 And so I paused for a second.

00:55:51.200 And the first thing I said, I was, I'd never been asked that question before.

00:55:54.720 And I've done a million shows just like you have.

00:55:57.100 And so I paused.

00:55:58.100 I said, probably the inability to get people to change their opinions, even if I provide them with a tsunami of evidence that fully drowns them.

00:56:10.380 And so you see why that's a pessimistic lens, because if you and I are talking about truth, and then I tell you that most people's, the architecture of the mind of most people is to go, la, la, la, la, la, there is nothing that you're ever going to say that's going to move me from my anchored position.

00:56:31.180 Can we ever get to truth, if only because of this bias?

00:56:36.240 Yeah, well, there's research on this.

00:56:38.180 You can get people to change their minds on certain topics, but it's very contextual.

00:56:43.700 It depends on how much of their own self-identity is wrapped into that particular belief, right?

00:56:48.680 So I'm a conservative, or I'm a liberal, or I'm a Catholic, or a Protestant, whatever, and this is really important to me.

00:56:55.520 The chances of you changing my mind by showing me contradictory evidence is pretty low.

00:57:00.100 Or if you're giving me problems in numbers, but pictures, graphs, there's a whole area of research on what's the best way to present data to people.

00:57:15.620 And, you know, there's certain visuals that are very striking and get people to see what's really going on and to really grasp it intuitively versus just numbers, raw data, that kind of thing.

00:57:26.780 And so you can get people to see, like, climate change or vaccines work or whatever by visual graphs better than just stories, right?

00:57:37.440 But again, if they're defining themselves that way, it may not be possible.

00:57:43.220 So this gets to my religious truths discussion.

00:57:46.080 You know, if it's really important to you, if it's the kind of truth that makes a big difference in your life, it's unlikely that I'm going to be able to change your position.

00:57:55.960 But maybe I really shouldn't be doing that anyway, because if it's not the kind of truth claim that could be adjudicated by science anyway, then what are we really talking about?

00:58:07.480 You know, and so I do have chapters on, say, free will and determinism and God.

00:58:10.900 Okay, let's take free will and determinism.

00:58:12.700 Well, this is one of these really insoluble problems, is what do you mean by free, and what do you mean by will, and what do you mean by determined, and so on.

00:58:19.840 I do offer my own explanation for this, is, you know, standing on one leg, it's that the universe could, so the way people like Sapolsky and Sam Harris describe this is, could you have done otherwise?

00:58:33.820 That is, like, in a rewind of the tape, and you played it again, could you have gone left instead of right, or married this person instead of that person, whatever it is.

00:58:41.360 Well, if it's a read-only memory tape, just a recording of what actually happened, then no, you could not have done otherwise, because that's what you did, right?

00:58:48.120 But that's not the world we live in.

00:58:50.560 The universe is determined after the fact.

00:58:53.760 The past is determined, but it's not predetermined.

00:58:57.240 That is, going forward, Heraclitus says you can't step into the same river twice, because it's not the same river, and you're not the same person.

00:59:05.100 Or Jorge Borges says garden of forking paths.

00:59:09.080 With each bifurcating choice you make, that changes everything going forward, go left, go right, this, and so on.

00:59:15.980 And the future is not predetermined.

00:59:17.840 Now, if you buy into the cosmology of the block universe, where everything's already happened, and we just happen to be a slice of time here, and God's outside of that and knows whatever, but that's not the universe we live in, right?

00:59:29.620 Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, there's an arrow of time.

00:59:33.320 The past, the future scenario is never going to be exactly like the past, so you can alter it.

00:59:39.180 You can self-determine it.

00:59:40.360 Anyway, that's my standing on one leg argument.

00:59:42.160 But, of course, it's a difficult one, because it depends how you define these terms.

00:59:48.320 And so that's why I'm not a philosopher, I'm a psychologist.

00:59:52.940 And in any case, Gad, I've never met a determinist who actually lives like the universe is determined.

00:59:59.900 They take pride in their books that they write, as if they chose to write the books.

01:00:04.160 And why are they even bothering to make arguments about it?

01:00:06.320 Oh, but don't they usually give the answer that it has to be for you to function in the world in a meaningful way that you have the illusion that you don't have free will?

01:00:19.820 That you do have free will.

01:00:21.600 Excuse me.

01:00:22.460 Yeah.

01:00:22.640 That's kind of the Sam Harris argument, isn't it?

01:00:25.600 Here's what he says.

01:00:26.480 Our wills are simply not of our own making.

01:00:29.140 Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.

01:00:35.640 We do not have the freedom we think we have.

01:00:38.180 Okay, so I'll do the little thought experiment with you, Gad, because I know your wife, and I know you're happily married, and I know this would never happen.

01:00:44.860 So it's a counterfactual thought experiment that can never happen.

01:00:47.640 But you're on the road by yourself, and you stray, and you hook up with somebody, and your wife finds out about it, and she says, Gad, darling, what were you thinking?

01:00:58.580 Could you actually say, well, darling, my will is simply not of my own making.

01:01:03.440 I mean, my thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which I'm unaware and over which I exert no conscious control.

01:01:09.340 Could you even finish the sentence before you?

01:01:12.080 Before I'm divorced.

01:01:13.840 Yes.

01:01:14.280 Knowing the fiery nature of my wife, who's Lebanese, I don't think I'd survive another five minutes. 1.00

01:01:21.600 Okay.

01:01:22.520 To your wife, this is hypothetical.

01:01:24.800 Hypothetical.

01:01:25.400 I've never been with Gad where I thought this could happen.

01:01:28.900 But the point is that, come on, we all know that, of course, you could do different because it's a different future, and you just don't put yourself in those scenarios where you – anyway.

01:01:39.000 You know, I love that you said – I mean, I already have a million reasons why I love and respect you, but now that you're taking this position on the free will argument, add another reason.

01:01:51.080 Because whenever I've read those parts, it's not as though I'm incapable of complex thinking. 0.99

01:01:56.620 I always read them, and I go, what a bunch of bullshit this is. 0.99

01:01:59.860 It makes no sense. 1.00

01:02:00.820 How is it that I teach psychology of decision-making then?

01:02:05.040 What did Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman do all this time?

01:02:10.740 What a way – why are you, Sam Harris, so upset at Trump when he has no free will to be the existential threat that he is?

01:02:19.700 Never mind your thought experiment of Gad straying in the – right?

01:02:23.700 Why are you so angry at Trump, right?

01:02:26.560 It is the laws of chemistry and physics that dictate what he is, and therefore, why don't you just accept that which he cannot control? 0.99

01:02:34.800 So it's such a bunch of bullshit, and thank you for – okay. 0.99

01:02:39.240 All right. 0.99

01:02:39.780 Let's discuss a few – let's try to apply some of this stuff in this book.

01:02:44.140 People, go out and get it.

01:02:45.640 It's out January 27th.

01:02:47.300 Do yourselves a favor.

01:02:49.140 Some of this stuff in contemporary context.

01:02:52.420 Maybe we could start with the following.

01:02:54.780 Did you – well, I know you watched it because you put up a very humorous tweet to me with Josh Hawley and some gynecologist, right?

01:03:03.800 Unbelievable.

01:03:05.040 I mean, let me ask you this, Michael.

01:03:08.120 Do you think that in the deep recesses – and I've often asked this question to many authors, and I always get slightly different equivocations.

01:03:16.280 In the deep recesses of her mind, when she puts her head on the pillow at the end of the night, does she say to herself, I defended truth when I engaged with this transphobic bigot? 0.98

01:03:31.360 Or does she go, my God, what a bunch of bullshit I just spewed, and history is going to judge me very negatively? 0.97

01:03:40.320 What's your – I know you can't – you don't know what's in her heart, but give me your sort of intuition. 0.98

01:03:44.680 My intuition on this, because I have engaged with quite a few people like this that believe that.

01:03:50.140 You know, men can get pregnant, and, you know, men can become women and go into women's sports.

01:03:55.220 You know, it's like, do you really believe this?

01:03:57.240 Okay, here's what – like, in this particular case, you know, can a man – Josh Hawley asked, can a man get pregnant?

01:04:04.360 Of course not.

01:04:05.780 But that's not what we're talking about.

01:04:07.460 They're talking about women who say they identify as men.

01:04:10.500 Yes, of course, a woman who identifies as a man can get pregnant, you know, unless she had surgeries and, you know, destroyed everything. 0.97

01:04:18.060 Yeah, of course.

01:04:19.140 But – so then it comes down, well, what do you mean – how do you define a man or a woman?

01:04:23.080 And that's where they get into that circular, well, you know, it's hard to say, and, you know, I'm kind of – I deal with a diverse range of people, and so this is what made Matt Walsh's film so funny.

01:04:35.900 What is a woman? 1.00

01:04:36.380 I mean, it was almost like a Borat, which is just a total made-up comedy thing, you know, where he put himself into these positions to get these people to say idiotic things. 0.99

01:04:45.760 But that was not Matt Walsh's intent. 0.95

01:04:48.200 It wasn't supposed to be funny.

01:04:49.620 But it was funny because these, you know, people, they couldn't answer the question because that's the problem, okay?

01:04:55.280 So I think, you know, everybody knows that you can't change sex. 0.98

01:04:59.260 There is no third sex and so on. 0.98

01:05:01.160 And people throw out stuff like, well, but, you know, what about these genetic anomalies, you know, the XXY, the XYY, and Kleinfelder syndrome, and so on.

01:05:10.960 Yes, and then, as people point out, there are people that are born with six fingers.

01:05:14.380 That doesn't mean the norm is we're five fingers.

01:05:16.860 It's in suicidal empathy, that example, but go ahead.

01:05:19.760 Nice.

01:05:20.280 Exactly.

01:05:20.800 Good.

01:05:21.040 Yeah, good.

01:05:21.860 Yeah, I mean, your book is going to be filled with these kind of batshit crazy things.

01:05:25.100 So, and there I do think, okay, in terms of, like, the moral arc, I think what's happened here is that, you know, we've gone from civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, children's rights, workers' rights, and so on.

01:05:37.740 The trans right thing feels to liberals like, well, this is the next thing I should be behind. 0.98

01:05:43.560 And I think that ideology overrides their two eyes and two neurons that go, I know that there's only two sexes, of course, but it's just overriding it. 0.84

01:05:55.400 Like, I really should be in favor of this.

01:05:57.860 I think that's what's going on.

01:05:59.160 But, yeah, no, fair enough.

01:06:00.540 But it almost seems as though that is the epitome of parasitized thinking, right?

01:06:06.460 Because I've often been asked, you know, oh, Professor Saad, when you talk about all of these parasitic ideas, is this something that is a contemporary reality?

01:06:15.420 And then my answer is that the specific idea pathogens that we are talking about today are contemporary, but the capacity of the human mind to be parasitized by nonsense is eternal, right?

01:06:29.300 So there was a time when we thought that if Linda next door were a witch, we'd throw her into water, and if she floats, then we know she's a witch. 0.57

01:06:35.940 And we thought that it was a great way to organize our neighborhood according to that belief. 0.92

01:06:39.940 Today we go, what the hell were we thinking?

01:06:41.580 But it's almost impossible for me to think of a more fundamental intellectual terroristic attack on the fabric of reality than to question the most fundamental defining marker of a sexually reproducing species than to say, well, there's no way for us to know what is exactly a male or woman. 0.90

01:07:05.140 So much so that when I'm listening to, I don't know what the name of the black justice who's got roughly the intelligence of my socks, maybe less.

01:07:16.140 I genuinely think that my socks are smarter.

01:07:18.180 Is that Ketanji?

01:07:19.080 Ketanji Brown, something like that.

01:07:20.620 Yeah, exactly.

01:07:21.060 When she is doing her stuff, it really, I mean, if it could surprise me who's written the books that I have, you can understand how extraordinary it is.

01:07:33.160 In the 21st century, the most scientifically literate advanced society in the world is taking its eight top jurists and having a conversation that I don't believe that Orwell could have predicted.

01:07:48.940 There's no way to predict that.

01:07:51.060 Yeah, yeah.

01:07:51.700 So have we reached, is that the singularity point, Michael, and we can only improve from there? 0.99

01:07:56.800 Or can we come up with bigger bullshit? 0.99

01:07:58.600 It's got to be better. 0.99

01:07:59.660 I was going to have a chapter on trans truths in the book, and I thought, you know, by the time it comes out, this is going to be dead and gone. 1.00

01:08:06.180 And I just cannot believe my eyes that right this week, we're recording this, the week before the book comes out, the Supreme Court has to deal with this issue, specifically about men and women's sports.

01:08:16.180 Anyway, yeah, again, I don't think it's a problem of ignorance or lack of education.

01:08:22.240 You know, of course she knows what a woman is. 1.00

01:08:24.140 Everybody does.

01:08:26.100 It's an adult human female.

01:08:27.800 Okay, in case any of our listeners are not sure.

01:08:31.520 What it is, I think, back to your suicidal empathy, I think they're placing one value over another value.

01:08:38.720 In this case, let's just say on immigration, you know, we want to favor brown people over the freedoms of brown people that are illegal immigrants over the U.S. citizens themselves. 0.80

01:08:51.740 Right.

01:08:52.200 So finally, when when a president says, you know what, we're going to do something about this once and for all.

01:08:56.940 It's gone too far.

01:08:58.000 And then everybody objects.

01:08:59.740 Well, why do you really think we should just have complete open borders?

01:09:03.500 And if you push them on that, most of you go, well, no.

01:09:06.240 Okay, then what criteria should we use?

01:09:08.440 And what are you going to do about the people that come here illegally? 0.98

01:09:12.100 You know, my wife came here through the through the front door and made all the applications. 1.00

01:09:17.500 And we went through all the process.

01:09:19.180 I had to sit through these meetings and I had to hire an attorney to help us navigate.

01:09:23.340 We did all that.

01:09:23.960 You know, she could have just gone to the Mexican border and just walked over. 1.00

01:09:27.800 Right.

01:09:28.420 And that doesn't seem fair.

01:09:29.780 And if you push liberals on this, go, yeah, I guess that's true.

01:09:33.140 But she's white. 0.99

01:09:34.120 She's white.

01:09:35.100 She has that privilege.

01:09:37.340 You should see this interview was so funny.

01:09:39.360 Have you ever have you ever been a party from Germany? 0.96

01:09:41.260 You know, have you ever joined the Nazi party or neo-Nazi party or are you coming here for prostitution? 0.97

01:09:46.220 They actually asked that. 0.89

01:09:47.360 It's like, what?

01:09:48.500 I'm coming here to get married to this guy. 0.99

01:09:50.300 Marriage is a form of patriarchal prostitution. 0.99

01:09:54.760 That's right. 0.93

01:09:55.080 Yes, I know.

01:09:55.580 So she was coming here for prostitution. 1.00

01:09:58.700 So I think, you know, like a lot of these, you know, these so-called Karens we're seeing in Minneapolis, you know, what are they doing out there? 0.67

01:10:05.640 Well, they're they're moral, you know, moral emotions are dialed up to 11 like this.

01:10:11.660 They've been told these lies. 0.90

01:10:13.280 You know, these are the Gestapo, Trump's Hitler, the MAGA is the Nazis. 0.99

01:10:19.040 And, you know, would you go back in time and kill Hitler to prevent six million Jews from dying? 0.99

01:10:23.080 Well, yes, I would. 0.98

01:10:24.360 OK, well, then that case, I'm going to go down there and march and drive around with my kid in the car, whatever. 1.00

01:10:28.960 I mean, it's just so there it's not that they're stupid. 0.99

01:10:31.840 I think their ideology is just overriding reason. 0.99

01:10:34.660 And and if I can just riff on that a second, I mean, what a risky thing to do.

01:10:40.000 Right.

01:10:40.480 But people do risky things when they're, you know, overridden with their moral emotions.

01:10:44.740 Like during COVID, we found this I did.

01:10:48.940 I worked on this Netflix show on cults and, you know, the sort of power of belief.

01:10:53.260 And we found this woman in Texas who was a married, two kids, successful business, entrepreneur, PR company.

01:11:00.020 Everything's great.

01:11:01.080 Dallas, perfect life.

01:11:02.220 And then COVID comes on.

01:11:03.940 Everything gets shut down.

01:11:04.960 She's out of business, no money. 0.99

01:11:06.820 And she's just sitting at home on the computer going down the QAnon rabbit hole and buying all the crazy bet shit conspiracy theories about everything. 1.00

01:11:16.360 And to the point where basically her husband said, if you don't stop this, you know, I'm taking the kids and leaving you. 0.97

01:11:23.860 And she told him, go ahead and do it, because this is the most important thing I will ever do in my life.

01:11:29.520 I'm going to save America.

01:11:30.700 Yeah. 0.86

01:11:31.660 She's putting, you know, that's she's not ignorant.

01:11:34.860 She's very successful and educated.

01:11:36.920 It's like saving America versus my kids.

01:11:39.700 Yeah.

01:11:39.820 I better go with the whole country.

01:11:41.220 Right.

01:11:42.220 Wow.

01:11:42.820 All right.

01:11:43.140 So that's the power of believing something that's false.

01:11:45.440 You know, OK.

01:11:47.120 So anyway.

01:11:48.120 Yeah.

01:11:48.340 That's.

01:11:49.320 Yeah.

01:11:49.880 I remember.

01:11:50.600 That's what's behind your suicidal empathy, I think, is people are just they're placing.

01:11:55.140 Well, what's your argument that they're so empathetic for this one group or whatever idea?

01:12:01.680 Well, yeah.

01:12:02.360 I mean, but more generally, the framework is that.

01:12:05.040 Like many psychiatric disorders, what happens is a hyper or hypo activation of that mechanism.

01:12:15.160 In this case, it's hyperactive.

01:12:17.420 Right.

01:12:17.540 OCD is the maladaptive misfiring of an otherwise adaptive process.

01:12:24.080 Checking and scanning the environment for threats makes perfect evolutionary sense.

01:12:29.000 But once I have tended to that threat, the warning flag goes down and I go on in my life.

01:12:33.560 But if I'm stuck in front of the sink, washing my hands and scalding hot water for eight hours a day so that I could no longer go to my job, what started off as an adaptive process becomes maladaptive.

01:12:45.640 And so I take that and I say, this is exactly what's happening to empathy.

01:12:49.360 It's not an attack, as you know, from having gone through the book.

01:12:53.260 It's not an attack on empathy, period.

01:12:56.760 It's an attack on dysregulated empathy.

01:12:59.520 So there you go.

01:13:00.020 Okay, but I wanted to maybe spend a couple of minutes.

01:13:05.120 You know, I probably have, and I'm not trying to just give you free compliments, although you are certainly worthy of having all those accolades.

01:13:11.820 You're certainly one of the most consistently for as many years as one can think of been a successful public intellectual and author.

01:13:21.720 Many of my listeners and viewers are aspiring intellectuals or aspiring authors.

01:13:30.020 So if I ask you, hey, Michael, let's do a five-minute seminar on here are some absolute musts for someone to be a successful author.

01:13:41.820 And maybe not to the extent that you've been.

01:13:44.520 But, you know, I've got this idea.

01:13:46.180 I want to write my next book.

01:13:48.220 Dr. Shermer, tell me how to do it.

01:13:50.240 What would you tell to such a person?

01:13:51.560 Well, apparently it's good to go to a comedy store and become a comedian now.

01:13:57.580 Okay, sorry.

01:13:58.720 I'm not going to name any names.

01:14:00.680 It's just something weird I've noticed.

01:14:02.800 He's a YouTube influencer and he's a comedian.

01:14:05.920 Yes, yes.

01:14:08.600 We're covering the war in Ukraine.

01:14:10.780 We're going to our...

01:14:11.660 Does his first name start with a D?

01:14:15.860 Yes.

01:14:16.420 Yes.

01:14:16.740 Okay, go on.

01:14:17.280 Here's my analogy.

01:14:18.000 I don't know him from out.

01:14:19.040 I've never met him.

01:14:19.760 I don't watch his show.

01:14:20.820 I don't even know what he's on about other than apparently he's a libertarian.

01:14:23.360 So I have some of those propensities.

01:14:24.620 Maybe we'd agree on things.

01:14:25.920 I just was amazed that this even became a thing.

01:14:28.680 Yeah, I know.

01:14:29.620 So here's my analogy, like, you know, the network news or whatever, you know, we're covering the war in Ukraine.

01:14:34.840 We're going to our war correspondent.

01:14:37.360 Comic Dave in his basement in Ohio.

01:14:39.600 Like, what?

01:14:41.340 I mean, wouldn't it be good to, like, go there?

01:14:43.880 Yeah.

01:14:44.520 And then, you know, on that, yeah, I mean, Douglas Murray, he's there.

01:14:49.040 He's gone there.

01:14:50.020 Yeah.

01:14:50.300 That has to have some value, right?

01:14:52.940 In the world we live in, in my book, what I'm arguing is that institutions, experts, they still matter.

01:15:01.380 Even acknowledging they got it wrong, you know, CDC and Anthony Fauci, they were wrong about the masks and this and that.

01:15:06.900 Okay, fine.

01:15:07.280 But there's still, I mean, we can't just throw it all out.

01:15:10.340 I mean, we have a system in place.

01:15:11.960 I want the reporting to be done by somebody that knows something about it, that went there himself.

01:15:17.260 I like Douglas Murray because he goes there.

01:15:19.620 I don't, I've never been there.

01:15:21.460 Well, I've been to Israel a couple times, but I've never been to, you know, some of the war-torn zones he's talking about.

01:15:27.360 Okay?

01:15:27.920 Anyway, so, you know, so I think the deeper question there is, you know, do those things still have value?

01:15:34.980 And I think they do.

01:15:36.820 All right, so to answer your question.

01:15:38.040 Well, these days, yeah, I guess you have to really navigate social media and, you know, and that kind of stuff.

01:15:44.160 I'm pretty old school.

01:15:45.880 But, you know, I think being widely read, you know, and having a diverse range of opinions based on some reading.

01:15:55.600 And, and I guess in terms of like, well, I want to write a book.

01:15:59.400 Yeah, I, I'm sure like you, I get letters.

01:16:01.700 You know, I want, I have a book.

01:16:03.000 Can you help me?

01:16:03.760 And it's like, okay, well, you really need an agent.

01:16:05.800 Oh, an agent.

01:16:06.400 Okay.

01:16:06.700 Can you get me an agent?

01:16:07.620 It's like, okay, this is not, I'm not in that job.

01:16:10.380 Right.

01:16:11.220 And, you know, but I have helped a lot of people.

01:16:14.220 Sometimes it works out.

01:16:15.080 Sometimes it doesn't.

01:16:15.780 But that's the system, right?

01:16:17.800 The book publishers, not self-publish, but book publishers mostly only entertain manuscripts from agents so that there's a screening process.

01:16:27.240 Otherwise, they'd get a thousand manuscripts a day.

01:16:29.700 They don't have the time, right?

01:16:31.000 So the agent screens them.

01:16:32.860 So in terms of that, you have to, in terms of like podcasts, I mean, I wish I knew what the next big thing was, Gad.

01:16:39.220 I mean, I would have loved to get into the podcast game like when Rogan did back when he was an early adopter and got in and got a market chair.

01:16:47.000 You know all about this as a marketing guy, right?

01:16:49.420 I mean, that's sort of that Matthew effect to those who have more shall be given and, you know, to get that momentum.

01:16:55.240 If I knew what the next thing was, I'd do it, but I don't know what it is.

01:16:58.100 I mean, I have a podcast, you have a podcast, but there's like a million podcasts or something and most of us are on the long tail.

01:17:04.160 So I guess my advice is just, you know, pick a subject and this is your thing.

01:17:08.940 This is what my thing is and that's what I stand for.

01:17:12.640 This is my platform.

01:17:14.160 Like for skeptic, you know, we deal with science and pseudoscience and conspiracies or whatever, but it's always a kind of a science focus and facts and truth and all that.

01:17:24.040 So that people have some idea, why am I interested in reading Gad said or buying his book or whatever?

01:17:31.140 Oh, because this is what he does.

01:17:33.100 Yeah, okay.

01:17:34.460 So you have to have some kind of identity.

01:17:36.180 You can't just be, I'm interested in everything and I want to write about everything.

01:17:40.300 Now, be widely read, but pick one thing, right?

01:17:43.140 And, you know, early on, you know, I had, you know, professors, you know, just don't write about the theory of everything.

01:17:48.700 Write about one thing, right?

01:17:51.000 And have, you know, have it and also have a point of view, right?

01:17:54.940 Why am I reading this?

01:17:57.460 You know, it's most opinion editorials.

01:18:00.180 They should have an opinion.

01:18:01.220 But even a scholarly paper or a serious work of nonfiction in a book, you know, I call this Darwin's dictum.

01:18:10.100 All observations must be for or against some point of view if they are to be of any service.

01:18:15.780 Darwin wrote that letter to a friend of his named Henslow who had gone to this British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting devoted to the origin of species.

01:18:26.000 Darwin wasn't there.

01:18:26.740 And his friend wrote him and said, yeah, they said your book is too theoretical.

01:18:31.300 You should just put the facts out and let them speak for themselves.

01:18:33.500 And he said, this is like counting pebbles and describing the colors.

01:18:38.080 All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service, right?

01:18:43.160 So whatever you're interested in, have an opinion.

01:18:45.600 Just put it out there.

01:18:46.760 And not just, you know, here's my theory.

01:18:48.420 But I mean, like, okay, you're going to be like your suicidal empathy.

01:18:51.820 Here's my hypothesis.

01:18:53.340 Here's what it explains.

01:18:54.520 It's a good explanation because of these reasons.

01:18:57.060 Now have at it, right?

01:18:58.680 And so then readers go, okay, now I know what I'm getting and I'm going to agree or disagree or whatever.

01:19:03.640 You know, so that's, you know, I guess.

01:19:05.380 Yeah.

01:19:05.560 And finally, I guess just to your happiness book, just be true to yourself.

01:19:10.200 You know, don't try to be somebody you're not.

01:19:13.460 You know, like I admire Joe Rogan as a podcaster.

01:19:16.120 But I can't be him.

01:19:19.180 You know, I couldn't talk to Mike Tyson for three hours.

01:19:23.340 He's a great conversationalist.

01:19:24.900 I do my thing.

01:19:26.020 You do your thing.

01:19:26.920 Joe does his thing.

01:19:27.740 You know, just you got to just find this is what I'm good at.

01:19:30.500 And I'm just going to do this.

01:19:31.700 In my case, you know, writing books and editing my magazine, riding my bike.

01:19:36.560 You know, I just like back in the day, you know, I was a tennis player.

01:19:39.720 And then, you know, I had some back problems and so on.

01:19:42.580 So I got out of that.

01:19:43.980 And then by random chance, I got a job at a bike magazine out of college.

01:19:47.540 I couldn't find a teaching job.

01:19:50.060 And I just took up cycling.

01:19:51.760 And it turned out at that time, almost nobody was bike racing.

01:19:55.460 So it was like a new market that I could get into and excel at.

01:19:59.720 And, you know, the next thing you know, I'm on Wide World of Sports for ABC and corporate sponsors and contracts.

01:20:06.620 And I'm a professional and I'm just spending my days riding my bike and so on.

01:20:11.960 And it's like, but there's a bunch of different sports.

01:20:15.000 That's the one that I was good at.

01:20:17.300 And there was an open market for it.

01:20:18.840 So, you know, that's pretty much it.

01:20:21.380 If I can add a few to yours, if it can help.

01:20:24.660 I would say this is more sort of the mechanics of writing.

01:20:30.240 I think having a punishing discipline is really important, right?

01:20:35.340 So I wake up every day.

01:20:37.980 I mean, when I'm working on a book project, I become sort of the recluse cave god who goes into the cave.

01:20:47.460 And my wife says, OK, I guess we'll see you in 14 months.

01:20:52.720 Of course, I'm available to my children and wife.

01:20:55.180 But I'm really, really sort of and actually I kind of almost go through a postpartum depression when the book finishes because I've been so focused on delivering that baby that now that it's gone, I'm kind of what I do with myself now every day, right?

01:21:07.900 So this discipline of you wake up every day and I mean, yes, you could put an artificial number of words that you have to write a day, whatever it is.

01:21:16.900 I need to get 300 words a day if I'm going to submit this book by the due date or whatever.

01:21:22.000 You have to have that discipline.

01:21:24.300 Otherwise, it just lives as a romantic ideal.

01:21:29.040 Everybody's an author until they actually have to write a book, right?

01:21:32.480 And so I would say this kind of punishing discipline is really important.

01:21:38.000 And in my case, and this may not apply, just like you said, like know thyself.

01:21:42.300 For me, I think one of the things that really resonates with my readers is that I'm able to mix very serious science with personal anecdotes that draws the people in, right?

01:21:56.480 They know me.

01:21:57.120 That's why people got very upset when they saw that I wasn't narrating my earlier books.

01:22:01.840 They said, no, no, no, I don't want to hear about your Lebanon stories through some weird guy.

01:22:05.900 You should be saying it.

01:22:07.160 I want to hear your sarcastic wit and so on.

01:22:09.960 So I think if you're able to truly have, I mean, literally and figuratively a voice as an author, I think that helps in creating that magic sauce.

01:22:19.460 What do you think?

01:22:20.060 Yeah, you're good at that.

01:22:21.180 Yeah, no, it makes a big difference.

01:22:23.700 Do you know Christopher Hitchens line about that?

01:22:25.420 Everyone has a book in them.

01:22:26.680 And in most cases, that's where it should stay.

01:22:29.220 I didn't know.

01:22:30.040 That's cool.

01:22:30.520 So, you know, I wish, you know, I know that you knew him.

01:22:33.660 I so regret that I never had the pleasure of meeting him.

01:22:36.900 Do you think that we would have gotten along or better?

01:22:39.520 Oh, yeah, he would have loved you.

01:22:40.720 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:22:42.360 Yeah, yeah.

01:22:42.920 Yeah, you're kind of, you're Hitch-like in some of your, although it's hard to, you know, I wish I had a string of video clips like Hitch Slaps.

01:22:49.860 I don't know if you've ever seen the Hitch Slap.

01:22:51.380 Yeah, of course.

01:22:52.200 But that takes a certain kind of temperament back to being true to yourself.

01:22:56.100 I'm just not, I'm not Hitch.

01:22:57.580 But I think the difference between the Hitch Slap and me, if I can dare put myself in the same category as Hitchens, I think even when I am, I call it the God smack.

01:23:11.420 When I'm God smacking you, there is still a twinkle in my eyes of playfulness, right?

01:23:18.320 So I think even when it seems as though I'm, you know, I really am being a combative honey badger, there is kind of a positivity in how I come at you.

01:23:29.400 Now, many people get that.

01:23:30.980 Some don't and get offended.

01:23:32.660 Yeah.

01:23:32.720 I think maybe Hitchens was a bit more caustic in his delivery.

01:23:38.260 Does that, does that seem right?

01:23:39.320 Yeah, sometimes, though it's hard to say because sometimes for him it was a show.

01:23:43.100 I remember we did a debate against two other guys somewhere and afterwards, I mean, I took it really seriously.

01:23:48.700 We're going to win this debate.

01:23:49.580 And then afterwards we're at the green room and he's like, Michael, I thought that was a good show we had tonight.

01:23:54.580 I'm like, oh, it's a show.

01:23:56.740 It's entertainment.

01:23:57.760 Okay, I get it.

01:23:59.380 Wow, that's amazing.

01:24:00.300 I mean, Hitch could have argued either side of any particular issue, I think, because you're just really good at that.

01:24:05.120 But, yeah, it is a form.

01:24:06.160 That's probably another good skill.

01:24:08.100 You know, just be entertaining.

01:24:09.060 Be interesting.

01:24:09.860 Yeah.

01:24:10.080 Just people want to watch you and hear what you have to say, right?

01:24:13.480 So, yeah, so all of that I think is important, true to yourself.

01:24:18.880 The discipline thing, that's an interesting issue.

01:24:21.480 For me, most of the things I do, I enjoy it so much that I don't really need discipline, per se.

01:24:27.580 In fact, I feel a little antsy if I don't do it.

01:24:30.120 I agree.

01:24:31.140 I agree.

01:24:31.520 Like, working out, I mean, I'm lucky I live in Southern California where it's sunny most of the time.

01:24:36.360 And I don't even want to tell you what I did this morning and what I'm going to do.

01:24:39.480 Don't say it.

01:24:41.000 I'm in a snowstorm.

01:24:42.160 I don't want to hear it.

01:24:42.860 It's 75 degrees today.

01:24:44.280 Anyway.

01:24:45.040 But I actually, if I don't go out and ride my bike or play tennis with my buddies or whatever, I feel kind of antsy.

01:24:50.660 Like, I got to get out there and work and sweat and the sun and the wind.

01:24:54.560 And same thing with writing.

01:24:55.780 You know, like, I really want to write something.

01:24:57.740 And in case I deal with the problem that you mentioned, which we all have, you know, when I finish a book.

01:25:03.040 So, for me, I usually write too much.

01:25:05.160 So, I cut stuff out.

01:25:06.480 And then I just, the way I talk myself into this, like, this is going in the next book.

01:25:11.740 So, then I don't feel like, oh, I don't want to cut this out.

01:25:14.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:25:14.740 And so, then, as soon as I'm done, I think, okay, I'm going to start thinking about the next book.

01:25:19.000 And I'll just kind of let that stew and I'll move things around.

01:25:22.020 And maybe this will be a chapter.

01:25:23.400 And maybe this is the table of contents.

01:25:25.160 And I, so, I'm still kind of working on it.

01:25:27.560 Plus, of course, with Skeptic, every three months we have to crank out another issue.

01:25:30.760 So, I have to edit a dozen articles or so.

01:25:32.600 So, that's always kind of going.

01:25:34.360 But even there, again, it doesn't, it's not work for me.

01:25:38.040 Like, if you said, this is called the lottery test.

01:25:41.200 If you won the lottery and you had all the money you need, how would your life change?

01:25:45.700 I do have all the money I need.

01:25:47.380 In my life, I am doing what I want to do.

01:25:50.900 The only thing, although I always add, I would fly private.

01:25:55.180 But, you know, to your point, I would say the same thing.

01:25:58.540 You know, now Suicidal Empathy just came out.

01:26:01.820 And, you know, from all indications, it looks like it might be the one, God willing, God willing,

01:26:07.260 that might give me the financial freedom.

01:26:09.420 But I would want the financial freedom, not because I want to sit and surf in Santa Barbara

01:26:14.820 all day long.

01:26:15.600 It's because I could do nothing other than right if I have that financial freedom.

01:26:21.720 So, I completely hear you.

01:26:23.220 Hey, Michael, this is fantastic.

01:26:25.120 It's four o'clock.

01:26:26.080 So, we went about half an hour over the time.

01:26:28.180 But it was...

01:26:28.680 Oh, it's okay.

01:26:28.840 I'm good.

01:26:29.200 Yeah, no, no.

01:26:29.760 It's such a pleasure.

01:26:31.600 This is the book.

01:26:33.800 Go get it right now.

01:26:35.520 Truth.

01:26:36.300 Michael Shermer's 14th book.

01:26:38.100 How many more books do you have in you?

01:26:39.640 Hopefully, another 14?

01:26:40.820 Well, I do have a manuscript that we're at my agent shopping around now called Contingency.

01:26:46.560 And this is the role of chance, randomness, and luck in how lives turn out.

01:26:52.560 So, this started off as, you know, how lives turn out, you know, psychology and genetics,

01:26:57.600 behavior genetics and all that.

01:26:58.880 But then it really morphed more into...

01:27:00.100 Because there's been already so much written on that, that the role of luck, just randomness.

01:27:06.480 Again, back to Jorge Borgia's The Garden of Forking Paths.

01:27:10.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:11.400 You know, there's just so much randomness.

01:27:13.560 And when you start talking to people about it, everyone has a story about how their lives turned out.

01:27:18.560 And it's rarely the way they planned it.

01:27:20.980 Yeah.

01:27:21.420 It's always, I went to this party and I met my spouse.

01:27:24.920 Oh, my God.

01:27:25.420 I had no idea.

01:27:27.220 I took this class and I met that professor rather than that one.

01:27:30.820 So, two quick stories.

01:27:32.580 Number one, if you don't know already, you should check out a book that came out a few years ago

01:27:36.760 by a Cornell economist who's been on my show, Robert Frank.

01:27:42.940 Oh, yeah.

01:27:43.360 I know Robert Frank.

01:27:43.980 Yeah, so Robert Frank had a book on exactly this kind of issue, the effect of luck in our lives.

01:27:52.840 And the second story, a more personal one, if I'm remembering the conversation correctly and accurately,

01:27:58.760 when I held an X Spaces with Elon Musk and we were discussing, I asked him a question sort of in this,

01:28:06.980 you know, how much of your entrepreneurial spirit is due to this versus that and so on.

01:28:11.060 And if I remember correctly, he answered that a lot of it is due to, you know, the serendipity of life.

01:28:17.940 I don't think he used the word serendipity, but very much luck.

01:28:21.060 So, you can go and check back what he said because there's some quotable stuff there.

01:28:25.320 When you've got the richest person in the world saying, look, a lot of it boils down to luck.

01:28:29.620 Of course, a lot of it is that he's a visionary and he's a hard worker, but some of it is just the sliding door principle, right?

01:28:36.080 You either got in or you didn't get in.

01:28:37.580 I have a whole chapter on movies and the sliding doors is one of them I talk about.

01:28:43.440 Oh, amazing.

01:28:44.320 Oh, so the book is written and is being fully shopped now.

01:28:47.380 Oh, yeah.

01:28:48.140 Yeah.

01:28:48.500 The agent shopping around the full manuscript.

01:28:50.180 It's a short book.

01:28:50.940 It's only like four, 45,000 words, 50,000.

01:28:54.520 I think it's 49,000 words.

01:28:56.500 Yeah.

01:28:57.320 Yeah.

01:28:57.840 Completely different than most of the stuff I've done, but it's.

01:29:00.080 Oh, very cool.

01:29:00.900 So, please come back when that book comes out.

01:29:03.400 Sliding doors is such a great analogy.

01:29:05.300 I love that book.

01:29:06.540 Even though, so I do make this distinction, I mean, in terms of making your own luck.

01:29:11.060 You know, someone like Elon is probably going to be successful in any century, in any area, by temperament.

01:29:17.300 Not just by intelligence, although he's obviously super smart, but by temperament.

01:29:21.200 Darwin, you know, much is made about the luck that he happened to get to be on the voyage of the Beagle because the captain happened to like him and his father said he'd fund it.

01:29:31.160 And so, yeah, there was a lot of luck there, but he had already been planning to go to the, I think it was the Azores or, or the, no, the Canary Islands.

01:29:39.160 And he had had this idea from a young age.

01:29:42.160 I want to travel the world and I'm going to do this.

01:29:44.480 And he had already started to make plans for that.

01:29:46.360 And then the voyage of the Beagle.

01:29:48.260 So, in other words, you kind of, you make your own luck.

01:29:51.020 You know, there's also that part of it.

01:29:53.100 Anyway.

01:29:53.560 Well, I can't wait.

01:29:54.960 Go out.

01:29:55.400 All right.

01:29:55.660 Get true.

01:29:56.160 Thank you so much.

01:29:56.840 Stay on the line.

01:29:57.400 All right.

01:29:57.660 Say goodbye offline.

01:29:58.640 Thank you so much, Michael.

01:29:59.560 Okay.

01:29:59.780 Thank you so much.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 28, 2026

Dr. Michael Shermer-＂Truth： What It Is, How to Find It & Why It Still Matters＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_958)

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