TRIGGERnometry - “Activism Has No Place in Journalism”

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham.

00:00:10.240 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:16.080 We are delighted that our guest today is the founder of Claire Lehman. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:22.440 Hi guys. Thanks so much for having me.

00:00:24.820 Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. This interview has been a while in the making. We've been trying to

00:00:28.360 make it happen we're so excited the time difference is crazy it's monday morning as we're recording

00:00:33.300 this where you are it's sunday very late at night here uh so uh you're just having your coffee we've

00:00:38.620 had to have some coffee to stay awake so it's all good but so much to talk about um listen one of

00:00:45.140 the things that we we were really interested to to discuss with you is you talked in some of your

00:00:49.580 previous interviews about the fact that at quillette which is a fantastic publication i've

00:00:54.740 written for a number of times myself uh you don't do the kind of this is what happened today here's

00:01:01.060 a new story about that rather you take a step back and you look at some of the trends some of the

00:01:05.680 the big things that are happening the big ideas the big debates and so on so as you as we sit here

00:01:11.800 in the middle of august 2020 what are some of the big things that you see as having happened and

00:01:19.100 potentially looking forward what is it that that you kind of are thinking about at the moment

00:01:24.740 Oh, that's an interesting question.

00:01:26.440 I would say that all of the big trends that I was thinking

00:01:33.500 about prior to COVID-19 are all of a sudden accelerating.

00:01:39.680 They're speeding up.

00:01:41.340 So there was a brief point in time when the pandemic had just started

00:01:46.780 where I thought that the culture wars would simmer down

00:01:50.940 and we'd get over identity politics because people would realise

00:01:56.660 that there's more important things to worry about such as, you know,

00:01:59.960 biomedical health, technology, you know, like real things

00:02:05.980 in the real world such as viruses.

00:02:08.300 But it seems like because everybody's been locked down

00:02:12.720 and cooped up in their homes and they've been spending all

00:02:15.440 of this time on the internet, suddenly the culture wars

00:02:18.300 have accelerated and intensified much greater

00:02:22.920 than what I would have ever expected.

00:02:26.060 So all of the culture war trends that I was thinking

00:02:29.320 about prior to 2020, I'm now thinking about them again

00:02:34.660 because they're intensifying.

00:02:36.400 And then the other patterns or trends that I find interesting

00:02:40.500 at the moment are the economic ones, so the speeding up

00:02:43.560 of the shift from businesses being sort of like brick

00:02:48.860 and mortar shops on the street to being online businesses

00:02:51.920 and how that's going to affect society

00:02:54.420 and how that's going to affect politics long-term.

00:02:59.200 And Claire, were you surprised at the way the coronavirus

00:03:04.140 has affected the culture wars?

00:03:05.660 Because I was very much in agreement with you.

00:03:07.480 I thought this is a time humanity is going to pull together.

00:03:10.040 We're all going to hold hands, well, gloves, but, you know,

00:03:12.660 We're all going to hold gloves.

00:03:13.800 We're all going to be in peaceful with one another.

00:03:16.860 And it just seems that everybody collectively lost their minds.

00:03:22.380 Well, I saw some good, there were some good signs in Australia.

00:03:29.400 So I live in Sydney, Australia, and at the start of the pandemic,

00:03:34.060 I felt like everybody was, you know, there was a sense of solidarity.

00:03:41.200 so we live in a fair australia is a fairly high trust society we're multicultural but everyone

00:03:47.360 seems to get along with each other fairly well and we didn't have the kind of the immediate

00:03:53.280 bickering over you know lockdowns and that kind of thing we had a lockdown but everyone seemed to

00:03:59.600 you know um comply so we didn't have this immediate bickering that happened maybe in

00:04:04.800 the united states or even in the uk um and we don't have like we all wear when we're on the

00:04:10.140 train we all wear masks and the mask is not like a culture war um sort of symbol like it is in

00:04:18.100 America uh so in Australia it's a little bit different but I think as the pandemic keeps

00:04:24.260 going on and people get fatigued and fatigued and worn out particularly with lockdowns and that kind

00:04:29.240 of thing um there'll be more bickering but what I've noticed is that the stress and the strain

00:04:36.360 of the pandemic has really brought to, brought any kind

00:04:40.780 of tensions or fractures within a country out.

00:04:44.240 So obviously in America everything, all of their divisions

00:04:48.420 are much more noticeable now.

00:04:51.920 I don't know exactly what's happening in the UK,

00:04:54.280 but I think in nations that are doing well are fairly,

00:04:58.740 are the ones that have maintained their level of trust.

00:05:01.860 so Australia, Japan, New Zealand potentially. Well it's interesting you talk about the UK I

00:05:10.680 mean actually you know we talk about the solidarity we did have a little bit of that at the beginning

00:05:15.780 I thought for the first month or two that was happening and I think what then happened is and

00:05:21.700 I know you've talked about this in the past as well in terms of importing stuff from the United

00:05:26.840 states what then happened is suddenly we had having gone from like you know if you're outside

00:05:32.700 sunbathing uh you're a criminal and you're you're killing everyone around you to the next week uh

00:05:39.840 massive riots in the streets no one's socially distancing and nobody's saying a word about that

00:05:44.940 you know yeah the black lives matter protest is that what you're referring to yes yeah we had one

00:05:52.140 in melbourne quite a big one and one in sydney where i am and uh but i was actually really

00:05:58.760 impressed with our health officials and they came out and said don't go and the prime minister and

00:06:05.500 other elected members of parliament said this is ridiculous this is an american issue this is not

00:06:11.740 australia and don't go and protest so i was actually really impressed by the the courage

00:06:18.420 well it didn't even require courage it's just the common sense of our politicians

00:06:23.240 and saying that don't go and protest during a pandemic sounds pretty racist to me

00:06:29.660 but you know you know we bring up this idea of importing the culture war how much do you think

00:06:38.000 that's true because so many of these issues i mean us in the uk over in your country in australia

00:06:44.280 they just don't map onto what we've got in our countries at all and yet we're all having this

00:06:50.180 conversation as if this is like the United States yeah oh it's a it's a concerning

00:06:57.500 um trend it's just I think it's because the United States is the world's global superpower

00:07:05.260 at the moment and we obviously you know we all speak the same language and we import so much of

00:07:13.060 their cultural products from music to entertainment um and it's just an unfortunate side effect that

00:07:20.700 we have to import their culture war issues as well but funnily enough you know we've never

00:07:27.020 imported their um evangelical kind of christian culture wars like we don't have you know uh we

00:07:34.480 don't have much division in australia over abortion um we don't have you know uh protests

00:07:41.760 about gun rights we have gun control here so i mean on the one hand we get things like black

00:07:48.740 lives matter being imported here but on the other hand we net they never really take root because

00:07:54.500 we have we've already dealt with many of the issues that the united states has not yet dealt

00:08:00.660 with so is that in some ways is that the solution to the the kind of exporting of the culture war

00:08:08.120 is to get your society sorted out so you're not then vulnerable

00:08:11.940 to all this crazy stuff.

00:08:14.280 Well, I mean, every nation has its own history, obviously,

00:08:17.820 and a culture is intertwined with the nation's history,

00:08:21.400 and it's not so simple as just giving everyone, you know,

00:08:25.380 access to free healthcare or, like, university.

00:08:28.240 It's not that simple.

00:08:29.700 So, like, if you take an issue like gun rights in America,

00:08:32.500 I mean, that is intertwined with the nation's founding.

00:08:36.060 So it's just it's not you can't compare the gun rights issue in the United States to Australia because they're so deeply fundamental to that society's cultural beliefs and value system that we just can't really understand it.

00:08:52.360 So, I mean, it's yeah, it is concerning that we have to deal with this identity politics, which is largely an American phenomenon being imported into Australia.

00:09:03.300 But I'm optimistic and confident that our society will never really go down the same path to being so divided over identity as the United States.

00:09:16.160 I mean, that could be me being too hopeful, but we'll see.

00:09:22.220 And do you think part of the reason I think it is being too hopeful, I'm going to be honest with you.

00:09:27.540 Yeah.

00:09:27.740 I feel those exact same things.

00:09:30.260 In the UK, though, it's gone pretty crazy.

00:09:33.300 Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's gone tom-tom. It really, really has. But one of the questions I wanted to ask is, how much of a responsibility do you think social media should bear the brunt for this? Because in times gone by, we would never have heard of these cases, or if they would do, it'd only be a footnote in a newspaper. But now it just seems to be spread at the touch of the bottom like a virus right around the globe in a matter of seconds.

00:09:58.920 Yeah.

00:09:59.800 Well, any kind of revolutionary technology is going

00:10:03.880 to have disruptive impacts on society.

00:10:08.680 And the way I think of social media and the internet

00:10:11.960 more generally is that it's the equivalent

00:10:13.980 to the printing press.

00:10:16.700 And so the printing press, when it was invented,

00:10:21.280 it brought about the Reformation and then hundreds

00:10:24.820 of years of religious warring.

00:10:28.180 But at the same time, I mean, those things are obviously bad,

00:10:30.920 but we wouldn't say to ourselves we don't want to live

00:10:33.780 in a world where the printing press was not invented.

00:10:36.680 So I see the internet as being a double-edged sword.

00:10:40.580 It's going to make, it's going to bring about a lot

00:10:46.740 of progress in terms of technology and bringing

00:10:49.580 very creative, smart people together.

00:10:52.660 At the same time, it's going to disrupt our societies

00:10:55.380 and our political systems to the point where there may even be trauma

00:10:59.320 and bloodshed, but in 100 or 200 years' time would we turn around

00:11:03.900 and say, oh, we wish the internet was never invented?

00:11:06.260 I don't think so, and I think the same goes for social media.

00:11:09.300 If you think about the world's most brilliant,

00:11:11.740 most creative individuals, linking them up via social media

00:11:15.200 or by any kind of mechanism, I mean, that has the potential

00:11:20.460 to unleash so much creativity that can benefit humanity

00:11:25.260 in the long term that I think it's worth it I don't know and then you go on Twitter and you

00:11:30.100 think really well I was thinking I mean Twitter is the exact opposite of that isn't it Twitter

00:11:36.180 is linking up all the most mentally unstable deluded people in one big web isn't it yeah

00:11:43.920 yes it is but I like to think of long term about the long term I mean what what if the people who

00:11:52.220 working on a coronavirus vaccine are linked up via you know Twitter well not Twitter but what if

00:11:59.820 the what if the information gets shared much more rapidly than it ever could before and it means that

00:12:07.080 we can defeat this pandemic you know so I just I think with any technological advancement we have

00:12:13.720 to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water and you know Colette itself is an

00:12:19.740 internet phenomenon i could never have established an online magazine without twitter because that's

00:12:26.900 where i met my writers and that's where we distribute our articles for free uh like i'm

00:12:33.380 not i don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to like send hard copies of my magazine around

00:12:39.400 to all of the cities in the world but because of the internet and because of twitter you know

00:12:44.340 people in all parts of the world students can log on for free read quillette for free and get

00:12:50.820 what i think is you know some pretty good quality content so you know we've got a we've got to have

00:12:58.180 a balanced view i think absolutely on the one hand you've got 200 years of religious warfare

00:13:03.280 another one you've got quillette there you go sorry francis go ahead mate no um but quillette

00:13:10.360 has been such a huge success and right the right from its inception this growth has been phenomenal

00:13:17.380 why do you think that is oh well I mean one of the reasons is why one of the reasons why is because

00:13:26.380 we have been dealing with I mean we've been talking about what we now call cancel culture

00:13:31.880 we've been talking about that trend since we started so that was back in 2015 so I mean now

00:13:37.620 cancel culture has sort of entered into the mainstream lexicon and there's articles about it

00:13:43.080 in mainstream newspapers and magazines you know people are discussing how bad it really is and

00:13:49.040 whether it's really a thing well we were talking about these things five years ago and so I think

00:13:55.760 we've just been ahead of the curve in in identifying some of the pathologies of identity politics

00:14:02.640 and censorship and the groupthink that's plaguing institutions

00:14:09.300 such as media, academia and maybe the arts.

00:14:13.140 So I think we've just been, we were sort of the first movers on that.

00:14:17.940 And then the other reason for our success is, you know,

00:14:23.200 we're not limited by space because publishing on a digital platform

00:14:27.140 doesn't really cost much at all.

00:14:29.780 we can publish quite lengthy essays where people take a deep dive into issues sometimes technical

00:14:36.040 issues without without us saying oh you've got to cut you know you've got to um you know cut it down

00:14:41.920 because if you're publishing a newspaper you often are very limited in your space like columnists

00:14:47.060 may only get 600 words everything has to be condensed down and sometimes that means it's

00:14:52.960 dumbed down because we aren't we don't have those limitations we allow people more freedom

00:14:59.620 writers more freedom to explore ideas and I mean it's not we don't have our success isn't like

00:15:06.120 mass we're not successful in a mass media kind of way but we have a niche so we're successful

00:15:13.140 in our niche and that we're lucky that that niche is big enough around the world to sustain us

00:15:19.100 and don't you think that is essentially now the future of the internet whereas before

00:15:23.680 where you know if you thought about major artists they had broad appeal you know if you thought

00:15:29.240 about major publications again they had broad appeal but very much now with the rise of the

00:15:33.160 internet it's about identifying a niche and then serving it which is what you've done beautifully

00:15:37.740 yeah yes I think I think that's correct and uh it I mean it might not mean that people become

00:15:46.360 household names like they did prior to the internet like um madonna and michael jackson

00:15:53.380 like we're not going to have that level of fame and stardom anymore however um we can lots of

00:16:00.440 people can enjoy um sustainable incomes uh just by finding an audience that likes them and they

00:16:09.580 have shared values with and they connect with and and it's very it's a very fulfilling career to

00:16:15.580 have that have a niche audience who you can trust and they trust you and they provide you with an

00:16:21.340 income and you serve them I mean it's it's very rewarding and fulfilling and then you don't have

00:16:27.760 all the downsides that come with you know being super famous like people did in the past and

00:16:34.820 don't you don't you think as well that you know the success of Quillette and let's be fair you

00:16:38.920 know the success of this show and Rogan doesn't it also highlight the failures of mainstream media

00:16:44.600 in that people no longer want to engage with it.

00:16:47.880 They don't see it as being trustworthy.

00:16:49.880 They're seeing it as being manipulative and so on and so forth.

00:16:53.800 Yeah, and I think there's a general move away from very slick,

00:16:59.400 highly produced content that people feel is inauthentic.

00:17:05.100 And so, you know, when I was growing up and I was a kid,

00:17:09.160 anything that I saw on TV was very highly produced,

00:17:11.900 very slick sort of scripted like this basically

00:17:15.760 you know people we're human beings and we crave connection and connect with other people

00:17:27.140 if they're being themselves if they're being authentic so i think i think there's a real

00:17:33.100 audiences around the world are turning towards more authentic intimate locally you know you can

00:17:41.000 even see it with food like you'll go to a cafe and they'll have signs locally grown organic like

00:17:46.440 there's this there's this turn away from big mass-produced um you know homogenized products

00:17:55.100 towards niche local intimate authentic and that's reflected in media just as anything else is just

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00:21:14.240 spell for 12 years came in useful one day and at what point because you have a range of thinkers

00:21:23.520 on you know so you know and you're not like some people say like they say the same things about us

00:21:27.860 you're right wing you're but but and you ask them to explain what right wing is it's essentially a

00:21:31.840 euphemism for hateful and racist but there we go but accurate enough but um is there ever a point

00:21:39.360 where you go right these ideas are simply too much or they push too far a particular thing

00:21:46.360 like I think you and maybe I'm going to misquote you here please correct me if I'm wrong you said

00:21:50.860 that you wouldn't put for example Mino Yiannopoulos on and have him write for you at what point do you

00:21:57.400 make that decision where you go I'm not interested in someone's viewpoint yeah so I'm not really

00:22:05.120 interested in provocation just for provocation's sake uh we we we're not we're not performance

00:22:15.040 artists so we you know the issues that we explore on quillette are pretty serious issues and um

00:22:21.960 you know we're not we're not just into owning the libs or getting a reaction out of people

00:22:29.720 Constantine's base.

00:22:32.800 Sorry, carry on.

00:22:34.320 I like to own everybody.

00:22:37.960 It's not about politics.

00:22:40.060 It's just about basic human standards for behaviour.

00:22:45.240 So I don't, we don't really, we very rarely publish what you would describe

00:22:51.400 as a hippie.

00:22:52.560 I mean, we have published some articles that bring up shoddy journalism

00:22:58.440 or like correct the record and that sometimes might involve taking a deep dive into a

00:23:05.940 into a journalist's work or a writer's work but we don't engage in in the kind of nasty ad hominem

00:23:14.320 attack which is has unfortunately become you know a mainstay of mainstream media for some reason

00:23:20.420 well just coming back to the mainstream media Claire because France has kind of touched on it

00:23:25.400 And you were talking about the fact that people like locally sourced, authentic, etc.

00:23:31.940 Do you also think there's a big part of it, which is less technological and more sort of ideological, where increasingly, I can certainly speak for our country, there's increasing perception, actually from both sides of the political spectrum, that the institutions that we used to take as being the sort of neutral arbiters of the truth are no longer fulfilling that function at all.

00:23:54.940 we see a big defund the BBC movement in this country um there is a feeling among many many

00:24:01.020 people that the mainstream media essentially are no longer doing their job do you think that's

00:24:05.020 also been a part of it or do you think that's exaggerated no I think that's definitely a part

00:24:10.420 of it and it's so there's technological forces that are influencing the media but they I think

00:24:19.460 you're correct you it's right you're right when you say that they have when when you imply that

00:24:25.520 they have uh neglected some of their traditional roles um i it's hard to it's hard to determine

00:24:34.220 what exactly has caused this whether it's the fact that um the talent that used to the talent

00:24:43.240 that used to go into journalism no longer goes into journalism and you know the the smartest

00:24:48.680 kids are now doing something else other than journalism or whether there's just been a lack

00:24:54.460 of leadership in institutions themselves it's really hard to pinpoint what the causal factors

00:25:00.000 are but do you not think it's more the kind of long march to the institutions where over the last

00:25:06.040 30 to 40 years universities have been increasingly churning out people with a particular mindset

00:25:11.420 those people then go into these professions which attract mostly university graduates you know we

00:25:17.460 had a journalist on the show some time ago mike graham who was talking about the fact you know

00:25:21.600 he's probably in his 50s when he was uh coming up through journalism lots of people considered it

00:25:27.780 more of a kind of traditional profession as opposed to something you went into through the

00:25:33.440 academic route uh do you think maybe the transformation of academia which is something

00:25:37.880 you've talked about quite a lot has been a big factor on that yeah it certainly would be a factor

00:25:43.180 I don't know how big, but you're right in that if you're getting a big chunk

00:25:51.180 of people within a profession who all think it's the same,

00:25:55.080 they're not going to notice each other's blind spots.

00:25:58.820 So if you've got a big chunk of journalists who think that journalism

00:26:03.620 is basically the same as activism or that activism somehow has a role

00:26:09.660 to play in journalism, which I don't think it does,

00:26:13.180 They're not going to pick up on each other's blind spots

00:26:16.320 and they're not going to test each other's assumptions,

00:26:19.620 test each other's work.

00:26:22.120 I mean, one of the biggest reasons for intellectual diversity

00:26:26.060 or viewpoint diversity is not because, you know,

00:26:29.980 conservatives or libertarians just it's nice to have them included.

00:26:33.680 It's to make sure good, rigorous, robust work is done

00:26:40.460 because when you have people who have different viewpoints,

00:26:43.180 or different ideological perspectives, they pick each other's work apart

00:26:50.340 and find the flaws in it, and that creates better work

00:26:54.040 over the long term.

00:26:55.680 But if everyone's thinking the same, people get lazy and sloppy

00:27:00.300 and they're not having their work thoroughly vetted by their peers

00:27:05.800 the way it should be.

00:27:06.840 So I think that's partly the reason why we've seen a decline

00:27:11.240 in standards in journalism.

00:27:13.180 And you said yourself, Claire, that activism can't be part of journalism.

00:27:18.760 I mean, there are plenty of people at The Guardian who would disagree with you.

00:27:23.200 Why do you say that?

00:27:24.640 Also, plenty of people at Breitbart, just to be fair as well.

00:27:27.460 Yeah, absolutely.

00:27:29.160 Good people on both sides.

00:27:33.220 That's a reference that shouldn't offend anyone.

00:27:35.400 Well done, Mick.

00:27:36.840 It's not that journalists shouldn't have strong convictions

00:27:40.540 or can't have their own political biases and that kind of thing.

00:27:43.820 But when it comes to the actual work, I mean,

00:27:47.200 journalism is an empirical profession and it's about finding the truth.

00:27:53.440 And so that virtue, finding the truth and documenting empirical facts

00:27:59.020 has to come before everything else.

00:28:00.780 So I think it's fine if a journalist, you know, puts truth up here

00:28:04.660 and their political biases down here.

00:28:07.680 Fine with me.

00:28:08.420 That's pretty much what we do at Colette anyway.

00:28:11.220 But when that reverses, when a journalist's political goals

00:28:16.960 are more important to them than finding the truth,

00:28:20.760 that's a problem because then it's no longer journalism.

00:28:24.960 But don't you think, Claire, we've reached this stage

00:28:27.300 where practically every publication now is advocacy journalism?

00:28:32.540 It's almost impossible to find a publication

00:28:36.220 which actually is objective anymore?

00:28:39.940 Yeah, I think it's hard to find publications according

00:28:43.720 to Mars head alone, but I think that if we look hard enough,

00:28:47.440 we'll find that there still are journalists with integrity,

00:28:51.340 but they're individuals.

00:28:54.080 So it's hard to pinpoint a particular publication as a whole,

00:29:00.180 but there will be many individuals working within newspapers

00:29:03.920 who still subscribe to the more traditional understanding

00:29:11.160 of what journalism is.

00:29:13.220 Well, except some of them are now leaving the very institutions

00:29:16.620 which they've been in, the Barry Weissers, the Andrew Sullivans.

00:29:21.560 A lot of people who you would hope would be the kind of centre

00:29:26.280 and the core of their institutions are actually feeling

00:29:29.100 like they can't exist in those spaces anymore,

00:29:31.360 which again i suppose explains the success of of publications like quillette um do you think that

00:29:38.240 we might have entered a slightly different age although i think you quillette is a counter

00:29:43.560 example to what i'm about to say but certainly on on youtube people who do what we do which

00:29:48.660 essentially like we say well i say i'm a centrist francis is old school lefty we tell people what

00:29:54.380 we think we tell people where we're coming from and then we have a conversation from that space

00:29:59.100 uh that's some that's that seems to be like a totally different shift where essentially

00:30:04.660 we're not pretending to be unbiased right uh whereas the problem with a lot of the mainstream

00:30:12.080 stuff is they're saying well this is just the objective reality we've got no bias at all

00:30:16.400 here's a story about how you know dancing is racist or something you know like

00:30:21.080 yeah do you think that's that's part of the shift as well is now we're kind of looking for people to

00:30:27.160 go this is who I am this is where I'm coming from and here's what I think because of that

00:30:31.620 yeah I think that's a valid point but I mean you guys are having conversations and a lot of the

00:30:37.000 stuff that I publish on Colette is uh opinion and when you expressing your opinion it helps to have

00:30:45.000 some self-awareness and it helps to be up front about your political biases but what I'm talking

00:30:51.220 about in terms of putting the truth first talking about if you're a reporter and you're going out

00:30:57.420 and observing an event like a a protest if you come back and write it write a story about how

00:31:04.060 it was mostly peaceful because only 24 cops got assaulted you know that's when you that's when

00:31:12.100 things are getting the lines are getting a bit blurred between activism and bias and reporting

00:31:17.080 on what actually happened and it's just my view that if your job is that you're a reporter you

00:31:23.300 have to report the facts clearly and uh you know you should try and minimize bias as much as

00:31:29.980 possible it's the same with science i mean if scientists are allowed to have their political

00:31:34.820 biases that's fine but if they let the those biases impact the results that they find from

00:31:41.960 an experiment then the whole process is corrupted and then we no longer have trust in the scientific

00:31:48.760 enterprise and then and that's incredibly damaging long term but isn't part of the problem as well

00:31:55.320 that you know you may want to you may go into these institutions and you may want to be objective and

00:32:00.720 you may want to report on the facts but ultimately if the hierarchy and the people above you aren't

00:32:06.920 interested in that then you're gonna you're doomed to failure aren't you yeah i mean of course

00:32:12.680 incentives matter and uh you know it like i i think i mentioned before potentially in some of

00:32:20.260 these institutions the leadership is culpable the leadership has really been strong enough to

00:32:25.560 withstand some of these corrosive forces uh yeah i think it would be tremendously difficult for any

00:32:31.680 junior journalist in the ABC or the BBC or wherever who has a more traditional view of

00:32:38.920 journalism going in and having to navigate all of the internal politics of these organizations

00:32:44.440 particularly when leadership might be very biased or have a different understanding of what

00:32:50.700 journalism is. All right well we've bashed the evil MSM enough I feel for for one episode.

00:32:56.960 But look, one of the fascinating things about Quillette is you get a lot of people from the scientific world to write about a lot of the things that have become invariably part of the culture war, you know, gender differences between men and women, you know, IQ research, all that sort of stuff.

00:33:16.640 So what have been and what will be some of the most important kind

00:33:20.980 of scientific things that Quillette has covered and will cover

00:33:24.160 in relation to, you know, some of those things like the stuff

00:33:29.000 that we talk about on the show?

00:33:31.980 Well, I think it's certainly our coverage of sex differences

00:33:35.780 has been quite influential.

00:33:38.440 I think we were the first publication to really commission

00:33:44.440 commission and solicit articles and commentary from evolutionary psychologists and even

00:33:52.280 neuroscientists who are like world leading experts in this area and I've seen articles that look

00:34:01.560 you know quite similar to our own articles end up on place at places like the Atlantic so I think

00:34:08.100 we've been a leader in that area.

00:34:10.820 I think intelligence research is certainly, you know,

00:34:16.180 we've certainly contributed to that, to more understanding perhaps

00:34:22.320 among intellectuals about intelligence research,

00:34:25.500 but it's still such a taboo scientific area.

00:34:28.020 I don't see that the science in that area becoming mainstream

00:34:32.380 many times or understood at a mainstream level.

00:34:35.440 I think sex differences used to be quite taboo

00:34:40.580 and scientists had to be really brave to even discuss it

00:34:45.660 because they feared being called sexist.

00:34:50.020 But I think that's broken down over the last five or ten years

00:34:54.360 and now people can discuss sex differences quite openly,

00:35:00.280 perhaps not at google but i think in other places people can talk about them i think it'll take

00:35:06.920 a bit longer for intelligence research it's still really taboo and people are still really

00:35:12.140 uncomfortable talking about it so um it's interesting that you say that because i didn't

00:35:17.600 realize you know you said i i intelligence research is a taboo subject and i assumed you

00:35:22.780 were talking about the the race and iq so are you saying that like research which finds that

00:35:28.820 different people have different iqs and that's somehow related to their genetics is that taboo

00:35:34.920 uh i would say that the any research that finds that there is a genetic component

00:35:43.460 to intelligence is taboo but there any isn't that a statement of the bleeding obvious though

00:35:49.400 that we you know we have a lot outside of academia

00:35:53.520 so people outside of academia have a lot more sense about this than than within academia

00:36:00.980 in a way yeah it's it's very tricky to argue that any any form of human behavior i mean we know

00:36:10.660 that uh 50 of psychological traits are heritable we know that from 30 years of behavioral genetic

00:36:19.060 studies but you won't find very many academics willing to say that publicly particularly in

00:36:24.980 psychology it's fraught it's absolutely fraught particularly around socially valued traits such

00:36:31.820 as intelligence and why is this i mean because you know i'm a former teacher everybody can now

00:36:37.660 drink sorry that's that's a game we play constantly mentions russian i'm a former teacher

00:36:41.800 but you could see that you know if if if a child had bright parents or parents you know who had

00:36:48.000 you know good jobs or whatever else they were more likely to be academically capable that just

00:36:52.460 seems obvious in that if you have two parents who are sporty the kid's probably going to be sporty

00:36:57.020 etc etc etc why is the common sense idea which everybody accepts in the real world

00:37:04.220 why is that taboo in academia well i mean people have been trying to understand that for a long

00:37:12.140 time now there's this famous book by stephen pinker called the blank slate that was written

00:37:16.460 back in 2002 and he tried to explore all of the reasons why we find it hard or that or not everybody

00:37:24.600 but the intellectual class of society why we find it so difficult to deal with human nature and the

00:37:32.300 heritable nature of human nature sorry that's a mouthful but and there are there are various

00:37:38.660 reasons but a big one is simply that um there are narratives or assumptions particularly within

00:37:47.020 progressive political ideology that frown upon acknowledging that we are born with the human

00:37:54.540 nature because it's seen as being uh incompatible with and this notion that if you create beautiful

00:38:05.220 environments for everyone people can flourish naturally so I think I think it's seen as an

00:38:11.280 impediment to good politics basically so if you if you acknowledge that some kids will always

00:38:19.420 struggle in school then I think there's this fear that suddenly you won't pour money into schools

00:38:27.060 or something like that I mean there's it you have to take a few steps to try and understand where

00:38:32.960 this fear comes from but it's it's been a huge part of our culture for some time now that we

00:38:39.940 haven't been able to honestly deal with the fact that people differ individually and as groups

00:38:47.520 and uh you know i think what some of the culture wars uh issues are the result of that and do you

00:38:56.300 think claire as well it's you know and you have children and you know we give children this

00:39:00.980 narrative that you can be anything you want you can do anything you want all you need to do is

00:39:05.100 put your head down work hard enough and the world is your oyster when the reality is when we're

00:39:10.640 talking about iq is there's some children unfortunately are never going to be capable of

00:39:15.060 being a doctor or you know being being a scientist they're simply not intelligent enough and that is

00:39:21.500 brutal and heartbreaking and if you say to these people right at the start that because of your

00:39:27.720 iq is simply never going to achieve this isn't isn't that an awful message to send to people

00:39:33.500 however accurate it might be well you know i'm never going to be uh i'm never going to win the

00:39:40.640 100 meters sprint you know race you're white that's why there's lots of things that we can't

00:39:49.580 all do i think one thing that we've lost however is this notion that all human beings

00:39:55.800 have the same moral worth and the same inherent dignity and I think intelligence is a really

00:40:02.580 thorny and tricky subject because we so often mistake we so often confuse intelligence with

00:40:10.880 human worth and that's really bad I mean we should be able to separate that a person's ability to

00:40:18.940 perform in our modern economy from their inherent worth you know a person can be kind funny

00:40:25.700 warm loving caring without being particularly bright you know and we shouldn't judge you know

00:40:34.460 we tie we put too much emphasis and value on intelligence rather than those other qualities

00:40:41.240 such as kindness and funniness and you know and and and uh bravery those types of human qualities

00:40:50.380 that I think we used to value more in our society,

00:40:53.140 but we've sort of lost.

00:40:56.220 Well, actually, I think it goes deeper than that,

00:40:58.420 perhaps, Claire, as well, which is that rather than looking

00:41:01.800 at an alternative source of value, we might want to look

00:41:05.980 at one of the breakthroughs of Western civilisation

00:41:09.080 is that everybody has value irrespective.

00:41:11.740 Everybody is valuable irrespective of their qualities

00:41:15.180 or values.

00:41:15.820 In other words, the three of us have different intelligence,

00:41:19.140 we have different attractiveness we have different this and that and and maybe one of us is morally

00:41:25.000 good and one of us isn't right i point at myself as i said of course but but but nonetheless we're

00:41:31.920 all human beings and that means we have moral value and we have inalienable inalienable rights

00:41:38.620 that are protected by the state from others that that was actually quite a revolutionary idea when

00:41:44.820 when it became part of our civilization um and and that fear of of seeing that people are

00:41:52.380 different it reminds me and i know you've talked about this as well as how you first encountered

00:41:57.020 the sort of uh almost blacklisting by australian media when you wanted to be critical of aspects

00:42:03.700 of feminism and it seems to me like that issue is very strong with liberal feminism where it's

00:42:09.960 like we have to pretend that men and women are the same because if they're not we can't achieve

00:42:14.640 equality which seems like a crazy idea yeah yeah yeah that's right there's this uh notion that if

00:42:22.660 you're different you are not equal and it's compute there's a confusion between moral equality and

00:42:29.460 empirical equality uh no we're never going to be equal empirically we're never going to be i'm

00:42:36.420 never going to be able to run the hundred meters as fast as hussein bolt uh but that doesn't mean

00:42:43.300 I shouldn't be considered equally human and have equal human worth.

00:42:50.020 So, you know, our culture seems to have lost this understanding

00:42:55.700 that equality is meant to be a moral aim and a moral goal.

00:42:59.800 It's about equal human worth and dignity and we're focusing

00:43:04.020 way too much on empirical equality and I don't really know

00:43:08.480 how to wind that back or get the conversation back

00:43:11.580 on track to moral equality but it's something that we have to do if we're going to make any

00:43:16.520 progress in these really thorny topics and the thing is these thorny topics are essential

00:43:21.500 for resolving some of these cultural issues I mean some of the arguments that people are having

00:43:27.580 are completely divorced from facts and from empirical reality so we we really need to talk

00:43:35.240 about what we know as empirical facts before we can solve any of these political issues so

00:43:42.640 we need to have these honest conversations and claire do you think part of the problem is as

00:43:47.480 well like you said that we don't we don't value you know honesty kindness bravery and you know

00:43:52.140 i agree with you but that we don't isn't it part of the problem and i'm going to say this with my

00:43:56.360 left wing head on is that you can't monetize that yeah and because you can't monetize it

00:44:02.220 It's therefore not seen as value, whereas, you know,

00:44:04.960 if you're great at programming or coding or any of these things

00:44:09.400 that come with having a high IQ, you can monetize it,

00:44:12.100 make a lot of money, and therefore you have value.

00:44:14.780 Yeah, absolutely, and that's something I wish we could talk

00:44:17.660 about more.

00:44:18.500 I mean, women, for example, on average are more empathetic

00:44:22.920 and more highly agreeable, right, but you can't scale

00:44:26.340 those qualities.

00:44:27.480 You can't scale up empathy like you can being a fantastic coder,

00:44:32.020 Like if you look at tech billionaires, I mean, some of them have just invented a snippet of code, but that has allowed them to, you know, the ability of them to monetize that is just astronomical.

00:44:47.240 You can't monetize, you know, if you're an extremely caring nurse who heals people in the hospital or if you're an amazing nanny who looks after people's children, you can't scale that up.

00:44:58.380 But the work that you do as a human being and even the work that you do within the modern economy is so important and so vital and so beneficial to other people that we could not go without it, but it's not scalable.

00:45:13.000 And so I wish we talked about that more because I do think certain skill sets are incredibly valuable and fundamental to our species, but they're not valued enough or they're undervalued simply because they're not as monetizable.

00:45:30.040 And when you say that we should talk about it more, do you feel like there's a solution that's there to change that somehow?

00:45:36.140 well i mean one way to compensate people for having a skill set or doing work which is not

00:45:44.480 doesn't you know make them rich is just by affording them prestige you know so if we if

00:45:52.280 if um if you know carers of elderly people in aged care homes were afforded more prestige like

00:46:00.340 i'm sure that they would feel better about the important work that they they do you know i just

00:46:05.560 think that just because something uh is easily monetizable or can make a great deal of money

00:46:14.260 um you know that has rewards in itself but there are other ways to compensate people for the work

00:46:22.660 that they do particularly if it's very important vital work to our society prestige those things

00:46:29.800 i mean it's very very interesting that you say that that we should bring you know that we should

00:46:34.460 bring prestige it's you sometimes think as well it's it's just the incentives that are wrong in

00:46:41.380 our society and because you know if you have a high IQ you naturally think to yourself right well

00:46:47.840 what is ultimately going to make me successful is it going to be being more empathetic being

00:46:53.780 more kind being more caring or is it actually going to mean that I'm going to be more hyper

00:46:57.260 focused I'm going to be more you know driven all the rest of it that is going to take me to where

00:47:02.480 i need to be yeah well i mean i hesitate to say that the incentives in our society are wrong but

00:47:09.700 i think we can do a better job at um at providing people with other rewards rather than just

00:47:20.260 economic and and there needs to be more of a uh awareness that i mean you know people do jobs

00:47:29.540 not necessarily because of the money and people do jobs because they find it fulfilling and

00:47:34.080 rewarding and and that sort of thing you know there are other there are lots of ways to make

00:47:38.080 a lot of money but they're not necessarily good for the soul but i think if we're talking about

00:47:44.960 you bankers um i think if we were just you know if the if the conversation was just broader and

00:47:54.340 some of these issues were um you know we talked about them a bit more freely and honestly that

00:48:01.160 would be that would be better but i mean i don't i don't think everyone just calculates how much

00:48:06.920 money they can earn just you know through a particular job and and and only chooses that

00:48:11.320 job i think we we choose the job that we do for a range of different reasons and i think most

00:48:16.120 people intuitively understand that i guess what you're talking about is a little bit like uh

00:48:21.500 having a high regard for people in armed services which used to be much more the case than it is

00:48:26.460 now like you know not necessarily well paid but held in very high esteem in many in many societies

00:48:33.660 so I suppose uh rerouting that to uh you know as you talk about doctors and nurses and so on

00:48:40.720 or having more of that um yeah I that's an interesting conversation I just I wonder how

00:48:46.840 you how you engineer that socially um i don't think i don't think you can i i i don't think

00:48:53.100 you can from a top-down point of view you can't you can't you can't organize that by fear it has

00:49:01.440 to come from the grassroots and it has to come organically but i think we used to do a better

00:49:05.240 job particularly for women i think for example mothers were more highly regarded generations ago

00:49:12.660 And, you know, it's sad that that I just think it's sad that some of that has been lost.

00:49:19.620 And, you know, we talk about intelligence and we had Noah Karl on the show and Noah was saying that there's really and maybe I'm misquoting him.

00:49:28.680 I hope not. But essentially, there's only one real type of intelligence.

00:49:33.000 Whereas when I was in teacher training college, they said there were multiple types of intelligence.

00:49:36.800 There was also emotional intelligence, et cetera, et cetera.

00:49:39.600 we all know that person who could ace maths exams and then when it comes to a human connection

00:49:44.900 interaction they'd fall apart where do you stand on this well i mean i from so i study psychology

00:49:53.700 at university and um i would have learned the same things that noah has learned although his

00:50:00.560 education is probably more recent than mine but yeah i think there's only one type of

00:50:05.020 general intelligence but I would qualify that in saying that the person can have

00:50:13.980 there are different cognitive profiles so some particularly when it comes to

00:50:20.540 people on the right hand side of the bell curve so if you're getting into the

00:50:24.360 gifted areas people can be gifted in very different ways and I think Jordan

00:50:30.660 peterson has spoken about this as well so if you if you if you suspect a child or an adult is

00:50:38.140 gifted they might be gifted in just one area and then have average abilities in other areas

00:50:44.440 or they might have just very uh spiky profiles i think this turns up in people who have asperger's

00:50:51.400 they have what's called a spiky profile so they're very they have high scores maybe on arithmetic or

00:50:57.360 some other you know subset of um an intelligence scale and then lower scores on others so

00:51:03.340 I think uh I mean so I so I think both views are right it's it's not correct to say there

00:51:11.760 are different types of intelligence but simply that when we test people people can have uh

00:51:19.580 different cognitive profiles and particularly when we're getting into the gifted areas people

00:51:24.800 can have very divergent kind of results um and that's it's not unusual but one when we're getting

00:51:32.620 into the left-hand side of the bell curve when people are struggling with an intelligence test

00:51:37.980 the the profiles are more similar so that i mean that i don't i don't know the reason for that but

00:51:45.440 that's that's uh i think that's a general finding and do you not worry that i mean that these sort

00:51:51.620 of tests could be misused you know like companies or whatever else or you know if you want to move

00:51:57.180 to another country they'll say right if anything below like a one two eight iq score and you're

00:52:01.500 not moving in could that eventually be a possibility francis don't worry i'll never fire you

00:52:07.280 well i mean they could be they could be misused but i think there's a lot of

00:52:14.380 i mean i one thing that i mean it could also save people a lot of time and money if they were used

00:52:23.760 like if you didn't have to go to university and get a four-year degree just to prove that you're

00:52:28.760 moderately intelligent and you could just do a test i mean that would save you four years of

00:52:34.540 your life and a whole lot of money and then you could get a professional job and they could train

00:52:39.240 you up in the job while paying you like i think i think yes there is potential for tests to be

00:52:44.740 misused but also um it could be a really cheap way to uh you know give people opportunities

00:52:53.980 that they otherwise wouldn't get so i mean i don't know i i i don't see it as being that simple like

00:53:00.920 and and the other thing about intelligence testing is it's one of the only ways that

00:53:06.180 smart kids from poor, disadvantaged backgrounds have been able

00:53:11.800 to really, not intelligence tests, but having standardised tests

00:53:20.700 in education settings has been one of the best ways

00:53:24.220 to enhance social mobility.

00:53:25.780 So I think there's, yeah, there's obviously situations

00:53:31.320 where the test could be misused and people could be treated

00:53:33.840 unethically because of it but same goes the other way. Makes sense Claire thank you very much it's

00:53:40.540 been a pleasure talking to you and as always we have one final question for you which is

00:53:45.760 what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

00:53:52.900 Wow uh how great trigger pod is. That's definitely important but increasingly people are talking

00:54:00.960 about it so what have you have you got another one for us well I think I think I mentioned them

00:54:05.940 earlier I think that other rewards for jobs that aren't economically rewarded such as nannying and

00:54:15.380 aged care work and that kind of thing I think we should talk about that more and also we should

00:54:22.560 talk about the costs involved in not acknowledging that we differ as individuals and as groups so

00:54:30.940 So the high cost of denying human nature.

00:54:35.340 Claire, thank you so much for coming on.

00:54:38.200 If people want to find you online, if they want to find Quillette,

00:54:41.120 what do they need to do?

00:54:42.960 Well, go to quillette.com.

00:54:45.260 That's Q-U-I-L-L-E-T-T-E.com.

00:54:49.440 And you can support us via Patreon, so Quillette at Patreon.

00:54:54.940 We have a podcast as well, so you can find us in your podcatches.

00:55:00.320 if you look for Colette and you can subscribe to our newsletter.

00:55:04.880 So you should be able to find a subscription button on our newsletter

00:55:09.840 and you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

00:55:14.660 So, yeah.

00:55:15.780 Perfect.

00:55:17.640 Thanks for coming on the show, Colette.

00:55:19.120 It's been absolutely fantastic chatting with you.

00:55:21.420 And if you've enjoyed the show, we will see – well, actually,

00:55:24.020 even if you haven't enjoyed the show, we'll still see you tomorrow

00:55:26.960 with another live stream

00:55:28.600 and very soon

00:55:29.300 with another brilliant episode.

00:55:30.480 So take care

00:55:31.020 and enjoy the rest of your day.

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00:56:15.140 theater get tickets at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - August 23, 2020

“Activism Has No Place in Journalism” - Claire Lehmann

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