TRIGGERnometry - How Do We Save America？ Live with Bret Weinstein

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00:00:06.520 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:00:11.780 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:00:15.780 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:00:22.600 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

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00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to a very special live episode of Trigonometry.

00:00:40.200 It's great to have you here. We have a fantastic guest.

00:00:43.760 If you're a first-time viewer of the show, we have a very special slogan, don't we, Francis?

00:00:47.520 It is. It's honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:51.180 And it does not get any more fascinating than the guest we have for you today.

00:00:55.660 The last time we spoke to him, the title of that episode was, Can We Can Stop a Civil War?

00:01:03.080 Let's find out if you still think so.

00:01:05.100 Brett Weinstein, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:01:07.380 Well, thanks for having me. It's good to be here, guys.

00:01:10.380 Yeah, can we stop a civil war? That's the question, huh?

00:01:13.000 Yeah. Well, why don't we just start right there?

00:01:15.040 Yeah, I would say it's still possible, but, you know, the more times we kick the can down the road, the harder it gets.

00:01:25.000 And that's really, at some level, the lesson of the last several decades.

00:01:30.440 This is not a problem that can be ignored forever.

00:01:33.360 And, you know, it's a bit like quitting smoking.

00:01:36.240 The fact that it's difficult is not an argument against doing it right now because it only gets more so.

00:01:41.020 Hmm. Well, before we get into the analysis of everything that happened yesterday and the bigger picture,

00:01:47.240 because it's something you've been talking for a while, I should just say I forgot to mention at the top.

00:01:51.360 For everybody watching, welcome.

00:01:53.180 If you want to ask a question, please send it in the PayPal link.

00:01:56.140 There's a there's a link in the pinned comment or you can use the super chat function on YouTube.

00:02:00.660 And after we've spoken for about 45, 50 minutes here with Brett,

00:02:04.180 we will get to those questions for another 30, 40 minutes and try and get as many answers as we can.

00:02:08.960 But, Brett, what happened yesterday in your analysis?

00:02:12.580 Rather than looking at the minutiae of it, what is the big picture events that we're seeing unfolding in front of our eyes at the moment?

00:02:20.260 Well, you know, I think we're seeing physical manifestations of processes that we're all in some sense familiar with,

00:02:27.420 even if we don't necessarily understand them.

00:02:29.400 We interface with them all the time on social media.

00:02:32.560 And so the question is really, what is the ideal place to stand to see this for what it is?

00:02:40.500 And, you know, we have a problem.

00:02:43.600 The problem has a lot to do with something that we typically call echo chambers.

00:02:49.460 But I think we don't properly understand that echo chambers come about in a variety of different ways.

00:02:54.920 Some of them automatic.

00:02:56.460 You know, these algorithms have a purpose, but they have side effects.

00:03:01.840 And the side effects involve the divergence of our shared narrative such that, frankly, people on one side stop recognizing people on the other as even humans whose opinion is worth considering.

00:03:17.680 And when that happens, you know, you enter a kind of fission process that is not dissimilar to what you would see in baboons or chimpanzees,

00:03:29.460 where one group just simply decides to part company with the other and strikes out on its own.

00:03:34.740 And, you know, until we address the divergence of our narratives, I think we're going to keep seeing variations on that theme.

00:03:41.880 And isn't part of the problem, Brett, that you've used the word narrative, is that both left and right, however you want to classify these two factions, have their own narratives,

00:03:52.580 which a lot of the time really have no basis in reality.

00:03:56.140 They're just that, a narrative.

00:03:57.860 And people don't engage with it.

00:03:59.420 They just parrot these words and these arguments.

00:04:03.000 Well, that's one part of the problem.

00:04:06.040 But, you know, you could do a fairly good taxonomy.

00:04:08.940 I would say that, you know, what we would loosely call the left and the right narrative are both downstream of a style of thought in which basically,

00:04:20.400 and, you know, in scientific terms, we might call it verificationism or confirmation bias.

00:04:25.800 And so you have a wide range of facts in a complex system, and you have people trying to filter it for meaning.

00:04:35.060 But unless they are well-schooled in the dangers of confirmation bias, what they will end up doing is either shoehorning things into a narrative that they already believe,

00:04:48.500 what we might call overfitting, or they will simply cherry-pick the data so that only those things that seem to match that narrative are even processed.

00:04:59.000 And when that happens, they become very convinced that they are seeing reality, when, in fact, what they are seeing at best is a highly biased edit.

00:05:10.500 And part of the problem as well is that we have these narratives, and that's just been exacerbated by social media.

00:05:18.080 So people can essentially isolate themselves, can't they, and only be exposed to their own narrative.

00:05:24.440 Well, even worse than that, I mean, that's certainly where this starts, is that, you know, you follow people who, when they speak,

00:05:31.420 it flatters your worldview rather than challenges it.

00:05:34.240 But then the media companies, the social media companies exacerbate this problem for what are presumably mostly narrow economic reasons.

00:05:44.600 In other words, to keep you on their site, they'll train their algorithm to either, you know, enrage you and keep you engaged or flatter you or some combination of the two.

00:05:55.580 But then even further down the road, we get to the point where they start declaring certain viewpoints, persona non grata, and tossing people off,

00:06:05.800 which causes the people who have these other viewpoints to gather in an echo chamber that actually is physically held elsewhere.

00:06:15.300 And that echo chamber doesn't check in with the standard narratives.

00:06:19.700 It doesn't face the critique that it would if it were intermingled with them.

00:06:24.020 And this is just simply a very dangerous process.

00:06:28.020 And, you know, if we were to get wise about it, what we would realize is that all of the variations on that theme,

00:06:36.200 all of the ones that we've seen and all of the ones that are yet to be invented are a danger to civilization.

00:06:44.480 And whatever instinct it is that causes us to think another one of these reinforcement mechanisms is a good thing,

00:06:51.380 we have to get in front of that and stop doing it.

00:06:54.020 Hmm. Right. Let's I want to get a little bit into some of what happened yesterday, because I do think it's important.

00:07:00.080 So as we were talking before we started the show, we've been criticizing the tactics of the far left for the last four years on this show.

00:07:09.020 The reason we are in the current studio is we got kicked out of our last one for saying that BLM shouldn't be looting and rioting.

00:07:15.700 And it's amazing to me that people now there are a lot of people on the right, particularly who are condoning what happened yesterday.

00:07:23.580 And that level of cognitive dissonance is mind boggling to me.

00:07:27.440 Surely if it's wrong when they do it, it must be wrong when when the side that you've become attached to does it as well.

00:07:34.080 How are people not seeing that?

00:07:35.620 Well, a good many of them are.

00:07:38.200 I've heard a lot of people that I respect on the right recognizing that as as much as there are some distinctions to be drawn here,

00:07:47.280 the overarching lesson is the same, which is we don't all get to decide that, you know, we've had it and that it's time to mutiny.

00:07:55.840 Now, the problem, I would say, for the U.S. especially is that because the U.S. was born in an insurrection,

00:08:08.100 it is very hard for us to say insurrection is simply wrong, right?

00:08:14.480 Because insurrection is our origin story.

00:08:17.320 And what that means is that we have to have some very well thought out description of what the circumstances are

00:08:29.060 that would have to be true in order to justify fighting back out of patriotism rather than a desire to tear the nation down.

00:08:40.000 And, you know, this is in some sense an asymmetry.

00:08:43.880 I don't think in the end it makes any difference in this case, but because what you really had is a small number of ill-informed people deciding that they had had enough.

00:08:55.740 And, you know, we obviously can't have a civilization in which everybody gets to decide to do this.

00:09:01.420 But the cognitive dissonance really is, again, a manifestation of a system in which we, because the institutions and the mechanisms

00:09:15.880 that are supposed to help us make sense of the world have, I think, universally been captured, the official ones at least,

00:09:24.100 we are left to cobble together our own worldview.

00:09:28.940 And that worldview can be postmodern nonsense, as we've seen on the BLM left. 0.96

00:09:37.660 It can be insubstantial conspiracy hypotheses elevated to the level of fact, as we've seen on the QAnon right.

00:09:49.060 And, you know, what it is, is just a low-quality mechanism filling the vacuum left by the capture of the high-quality mechanism.

00:10:01.860 I'm really glad you brought up the point of America's birth story, the founding story of America being the revolution against British rule.

00:10:10.560 So, in terms of the narrative that would be on the MAGA right right now is what they would say,

00:10:18.460 and I personally don't agree with this, but they would say the election was stolen in a wide-scale electoral fraud.

00:10:25.160 As a result of this, they made a large number of legal cases which weren't properly investigated.

00:10:31.820 They were dismissed on standing instead of being looked at on merit.

00:10:34.560 And when it became clear that the legal avenue wasn't going to happen,

00:10:40.580 they tried to stop Congress from certifying it via a few people who were willing to do that.

00:10:47.520 And at this point, this is what they would argue, just a reminder,

00:10:51.640 these brave patriots felt the need to storm in and essentially, you know, save America from leftist tyranny.

00:10:59.160 This is what they would argue.

00:11:00.980 How do you dissuade someone from that worldview?

00:11:06.380 Well, I don't know, because the abdication of responsibility by the major institutions,

00:11:15.300 by journalists, by virtually every pillar of society set the stage for this.

00:11:22.320 So, as much as it is very important to recognize the responsibility of confused individuals,

00:11:29.880 they're not confused for nothing.

00:11:32.720 And they're also, I would say, Americans generally are not wrong in detecting that something about our system is fundamentally broken, right?

00:11:43.940 And so, you know, the irony is that the frustration that motivates the attack on the Capitol that we saw yesterday

00:11:52.100 and the George Floyd riots is in some sense just a near universal, right?

00:12:00.580 Anybody who's paying attention and is not being richly rewarded by the system as we find it

00:12:05.100 has the sense it's rigged, it's not rigged in our favor, and that's a problem.

00:12:11.560 And, you know, the other irony is that anyone who attempts to bootstrap a proper solution gets demonized

00:12:20.060 and, in fact, gets painted as if they are part of one of these cabals on the fringes.

00:12:24.640 You know, and I've faced that myself, as we've talked about before, right?

00:12:29.300 Anybody who tries to, you know, carve out a stable space in the middle in which to discuss what's really going on 0.72

00:12:36.980 and what's at stake and what ought to be unifying us is portrayed as a partisan or a fool or any one of these things.

00:12:44.960 I mean, as recently as a couple weeks ago, IDW was declared far right in an academic paper

00:12:53.980 that ultimately there was acknowledgment that this was preposterous.

00:12:57.280 But, I mean, it was just simply a clear attack from the truth-seeking wing of civilization on the sense-making wing.

00:13:08.600 And, you know, no wonder things have begun to decohere.

00:13:12.660 And, Brett, you said that the system is broken.

00:13:17.080 Could you delve into that a little bit more for people overseas or people who are not as au fait

00:13:22.820 with the American political system as you might be?

00:13:26.500 Sure. Now, it's a little bit subtle because what we have is a pervasive culture of political corruption.

00:13:36.340 But the corruption is almost entirely legal.

00:13:39.500 That is to say, it is very difficult to meet the American standard of proof with respect to violations of the protections we have against corruption, right?

00:13:52.380 So revolving door politics being one mechanism, nepotism, you know, bribery being delivered to the kin and friends of elected officials to keep their fingerprints off things.

00:14:04.940 All of these mechanisms exist.

00:14:06.940 And, in fact, they are loopholes that were carved out and enlarged by effectively corporate interests that we should have expected to attempt to do their own bidding at public expense by figuring out how to corrupt the process.

00:14:28.760 And what is hard to appreciate is just the degree to which this actually governs policy.

00:14:38.340 In effect, what we have is a political apparatus that serves the public interest only incidentally.

00:14:45.760 That is to say, you know, it is there are certain things on which the public well-being aligns with special interests and then the public's bidding will be done to an extent.

00:14:58.100 But as soon as they depart, there's no question whose interests govern.

00:15:03.880 So that said, the system, because it is born in the explicit recognition of the importance of checks and balances, and because the founders thoroughly understood the hazards of the market in principle, they couldn't have understood the challenges that would be faced in a technological environment.

00:15:30.620 But they did understand the danger of conflicts of interest.

00:15:35.700 Our system is rescuable, but we have to recognize the degree to which corruption has taken it over and has caused people to be an afterthought to policy rather than its focus.

00:15:47.960 So essentially what you're saying is that American democracy is in crisis.

00:15:51.360 I mean, I think, you know, that's a very safe statement we could go along.

00:15:57.880 It's been in crisis for almost my entire life.

00:16:03.320 You know, we have a process.

00:16:05.900 It's confusing because in some sense, our general elections appear to be more or less fair, whereas our primaries are where the dirty deeds are done.

00:16:20.380 And so to the extent of the fanfare in general surrounds the general election, it looks much healthier than it actually is.

00:16:32.080 But in any case, yes, democracy in the U.S. is in serious trouble.

00:16:39.080 The hazard to it is mundane as can be, but it is going to break apart in spectacular fashion in events like we saw yesterday.

00:16:51.140 And I suppose a bigger question is where America leads, the rest of the world follows.

00:16:57.080 I was talking to my Venezuelan cousin last night and I said to him, you know, things that the world's going down the pan when even the gringos are going insane. 1.00

00:17:05.420 So if if America is in crisis, what do you think is going to happen around the rest of the world and how is this going to impact every liberal democracy?

00:17:15.000 Well, this is another I don't want to say uniquely American defect, but it is a defect that we have to a much greater degree than a large part of the world,

00:17:26.620 which is, I think, because of the history of the 20th century and the ascension to an unparalleled state of power that the U.S. went through.

00:17:38.820 Americans, modern Americans tend to see the rest of the world only dimly.

00:17:46.860 We see our own issues as paramount and everything else is very remote.

00:17:53.420 But what we don't easily understand is the role that the U.S. has played, not only in effectively demonstrating a path to a better style of governance,

00:18:06.280 a style of governance that is built on the idea that governmental legitimacy is and must be founded in the consent of the governed.

00:18:15.160 But we don't understand the role we play in stabilizing the world.

00:18:21.020 And so my sense is we are going to have an absurd battle in the U.S. over largely fictional substitutes for a proper analysis of what has gone wrong.

00:18:34.500 And the result of that is going to be we are going to sideline ourselves and leave a vacuum that is certain to be filled by countries that are not remotely as committed to the values that we hold dear.

00:18:48.200 Therefore, even just a simple analysis of, you know, do you like equality?

00:18:55.480 Right. We can fight over the difference between equality and equity.

00:18:58.220 But if you like the idea of equality, the last thing you want to do is create a power vacuum that empowers China and Russia. 0.60

00:19:08.020 Right. That would be a terrible error.

00:19:12.100 But there's some other things that I wanted to cover in addition to the main issue, which, of course, is very important.

00:19:17.580 But as I think we're starting to zone in in the course of this conversation on the issue of social media and their influence,

00:19:25.000 I think while Francis and I have both been openly and outwardly critical of what happened last night and Donald Trump in in his role in it,

00:19:34.800 I think what he did and what those protesters did was very damaging and irresponsible.

00:19:39.420 At the same time, it's hard to ignore the fact that a very, in my opinion, dangerous precedent was set last night when Twitter and later Facebook unilaterally decided to suspend President Trump's account on Twitter.

00:19:54.080 I don't know how you feel about it. We haven't spoken about it.

00:19:56.680 But in my view, the precedent of a social media company, a big tech company, essentially cutting the president's pipeline to people off from him in a crucial moment,

00:20:09.260 in a very heated dispute about the outcome of an election, the precedent that sets to me, if you play that movie forward, it does not look good to me.

00:20:18.280 What did you make of it?

00:20:19.940 Oh, I find it absolutely terrifying.

00:20:23.040 I mean, no matter who this person is and what he's doing, he is the president.

00:20:29.180 Any reasonable person should agree to that.

00:20:32.580 And the idea that those who, you know, sell pencils and paper or, you know, are vendors of electrical power or happen to own the conduits through which we communicate,

00:20:46.020 that those people have the right to censor is so absurd on its face.

00:20:52.520 And in fact, what we're seeing is really a variation on another theme where we've seen these same tech giants behave incredibly irresponsibly,

00:21:02.500 barring people left and right for whom there is no argument that they are jeopardizing anything important.

00:21:08.960 In fact, people who are trying to prevent events like this, like, you know, the Articles of Unity account that Twitter banned.

00:21:16.780 It was it was it was built to prevent this kind of catastrophe.

00:21:24.760 And so the idea that these people are going to appoint themselves to a position where they get to decide who gets to speak to whom.

00:21:32.900 And, you know, even a duly elected president is unable to communicate with the public is, you know, clearly that's a good many steps down the road to hell.

00:21:46.580 And there's an extra step that I and again, I don't know whether you'd agree with me on this,

00:21:51.860 but you've got the U.S. House and Senate now controlled by the Democrats and the presidency.

00:21:58.320 So they have complete control there.

00:22:00.900 And my view is it's highly likely that one of the terrible outcomes that results from this will be that the Democratic Party,

00:22:11.000 the Democratic presidential administration say, well, look what happens when you allow dangerous speech to be available online.

00:22:18.260 Look what happens when one man can have 70 or 80 million followers on Twitter and spread fake news or whatever it is might be.

00:22:26.840 We need to crack down. We need to make sure this never happens again.

00:22:30.900 As Google executives were filmed saying in 2016 after Trump was elected the first time.

00:22:36.880 And so my fear is that not only have the big tech companies awakened to the tremendous power that they now have,

00:22:43.740 they're going to wield it in in combination with the Democratic establishment. 1.00

00:22:48.380 Now, against people like us, people like you, people like me, people like Francis, other people trying to have sensible conversations online that are actually addressing some of the underlying issues you talk about.

00:22:59.700 They're going to come down on all of us like a ton of bricks, aren't they?

00:23:02.560 Oh, I see this coming.

00:23:05.560 And, you know, we've we've all been talking about it for so long that, yes, what's what's happened now is going to accelerate it when, you know, again, there's just going to be no end to the ironies.

00:23:16.780 What really happened yesterday in some sense was that the feeble response to BLM violence, in particular, the sustained attack on federal buildings here in Portland actually set a precedent.

00:23:38.060 And, you know, we I've been involved in a number of discussions with very smart, well-informed people offline about how one compares the attack on, you know, a courthouse in federal courthouse in Portland to an attack on the Capitol.

00:23:54.440 And obviously, an attack on the Capitol is a good deal more serious in one regard.

00:24:01.040 But then again, it was a momentary attack, whereas what has happened in Portland was a sustained attack on a federal building allowed to continue night after night.

00:24:13.680 And so, you know, that people are beginning to understand what it is that restrains the behavior of the force that is supposed to enforce the law.

00:24:23.820 Right. And that they are availing themselves of opportunities that they should not have because we have effectively carved out a loophole for one group of people over here that's going to be predictably enough exploited by other people over there.

00:24:36.500 We have to stop that process. You absolutely have to have the law.

00:24:42.400 Now, unfortunately, so much here has been politicized that even the, you know, the phrase that is being used is law and order, which is, in fact, a dog whistle.

00:24:53.820 Right. Law and order is a dog whistle. The proper nonpartisan way to say this is rule of law.

00:25:02.300 Yes. You have to have the rule of law and the rule of law can be applied blind.

00:25:07.420 The point is, are you attacking a federal building? That's a crime. We have mechanisms.

00:25:13.980 We're not going to provide a way out because, you know, we want to signal that we are sympathetic to something you're saying.

00:25:22.100 The point is you're not allowed to do that. It's outside the rules.

00:25:25.280 So, yeah, we've we've set the stage for ourselves here and we are now seeing just how far it goes.

00:25:32.520 And we will see exactly the same thing censorship wise. Right.

00:25:36.260 To the extent that you have these arrogant corporations that live, I don't even want to say on one side of the ideological spectrum, because I think it's far more political than anything.

00:25:47.040 But to the extent that they see one set of things that they will violate norms like free speech to address, of course, those very same rights that they are generating for themselves will be turned on exactly the people that they would want to protect.

00:26:06.540 So, yeah, we've we've we've we've created a predicament for ourselves that is going to require some very careful, counterintuitive thinking to escape.

00:26:17.220 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical, a beautiful noise is coming to Toronto.

00:26:23.860 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love, including America, Forever in Blue Jeans and Sweet Caroline.

00:26:33.120 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

00:26:37.180 The Neil Diamond musical, a beautiful noise now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:26:43.840 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

00:26:48.420 And, Brett, you know, we're talking about what the BLM rights are particularly important.

00:26:54.960 Why is it that we cannot be consistent in our thinking?

00:26:59.400 Why is it that people who are on that side are fully able to condemn Trump, fully able to say this is, you know, disgusting, this is whatever it may be.

00:27:10.120 But when it comes to their own side, they go, well, what they're doing is trying to abolish systemic racism.

00:27:16.360 Well, you know, I I have just a personal rule about this.

00:27:24.060 I don't think that what's going on on the two sides is exactly symmetrical, right?

00:27:30.600 There are lots of nuances.

00:27:32.260 However, my feeling is.

00:27:35.660 If you were condemning BLM.

00:27:38.160 And you are not at least trying to figure out what part of what happened yesterday is completely unacceptable and for the same reasons, you're not really a part of the actual conversation.

00:27:52.340 You're just a partisan.

00:27:53.340 And so if you were to limit the conversation to only people who are recognizably behaving in a nonpartisan and even handed fashion, the quality of the conversation would immediately skyrocket.

00:28:06.680 The problem is everybody wants to amplify that which leans in their direction.

00:28:12.880 And so what you get is a lot of people making arguments.

00:28:15.340 Many of those arguments may be true, but they're making them for the wrong reason.

00:28:18.700 Right. They're not legitimate arguments because what's motivating them is, hey, that that works in my favor rather than that's actually accurate.

00:28:26.620 So anyway, we it would be wise if we figured out how to narrow the conversation to only those people who've proven that when a point goes against whatever their side might be, that they still recognize it.

00:28:42.300 Well, I don't think that's going to happen.

00:28:43.540 I mean, to put it as pessimistically as I can.

00:28:47.320 But what what I think maybe it's time to start talking about is the big tech incentivization of ever spiraling extremism, because we know, you know, you your your brilliant podcast that you do with with Heather, the Dark Horse podcast.

00:29:04.680 We do this show to thousands of people.

00:29:07.060 We know that if we call this this live interview with you, you know, if we wanted to to please a left wing audience, we would say fascism in America.

00:29:15.900 And if we wanted to please a right wing audience, we say patriots succeed in whatever it whatever it would be.

00:29:22.460 Or patriots unite.

00:29:23.520 Patriots unite. Even better.

00:29:25.080 That'd be great.

00:29:25.640 That'd be great.

00:29:26.180 So if we do either of those things, we we would have 10 times as many people in here and 10 times as much passion and 10 times as many super chats.

00:29:36.280 And we that is the way you you do things if you want to get attention.

00:29:41.720 And we've done our very best to stay away from that.

00:29:44.440 We don't always succeed, but we've done our best.

00:29:46.340 But the platforms incentivize that kind of behavior.

00:29:50.560 And I think that part of the solution must be surely in addressing the way that those systems encourage people to behave, because human beings are very simple.

00:29:59.260 We respond to incentives, don't we?

00:30:01.460 Well, we do.

00:30:03.080 I think, you know, the thing about patriotism, the the sort of sin qua non of the the structure is a willingness to pay a cost for something that you believe in.

00:30:16.260 And, you know, I think many of us are showing that we do that naturally.

00:30:20.820 I don't find that terribly surprising.

00:30:22.900 I think patriotism is a real phenomenon.

00:30:25.080 And there are always, you know, it's not the most common property, but it's not uncommon to find people who are willing to sacrifice for for their nation or for values that are are worth fighting for.

00:30:39.960 But the problem is, I mean, you know, let's just I it's hard for me to make this point because I'm at the center of it.

00:30:50.360 But, you know, Facebook has now tossed the president off their platform.

00:30:56.400 Right.

00:30:58.120 That would be much easier to interpret generously if they hadn't also tossed me off their platform.

00:31:06.040 Right.

00:31:06.640 I mean, the problem is Facebook has displayed a willingness to evict people who are simply pointing out the corruption of both parties.

00:31:21.200 Right.

00:31:21.800 And so, in effect, they have come out pro corruption.

00:31:26.500 And having done so now they're throwing the president off reads in a in a particular way.

00:31:33.800 So I should say, for those who don't know the story, under a great deal of pressure that was exerted when I announced on Twitter that I had been thrown off Facebook, Facebook did reverse course and claimed that it had been an error.

00:31:48.820 Nothing they said about the issue made any sense.

00:31:50.960 But the point is, do you really want Facebook empowered to decide who is going to get to speak?

00:31:58.200 And if you do, what do you think they will do with that power?

00:32:02.180 One thing they will do is they will go after people who are non-ideological and non-partisan.

00:32:07.400 Right.

00:32:07.760 Because they are fiercely partisan.

00:32:09.980 We can't have partisans in charge of who gets to speak, even when there's somebody doing things which I think are genuinely troubling,

00:32:17.220 which I would say is quite true of Trump, especially in in recent weeks.

00:32:22.080 So what do we do, Brett?

00:32:24.400 We have these companies, four or five of them, and they're in charge.

00:32:29.740 And they're the ones that get to decide to decimate the information.

00:32:35.120 What can we do as a society to take back control?

00:32:40.420 Francis bringing out a collective slogan there, just for the hardcore fans.

00:32:44.560 Take back control of our tech.

00:32:46.500 All right.

00:32:48.720 So let's just first notice one of the facts that works in our favor.

00:32:57.860 You've got three kinds of people inside of all of our institutions.

00:33:04.280 You've got people who are committed to doing the right thing.

00:33:08.280 In an institution that is fiercely committed to doing the expedient thing,

00:33:12.640 those people will not last long.

00:33:14.440 They will be in very short supply.

00:33:17.400 You've got people who are ruthless and do whatever is in their own interest,

00:33:22.460 irrespective of what the cost may be.

00:33:25.400 Those people will exist at some level inside of all of our institutions.

00:33:29.540 And then you have people who are caught in a bind.

00:33:32.840 Right.

00:33:33.180 These are people who probably are sympathetic to the idea that the system isn't working very well,

00:33:38.760 that it could be fixed to advance values that we actually all share.

00:33:45.120 But they are willing to make massive compromises in order to stay employed,

00:33:51.340 in order to advance the narrow interests of their families, etc.

00:33:56.720 And my point would be those people can actually be liberated to do the right thing inside of all of these institutions.

00:34:06.540 And we are foolish to simply read the fact that they routinely disappoint us

00:34:14.320 as evidence that they wouldn't prefer to live in a better system and be ready to go along with it if there was some plan to get there.

00:34:20.560 So this is a long-winded way of saying that, strategically speaking,

00:34:26.960 you've got a lot of people who are capable of leveling up, being good, and collaborating,

00:34:33.180 who can't be seen because their day-to-day activities look corrupt like everything else about our system.

00:34:43.340 And so I would say we need to start reaching those people,

00:34:49.600 and they need to start reaching across political ideological lines to their partners in competing institutions.

00:34:58.680 Right.

00:34:58.980 Now, you can say this about our political structure, for example.

00:35:02.460 In the U.S., there are, I think it's a small number of high-quality people in the Congress, for example,

00:35:13.680 who could partner with people across the aisle to right the ship of state.

00:35:22.720 Right.

00:35:22.840 If we do what those who are taking advantage of the situation would have us do,

00:35:28.840 things will simply get worse.

00:35:30.400 And, you know, we will periodically come back to TriggerPod to talk about the, you know,

00:35:36.780 the new infuriating film that we've all seen and what its implications are for the collapse of the West and all of these things.

00:35:42.740 But if people who see the importance of preserving the nation, in the case of the U.S. and the West more generally,

00:35:52.640 start behaving like patriots and contacting those with different views who share that same priority,

00:36:00.460 there's a lot of good that can be done.

00:36:02.600 So the question is, can those people, what are they paying attention to?

00:36:05.760 What are they reading?

00:36:06.920 Right.

00:36:07.100 Either they're paying attention to channels like this one, in which case there's hope of reaching them,

00:36:13.200 or are they paying attention to officially sanctioned channels that are so fiercely partisan that even though this is the moment for them to take control

00:36:23.480 and partner across these traditional lines, that they will just miss the call because they won't know it's out there.

00:36:31.060 And, Brett, what would you say to, and this is a very, very left-wing argument that has been put to me,

00:36:36.440 and I can't really see a way around it, that this is the inevitable result of capitalism.

00:36:42.120 This is what happens when you have monopolies in charge of disseminating information.

00:36:46.920 They are ultimately going to act in their own interest, and their own interest is in the bottom line.

00:36:52.180 It's in the profit margin.

00:36:54.800 I would say a number of things.

00:36:56.660 One, I am increasingly wary of any argument that is predicated on the term capitalism if the person delivering the argument isn't willing to define exactly what they mean.

00:37:11.600 Because, in general, when I talk to people on the left about their concerns about capitalism, in effect, what I frequently hear is that they don't like markets.

00:37:25.340 And I know from several decades of encountering the problem that markets are both the source of many of our greatest hazards and also our best hope, right?

00:37:40.980 Markets are very good at solving certain kinds of problems.

00:37:43.560 And so what we should really be doing is figuring out how to get markets to address those problems rather than demonizing them wholesale because many of their products are destructive.

00:37:57.240 So, in any case, I guess what I would say is, yes, capitalism needs to be intelligently regulated, right?

00:38:07.840 And if I say well-regulated, people on the right will hear that as intensely regulated.

00:38:12.880 What I want to see is it elegantly regulated so that it actually solves problems rather than have market forces turned over to the faith that if you simply allow them to run rampant, that they will fix everything, which they clearly don't.

00:38:31.280 Brett, we've got about another seven, eight minutes of the interview, and then we'll go to our questions from the audience.

00:38:37.840 So, guys, if you're watching, remember, there's a link in the pinned comment or send us a super chat, and we'll pull them all up at the end and go through the most appropriate and interesting questions.

00:38:47.440 But, Brett, what do you see?

00:38:49.380 We've seen this, I would say, cataclysmic event yesterday.

00:38:53.400 And I know that a lot of people on the right feel like the media coverage is disproportionate when compared to what happened with BLM.

00:39:01.240 And I have some sensitivity to that in terms of the physical damage, in terms of the cost of the damage, in terms of number of people who were injured or killed.

00:39:12.380 Yes, it wasn't quite as bad as six months of BLM burning down central Portland and whatever else, but it happened in one night, and it was the capital during the certification of an election.

00:39:22.520 That is political violence on a completely different scale.

00:39:25.640 And that's what makes it so important, right?

00:39:27.560 So, to me, there is no doubt that this is a cataclysmic event with huge impacts down the line.

00:39:34.240 Do you think this will become a sort of Cuban missile crisis moment where we all wake up to the madness that we've been living in?

00:39:41.740 We see how close we've come to the brink, and we go, we must step back.

00:39:47.240 We must find a sensible way.

00:39:49.200 Even if we continue to fight the so-called Cold War or whatever cultural war, we can't fight it in a way that leads us to this.

00:39:58.240 Well, it absolutely should be that moment.

00:40:01.360 I know from experience that many things that should be that moment come and go, and it doesn't happen.

00:40:07.780 So, the question is, is there some force that we can exert that can cause people to understand what this means?

00:40:17.020 And I would say, you know, again, I alluded earlier to the fact that a solution here will have to be counterintuitive, right?

00:40:23.600 The intuitive thing for people on all sides is to figure out what this does to the cause they were advancing and, you know, play from there.

00:40:33.600 And if we do that, we will end up on a continuing escalator of mendacity and essentially a treadmill of retribution, right?

00:40:45.000 It is this retributive instinct that I think is the greatest danger to us now.

00:40:50.500 Many people were enraged by what they saw yesterday, understandably, but you cannot analyze it in isolation.

00:40:56.880 It is the result of many things.

00:40:59.140 It is the result of the corruption of the system.

00:41:01.140 It is the result of the amplifying influence of social media.

00:41:06.300 And if we're going to dig our way out of this, we are going to have to confront those processes in ways that are new and therefore likely to be easy to dismiss.

00:41:18.320 So, go ahead.

00:41:19.940 No, no, sorry.

00:41:21.320 And one thing that I really wanted to talk to you about, Brett, before we move on to the super chats and all the rest of it, is I have a lot of friends on the left.

00:41:30.980 I still consider myself to be of the left, although I don't think they would.

00:41:34.500 But anyway, and I hear the term fascist used around Trump.

00:41:39.660 And there's been lots of pictures of people with fascist insignia and T-shirts and all the rest of it.

00:41:46.220 Would you consider Trump to be a fascist and do you consider his actions fascistic, especially those of last night?

00:41:56.220 No.

00:41:58.000 I consider Trump to be a genuine threat to the established order.

00:42:06.560 I consider him to be the leader of a cult of personality.

00:42:10.640 I consider him to have severe personal defects that make it impossible for him to responsibly wield the power that he has.

00:42:22.240 I would say the evidence, the number of times he has simply not taken advantage of a crisis to institute fascistic reforms that would have been expected is many.

00:42:36.340 And so what we have is, are there elements of fascism that one can find over in Trump space and the movement that surrounds him?

00:42:48.920 Sure.

00:42:49.320 But you can say the exact same thing about what's going on over in DNC space, right?

00:42:54.940 The fusion, for example, of the state with the corporate is classic fascism.

00:43:01.700 And where that's going on most clearly has to do with the tech sector and the Democratic Party.

00:43:08.740 So I guess my point would be, look, I'm not even sure that we're going to see fascism again, right?

00:43:16.560 Will we see variations on that theme?

00:43:19.500 We will.

00:43:20.700 Where will they come from?

00:43:21.860 That's anybody's guess because, you know, the whole thing, the whole apparatus has become corrupted.

00:43:30.240 And the way that that corruption manifests is simply it's non-traditional, right?

00:43:38.820 We're dealing with a novel environment.

00:43:40.660 And so fascism has been defined against historical realities that simply don't exist anymore.

00:43:47.840 So are there things as frightening as fascism that we should be afraid of?

00:43:52.000 Absolutely.

00:43:52.800 But if, you know, if we're waiting for it to, you know, goose step onto the stage, it's not going to happen.

00:43:58.440 Well, right.

00:43:59.220 And I think even what happened yesterday in my assessment is probably more product of his lack of imagination of what might happen if you continue to whip up these frenzies,

00:44:09.440 as opposed to him like deliberately orchestrating mobs to take over the Capitol.

00:44:15.140 So I think it's probably a false accusation that often comes from the left against him.

00:44:22.160 But speaking of presidents, what do you make of what will happen under his opposite number?

00:44:29.080 Because it looks like Donald Trump has acknowledged that there's going to be a peaceful transfer of power on January the 20th.

00:44:36.580 But what do you think the Biden presidency, particularly, as I mentioned, with having control over both chambers of Congress,

00:44:44.960 what do you think that's going to look like?

00:44:47.620 And what will America look like with President Joe Biden?

00:44:51.520 Well, unfortunately, it's going to be a disaster.

00:44:55.080 That's essentially guaranteed.

00:44:56.920 But it's going to be a disaster.

00:44:57.920 I should say sorry to interrupt, Brett, for people who are watching for the first time.

00:45:03.360 Not all of our interviews are as upbeat and cheery as this one.

00:45:06.740 Please carry on.

00:45:08.280 Yes.

00:45:08.980 Well, the thing is, Joe Biden is a machine politician from the heart of the Democratic National Committee.

00:45:18.400 So what this moment is, is an old corrupt order reasserting itself after a period of new corruption and chaos.

00:45:33.100 And I don't, you know, as I said during the election cycle, I don't know which is more troubling.

00:45:42.640 Certainly the events of yesterday suggest one very particular hazard that seems to exist on one side of this in a very potent and concentrated form.

00:45:55.900 But in terms of, you know, it is very dangerous to have mainstream, especially powerful Americans reassured that normalcy is back and that there's nothing to worry about.

00:46:10.180 Because everything, including Trump, is a consequence of a system that has been in crisis for decades in which rational options do not exist.

00:46:22.620 They are systematically eliminated for very mundane economic reasons.

00:46:29.320 And that is the problem that has to be cured because this was never about Trump.

00:46:34.480 Trump is a symptom.

00:46:35.400 And if you don't cure the problem, worse, if you decide that the problem is cured by reestablishing the old corrupt order, then you will generate a next version of Trump.

00:46:45.460 And it could easily be far more dangerous.

00:46:49.540 It could be smarter.

00:46:51.340 It could be much more interested in wielding power in an authoritarian fashion.

00:46:59.440 And, you know, this is this is the trial run that is supposed to alert us to that.

00:47:06.160 And if we don't take the hint, then I guess what's coming is on us.

00:47:10.080 Well, on all of those many happy notes, Brett, let's get to some of the questions.

00:47:17.300 I'm starting to hear a bit of an echo.

00:47:19.380 I don't know what that's about.

00:47:21.260 But, Anton, if we could have some of the things that people have been saying.

00:47:25.360 Brett, give us a second.

00:47:26.360 He's already sent us through a portion.

00:47:28.540 Yeah.

00:47:28.780 So let me have a look.

00:47:29.720 So Anton says, I'm learning more and more towards labeling 21.

00:47:35.540 Yeah.

00:47:36.220 We're going to have some of these that I can't read out, Brett, just because they're more jokey than anything else.

00:47:45.540 A question for Brett, says Holby Camelton.

00:47:47.800 Did anyone learn anything positive from the evergreen debacle?

00:47:51.740 If so, how do we encourage and replicate positive growth among the masses?

00:47:57.000 Well, we have to divide that question.

00:48:00.060 Did anyone at Evergreen learn anything valuable?

00:48:03.160 I will say the evidence that is coming out of the Evergreen State College would suggest that absolutely nothing was learned, if anything the opposite.

00:48:16.260 Somehow the events of Evergreen seem to have reassured people that they were on exactly the right track and they have managed to dismiss all pushback as somehow evidence that they were right all along.

00:48:29.720 Did anybody in the outside world learn anything from it?

00:48:33.060 Well, a good many people clearly did.

00:48:35.820 It wasn't enough.

00:48:36.820 It wasn't enough.

00:48:37.820 And the fact that the evergreen pattern has reemerged all over the place continues to be seen at colleges like Bryn Marn and Haverford and has spilled out into the streets would suggest we didn't learn enough fast enough.

00:48:58.420 But I would say lots of people are wide awake and in part the reason that they saw a very clear example in the evergreen story of what this was and just how broken the ideology that drove it was.

00:49:14.080 And we have a question here from the wonderfully named Jez Giant Chicken who says, who's asked a question, it's actually a very good question.

00:49:23.260 Voters seem to have reached the end of their tether with the Republican-Democrat circus now.

00:49:29.240 Will 2024 see more independence running?

00:49:34.540 Well, you know, I don't know.

00:49:38.980 It certainly should.

00:49:40.640 But the mechanisms that exist to prevent people from escaping the duopoly are subtle, powerful and many.

00:49:52.400 And so I think people need to be alert to the fact that they are being steered into a structure that is already controlled because that structure knows that if people had a choice outside of it, a rational choice, that that choice would be wildly popular.

00:50:13.700 Someone just as an aside, John Bowering with a tenor says, bloody hell, it's Brett on trigonometry.

00:50:20.580 It looks like we've got two Christmases this year.

00:50:22.820 Love you all, guys.

00:50:24.160 Well, we might not have any Christmases this year the way this one is going.

00:50:27.520 But this is an interesting point.

00:50:29.460 And this is a point that people on the right often make about this issue, Brett.

00:50:33.620 Colin says, do you remember when it was acceptable to storm the Senate during the Kavanaugh hearings?

00:50:38.540 The narrative has been decided for you.

00:50:40.840 In other words, that hypocrisy that both you and us acknowledged, is that that's a central driving force of the whole process here, isn't it?

00:50:52.620 Yes.

00:50:53.220 And I would say in order that we do not just continue to see a series of this in which people point out, oh, well, you think this is bad.

00:51:03.380 What about when it was the other side and you said nothing?

00:51:05.680 You know, we can do an infinite series of that.

00:51:07.820 What has to happen is we have to make a hard break, right?

00:51:15.100 We have to declare a moment at which behavior like this is not tolerated and move forward under a different set of rules.

00:51:28.700 Where, you know, the idea of colorblindness has been misportrayed and falsely tarnished.

00:51:40.500 But really, it is a variation on equal protection under the law.

00:51:46.360 The law must be blind to who you are and what you believe, and it must be applied equally. 0.99

00:51:51.740 And so we should all be able to subscribe to that.

00:51:56.340 And to the extent that it is violated by anyone, we ought to be able to say that's not good for us, even if the people who got the exception were saying things that we have some sympathy with.

00:52:06.660 But how is that going to happen, Brett?

00:52:08.100 We've seen what the Democratic Party has represented in the last four years.

00:52:12.340 Now that they control every possible lever of government, how is that going to happen?

00:52:18.500 Well, you know, you correctly detect that I'm not optimistic that having the Democrats in full charge is going to result in this.

00:52:27.980 On the other hand, I do believe that people wake up and many people who signed up for some kind of control on the basis that they thought it spoke to values that they believed in are going to realize that, in fact, they are putting something much bigger and more important in danger, right?

00:52:54.420 You can't sacrifice the West over virtue signaling, right?

00:53:00.240 It's an absurdity.

00:53:01.780 And so anyway, what we can do is we can hope that those people emerge and we can recognize them when they do.

00:53:09.640 We can protect them.

00:53:11.580 And to the extent that they don't emerge, we're going to have to force the issue because the thing that has just reasserted its control is hostile to the people.

00:53:24.420 The public's public's public's interest and is in large measure a cause of the problem that we saw boil over yesterday.

00:53:32.680 Christopher McMahon has asked you a question, which is, Brett, any plans for unity 2024?

00:53:41.480 There are certainly plans for unity going forward.

00:53:46.460 There are questions about what unity should be.

00:53:50.240 Obviously, I think people understood unity as very much about an electoral play, and there's certainly room for that going forward.

00:54:04.280 But I don't think it's the only thing that unity should be about.

00:54:09.080 Unity is about the fact that very frequently no one speaks for our collective nonpartisan interests.

00:54:18.680 And that is putting us in jeopardy.

00:54:20.860 And therefore, I think the proper role for unity going forward is to always give voice to the patriotic center and to provide safe haven for people from all parts of the political spectrum who wish to meet in that center so that we can navigate the way forward.

00:54:41.520 I have to say that the names in the super chats are brilliant.

00:54:45.700 Someone called Batsa People 2 says, how do we increase empathy on Earth?

00:54:51.680 Which I thought was actually an interesting question, not least because we're talking with you as a sort of social analyst, political commentator.

00:55:00.280 But actually, your day job and your profession is evolutionary biology.

00:55:06.020 So is there a way to increase empathy on Earth?

00:55:09.140 Is it even desirable to do so?

00:55:11.440 Yes.

00:55:11.860 We've done an amazing job on this front over the course of thousands of years.

00:55:18.740 And only in the last five minutes of history have we begun to bungle it so badly.

00:55:25.480 The way you increase empathy is you allow people to see through your eyes or an enhanced mechanism would involve the building of characters and the running them through scenarios so that you understand it from their perspective.

00:55:41.720 And, you know, this is this is so simple, we don't even comment on it most of the time.

00:55:46.340 But how is it that, you know, a man can know how a woman sees the world? 1.00

00:55:52.680 Well, you know, a really good story written from a woman's perspective is a darn good upgrade.

00:55:59.180 So the point is, any mechanism that causes you to see through the well-drawn eyes of somebody else is an enhancement to empathy.

00:56:10.340 It is a very good thing.

00:56:11.820 Unfortunately, what social media, I think, has accidentally done is the exact opposite, where what it does is it makes people whose viewpoint is different seem alien and defective.

00:56:24.740 And it makes people who share your exact viewpoint seem like the only people who get it.

00:56:31.020 And so it's like an anti-empathy environment.

00:56:33.580 And I would say in the short term, people need to violate whatever boundaries are supposed to keep them from interacting with others.

00:56:42.340 They need to extend the benefit of the doubt to people, really hear what they're trying to say.

00:56:47.180 And having gone down this road and partnered with many others who do this routinely, I would say it's surprisingly easy and more important, it's rewarding.

00:56:57.440 When you meet people whose perspective is different and they articulate it and you hear what they're saying and you suddenly understand why it is that people are so convinced of something that you didn't initially see, you'll feel better.

00:57:10.000 You'll feel more grounded.

00:57:12.860 So anyway, yes, plenty of mechanisms and we should avail ourselves of them and be afraid of any mechanism that goes in the other direction.

00:57:19.280 Annie asks, how do you show people they're stuck in a particular narrative and when they automatically assume you're inverted commas far right, but even suggesting a different point of view?

00:57:31.720 And you could even substitute far right, far left, woke, anti-woke, whatever it is.

00:57:36.720 How do you have conversations in this world that you've just described?

00:57:40.620 Well, you know, it's a little slow going.

00:57:42.680 I think the problem is that the question, in some sense, comes from a perspective in which, you know, you might ask, how can you make sure nobody misunderstands where you're coming from?

00:57:53.400 And you can't.

00:57:54.820 But what you can do is make progress so that over time, more and more people understand that that's not where you are and it's not what's motivating you.

00:58:03.240 And I would say the key tool for this is to trigger their minds to rise to consciousness.

00:58:11.480 That by and large, human beings, hour to hour, are on autopilot and they only rise to consciousness when something requires the attention of the conscious mind because it isn't standard.

00:58:24.060 And so the way you get that to happen in conversation is you raise points that do not reconcile by some normal scheme, right?

00:58:37.740 Right. So, you know, to the extent that one holds positions that are not from either slate but are actually a mixture that is what you arrive at if you start from first principles,

00:58:51.620 then pointing out the juxtaposition of perspectives that don't usually travel together causes people to have to think in order to process what you're saying.

00:59:01.540 So to take just one example, people tend to be either COVID hawks, in which case they're enthusiastic about masks under all circumstances.

00:59:14.240 They are absolutely believing of medical wisdom on the topic, or they tend to be COVID skeptics, in which case they have the sense that this isn't a very serious disease, that masks don't work and are unnecessary, that lockdowns are inherently about authoritarianism.

00:59:34.240 And to the extent that one says something like, I am a believer that COVID is much more dangerous than our focus on death rates would have us believe.

00:59:49.680 On the other hand, I believe we are making a mistake not pointing out to people the relative safety of the outside environment and that masks are a socially costly phenomenon and we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to take them off when we're in an environment where the virus doesn't transmit, right?

01:00:08.880 That borrows from both sides and it doesn't adhere to anybody's script and it will cause the mind to have to process it specially.

01:00:15.640 Well, if you don't mind me saying, an even better and shorter example would be the way you use the word patriot, because it's interesting to me that you talk about patriotism quite a lot, because for a sort of leftist professor from Evergreen, or formerly, of course, that is not a word that most people would associate with you.

01:00:36.160 But the way you frame that word is essentially about love of country, love of people, of your fellow man and woman in your country.

01:00:44.300 And I think in a world in which the word patriot seems to be mostly a preserve of the right, that actually is something that, even when I listen to you, pulls me out of the sort of, you know, that very, very binary thinking that we often have on these issues.

01:00:59.780 And actually speaking about that very issue, Holly Mathner, who is a big supporter and a big friend of both our show and yours, says,

01:01:10.160 is it possible that the Overton window has shifted so far that those of us who believe in free speech, scientific reality and individualism actually are right of center now?

01:01:20.280 Well, I can't imagine why right of center would be the right description. Knowing Holly, I'm sure that there is a good defense of her perspective.

01:01:33.220 But what I would say, what I have met is a good many people whose top priorities include, you know, logic, analysis, evidence-based reasoning, hypothetical deductive approach.

01:01:51.000 A good many of those people are effectively sheltering on the center right because the left has become hostile to these things.

01:02:00.920 And I don't think that has anything to do with where these things natively live.

01:02:05.700 You know, of course, you know, in the not so distant past, the left would have been, you know, the defender of science against people who wanted a religious exemption from it.

01:02:17.980 But it is important not we don't want to mistake science for that which scientists do.

01:02:26.140 Science is a method, right? Anything that adheres to that method is science.

01:02:29.820 And likewise, we don't want to mistake a set of beliefs as resident on some part of the political spectrum where they happen to reside at the moment.

01:02:42.340 The point is, these are part of our collective birthright.

01:02:45.900 The very features that Holly is pointing to are so essential to the successes of the West that I think the fact is they're communal property.

01:02:58.380 And I'm grateful to anybody who will defend them, irrespective of what side of the political spectrum they're on.

01:03:04.180 But ultimately, they have to reside on both.

01:03:06.120 An iron shirt has a very, very good question.

01:03:11.100 Charming name as well.

01:03:12.660 Although the gender equity in yesterday's capital deaths.

01:03:16.220 I think you can skip that one.

01:03:17.380 Oh, sorry.

01:03:18.120 Yep.

01:03:18.820 That was absolutely.

01:03:20.420 We're trying to give you the ones that actually are going to provoke an interesting response for me.

01:03:24.340 There's plenty.

01:03:25.300 Because when we normally do live streams, there's a lot of jokes flying around and stuff like that.

01:03:29.760 But when we've got you on the show, we don't want to waste your time with that.

01:03:34.980 So let me see.

01:03:36.560 There was a great one about peer review.

01:03:38.260 Oh, here it is.

01:03:38.900 Yes.

01:03:39.280 So this is from Boer Hav, which is, can the Academy be improved by making peer review financially rewarding?

01:03:48.900 Oh, boy.

01:03:49.600 Anyway, you know, the Academy is so broken and has, you know, it is suffering from a lethal number of self-inflicted wounds.

01:04:03.240 And so, you know, would it be better if peer review was financially rewarding?

01:04:09.820 Maybe a little.

01:04:11.280 But, you know, that's far from the deepest problem with peer review.

01:04:14.640 So what I would say is we need, if the Academy is to survive, it needs a radical rethink.

01:04:25.680 There's no question about this.

01:04:27.920 Absent a radical rethink, it will perish from its own absurdities and paradoxes.

01:04:34.260 And the real question is, how do we not go down with that ship?

01:04:37.740 How do we generate something that does not have peer review's defects in the outside world, where we are going to have to navigate the questions of what is true while the Academy, you know, suffers its death throes?

01:04:54.580 Yeah, it does sound a little bit like sort of saying, would the cancer patient with stage four cancer be better off if the room temperature was one degree higher?

01:05:03.740 There's a bigger problem going on there, right?

01:05:06.120 Yeah. And that's a subject for another whole conversation, I think, because what's happened in Academy is largely feeding into all the things we've been talking about and is very sad to see.

01:05:16.940 And it's probably even sadder for you, someone who was of that world.

01:05:20.620 Let's look at some PayPal's as well.

01:05:22.180 David says, please keep me anonymous.

01:05:23.880 Is it possible that we are witnessing what we are witnessing?

01:05:27.020 And this is something I've talked about frequently, is that what we're witnessing are symptoms of a declining civilization, and not just the United States, but also the West in general.

01:05:36.320 Yeah, this, I'll try to make this succinct, but I have argued in a couple of places, including on a recent Dark Horse podcast, that the United States is suffering, that actually born of its corruption is suffering something that is the exact analog of the process that causes a body to degrade and fail over time.

01:06:04.140 That, in effect, what makes a body fail is that many genes have two or more properties, and when a property is very good for you early in life, it tends to be captured, collected, and amplified by selection in spite of its late life downside, because many individuals don't live to suffer the late life effects, and those who do have already done most of their reproduction.

01:06:32.740 So anyway, that's the biological part of this, but what we have in the US in very potent form is a system in which when a process, let's say an industrial process, has very good early benefits, that is to say it's wildly profitable, and it comes with late life effects that are very destructive, like let's say it deranges civilization by causing people only to hear viewpoints that reinforce what they already think.

01:07:01.220 That process, that process, by the time we recognize the hazard is unstoppable.

01:07:06.580 We cannot go in reverse, even when we discover that we are in mortal jeopardy, because the process puts us in danger.

01:07:13.160 So that's the exact same thing as the process that causes a body to fail.

01:07:17.780 So in effect, civilization is experiencing what we call senescence.

01:07:22.400 But I would point out, this is not a death sentence, because we have a mechanism for self-upgrade, and that mechanism for self-upgrade, which is very well formalized in the American system, but exists across the West,

01:07:36.400 is to effectively take the values at the core of the system, the mechanisms that are understood to function well, and to separate them and put them into a 2.0 structure in exactly the same way that a failing human body produces children that pick up the smart things that the adult knows,

01:07:58.700 the relevant things, the relevant things, and jettisons the antiquated and wrong things, right?

01:08:05.200 So we need a rebirth process for the West, or we will die and leave no air.

01:08:10.480 And this is from Body Skies.

01:08:13.660 As an evolutionary biologist, what are your thoughts on Tennant McKenna's stoned ape theory?

01:08:21.240 And to what extent do you think American politicians would benefit from guided psychedelic experiences as a way to instill empathy for their fellow humans?

01:08:32.880 This may be reframed as the Joe Rogan, have you ever smoked DMT question.

01:08:38.000 Well, let's put it this way.

01:08:40.480 The number of cultures that have innovated a mechanism for inducing hallucinations is indefinitely large, right?

01:08:51.080 It's not always molecules.

01:08:54.760 Sometimes it's sweat lodges and things.

01:08:56.580 But nonetheless, we have to understand this as a positive process, which doesn't mean that simply getting stoned is good for you.

01:09:05.740 But what it does mean is that many cultures have discovered a mechanism for breaking through the normal boundaries of consciousness and that by architecting that in a special way have gotten benefits from it.

01:09:19.820 Now, I would point out, it's typically the shaman who has the visions, not the chief, right?

01:09:26.880 Now, there are going to be cases where that's not the case, but there's some protection in having the person who is making the calls not be the person who is seeing the visions.

01:09:36.020 And we may need some analog whereby we can avail ourselves of the insight that comes from what is essentially a high cognitive mutation rate without suffering the hazard of driving while tripping.

01:09:54.660 So, yes, there is something down this road.

01:09:58.260 Do I think that our leaders need to be given entheogens?

01:10:04.820 Well, A, the questioner asked under proper guidance.

01:10:10.100 Were you to have proper guidance, that would be essential for such a thing.

01:10:14.560 But B, it doesn't have to be them.

01:10:17.220 You know, and in fact, maybe our, you know, unfortunately, maybe markets have taken the fanciful narrative generating mechanism that would play that role for society and harnessed it to a uninteresting and dangerous economic plow.

01:10:35.700 But, yes, we have to resurrect something so that we can think outside the box and see what might be possible without being limited by, you know, the normal rules.

01:10:46.360 I couldn't agree with you more, Brett.

01:10:48.360 I think the only thing that could possibly make this situation better if Joe Biden and Donald Trump were simultaneously hallucinating while this was happening, that would take things up a level, wouldn't it?

01:10:59.520 What could go wrong?

01:11:00.940 Yeah, one of our American supporters, Colby Hamilton from Texas, he says that he likes your idea of drafting a better quality of candidate for president.

01:11:11.880 But his concern is how that works within a system where we're all human.

01:11:15.100 So he says, for example, you think McRaven is center-right, which he, I presume, doesn't agree with.

01:11:20.700 What about, like, in 2024, Tulsi Gabbard, Dan Crenshaw, Tick, and both very, certainly, interesting people, I would say, have shown themselves to be quite sensible in many things.

01:11:33.880 Neither appears to be extremists.

01:11:35.940 Both have served and both could be described as patriot without any sort of question over them.

01:11:42.020 What do you make of his question and those two in particular?

01:11:46.920 Well, how can I put this?

01:11:51.700 I think if you meet a small number of characteristics and you come up with a power-sharing arrangement where things have to be hashed out to the point of consensus, you've solved almost all of the problem.

01:12:06.920 Now, in the Unity 2020 proposal, I did say someone from the center-left and someone from the center-right would need to be paired.

01:12:16.100 In large measure, I don't think it's necessary that that be the case.

01:12:19.480 But I do think it's necessary in order for the public to understand that their interests will definitely be represented no matter where they are on the political spectrum.

01:12:30.400 So from my perspective, look, all I want is rational people who are courageous enough to do the right thing and not corrupted by finances or anything else.

01:12:44.840 If you had such people, they would make errors.

01:12:48.040 There would be hazards.

01:12:49.060 But we'd be so far ahead of where we are now, it would be a slam-dunk winner.

01:12:53.720 So anything that will do the job as far as pairing somebody from the center-left and center-right in order to neutralize whatever political considerations would tend to walk into the room with the people in question, it's nice, but it's really not needed.

01:13:08.620 A rational person faced with the evidence, faced with an understanding of the full range of possibilities will tend to do the right thing.

01:13:17.140 And if you had two of them who have to hash it out, I'm not concerned, even though I'm from what I would say is the far left.

01:13:26.740 If you had two people who were right of center but were committed to the well-being of the nation and open to hearing arguments from all sides about what the best course forward was, I could be very comfortable with that.

01:13:37.920 We have a question from Mad Hatter, which is, will we ever see another Republican president in the next 20-plus years?

01:13:44.400 And I think this ties into this fact that a lot of conservatives are very, very worried that Donald Trump has done irreparable damage to the party and its reputation.

01:13:56.680 Yeah, I must say I'm so concerned about both of these deeply corrupt parties that I find it hard to get animated over whether or not we'll see another Republican president.

01:14:09.620 What I want to see is a president who's up to the challenge, right?

01:14:14.720 Any president from any party who's seriously up to the challenge would be great.

01:14:19.860 Who was the last one that the United States have had who described as having that, fitting those criteria?

01:14:25.700 Well, I would say I have to put a special asterisk by Barack Obama's name because I still cannot explain to myself why he was so terrible as a president because he does strike me as a guy.

01:14:39.600 He's plenty smart.

01:14:40.940 It seemed to me that his heart was in the right place.

01:14:44.680 You know, he was a marvelous orator who had the power to inspire people.

01:14:48.320 And yet, at a policy level, he was no better and arguably worse than George Bush.

01:14:52.780 So I don't know why Obama fails the test, but he does.

01:14:56.920 I would say the last one who had the requisite characteristics was largely understood to be a failure of a president was Jimmy Carter.

01:15:05.980 And the fact is, Jimmy Carter had a very difficult set of hazards to deal with the energy crisis, in particular, the Iran hostage situation.

01:15:18.100 And, you know, he I don't know how much better he might have done, but he is not regarded as a great president because so little was accomplished.

01:15:29.440 However, he's very clearly, you know, a decent man and a smart man and patriotic.

01:15:37.100 And so I think in other circumstances, he might have shined.

01:15:42.620 But the the world since then has been has routinely generated presidential paradoxes.

01:15:53.400 I guess I should also put an asterisk by Ronald Reagan, who I think history has shown to have been a better president than many of us thought he was.

01:16:05.320 Now, in some sense, the asterisk in his case is about the fact that I'm not really sure that what he was was president.

01:16:13.000 Right. He was an inspiring orator who was effectively hired to do a job and, you know, may have gambled in a way that was unacceptable, but worked out with respect to the Soviet Union, for example.

01:16:28.320 But nonetheless, you know, again, it's not that none of the characteristics were right for Ronald Reagan, but the sum total wasn't.

01:16:36.400 Hmm. That's really interesting, Brad. Before I read out another question, are you OK to go for another 10 minutes or?

01:16:42.920 Sure. Yeah, cool. I should just say that while we've been on air for people who are watching, you might want to know that we'll be doing another live interview this Saturday, two days from now with Douglas Murray, who's a regular on the show talking about this this very issue.

01:16:56.780 And he wrote a piece yesterday talking about Donald Trump's responsibility for what had happened and what needs to happen now.

01:17:04.120 And I think, again, adding to your very sensible voice, Brett, I think that's a voice from the center right or the right that also needs to be heard on this issue.

01:17:12.660 And we're always delighted to have Douglas on the social. That will be on Saturday, same time, 7 p.m. UK.

01:17:18.080 I'm looking forward to it. Douglas is a friend and he's one of a small number of people whose opinion I take very seriously.

01:17:25.900 Do we. Tremendous respect for that man. But Rocky says, and this is a really good question.

01:17:30.680 We've got I want to acknowledge a bunch of people who've sent us very significant super chants, but Jason McConnell in particular and others.

01:17:37.280 But Rocky from Canada says breaking up is on the rise as an idea.

01:17:41.460 And this is something that worries me tremendously, Brett, when I see what I think is deeply irresponsible talk of secession and breaking up and all this sort of thing.

01:17:49.080 But it is. You can't deny it. It's been the idea. Look at Brexit in Canada.

01:17:54.180 You know, we're talking about Scotland splitting off in the United Kingdom.

01:17:57.880 There are Spanish pieces of that country that want to break off and have been trying to. 0.99

01:18:02.480 It seems to be in the zeitgeist. Is that right? Is that wrong? What do you think?

01:18:07.900 Oh, it's a terrible idea, especially in the U.S. case.

01:18:10.860 I mean, for one thing, we don't there is no geographical boundary you could draw that would, you know, allow that separation.

01:18:17.840 So the carnage in question would be unthinkable.

01:18:21.400 But it's also it's not the solution to the problem.

01:18:25.640 Right. We have a problem where we've lost the ability to see the humanity in each other.

01:18:30.000 And we've begun to imagine that the people on the other side are just, you know, too too dumb to be left on the ship. 0.97

01:18:36.600 And it's not true. Right. Are there people too dumb? Yes. 0.99

01:18:39.720 It's on both sides. But the fact is understanding what is being said.

01:18:47.700 Right. It really is true. If you work from first principles and you attempt to figure out what is true and what it implies about policy,

01:18:55.720 you don't end up with a slate that is blue or red. It's very mixed.

01:19:00.860 And so what that means is if your viewpoint is blue or red, you're missing a big part of the puzzle.

01:19:09.720 Right. And so anyway, what I would say is the the idea of splitting apart is

01:19:20.100 it is a cure that is worse than the disease by far.

01:19:26.180 And the right thing to do is to start patching the nation and the West together on the basis that actually 0.57

01:19:33.520 we have all lost our minds to an extent and recovering them is job number one.

01:19:41.680 And we've got a question from Manuel, which is what would be a better version of social media than the one we currently have?

01:19:52.660 What would be a better version? Well, you know, it's a heart.

01:19:55.560 It's a little bit like the the question about peer review in the sense that, you know, we could dance around the edges of various things that are wrong.

01:20:08.560 The censorious instinct is itself a huge hazard.

01:20:12.860 It being wielded by people who are clearly partisan makes it 10 times worse.

01:20:18.820 So, you know, for starters, what we need is some kind of 2.0 version of our constitutional rights that tells us what we are allowed to do online,

01:20:31.540 where we are guaranteed the right to do it and, you know, lays these things out in a manner that would give us some mechanism for redress of grievances.

01:20:42.380 You know, it simply can't be that you log in one morning and discover you're no longer on the platform and that the decision is final and there's nobody to talk to.

01:20:53.260 That happened to me. Just that exact thing.

01:20:55.580 And the point is, at the very least, right, the founders of the U.S. understood that you had a right to see the evidence against you, to face your accusers.

01:21:04.660 You needed a court, right? And in this case, we've uninvented all of that insight over a largely artificial distinction between public and private.

01:21:16.940 Just I should say, and Ken Dodd's super chat summarizes this.

01:21:20.680 He says the right man, the right conversation at the right time. Thanks, guys.

01:21:24.020 So there's a lot of love for you, Brett, and for for the approach you've taken.

01:21:28.440 And thank you very much for coming on the show.

01:21:32.040 But Ryan asked a question also from Canada, interestingly.

01:21:35.520 And this is an interesting question that I think Francis and I as well, you should answer.

01:21:39.320 Does everyone agree that none of this is about Biden?

01:21:42.740 Which I find an interesting question.

01:21:44.480 I would say I would agree that this isn't about Biden.

01:21:48.220 What it is about is what Biden is not.

01:21:50.560 If Biden had been a very different candidate, then this would have gone very differently.

01:21:54.760 But the fact that he's so he's not been able to capture anyone's imagination, he's just not Donald Trump.

01:22:01.800 That seems to be his strongest strength, his biggest strength.

01:22:06.480 That is probably the thing that has made this worse.

01:22:08.940 What do you think?

01:22:09.920 I think that Biden is a representation of the old order.

01:22:14.400 I think what he is is a skin graft and a cancerous wound.

01:22:18.120 And the problem is, is that people look at the skin graft.

01:22:21.080 It's gone over the wound.

01:22:21.960 And everyone's like, oh, OK, it's fine.

01:22:24.200 We can all go about our time.

01:22:25.820 We're back to normal.

01:22:27.000 But the infection is still there and it's still going to eat away at the leg, unfortunately.

01:22:32.020 It's a lovely visual metaphor.

01:22:33.660 That's what we're sorting with.

01:22:35.780 Yep.

01:22:36.560 No, I think this is exactly right.

01:22:38.520 And, you know, I don't even think this is subtle.

01:22:42.400 Right.

01:22:42.900 Let's leave Biden aside.

01:22:44.840 He may be a perfectly lovely human being at the level of sitting across the table from him and talking to him.

01:22:51.840 But the number of places where a major form of financial corruption is just outside the range of where it touches him legally is vast.

01:23:10.060 Right.

01:23:10.280 I mean, we've had an impeachment surrounding a business dealings in Ukraine of his son.

01:23:19.460 The Biden laptop also suggests that influence his influence was being peddled very directly to other people.

01:23:26.280 And the point is, I can't as an American say that I much care that this stuff isn't legally provable as corruption.

01:23:34.680 It's clear that either Hunter Biden was pretending to peddle his influence, right, which is one kind of problem, much less serious, or that he was actually peddling influence and that it was done in a way that, you know, kept Joe Biden's hands off the immediate consequences.

01:23:53.940 But the real point is, hey, we have a corrupt system.

01:23:57.200 It's serving the interests of those who can pay for play rather than the public.

01:24:01.840 And that is the exact opposite of what the system is supposed to do.

01:24:05.700 We have a super chat from Downey Jr.

01:24:09.540 I'm not sure if it's Robert.

01:24:10.760 If it is, we're all a big fan of your work, Robert.

01:24:13.220 And we want to see Iron Man back in the Marvel Universe.

01:24:16.760 But anyway, so he asked, do political systems attract the best people for the job or are the best people working in the private sector living more happy and prosperous lives?

01:24:30.500 Great question.

01:24:31.960 A few of the best people will be found in the system.

01:24:37.280 But by and large, the system actually makes it almost impossible for them to stick around.

01:24:42.460 And I would point to Tulsi Gabbard leaving office, having run into the entire democratic bulwark and the prevention of all of the things she would have liked to do.

01:24:55.740 And this isn't the only place that it happens.

01:24:57.860 Also, I would say, you know, many of the people who it would be wonderful to have in a university structure, the people who would be, you know, scientifically the most capable and the most likely to make major breakthroughs end up in the private sector.

01:25:11.880 Because the hoops they're forced to jump through in academia and the low rate of pay just simply makes it not worth it.

01:25:21.280 So, in effect, in any place that you have the best people showing up in a system that is not their equal, it is the result of what I'm calling patriotism, which is a willingness to sacrifice for something larger.

01:25:35.920 And, in effect, if you want the system to work better, then make sure it rewards the people who contribute best.

01:25:44.500 You know, you want the patriots to do well, frankly.

01:25:47.180 And if you did that, you'd see a lot more of them in the places where they stood to do the most good.

01:25:51.200 Again, as I said, lots of love.

01:25:55.200 Thank you so much for such a balanced, well-thought-out analysis.

01:25:58.720 It's a wonderful interview.

01:26:00.500 Brett, I think we'd better let you go because we've had you for an hour and a half.

01:26:04.520 And it's a real privilege and a treat for us.

01:26:07.660 And I want to wish you well.

01:26:09.460 I hope that your commentary and analysis remains a central part of American life because I think it's people like you who actually have a positive role to play when so few people are playing a positive role now in the world.

01:26:21.440 So, thank you very much for coming back.

01:26:23.320 All the best, you and your family. 0.98

01:26:24.540 And I hope your country recovers from this because, frankly, if it doesn't, we're all fucked as well. 0.97

01:26:30.500 Yeah, I really appreciate that you guys are out there and that you're holding the line. 0.98

01:26:36.740 And so, anyway, right back at you.

01:26:39.580 Thanks very much, Brett.

01:26:40.640 And thank you for watching.

01:26:41.720 As I mentioned, Douglas Murray will be on the show on Saturday, but we'll be back tomorrow with our usual live stream and we'll keep you updated on everything that's going on.

01:26:49.860 Thank you for watching and we'll see you very soon.

01:26:52.140 Take care and see you soon, guys.

TRIGGERnometry - January 07, 2021

How Do We Save America？ Live with Bret Weinstein

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