Kind: captions
Language: en
of radical
um political movement of which there
will always be a lot in the country
has managed to do something that a
radical movement is not supposed to be
able to do in the U.S which is they've
managed to hijack institutions all
across the country and hijack medical
journals and universities and
you know the ACLU you know saying all
the you know activist organizations and
non-profits and many tech companies and
the way I view a liberal democracy is it
is that it is is a bunch of these
institutions that were that were trial
and error crafted over you know hundreds
of years
and they all rely on trust public trust
and there's certain kind of feeling of
unity that actually is critical to a
liberal democracy's functioning and with
I see this thing is as a parasite on
that that whose goal is and I'm not
saying each by the way each individual
in this is I don't think they're bad
people I think that it's it's the
ideology itself has the property of its
goal is to tear apart the pretty
delicate workings of the liberal
democracy and Shred the critical lines
of trust
the following is a conversation with Tim
Urban his second time in the podcast
he's the author and illustrator of the
amazing blog called wait but why and as
the author of a new book coming out
tomorrow called what's our problem a
self-help book for societies we talk a
lot about this book in this podcast but
you really do need to get it and
experience it for yourself it is a
Fearless insightful hilarious and I
think important book in this divisive
time that we live in the Kindle version
the audiobook and the web version should
be all available on day of publication
I should also mention that my face might
be a bit more beat up than usual I got
hit in the chin pretty good since I've
been getting back into uh training Jiu
Jitsu a sport I love very much after
recovering from an injury so if you see
marks on my face during these intros or
conversations you know that my life is
in a pretty good place
this is the Lex Friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's Tim Urban
you wrote an incredible book called
what's our problem a self-help book for
societies
in the beginning you uh present this
view of uh human history as a thousand
page book
where each page is 250 years
and it's a brilliant visualization
because almost nothing happens for most
of it so what blows your mind most about
that visualization we just sit back and
think about it it's a boring book so 950
Pages 95 of the book hunter-gatherer is
kind of doing their thing I'm sure
there's you know there's some there's
obviously some major cognitive
advancements along the way in language
and I'm sure you know the bow and arrow
comes around at some point you know so
so tiny things but it's like oh now a
400 Pages tell the next thing but then
you get to page 950 and things start
moving recorded history starts at 9.76
right right it's basically the bottom
row is when anything interesting happens
there's a bunch of Agriculture for a
while before we know anything about it
and then recorded history starts yeah 25
pages
of actual like recorded history so when
we think of prehistoric we're talking
about pages one through 975 of the book
uh and then history is Page you know 976
to 1000. if you were reading the book it
would be like epilogue a d you know the
last little 10 pages of the book and we
think of a d is super long right 2000
years the Roman Empire 2 000 years ago
like that's so long yeah human history
has been going on for over 2 000
centuries
like that is it's just it's hard to wrap
your head around
um and this is I mean even that's just
the end of a very long road like you
know uh the hundred thousand years
before that it's not like you know it's
not like that was that different so it's
just there's been People Like Us that
have emotions like us that have physical
Sensations like us
um
for for so so long and who who are they
all and what was their life like and
it's you know I think we have no idea
what it was like to be them the the
thing that's craziest about the people
of the far past is not just that they
had different lives they had different
fears they had different dangers and
different responsibilities and they
lived in tribes and everything but they
didn't know anything like we just take
it for granted that we're born on top of
this Tower of knowledge and from the
very beginning we
we know that the Earth is a ball
floating in space um and we know that
we're going to die one day and we know
that
um you know we evolved from animals and
all the those were all like incredible
you know epiphanies quite recently and
the people a long time ago they just had
no idea what was going on and like I'm
kind of jealous because I feel like it I
mean it might have been scary to not
know what's going on but it also I feel
like would be you'd have a sense of awe
and wonder all the time and and you
don't know what's going to happen next
and once you learn you're kind of like
oh that's like it's a little Grim but
they probably had the same capacity for
Consciousness to experience the world
to wander about the world maybe to
construct narratives about the world and
myths and so on
they just had less grounded systematic
effects to play with they still probably
felt the narratives the myths they
constructed as intensely as we do oh
yeah they also fell in love they also
had friends and they had falling outs
with friends they didn't shower much
though they did not smell nice uh maybe
they did
maybe beauty is in the eye of the
beholder yeah maybe it's all like
relative so how about how many people in
history have experienced a hot shower
like almost none that's like when we're
hot showers invented 100 years ago
like less
um so like like George Washington never
had a hot shower it's like it's just
kind of weird like he he took cold
showers all the time or like
um and again we just take this for
granted but that's like an unbelievable
life experience to have a rain a
controlled little booth where it rains
hot water on your head and then you get
out and it's not everywhere it's like
contained
um that was like you know they a lot of
people probably lived and died with
never experiencing hot water maybe they
had a way to heat water over a fire but
like then it's I don't know it's just
like there's a there's so many things
about our lives now that are completely
just total anomaly it makes me wonder
like what is the thing they've noticed
the most I mean the sewage system like
it doesn't smell in cities so
what does the sewer system do I mean it
gets rid of waste efficiently Etc we
don't have to confront it both with our
with any of our senses and that's
probably wasn't there I mean what else
plus all the medical stuff associated
with yeah I mean how about the disease
yeah how about the the Cockroaches and
the rats and the and the disease and the
the plagues and you know and and then
when they got so they they caught more
diseases but then when they caught the
disease they also didn't have treatment
for it so they often would die or they
would just be in a huge amount of pain
they also didn't know what the disease
was they didn't know about microbes that
was this new thing the idea that these
tiny little animals that are causing
these diseases so what did they think
you know in the the Bubonic plague you
know and the black death
um the 1300s people thought that it was
an act of God because you know God's
angry at us because why would you know
why would you not think that if you
didn't know what it was
um and so the crazy thing is that these
were the same primates so I do know
something about them I know in some
sense what it's like to be them because
I'm a human as well and to know that
this particular primate that I know what
it's like to be experienced such
different things it's and and like this
isn't our life is not the life that this
primate has experienced almost ever so
it's just uh it's a bit strange I don't
know I I have a sense that we would get
acclimated very quickly like if we threw
ourselves back a few thousand years ago
it would be very uncomfortable at first
but the whole hot shower thing you'll
get used to it after a year you would
not even like miss it because uh was
there's a few uh trying to remember
which book that talks about hiking that
Appalachian Trail
but you kind of miss those hot showers
but I have a sense like after a few
months after a few years well you use
your scale recalibrates yeah yeah I was
saying the other day to a friend that
whatever you used to you start to think
that oh that the people that have more
than me are more fortunate like it just
sounds incredible I would be so happy
but you know that's not true because you
experience what would happen is you
would you would you would get these new
things or you would you would get these
new opportunities and then you would get
used to it and then you would this the
hedonic treadmill you'd come back to
where you are and likewise though
because you think oh my God what if I
had to you know have this kind of job
that I never would want or I had this
kind of marriage that I never would want
you know what if you did you would
adjust and you get used to it and you
might not be that much less happy than
you are now so on the other side of the
you being okay going back you know you
we would survive if we had to go back
um you know we'd have to learn some
skills and but but we would buck up and
you know people have gone to war before
that were in the you know shopkeepers
the year before that they were in the
trenches the next year
but on the other hand if you brought
them here
you know I always think it'd be so fun
to just bring forget the hunter
gatherers bring a 1700s person here and
tour them around take them on an
airplane and show them your phone and
all the things it can do show them the
internet show them the grocery store
imagine taking them to A Whole Foods
likewise I think they would be
completely awestruck and on their knees
crying tears of joy and then they'd get
used to it and they'd be a complaining
about like they don't you don't have
these oranges in stock is like you know
and that's you know the grocery store is
a tough one to get used to like when I
when I first came to this country the uh
the abundance of bananas was the thing
that struck me the most or like
fruits in general but food in general
but banana somehow struck me the most
that you could just eat them as much as
you want that took a long time for me
probably took several years to really
like get get acclimated to that is that
why didn't you have bananas uh the
number of bananas fresh bananas I don't
that that wasn't available bread yes
bananas no
yeah it's like we don't even know what
to have like we don't even know the
proper levels of gratitude yeah you know
walking around the grocery store I don't
know to be like the bread's nice but the
bananas are like we're so lucky I don't
know I'm like oh I could have been the
other way I have no idea well it's
interesting then where we point our
gratitude
in the west in the United States
probably
do we point it away from materialist
possessions towards or do we just Aspire
that to do that towards other human
beings that we love because in the East
and the Soviet Union growing up poor is
having food is the gratitude
having transportation is gratitude
having warmth and shelters gratitude
and now but see within that the Deep
gratitude is for other human beings it's
the Penguins huddling together for
warmth in the cold I think it's a person
by person basis I mean I'm sure yes of
course in the west we will on average
feel gratitude towards different things
or maybe a different level of gratitude
maybe we feel less gratitude than some
than countries that
um you know obviously I think the
easiest that the person that's most
likely to feel gratitude is going to be
someone who's on who's whose life
happens to be one where they just move
up up throughout their life a lot of
people in the greatest Generation you
know people who were born in the 20s or
whatever and a lot of the Boomers too
the story is the greatest Generation
group dirt poor and they often ended up
middle class and the Boomers some of
them started off middle class and many
of them ended up quite wealthy and I
feel like that life trajectory
is naturally going to
Foster gratitude right
um because you're not going to take for
granted these things because you didn't
have them
um you know I didn't go out of the
country really in my childhood very much
um you know like you know we traveled
but it was to Virginia to see my
grandparents or Wisconsin to see other
relatives or you know maybe Florida
after going on to the beach and then I
started going out of the country like
crazy in my 20s because I I really you
know
okay my favorite thing and I feel like
because I if I had grown up always doing
that it would have been another thing
I'm like yeah that's just something I do
but I I still every time I go to a new
country I'm like oh my God this is so
cool and in another country this thing
I've only seen on the map I'm like I'm
there now and so I feel like it it it's
a lot of times it's a product of what
you didn't have and then you suddenly
had but I still think it's Case by case
in that there's a there's like a meter
in in everyone's had you know uh that I
think on on a
at a 10 you are you're experiencing just
immense gratitude right which is a
euphoric feeling it's a great feeling
um and it's
um it makes you happy it's it's to savor
what you have to look down at the
mountain of stuff you have that you're
standing on right to look to look down
at and say oh my God I'm so lucky and
I'm so grateful for this and this and
this and I you know obviously that's a
happy exercise now when you move the
meter down to six or seven maybe you
think that sometimes but you're you're
not always thinking that
um uh because you're sometimes looking
up at this cloud of things that you
don't have and the things that they have
but you don't or the things you wished
you had or you thought you were going to
have or whatever and that's the opposite
direction to look right and and that's
the either that's that's Envy that's
yearning
um or often it's it's if you think about
your past
um it's it's grievance right and so then
you go into a one and you have someone
who feels like a complete victim they
are just a victim of the Society of the
their their their their siblings and
their parents and their their loved one
um and they are
um they're wallowing in
everything that's happened wrong to me
everything I should have that I don't
everything that has gone wrong for me
and so that's a very unhealthy mentally
unhealthy place to be
um anyone can go there you know there's
an endless list of stuff you can you it
can be aggrieved about and an endless
list of stuff you can have gratitude for
and so it's it's in some ways it's a
choice and it's a habit and maybe it's
part of how we were raised our natural
demeanor but it's such a good ex you are
really good at this by the way your
Twitter is like go on well like uh like
you're you you you were constantly just
saying man I'm lucky or like I'm I'm so
grateful for this and that's it's it's a
good thing to do because you're
reminding yourself but you're also
reminding other people to think that way
it's like we are lucky
um you know and um and so anyway I think
that scale can go from one to ten and I
think it's hard to be a ten I think
you'd be very happy if you could be but
I think trying to be above a five and
looking down at the things you have
more often than you are looking up at
the things you don't or being you know
resentful about the things that people
have wronged you and well the
interesting thing I think was an open
question but I suspect that you can
control that knob for for the individual
like you yourself can choose like the
stoic philosophy you could choose where
you are as a matter of habit like you
said but you can also probably control
that in a scale of a family of a tribe
of us of a nation of a society I mean a
lot you can describe a lot of the things
that happens in Nazi Germany and
different other parts of History through
sort of societal envy and resentment
that builds up maybe certain narratives
pick up and then they infiltrate your
mind and then now your knob goes to from
the gratitude for everything it goes to
resentment and envy and all Germany
between the two World Wars you know like
like you said the Soviet
um
kind of mentality
um so yeah and then when you're soaking
in a culture so there's kind of two
factors right it's
um
it's it's what's going on in your own
head and then what's surrounding you and
what's surrounding you kind of has
concentric circles there's your
immediate
group of people because that group of
people if they're a certain way if they
feel a lot of gratitude and they talk
about it a lot that kind of insulates
you from the broader culture because you
know the the the people are gonna have
the most impact on you are the ones
closest
but often they're all the all the
concentric circles are saying the same
thing the people around you or they're
feeling the same way that the broader
Community which is feeling the same way
as the broader country
um and you know them I think this is why
I think American patriotism
you know nationalism you know can be
tribal can be very not not a good thing
patriotism
um I think is is a great thing because
really what is patriotism I mean it's if
you love your country you should love
your fellow countrymen you know Patriot
you know that's a Reagan quote it's like
patriotism is like I think a feeling of
like
um Unity
um and but it also comes along with an
implicit kind of concept of gratitude
because it's like we are so lucky to
live in you know people you know think
it's chauvinist to say we live in the
best country in the world right and you
know yes when Americans say that no one
likes it right but actually it's not a
bad thing to think it's a nice thing to
think it thinks it's a way of saying I'm
so grateful for all the great things
this country gives to me in this country
has done and and I think you know if you
heard the Philip you know a Filipino
person say you know what the Philippines
is the best country in the world no one
in America would say that's chauvinist
they'd say awesome right because when
you're coming from someone you know
who's not American it sounds totally
fine
um but I think I think you know national
pride is actually good now again that
can quickly translate into xenophobia
nationalism and so you know you have to
make sure it doesn't go off that Cliff
but yeah there's good ways to formulate
that like you talk about we'll talk
about like high wrong progressivism
higher on conservatism those are two
different ways of
of uh embodying patriotism so you could
talk about maybe loving the tradition
that this country stands for or you
could talk about loving the people the
uh that ultimately push progress and
those are
from an intellectual perspective a good
way to represent uh patriotism we've got
to zoom out because this this graphic is
epic a lot of images in your book are
just Epic on their own is brilliantly
done but this one has uh famous people
for each of the cards
foreign
like the best of yeah uh for you by the
way good for them to be the person yeah
that that it's not that I could have
chosen lots of people for each card but
I think most people would agree you know
that's a pretty fair choice for each
each page and to good for them to be
able you know you crushed it if you can
be the person for your whole 250 year
page so well I noticed you put Gandhi
didn't put Hitler I mean there's a lot
of people gonna argue with you about
that particular last page true yes
you're right I could have I could have
put a I actually I was thinking about
Darwin there too though
um yeah exactly you really could have
put anyone anything about putting
yourself for a second yeah I should have
I should have that would have been
awesome I'm sure that would have
endeared the readers to me from right
from the beginning of the first page of
the book a little bit of a Messianic
complex going on but yeah so the list of
people just you know so these are 250
year chunks the last one being from 1770
to 2020 And So It Goes Gandhi
Shakespeare Joan of Arc Genghis Khan
Charlemagne Muhammad Constantine Jesus
Cleopatra Aristotle
it's so interesting to think about this
very recent human history that's 11
pages so it would be 27.50 almost 3 000
years just that there's these figures
that stand out and then Define the
course of human history and it's like
the create the craziest thing to me is
that like Buddha was a dude he was a guy
with like
arms and legs and fingernails that he
may be bit and like he likes certain
foods and maybe he got like uh you know
he had like digestive issues sometimes
and like he got cuts and they stung and
like he was a guy
um and he had hopes and dreams and he
probably had a big ego for a while
before he gets Buddha totally overcame
that one but like
and it's like who knows you know you
know what the myth the mythical figure
who knows how similar he was but the
fact same with Jesus like this was a
good guy like to me it's he's a primate
yeah what uh impact he was a cell first
and then a baby yeah and he was a fetus
at some point he's a dumb baby trying to
learn how to walk yeah like having
tantrum yeah um because he's frustrated
because he's in the terrible twos Jesus
was in the terrible twos who didn't
never had a tantrum let's be honest the
myth the mother was like this this
Baby's great like
wow let's figure something out it just I
mean this I mean listen hearing learning
about Genghis Khan it's incredible to me
because it's just like this was some
um Mongolian
you know herder guy who was it taken as
a slave and he was like dirt poor you
know catching rats is it you know young
teen with you know to feed him and his
mom and his I think his brother
um and it was just like
the the the odds
on when he was born he was just one of
you know probably tens of thousands of
random teen boys living in Mongolia in
the 1200s the odds of that person any
one of them being a household name today
that we're talking about
it's just crazy like what had to happen
um and for that guy to for that poor
dirt poor herder to take over the world
I don't know so history just like
continually blows my mind like you know
and here's the reason you and I are
related probably yeah no I mean we're
it's it's also that's the other thing is
that some of these dudes by becoming
King by being having a better Army at
the right time you know William the
Conqueror whatever has is in the right
place at the right time with the right
Army you know and there's a weakness at
the right moment and he comes over and
he exploits it and ends up probably
having you know I don't know a thousand
children and those children are high up
people who might be have a ton
this species is different now because of
him like if that if I forget England's
different or you know European borders
look different like like we are like we
look different and because of a small
handful of of people um you know yeah
certain when I sometimes I think I'm
like oh you know this part of the world
I can recognize someone's Greek you know
someone's Persian someone's wherever
because you know they kind of have
certain facial features and I'm like it
may have happened I mean obviously it's
that's a population but it may be that
like someone 600 years ago that looked
like that really spread their seed and
that's why the ethnicity looks kind of
like that now sorry anyway
yeah yeah do you think individuals like
that can turn the direction of History
or is that an illusion that narrative
would tell ourselves
well it's both I mean so I said William
the Conqueror right or Hitler right
it's not that Hitler was born and
destined to be great at all right I
think in a lot of cases he's um
frustrated artist with a temper who's
turning over the table in his studio and
hitting his wife and being kind of a
dick uh and a total nobody right
um I think almost all the times you
could have put Hitler baby on Earth he's
uh he's a rando right you know and maybe
he's a you know maybe sometimes he
becomes a you know some kind of you know
he uses the speaking ability because
that ability was going to be there
either way but maybe he uses it for
something else
but
um but that said I don't also do I think
you but it's not that um oh World War II
was gonna happen either way right so
it's both it's that like these
circumstances were one way and this
person
came along at the right time and those
two made a match made in in this case
hell but it makes you wonder
yes it's a match in hell but are there
other people that could have taken this
place or do these people that stand out
they're the rare spark of uh
that genius whether to take us towards
evil towards good whether those figures
singularly Define the trajectory of
humanity you know what defines the
trajectory of humanity in the 21st
century for example might be the
influence of AI might be the influence
of nuclear war negative or positive
not in the case of a nuclear war but uh
the bioengineering
nanotech
virology
what else is there maybe the structure
of governments and so on maybe the
structure of universities I don't know
there could be singular figures that
stand up and lead the way for human
there will be but I wonder if the
society is the thing that manifests that
that person or that person really does
have a huge impact I think it's probably
a spectrum where there are some cases
when a circumstance was such that
something like what happened was gonna
happen if you pluck that person from the
earth I don't know whether the Mongols
is a good example or not but maybe it
could be that if you plucked Genghis
Khan as a baby
there was because of the specific way
Chinese civilization was at that time
and the specific
you know climate you know that was that
was causing a certain kind of pressure
on the Mongols and the way they they
still had their great archers and they
had their horses and they had a lot of
the same advantages so maybe it was like
it was waiting to happen right it was
going to happen either way and uh may
not have happened to sit to the extent
or whatever so maybe or you could go the
full other direction and say actually
this was probably not gonna happen
um and you know I think World War II is
an example right I kind of think World
War II really was kind of the the work
of it of course it relied on all these
other circumstances you had to have the
resentment in German you have had the
Great Depression but like
um I think if you take Hitler out I'm
pretty sure World War One World War II
doesn't happen
well then it seems like easier to answer
these questions when you look at history
even recent history but let's look at
now let's look at I'm sure we'll talk
about social media so who are the key
players in social media Mark Zuckerberg
what's the name of the Myspace Guy Tom
Tom yeah
um there's a meme going around where
like Myspace is like the perfect social
media because no algorithmic involvement
everybody's happy and positive but also
Tom did it right yeah at the time you're
like oh man Tom only made like a few
million dollars he sucks to not be Zuck
Tom might be living a nice life right
now where he doesn't have this in
nightmare that these other people have
yeah and he's always smiling his profile
picture
and then so there's like Larry Page so
with Google that's kind of intermingled
into that whole thing into the
development of the internet Jack Dorsey
now Elon
um who else I mean there's people
playing with the evolution of social
media and to me that seems to be
connected to the development of AI and
it seems like those singular figures
will Define the direction of AI
development and social media development
with social media seeming to have such a
huge impact on our collective
intelligence it does feel in one way
like
individuals have an especially big
impact right now in that a small number
of people are pulling some big levers
um and you know there can be a little
meeting of three people at Facebook and
they come out and they come in they come
out of that meeting and make a decision
that totally changes the world right on
the other hand you see a lot of a lot of
Conformity you see a lot of you know
they all pulled the plug on Trump the
same day right
so that suggests that there's some
bigger force that is also kind of
driving them in which case it's less
about the individuals I think you know
this is what you know what is leadership
right I mean to me leadership
is the ability to move things in a
direction that the cultural forces are
not already taking things right A lot of
times people seem like a leader because
they're just kind of hopping on the
cultural wave and they happen to be the
person who gets to the top of it now it
seems like they're but actually the the
wave was already going like real
leadership is when
um is is when someone actually changes
the wave changes the shape of the wave
like I think Elon with you know SpaceX
and and with Tesla like genuinely like
shaped a wave you know maybe you could
say that EVS were actually like they
were gonna happen anyway but it's
there's no it's not much evidence about
at least happening when it did uh you
know if we end up on Mars you know you
can you can say that Elon was a genuine
like leader there and so there are
examples now like Zuckerberg definitely
has done a lot of leadership along the
way
he's also
um potentially kind of like caught in a
a storm that is happening and you know
he's one of the figures in it so I don't
know and it's possible that he is a big
shaper if the metaverse becomes a
reality if in 30 years we're all living
in a virtual world to many people it
seems ridiculous now that that was a
poor investment we talked about getting
you know 10 you know I think it was
something like a billion people with um
a VR headset in their pocket and by you
know I think 10 years from now back in
2015 so we're hyper behind that but when
I he was talking about that and honestly
I I
this is something I've been wrong about
because I I went to like one of the
Facebook conferences and tried out all
the new Oculus stuff and I was like you
know pretty early talking to some of the
you know major players there because I
was going to write a big post about it
that then got swallowed by this book but
um but I would have been wrong in the
post because in what I would have said
was that this thing is when I tried it I
was like this is you know some of them
were suck some of them make you nauseous
and they're just not that you're you
know the headsets were big and you know
but I was like the times when this is
good it is I have this feeling I haven't
had it reminds me of the feeling I had
when I first was five and I went to a
friend's house and he had Nintendo and I
and he gave me the controller and I was
looking at the screen and I pressed a
button and Mario jumped and I said I
said
I can make this something on the screen
move and the same feeling I had the
first time someone showed me how to send
an email it was like really early and
he's like you can send this and I was
like it goes I can press enter on my
computer and something happens on your
computer those were obviously you know
when you have that feeling it often
means you're you're witnessing a
paradigm shift and I thought this is one
of those things
and I still kind of think it is but it's
kind of weird that it hasn't you know
like where's the VR Revolution like yeah
I'm surprised because I'm I'm with you
my first and still instinct is this
feels like it changes everything VR
feels like it changes everything but
it's not changing anything like and a
dumb part of my brain is genuinely
convinced that this is real but then the
smart part knows it's not but that's why
the dumb part was like we're not walking
off that Cliff the smart part's like
you're on your rug it's fine the dumb
part of my brain is like I'm not walking
off the cliff so it's like it's crazy I
feel like it's waiting
for like that revolutionary person who
comes in and says I'm going to create a
headset like honestly yeah Steve Jobs
iPhone of honestly a little bit of a
Carmack type guy which is why it was
really interesting for him to be
involved with with Facebook is basically
how do we create a simple dumb thing
that's a hundred bucks but actually
creates that experience and then there's
going to be some viral killer app on it
and that's going to be the Gateway into
a thing that's going to change
everything I mean I don't know what
exactly was the thing that changed
everything with the personal computer
does that understood why that maybe
Graphics what well was the use case I
mean exactly it wasn't it wasn't the the
not 84 Macintosh like a a moment when it
was like this is actually something that
normal people can and want to use
because it was less than five thousand
dollars I think it was and I just think
it had some like Steve Jobs user
friendliness already to it that other
ones hadn't had I think Windows 95 was a
really big deal yet they I remember like
because I I'm old enough to remember the
MS-DOS when I was like kind of
remembered the command and then suddenly
this concept of like a window you drag
something into or you double click an
icon which now seems like so obvious to
us was like revolutionary because it
made it it made it intuitive so you know
I don't yeah Windows 95 was good it was
crazy yeah I forget what the big leaps
was because those Windows 2000 it sucked
and then Windows XP was good I moved to
Mac around 2004 so I stopped I sold your
soul to the devil I see well us the
people still use uh Windows and Android
uh the device in the operating system of
the people not you elitist folk with
your books
and your uh what else and success okay
uh
you write more technology means better
good times but it also means better bad
times and the scary thing is if the good
and bad keep exponentially growing it
doesn't matter how great the good times
become if the bad gets to a certain
level of bad it's all over for us can
you elaborate on this why why is there
why does the bad have uh that property
that if it's all exponentially getting
more powerful then the bat is going to
win in the end was is my misinterpreting
that no so the first thing is I noticed
a trend
which was like
the centuries the good is getting better
every Century like the 20th century was
the best Century yet in terms of
prosperity in terms of GDP per capita in
terms of life expectancy in terms of
poverty and disease and every metric
that matters the 20th century was
incredible it also had the biggest Wars
in history the biggest genocide in
history the biggest existential threat
yet with nuclear weapons right you know
it the Depression was you know probably
as big an economic so it's this
interesting thing where the stakes are
getting higher in both directions and so
the question is like if you get enough
good does that protect you against the
bat right the the the the dream and I do
think this is possible too is the good
gets so good you know have you ever read
the culture series The Ian Banks books
not yet but I get criticized on a daily
basis but some of the mutual folks we
know for not having done so lots and I
feel like a lesser man for it yes I need
to say so that that that's how I got
onto it and I read six of the ten books
um and they're great but the thing I
love about them is like it just paints
one of these
futuristic societies where the good has
has gotten so good that the bad is no
longer even an issue like basically and
the way that this this works is the AI
you know the AIS
um
are benevolent and they control
everything and so like there's one
random anecdote where they're like you
know what happens if you murder someone
in because he's still you know there's
still people with rage and jealousy or
whatever so so someone murdered someone
um first of all that person's backed up
so it's like they help to get a new body
and it's it's annoying but it's like
it's not death and secondly that person
what are they gonna do put them in jail
no no they're just gonna send a slap
drone around which is this little like
tiny you know random drone that just
will float around next to them forever
and by the way kind of be their servants
like it's kind of fun to have a slap
drone but just making sure that they
never do anything and it's like I was
like oh man it could just be everyone
could be so safe and everything could be
so like you know you want a house you
know the as will build your house
there's endless space there's endless
resources so I do think that that could
be part of our future that's part of
what excites me is like there is like
today would seem like a utopian to
Thomas Jefferson right Thomas
Jefferson's world would seem like a
Utopia to a caveman
there is a future and by the way these
are happening faster these jumps right
so the thing that would seem like a
Utopia to us we could experience in our
own lifetimes right like it's especially
a female life extension it combines with
exponential progress
um I want to get there and I think if in
that part of what makes it Utopia is you
don't have to be as scared of the the
worst bad guy in the world trying to do
the worst damage because we have
protection
but that said
um I'm not sure how that happens like
it's it's
either easier said than done Nick
Bostrom uses the example of if nuclear
weapons could be manufactured by
microwaving sand for example
we'd probably be in the Stone Age right
now because
0.001 of people would love to destroy
all Humanity right some 16 year old with
huge mental health problems who right
now goes and shoots up a school would
say oh even better I'm going to blow up
a city and now suddenly there's copycats
right and so
that's like as our technology grows it's
going to be easier for the worst bad
guys
to do and tremendous damage and it's
easier to destroy than to build so it
takes a tiny tiny number of these people
with enough power to do bad so that to
me I'm like the stakes are going up
because the the what we have to lose is
this incredible Utopia but also like
dystopia is real it happens the Romans
ended up in a dystopia they've probably
earlier thought that was never possible
like
we should not get cocky and so to me
that that trend
is the exponential Tech is a
double-edged sword it's so exciting I'm
happy to be alive now overall because
I'm an optimist and I find it exciting
but it's really scary and we and and the
the the the the dumbest thing we can do
is not be scared dumbest thing we can do
is get cocky and think well my life is
always the last couple Generations
everything's been fine
stop that
what's Your Gut what percentage of
trajectories take us towards the as you
put unimaginably good future versus
unimaginably bad future is I think are
you as an optimist it's really hard to
know I mean it all like you know one of
the things we can do is look at history
and
on one hand there's a lot of stories
actually listening to a great podcast
right now called the fall of
civilizations
um and it's literally every episode is
like you know a little like two hour
Deep dive into some civilization some
are really famous like the Roman Empire
some are more obscure like the the Norse
in Greenland but
um but it's each one is so interesting
but what's
it's I mean there's a lot of
civilizations that had their Peak
there's always the peak right when
they're thriving and they're they're Max
size and and and they have their
waterways and they have their civilized
and it's representative and it's fair
and whatever I'm not not always but it's
it's uh the peak is a great you know if
I could go back in time you know it's
not that you don't you know the farther
you go back the worse it gets no no you
want to go back to a civilization during
I would go to the Roman Empire in the
year 100. it sounds great right you
don't want to go to the Roman Empire in
the year 400. we might be in the peak
right now here whatever honestly I I
think about like the 80s you know the
70s the 80s Here We Go the music no no
it's so much better no the 80s culture
is so annoying it's just like I'm I'm
when I re when I listen to these things
I'm thinking you know the 80s and 90s
America the 90s was popular if people
forget that now like Clinton was a
superstar around the world Michael
Jordan was exported internationally then
basketball was everywhere suddenly you
had like music the sports whatever it
was a little probably like the 50s you
know you're coming out of the World War
and the depression before it was like
this kind of like everyone was in a good
mood kind of time you know it's like a
finish a big project and it's Saturday
it was like I feel like the 50s was kind
of like everyone was having it you know
the the
um 20s I feel like everyone was in good
mood randomly
um then the the 30s everyone was in a
bad mood
um but the 90s I think we'll look back
on it as a time when everyone was in a
good mood and it was like you know again
of course at the time it doesn't feel
that way necessarily but I look at that
I'm like maybe that was kind of
America's Peak and like no maybe not but
like it hasn't been popular since really
worldwide um it's gone in and out
depending on the country but like it
hasn't reached that level of like
America's awesome around the world and
the political you know situations gotten
you know really ugly and you know maybe
it's social media maybe who knows but I
I wonder if it'll ever be a simple
and and positive as it was then like
maybe we are in the in the you know it
feels a little like maybe we're in the
beginning of the downfall or not because
because these things don't just go it's
not a perfect smooth Hill it goes up and
down and up and down so maybe we're
there's another big upcoming and it's
unclear whether public opinion which is
kind of what you're talking to is uh
correlated strongly with influence as
you could say that even though America's
been on a decline in terms of public
opinion the exporting of Technology
that America has still with all the talk
of China has still been leading the way
in terms of AI in terms of social media
in terms of just basically any software
related product like chips yeah chips so
hardware and software I mean America
leads the way you could argue that
Google and Microsoft and Facebook are no
longer American companies they're
International companies but they really
are still at the you know headquarters
in Silicon Valley broadly speaking so uh
in Tesla of course and just all of its
all the technological innovation still
seems to be happening in the in the
United States although culturally
and politically
it this is not it's not it's not good
well maybe that could shift at any
moment when all the technological
development can actually be
create some positive impact in the world
yeah that can shift it with the right
leadership and so on with the right
messaging
yeah I I think um
I I don't feel confident at all about
whether no no I don't mean that I don't
mean I don't feel confident in my
opinion that we may be on the downswing
or that we may be I truly don't know
it's like I think the people
foreign
stories that are really hard to see when
you're inside of them it's like it's
like being on a beach and and running
around you know a few miles this way
I've been trying to suss out the shape
of the coastline like it's just really
hard to see the big picture you know you
get caught up in the the the micro
Stories the little tiny you know ups and
downs that are part of some bigger Trend
and and also giant Paradigm shifts
happen quickly nowadays the internet you
know came out of nowhere and suddenly
was like
you know change everything so there
could be a changed everything thing on
the way it seems like there's a few
candidates for it and like but but I
mean it feels like the stakes are just
High it higher than it even was for the
Romans higher than it was for because
um that we we're more powerful as a
species we have god-like powers with
technology that other civilizations at
their Peak didn't have and so I I wonder
if those high stakes and Powers will
feel laughable to people that live
humans aliens cyborgs whatever lives 100
years from now that maybe maybe are a
little like this feeling of political
and technological turmoil is is nothing
well that's the big question you could
EAS so right now you know you know the
1890s was like a super politically
contentious decade in the U.S it was
like immense tribalism
um and the newspapers were all like
lying and telling you know you know
there was a lot of like what we would
associate with today's media the worst
of it
um and it was over gold or silver being
this I don't know it was very it's
something that I don't understand but
the point is it was a little bit of a
blip right it happened it felt it must
have felt like the end of days at the
time and then now we most people don't
even know about that uh versus you know
again the Roman Empire actually
collapsed and so the the question is
just like is yeah you know will in 50
years will this be like or like
McCarthyism oh they had like uh oh that
was like a crazy few years in America
and then it was fine
um or is this the beginning of something
really big and then that's what
well I wonder if we can predict uh what
the big thing is at the beginning it
feels like we're not we're just here
along for the ride and at the local
level and at every level of trying to do
our best how do we do our best what's
the that's the one thing I know for sure
is that we need to have our wits about
us and do our best and the way that we
can do that you know we have to be as
why is this possible Right to proceed
forward and wisdom
ever is an emergent property of
discourse so your proponent of wisdom
versus stupidity because you can make an
uh uh I can still man the case for
stupidity
do it I probably can't but there's some
I think wisdom and you talk about this
can come with a false confidence
arrogance I mean you talk about this in
the book that's too easy that's not
wisdom then if you're being arrogant
you're being unwise unwise yeah you know
I think I think wisdom is doing what
people a hundred years from now with the
hindsight that we don't have would do if
they could come back in time and they
knew everything it's like how do we
figure out how to have hindsight when we
actually are not what if stupidity is
the thing that people from 100 years
from now will see us wise
being naive and uh trusting everybody
maybe that well then you get lucky then
then you you know then maybe you get to
a good a good future by stumbling upon
it
um but ideally you you can get there
like I think a lot of we America the
great things about it are a product of
the wisdom of previous Americans you
know the Constitution was a pretty you
know pretty wise system to set up
there's not much stupid stumbling around
well there is I mean with the Huskies uh
the idiot Prince Michigan and uh
Brothers karmazov there's uh uh aliosha
you err on the side
of love
and almost like a naive trust in other
human beings and that turns out to be at
least in my perspective and long term
for the success of the species is
actually wisdom it's a compass we don't
know it's because you're in the fog in
the fog it's a compass yeah
love is a compass okay but but here's
the thing so I think we should have a
compass is nice but you know what else
is nice is a flashlight in the fog that
can help you can't see that far but you
can see oh you can see four feet ahead
instead of one foot and that to me is
discourse that is open vigorous like
discussion in a culture that Fosters
that is how the species is how the the
the the the American citizens as a unit
can be
as wise as possible can maybe see four
feet ahead instead of one foot ahead
that said uh Charles Bukowski said that
love is a fog that Fades with the first
light of reality so I don't know how
that works out but I feel like there's
intermixing of metaphors that works okay
uh you also write that quote as the
authors of the story of us which is this
thousand page book
we have no mentors no editors no one to
make sure it all turns out okay it's all
in our hands this scares me but it's
also what gives me hope if we can all
get just a little wiser together it may
be enough to nudge the story onto a
trajectory that points towards an
unimaginably good future
do you think we can possibly Define what
a good future looks like
I mean this is uh the problem with that
we ran into with Communism
of thinking of utopia
of having a
deep confidence about what a utopian
world looks like
well it's a deep confidence that was a
deep confidence about the instrumental
way to get there it was that you know I
think a lot of us can agree that if
everyone had everything they needed and
we didn't have disease or poverty and
people could live as long as they wanted
to and choose when to die
and there was no existential major
existential threat because we control I
think almost everyone can agree that
would be great that communism is a that
was they said this is the way to get
there and that is
that that's a different question you
know so the the unimaginably good future
I'm PR I'm picturing I think a lot of
people would picture and I think most
people would agree now not everyone
there's a lot of people out there who
would say humans are the scourge on the
earth and we should degrowth or
something but I think a lot of people
would agree that you know just again
take Thomas Jefferson bring him here he
would see it as utopia for obvious
reasons for the the medicine the the
food the transportation
um just how uh the quality of life and
the safety and all of that so
extrapolate that forward for us now we
were Thomas Jefferson you know what's
the equivalent
that's what I'm talking about and the
and the big question is I actually don't
I I don't try to say here's the way to
get there here's the actual specific way
to get there I try to say how do we have
a flashlight so that we can together
figure it out like how do we give
ourselves the best chance of figuring
out the way to get there and I think
part of the problem with with Communists
um and people is ideologues is that
they're they're way too overconfident
that they know the way to get there and
and it's it becomes a religion to them
this solution and then you're not you
can't update once you have a solution as
a religion and so I felt a little
violated when you said Communists and
stare deeply into myself
um
in this book you've developed a
framework for how to fix everything
um it's called the latter can you
explain it okay it's not a framework for
how to fix everything just I would never
say that I'll explain it to Tim Urban at
some point okay how this humor thing
works yeah framework of uh how to think
about collaboration between humans such
that we could fix things I think it's a
compass it's like uh it's like a
it's a ruler that we can once we look at
it together and see what it is we can
all say oh we want to go to that side of
the ruler sure not this side
um and so it gives us a direction to go
and so what are the parts of the ladder
so I have these two characters this
orange guy this primitive mind is this
is our software that is the software
that was in a 50 000 BC person's head
that was specifically optimized for to
help that person survive in that world
and not even not just not really survive
but help them pass their genes on in
that world
um
and
civilization happened quickly and brains
changed slowly and so that unchanged
dude is still running the show in our
head
um and I use the example of like
Skittles
like why do we eat Skittles it's trash
it's obviously bad for you and it's
because
the Primitive mind
in the world that it was programmed for
there was no Skittles and it was just
fruit and you know and and if there was
a dense chewy Sweet fruit like that it
meant you just found like a calorie Gold
Mine energy energy take it take it eat
as much as you can gorge on it hopefully
you get a little fat that would be the
dream and now we're so good with energy
for a while we don't have to stress
about it anymore so today Mars Inc is
clever and says let's not sell things to
people's higher Minds who's the other
character let's sell the people's
primitive Minds primitive minds are dumb
and let's trick them into thinking this
is this new this this thing you should
eat and then they'll eat it now Mars Inc
is a huge company actually just a little
real quick see you said primitive mind
and higher mind so those are the two
things that make up
this bigger mind that it that is the
modern human being yeah it's like you
know it's not perfect obviously there's
a lot of crossover um there's people who
will yell at me for saying there's two
minds and you know that but to me it's
just still a useful framework where you
have this software that has making
decisions based on a world that you're
not in anymore and then you've got this
other character I call it the higher
mind and it's the part of you that knows
that skills are not good and can
override the Instinct and the reason you
don't always eat Skittles is because the
higher Minds says no no no we're not
doing that because that's bad and I know
that right now you can apply that to a
lot of things the higher Minds the one
that knows I shouldn't procrastinate the
Primitive Minds the one that wants to
conserve energy and not do anything icky
and you know can't see the future so he
procrastinates that you know you can
apply this no I in this book apply it to
um
to how we form our beliefs is one of the
ways and then eventually the politics
and political movements but like
if you think about what well what's the
equivalent of the Skittles tug of war in
your head for how do you form your
beliefs
um
and it's that the Primitive mind in the
world that it was optimized for
um it wanted to
feel conviction about its beliefs it
wanted to be sure that it was
um I wanted to feel conviction and it
wanted to agree with the people around
there didn't want to stand out it wanted
to to perfectly agree with the tribe
about the tribe's sacred beliefs right
and so there's a big part of us that
wants to do that that doesn't like
changing our mind it feels like it's
part of our the Primitive mind
identifies with beliefs feels like it's
a threat a physical threat to you to
your primitive mind when you change your
mind or when someone disagrees with you
in a smart way so there's that huge
force in us which is confirmation bias
that's where that comes from it's it's
this this desire to keep believing what
we believe and this desire to also fit
in with our beliefs to believe what the
people around us believe and that can be
fun in some ways we all like the same
sports team and we're all super into it
and we're all gonna be biased about that
call together I mean that it's not
always bad but um it's not a very smart
way to be and it you're actually you're
working kind of for those ideas those
ideas are like your boss and you're
working so hard to keep believing those
those ideas are you know a really paper
comes in that you read that that
conflicts with those ideas and you will
do all this work to say that paper is
bullshit because
you're a faithful employee of those
ideas now the higher mind to me the same
party that can override the Skittles can
override this and can and can search for
something that makes a lot more sense
which is Truth uh because what rational
being wouldn't want to know the truth
who wants to be delusional and so
there's this tug of war because the
higher mind doesn't identify with ideas
why would you it's an experiment you're
doing it's a mental model and if someone
can come over and say you're wrong you'd
say where show me show me and if they
point out something that is wrong and
say oh thanks oh good I just got a
little smarter right you're not going to
identify with the thing go yeah kick it
see if you can break it if you can break
it it's not that good right so there's
both of these in our heads and there's
this tug of war between them uh and
sometimes you know if you're telling me
about something with AI I'm probably
gonna think with my higher mind because
I'm not identified with it but if you go
when you criticize the ideas in this
book or you criticize my religious
beliefs or your criticize I might have a
harder time because the Primitive mind
says no no those are our special ideas
and so yeah so that's that's one way to
use this ladder is like it's a spectrum
you know at the top the higher mind is
doing all the thinking and then as you
go down it becomes more of a tug of war
and at the bottom the Primitive mind is
in total control and this is distinct as
you show from the spectrum of ideas so
this is how you think versus what you
think and those are distinct those are
different dimensions we need we need a
vertical axis we have all these
horizontal axes Left Right Center or you
know you know this opinion all the way
to this opinion but it's like
what's much more important than where
you stand is how you got there right and
how you think so this helps if if I can
say this person's kind of on the left or
on the right but they're up high I think
I think in other words I think they got
there using evidence and reason and they
were willing to change their mind now
that means a lot to me what they have to
say if I think they're just a tribal
person and I can predict all their
beliefs from hearing one because it's so
obvious what political beliefs that
person's views are irrelevant to me
because they're not real they didn't
come from information they came from a
tribe's kind of you know sacred Ten
Commandments I really like the comic you
have in here but with the boxer uh this
is the best boxer in the world wow cool
who has he beaten no one he's never
fought anyone then how do you know he's
the best boxer in the world I can just
tell now I mean this connects with me
and I think with a lot of people just
because in martial arts it's especially
kind of true that this is this whole
legend about different martial artists
and that kind of would construct like
action figures like you know thinking
that uh Steven Seagal is the best
fighter in the world or Chuck Norris But
Chuck Norris is actually backed up he's
done really well in competition but
still the ultimate test for particularly
for martial arts is what we now know is
uh mixed martial arts UFC and so on and
that's the actual scientific testing
ground some meritocracy yeah exactly I
mean there's within certain rules and
you can criticize those rules like this
doesn't actually represent the broader
combat that you would think of when
you're thinking about martial arts but
reality is you're actually testing
things and that's when you realize that
Aikido and some of these kind of woo-woo
martial arts in their certain
limitations don't work in the way you
think they would in the context of
fighting I think this is one of the
places where everyone can agree which is
why it's a really nice comic because
then you start to talk about
map this onto ideas that people take
personally it starts becoming a lot more
difficult to um
to basically highlight that we're
thinking with uh not with our higher
mind but without primitive mind
yeah I mean if if I'm thinking with my
higher mind and now here is you can use
different things for an idea as a
metaphor so here the metaphor is a boxer
yeah
for and for one of your conclusions one
of your beliefs and
if I'm if I'm if I'm if all I care about
is truth and up in other words for the
that means all I care about is having a
good boxer
I would
say go go yeah try see if this person's
good go go in other words I would get
into arguments which is throwing my
boxer out there to fight against other
ones
um and if I think my argument's good by
the way I love boxing if I if I think my
guy is is amazing you know Mike Tyson
I'm thinking oh yeah bring it on who
wants to come see I bet no one can beat
my boxer I love a good debate right in
that case
now what would you think about my boxer
if not only had was I telling you he was
great but he's never boxed anyone but
then you said okay well your idea came
over to try to punch him and I screamed
and I said what are you doing that's
violence and you're you're in your and
you're an awful person and I don't want
to be friends with you anymore because
you you would think this boxer obviously
sucks and or at least I think it sucks
deep down because uh why would I be so
empty anyone note boxing aloud you know
people so I I think if you're in so this
I call this a ladder right if you're in
low wrong land you know whether it's a
culture or whatever a debate an argument
when someone says no that's totally
wrong uh what you're saying about that
and here's why you're actually being
totally biased
it sounds like a fight people are gonna
say oh wow we got in like a fight it was
really awkward like are we still friends
with that person because that's not a
culture or boxing it's a culture where
you don't touch each other's ideas
that's just that's insensitive versus an
in a night in a you know a high rung
culture uh it's sport that's I mean look
at every one of your podcasts your your
agree whether you're agreeing or
disagreeing the tone is the same it's
not like oh this got awkward it's like
it's it's the tone is identical because
you're just playing intellectually
either way because it's a good high
wrong space at his best at his best but
people do take stuff personally and then
that's actually one of the skills of
conversation just as a fan of podcast is
when you sense that people take a thing
personally you have to like there's sort
of methodologies and little paths you
can take to like calm things down like
go around don't don't take it as a
violation of like you're trying to suss
out which of their ideas are sacred to
them yeah and which ones are uh bring it
on and sometimes it's actually I mean
that's the skill of it I suppose that
sometimes it's a certain wordings
in the way you challenge those ideas are
important you can you can challenge them
indirectly and then together walk
together in that way because they're
what I've learned
is people are used
to their ideas being attacked in a
certain way in a certain Tribal Way and
if you just avoid those like for example
if you have political discussions and
just never mention left or right or uh
Republican and Democrats none of that
just talk about different ideas and and
avoid certain kind of triggering words
you can actually talk about ideas versus
falling into this
path that's well established through
battles that people have previously
fought when you say triggering I mean
who's getting triggered the Primitive
mind so what you're trying to do what
you're saying in this language is how do
you have conversations with other
people's higher Minds almost like
Whispering without waking up the
perimeters Criminal Mind as they're
sleeping right and as soon as you say as
soon as you say something the left
primitive mind gets up and says what
what are you saying about the left and
now now that everything goes off the
rails uh what do you make of conspiracy
theories under this framework of the
latter so
here's the thing about conspiracy
theories is that
once in a while they're true right so
because sometimes there's a natural
conspiracy actually humans are pretty
good at real conspiracies secret things
uh and then you know I just watched the
maid off doc
um great new Netflix stock by the way
um and
um so the question is
how do you create a system that is good
at you put the conspiracy theory in and
it either goes e or it says this is
interesting let's keep exploring it like
how do you put how do you do something
that it can how do you assess and so
again I think the hiron culture
is really good at it because a real
conspiracy you're what's going to happen
is you put it it's like a little machine
you put in the middle of the table and
everyone starts firing darts at it or
bow and arrow or whatever and everyone
starts kicking it and trying to and
almost all conspiracy theories they
quickly crumble right because they
actually you know you know Trump's
election one is and I actually dug in
and I looked at like every claim that he
or his team made and I was like
all of these none of these hold up to
scrutiny none of them I was open-minded
but none of them did so that was one
that as soon as it's open to scrutiny it
crumbles
the only way that conspiracy can stick
around in a community is if
it is a culture where that's being
treated as a sacred idea that no one
should kick or throw a dart at because
if we throw a dart it's going to break
so it's being it's and so the what you
want is this is a culture where no idea
is sacred anything can get thrown out
and so I think that then what you'll
find is that 994 out of 100 conspiracy
theories come in and they fall down the
other maybe four of the others come in
and there's something there but it's not
as Extreme as people say and then maybe
one is a huge deal and it's actually a
real conspiracy well isn't there a lot
of gray area and there's a lot of
mystery isn't that where the conspiracy
theories seep in so uh it's great to
hear that you've really looked into the
the the Trump election fraud claims
but aren't they resting on a lot of kind
of gray area like fog basically saying
that there is dark Forces in the shadows
that are actually controlling everything
I mean the same thing with uh maybe we
can there's like safer conspiracy
theories more less controversial ones
like have we landed on the moon right
the United States ever land on the Moon
there's you know you like the reason
those conspiracy theories work is you
could construct there's incentives and
motivation for faking the moon landing
there's a lot of
um there's a there's very little data
supporting the moon landing like that's
very public and kind of looks fake space
and that would be a big story if it
turned out to be fake that's the art
that's that would be the argument
against it like our people really as a
collective going to hold on to a story
that big
um yeah so that but but there's a lot
that the reason they work is there's
mystery yeah it's a great documentary
called behind the curve about flat
earthers and one of the things that you
learn about flat earthers is they
believe
all the conspiracies not just the Flat
Earth they're they're convinced the moon
landing is fake they're convinced 911
was an American con job
they're convinced you know that name a
conspiracy and they believe it and so
it's so interesting is that
I think of it as a um
as a skepticism Spectrum yeah so on one
side you it's like a filter in your head
a filter in your in the beliefs section
of your brain on one end of the spectrum
you are gullible perfectly gullible you
believe anything someone says right on
the other side you're paranoid you think
everyone's lying to you right
everything's everything is false nothing
that anyone says is true right so
obviously those aren't good places to be
um now the healthy place I think that
that the so so I think the healthy place
is to be somewhere in the middle and but
also you can learn to trust certain
sources and then you know you don't have
to do as much apply as much skepticism
to them and so here's what
like and when you start having a bias
just so you have a political bias
when your side says something you you
will find yourself moving towards the
gullible side of the spectrum you read
an article written that's that supports
your views you move to the gullible side
of the spectrum and you just believe it
and you don't have any where's that
skepticism that you normally have right
and then you move and then you soon as
soon as it's the other person talking
the other team talking you move to the
skeptical the the closer to the to the
you know denial paranoid side now
flat earthers are the extreme they are
either at 10 or 1.
so it's like it's so interesting because
they're the people who are saying ah nah
I won't believe you I'm not gullible no
everyone else is gullible about the moon
landing I won't and then yet when
there's this evidence like oh because
you can't see Seattle you can't see the
buildings over that Horizon and you
should which isn't true you should be if
it were or if the Earth around you
wouldn't be able to see them therefore
it's so suddenly they become the most
gullible person here any theory about
the earth flat they believe it it goes
right into their beliefs so they're
actually jumping back and forth between
refuses to believe anything and believe
anything and so they're the extreme
example but I think when it comes to
conspiracy theories the people that get
themselves into trouble
are the ones who they they become really
gullible when they hear a conspiracy
theory that kind of fits with their
world view and they likewise when
there's something that's kind of
obviously true and it's not a big lie
they will actually uh they'll they'll
think it is they they just tighten up
their kind of skepticism filter and and
so yeah so I I think the healthy places
to be is where you are not because you
also don't want to be the person who
says every conspiracy you hear the word
conspiracy theory and it sounds like a
like a synonym for like quack job crazy
Theory right so yeah so I I think yeah I
think it's be somewhere in the middle of
that spectrum and to learn to fine tune
it which is a tricky place to operate
because you kind of have to every time
you hear a new conspiracy theory you
should approach it with an open mind
and you know and also if you don't have
enough time to investigate which most
people don't kind of still have a
humility not to make a conclusive
statement that that's nonsense there's a
lot of um social pressure actually yeah
to immediately laugh off any conspiracy
theory if it's done by the the bad guys
right you will quickly get mocked and
laughed at and not taken seriously if
you give any Credence you know back the
lab leak was it was a good one where
it's like uh turned out that that was at
least very credible if not true and
that was a perfect example of one where
when it first came out and not only so
so Brett Weinstein talked about it and
then I in a totally different
conversation said something
complimentary about him on a totally
different subject
and people were saying Tim you might
have gone a little off the deep end
you're like quoting someone who is like
a lab leak person so I was getting my
reputation dinged
for complimenting on a different topic
someone whose reputation was totally
sullied because they have you know they
questioned an Orthodoxy right so it's
you see in so what what does that make
me want to do
distance myself from Brett Weinstein
that's the at least that's the incentive
that's uh and what does that make other
people want to do don't become the next
Brit Weinstein don't say it out loud
because you don't want to become someone
that no one wants to compliment anymore
right you can see the social pressure
and that's and of course when there is a
conspiracy that social pressure is its
best friend
because then they see the people from
outside are seeing that social pressure
enact like a Tim Urban becoming more and
more and more extreme to the other side
and so they're going to take the more
and more and more extreme I mean this
what what do you see that the pandemic
did
that kova did to our civilization in
that regard in the forces why was it so
divisive do you understand that
yeah so covet I you know I thought might
be you know we always you know the
ultimate example of the topic that will
unite us all is the alien attack yeah
although honestly I don't even have that
much Faith then I think there'd be like
some people are super like you know
pro-alien and some people are anti-alien
but anyway I was a surgeon to interrupt
because I was talking to a few
um astronomers and they they're the
first
folks that
maybe kind of sad in that if we discover
Life on Mars for example
that there's going to be potentially a
division over that too where half the
people will not believe that's real
well because
we we live in a current Society where
the political divide
has subsumed everything and that's not
always like that uh it goes into stages
like that we're in a really bad one
where it's I think actually in the the
book I call it like a Vortex like a like
a like a almost like a Whirlpool that
pulls
everything into it it pulls it pulls um
and so normally you'd say okay you know
immigration naturally going to be
contentious that's always political
right yeah but like
covid seemed like oh that's one of those
that will unite us all let's fight this
not human virus thing like obvious is no
no one's sensitive no one's like getting
hurt when we insult the virus like let's
all be we have this threat it's common
threat it's a threat to everyone of
every nationality in every country every
ethnicity and
and what it didn't do that at all the
whirlpool was too powerful so it pulled
coveted in and suddenly masks
if you're on the left you like them if
you're on the right you hate them and
suddenly lockdowns if you're on the left
you like them and on the right you hate
them and vaccines this is people who
forget this when when Trump first
started talking about the vaccine
Biden Harris
Cuomo they're all saying I'm not taking
that vaccine not from this CDC because
it was too rushed or something like that
but because I'm not trusting anything
that Trump says Trump wants me to take
it I'm not taking it I'm not taking it
from this CDC so
this was if Trump this Trump was almost
out of office but at the time if Trump
had been it would have been I'm pretty
sure it would have stayed Wright likes
vaccines the left blood doesn't like
vaccines instead the president switched
and all those people are suddenly saying
they were actually specifically saying
that if you you know that that like if
if you're saying the CDC is not
trustworthy that's misinformation which
is exactly what they were saying about
the other CDC and they were saying it
because they genuinely didn't trust
Trump which is fair but now and other
people don't trust the Biden CDC
Suddenly It's this kind of
misinformation that needs to be censored
so it was a sad moment because it was a
couple months at the very even a week or
so the I mean a month or so at the very
beginning when
it felt like a lot of our other
squabbles were kind of like oh I feel
like they're kind of irrelevant right
now yeah and then very quickly the
whirlpool sucked it in and and
in a way where I think it damaged the
reputation of these a lot of the the
Trust In A lot of these institutions for
the long run but there's also an
individual psychological impact it's
like a vicious negative feedback cycle
where they were deeply affected on an
emotional level and people just were not
their best cells
that's definitely true yeah I mean
talk about the Primitive mind I mean
what one thing that we've been dealing
with for our whole human history is
pathogens yeah and it's it's emotional
right it it brings out you know there's
really interesting studies where like
if
they they studied the the the the
phenomenon of disgust which is one of
these like
you know smiling is universal you don't
have to ever translate a smile right
certain you know you know throwing your
hands up when you're when your sports
team wins it's Universal because it's
part of our we're coding and so is
disgust to kind of make this like you
know face where you wrinkle up your nose
and you kind of put out your tongue and
maybe even gag that's to expel expel
whatever's because it's It's the
reaction when something is potentially a
pathogen that might harm us right feces
vomit whatever
but they did this interesting study
where people
who in in two two groups the control
group you know was shown images of
um in my beginning two studies mixed up
but they were showing they were showing
images of like car crashes and like
disturbing but not disgusting and the
other one was showing like you know like
you know rotting things and just just
things that were disgusting and then
they were asked about immigration these
were Canadians and the group that was
had the disgust feeling going pulsing
through their body was way more likely
to prefer like immigrants from White
countries
and the group that was had been showing
car accidents they were they still
preferred the groups from White
countries but much less so and so what
what does that mean it's because with
the disgust impulse makes us scared of
you know sexual practices that are
foreign of ethnicities that are not look
they don't look like us of of it's still
xenophobia so it's ugly it's this really
ugly stuff this is of course also how
you know the the Nazi propaganda with
cockroaches and uh or it was uh Rwandan
was cockroaches you know the Nazis was
rats and you know
it's it's specifically it's a
dehumanizing emotion so
anyway we were we were we were talking
about
um covid but I think it does it Taps
deep into like the human psyche in it
and it's I don't think it brings out our
I think like you said I think it brings
out an ugly side in US
you describe an idea lab as uh being
opposite of echo Chambers
so we know what Echo Chambers are and
you said like there's basically no good
term for the opposite of an echo chamber
so what's an ideal lab yeah well first
of all both of these we think of an echo
chamber as like a group maybe or even a
place but it's it's a culture it's an
intellectual culture
and this goes along with the high run
low so high rung and low wrong thinking
is individual so I was talking about
what's going on in your head but this is
very connected to the Social Scene
around us and so groups will do high
rung and low rung thinking together
um basically it's collect so an echo
chamber to me is a collaborative low
rung thinking it is it's a culture where
the cool it it's based around a sacred
set of ideas and it's the coolest thing
you can do in an echo chamber culture is
talk about how great the sacred ideas
are and how bad and evil and stupid and
wrong the people are who have the other
views and this and and and and it's it's
quite boring you know it's quite boring
you know it's very hard to learn and
changing your mind is not cool in an
echo chamber culture it makes you seem
wishy-washy it makes you seem
um like you know uh like you're waffling
and you're flip-flopping or whatever it
showing conviction about the sacred
ideas in Echo chamber culture is awesome
if you're just like you know obviously
this it makes you seem smart while being
you know humble makes you seem dumb so
now flip all of those things on their
heads and you haven't you have the
opposite which is ideal lab culture
which is collaborative High wrong
thinking it's collaborative truth
finding um but it's also just it's just
a totally different vibe it's uh it's a
place where arguing is a fun thing it's
not no one's getting offended and and
criticizing like the thing everyone
believes is actually it makes you seem
like interesting like oh really like why
why do you think we're all wrong and
um expressing too much conviction makes
people lose trust in you doesn't make
you seem smart it makes you seem stupid
if you don't really know what you're
talking about but you're acting like you
do I really like this diagram of where
on the x-axis agreement on the y-axis is
decency that's in an idea lab in an echo
chamber there's only one axis it's uh
asshole to non-ass hole right this is a
really important thing to understand
about the difference between you call a
decent see here about ass hoolishness
and disagreement so my college friends
we love to argue right and and no one
thought anyone was an asshole for it was
just for sports sometimes we'd realize
we're not even disagreeing on something
and that would be disappointing and be
like oh I think we agree it was kind of
like sad it was like oh well there goes
the fun
and one of the members of this group has
this she brought her new boyfriend to
one of our like Hangouts and there was
like a heated heated debate you know
just just one of our typical things and
afterwards you know the next day he said
like is everything okay and she was like
what do you mean and he said like after
you know the fight and she was like what
fight and he was like you know the fight
last night and she was like and she had
to then she was like you mean like the
the arguing and he was like yeah and she
and so that's someone who is not used to
idea lab culture coming into it and
seeing it is like that was like this is
like are they still friends right and
ideal lab is nice for the people in them
because you're it individuals Thrive you
don't want to just conform that does it
makes you seem boring in an idea but you
want to be yourself you want to
challenge things you want to have a
unique brain so that's great and and you
also have people criticizing your ideas
which makes you smarter it doesn't
always feel good but you you become more
correct and smarter an echo chamber is
the opposite where it's not good for the
people and it does your learning skills
atrophy
um and uh and I think it's boring but
the thing is they also have emergent
properties so
the emergent property of an ID lab is
like super intelligence just you and me
alone just the two of us if we're
working together on something but we're
being really
um grown up about it we're disagreeing
we're not you know no one's sensitive
about anything we're going to each find
flaws in the other ones arguments that
you wouldn't have found on your own and
we're going to have a piffy double the
epiphanies right so it's almost like the
two of us together is like as smart as
1.5 it's like 50 smarter than either of
us alone right so you have this 1.5
intelligent kind of joint being that
we've made now bring the third person in
fourth person in right you see it starts
to scale up this is why science
institutions can discover relativity in
quantum mechanics and these things that
no individual human you know was going
to come up with without a ton of
collaboration because it's this giant
idea lab so it has an emergent property
of super intelligence an echo chamber is
the opposite where it has the emergent
property of
stupidity I mean has the emergent
property of a bunch of people all you
know you know paying field you know
fealty to this set of sacred ideas and
and um so you lose this magical thing
about language and humans which is
collaborative intelligence you lose it
it disappears but there is that axis of
decency which is really interesting
because you kind of painted this picture
of you and your friends arguing really
harshly but underlying that
is a basic camaraderie respect there's
there's a
all kinds of mechanisms we humans have
constructed to communicate
like mutual respect or maybe communicate
that you're here for the idea lab
version of this totally it doesn't you
don't take it you don't get personal
right you're not getting personal you're
not
um you're not taking things personally
people are respected in an idea lab and
ideas are disrespected and there's way
ways to signal that so like for with
friends you've already done the
signaling you've already established a
relationship the interesting thing is
online I think you have to do some of
that work I mean to me the sort of uh
steel Manning the other side or no uh
having empathy and hearing out being
able to basically repeat the argument
the other person is making before you
and showing like respect to that
argument I could see how you could think
that before you make a counter argument
there's just a bunch of ways to
communicate that you're here not to uh
do kind of what is it low rung you know
shit talking mockery derision but are
actually here ultimately to discover the
truth and the space of ideas and the
tension of those ideas and I I think
it's uh
I think that's a skill that we're all
learning as a civilization of how to do
that kind of communication effectively
because I think disagreement as I'm
learning on the Internet is actually a
really tricky skill like high effort
High decency disagreement like I
listened to uh there's a really good
debate podcast uh intelligent squared
and like they they can go pretty hard in
the paint the classic idea lab exactly
but like how do we map that to social
media when people like will say
um
will say well like Lex or anybody you're
not you hate disagreement you you want
to censor disagreement no
um I love intelligent Square type of
disagreement that's fun you want to
reduce asshole and for me personally I
don't want to reduce asshole if you know
I kind of like ask over it's like fun in
many ways but the problem is when the
asshole shows up to the party they make
it less fun for the for the party that's
there for the idea lab and the other
people especially the quiet voices at
the back of the room they leave and so
all you're left is was with assholes
well that Twitter political Twitter to
me is one of those parties it's a big
party where a few assholes have really
sent a lot of the quiet
thinkers away yeah
um and and so so if you think about this
graph again
what
the what Twi some place like Twitter
um a great way to get followers is to be
an asshole with a certain you know
pumping a certain ideology you'll get a
huge amount of followers and for those
followers and the followers you're gonna
get the people who like you know not the
people who like you
are probably going to be people who are
really thinking with their primitive
mind because they're seeing your your
being you're being an asshole but
because you agree with them they love
you and they think they don't see any
problem with how you're being yeah they
don't see the asshole this is a
fascinating thing people because look
because look at the thing on the right
agreement and decency are the same yeah
so if you're in that mindset the bigger
the asshole the better if you're
agreeing with me you're my man I love
what you're saying yes show them right
and the algorithm helps those people
does those people do great on the
algorithm this is a fascinating Dynamic
that happens uh because I have I've
currently hired somebody that looks on
my social media and they block people
because the assholes Will Roll in
they're not actually there to have a
interesting disagreement which I love
they're there to do kind of mockery and
then when they get blocked
they then celebrate that to their Echo
chamber like look at this I got them or
whatever they do or they'll say some
annoying thing like oh so it's so he
talks about he likes you know if I'd
done this they'll say he oh he says he
likes idea Labs but he actually wants to
create an echo chamber but I'm like nope
you're an asshole I'm not I'm not I I
this look at the other 50 people and
this threat that disagreed with me yeah
respectfully they're not blocked yep
exactly you know and so they see it as
some kind of hypocrisy because again
they only see the thing on the right and
they're not understanding that there's
two axes or that I see it as two axes
and so you it's you seem Petty in that
moment but it's like no no you're this
is very specific what I'm doing you're
actually killing the conversation I I in
generally I give all those folks a pass
and just send them love telepathically
but yes like it's getting rid of
assholes in the conversation is the way
you allow for the disagreement you do a
lot of like when I think when like
primitive mindedness comes at you at
least on Twitter I don't know you
feeling internally in that moment but
you do a lot of like
I'm gonna meet that with my higher mind
and just come out and you'll be like and
you'll be like thanks for all the
criticism I love you yeah and that's
that that that's actually a an amazing
response because it just it what it does
is it it that it it unriles up that
person's primitive mind and actually
wakes up their higher mind who says oh
okay you know this guy's not so bad and
suddenly like civility comes back so
it's a very powerful hopefully long term
but the thing is they do seem to drive
away
high quality disagreement because like
because it takes so much effort to uh
disagree in a high quality way I've
noticed this on my blog like my one of
the things I pride myself on is like my
comment section is awesome like there's
there's there's every everyone's being
respectful
no one's afraid to disagree with me
until and say you know tear my post
apart but in a totally respectful way
where the underlying thing is like I'm
here because I like this guy in his
writing
and people disagree with each other and
they get in these long entry and it's
interesting and I read it and I'm
learning and then I you know a couple
posts especially the ones I've got
written about politics it's not like it
seems like any other comment section
people are being nasty to me they're
being nasty to each other and then I
looked down one of them and I realized
like almost all of this is the work of
like three people yeah that's who you
need to block those people need to be
blocked you're not being thin-skinned
you're not being petty doing it you're
actually protecting an idea lab because
what people would really aggressive
people like that do is they'll turn it
into their own Echo chamber because now
everyone is scared to kind of disagree
with them this is unpleasant and so
people who will chime in are the people
who agree with them and suddenly like
they've taken over the space and I kind
of believe that those people on a
different day could actually do high
effort disagreement it's just that
they're in a in a certain kind of mood
and a lot of us just like you said with
the Primitive mind could get into that
mood and it's I believe it's actually
the job of the technology of the
platform to incentivize those folks to
be like are you sure this is the best
you can do like if you really want to
talk shit about this idea like do better
like yeah and then we need to create
incentives where you get likes for high
effort disagreement because currently
you get likes for like uh something
that's slightly funny and is a little
bit like mockery
like um
yeah basically signals to some kind of
echo chamber that this person is a
horrible person it's a hypocrite as evil
whatever that feels like it's solvable
with technology because I think in our
private lives none of us want that I
wonder if it's making me think that I
want to like because a much easier way
for me to do it just for my
my world would be to say something like
you know here's this axis this high this
is this is part of what I part of what I
like about the latter is is it's a
language that we can use it's like
specifically what we're talking about is
High rung disagreement good low rung
disagreement bad right and so so it
gives us like a language for that and so
what I would say is I would you know my
you know I would have my you know
readers you know understand this axis
and then I would specifically say
something like please
do the the do the do it but why a favor
and upvote regardless of what they're
saying horizontally right regardless of
what their actual view is upvote high
wrongness
they could be tearing me apart they can
be saying great they can be praising me
whatever
uproad High running this and down vote
low rugness and if enough people are
doing that suddenly there's all this
incentive to try to say no I need to
calm my emotion down here and not be
personal because I'm gonna get voted
into Oblivion by these people
I think a lot of people would be very
good at that
they and they not are only would they be
good at that they would want that that
task of saying I know I completely
disagree with this person but this was a
high effort uh High rung
disagreement I guess everyone thinking
about that other access too you're not
just looking at where do you stand
horizontally you're saying well how did
you get there and how are you you know
are you treating ideas like machines are
you treating them like little you know
babies and there should be some kind of
labeling on personal attacks versus idea
disagreement sometimes people like throw
in both a little bit right that's like
all right no there should be a
disincentive at personal attacks versus
idea attacks well you can also what one
metric is
a a respectful disagreement if I see
just say someone else's Twitter and I
see you know you put out a thought and I
see someone say you know as you know
someone say
um you know I don't see it that way
here's here's where I think you went
wrong and they're just explaining
I'm thinking that if Lex reads that he's
gonna be interested he's gonna he's
Gonna Wanna post more stuff right
because he's gonna like that if I see
someone being like
um
uh wow this really shows the kind of
person that you become or shows up I'm
thinking that person is making Lex want
to be on Twitter less it's making him
it's and so what's that doing what that
person is actually doing is they're
putting is they're actually they're
chilling discussion because they're
making it unpleasant to they're making
it scary to say what you think and the
first person isn't at all the first
person is making you want to say more
stuff so and those are both disagree
those are people who both disagree with
you exactly exactly
I want to it's a great disagreements
with friends in Meet space is like
you're they disagree with you they could
be even yelling at you
honestly they could even have some shit
talk where it's like personal attacks it
still feels good because you know them
well and you know that that shit talk
because like yeah friends should talk
all the time playing us playing a sport
or a game and again it's it's it's
because they know each other well enough
to know that this is fun we're having
fun and obviously I love you like
exactly you know and and that's that's
important online it's a lot harder yeah
the that obviously I love you that
underlies a lot of human interaction
right seems to be easily Lost online
I've seen some people on Twitter and
elsewhere just behave their worst yeah
and it's like I know that's not who you
are totally like why are you I actually
you know I know who's this human I know
someone personally who is one of the
best people yeah I'm it's just I love
this guy like one of the best like fun
funny like nicest dudes
and he if you would if you looked at his
Twitter only you would think he's a
culture worry or an awful culture
Warrior and you know you know biased and
just stoking anger
and and it comes out of a good place and
I'm not going to give any other info
about it you know specific but like I
think he's describing a lot of people it
comes out of a good place because he
really cares about what he you know it
comes up but it's just I can't Square
the two it's so and that's it you have
to once you know someone like that you
can realize okay apply that to everyone
because a lot of these people are lovely
people and it's just bring even just you
know back in the before social media did
you ever had a friend who like
was just like they had this like
dickishness on text or email that they
didn't have in person you're like wow
like email you is like kind of a dick
and it's like it just certain people
have a different Persona behind the
screen it has for me a person has become
a bit of a meme that uh Lex blocks with
love but there is a degree to that where
this is I don't see people on social
media as representing who they really
are I really do have love for them I
really do think positive thoughts of
them throughout the entirety of the
experience I see this as some weird side
effect of uh online communication and so
it's like to me blocking is not some
kind of a derisive act towards that
individual it's just like saying well a
lot of times what's happened is they
have slipped into a very common delusion
that dehumanizes others so that doesn't
mean they're a bad person we all can do
it but they're dehumanizing you or
whoever they're being nasty to because
they in a way they would never do in
person because in a person they're
reminded that's a person remember I said
the dumb part of my brain when I'm doing
VR like won't step off the cliff but the
smart part of my brain knows I'm just on
the rug that dumb part of our brain
is really dumb in a lot of ways um it's
the part of your brain where you can
set the clock five minutes fast to help
you not be late the smart part of your
brain knows that you did that but the
dumb part will fall for it right that
same dumb part of your brain can forget
that the person behind that screen that
behind that handle is a human that has
feelings and and that doesn't mean
they're a bad person for forgetting that
because it's it's possible well this
really interesting idea and I wonder if
it's true that you're right
is that both primitive mindedness and
high-mindedness tend to be contagious
I hope you're right that it's possible
to make both contagious because there
are sort of um popular intuition is only
one of them the Primitive mindedness is
contagious as as exhibited by social
media they complement you again don't
you think that your your Twitter to me
is like I was just looking down and I
mean it is a
it's just high-mindedness it's just
high-mindedness down down down down down
it's it's gratitude it's optimism it's
love it's forgiveness it's all these
things they're the opposite of grievance
and victimhood and resentment and
pessimism right and
there's I think a reason that a lot of
people follow you because it is
contagious it makes other people feel
those feelings I don't know there's been
I've been recently over the past few
months attacked quite a lot it is
fascinating to watch because there's is
over things that I think I probably have
done stupid things but I'm being
attacked for things that are totally not
worthy of attack I got attacked for a
book list
I saw that by the way I thought I
thought it was great but like you can
always kind of find ways to you know I
guess the assumption is this person
surely is a fraud or some other
explanation he's sure it has dead bodies
in the basement he's hiding or something
like this and then I'm going to
construct The Narrative around that and
ma can attack that I don't know how that
works but there there is um there does
and I think you write this in the book
there seems to be a gravity
pulling people towards the Primitive
mindedness to anything political right
religious certain things sure are bottom
heavy you know yeah for our psyche they
they they they they they they have a
magnet that pulls our psyches downwards
on the ladder and and why why does
politics pull our psyches
down on the ladder because it
for for the tens of thousand years that
we were evolving
um you know during human history it was
life or death
politics was life or death and and and
so
um it was actually an amazing study
where it's like
um they
challenged like 20 different beliefs of
a person and different parts of the
person's brain and they had an MRI going
different parts of the person's brain
lit up when non-political beliefs were
challenged versus political beasts were
challenged when political beliefs were
challenged when non-political beliefs
were challenged
the
like the the rational like the
prefrontal cortex type areas were lit up
when the political beliefs were
challenged and then I'm getting over my
head here but it's like the the parts of
your brain the default mode Network the
parts of your brain associated with like
inter introspection and like your own
identity were lit up and they were much
more likely to change their mind on all
the beliefs the non-political beliefs
when that default mode Network part of
your brain uh lit up you were you were
gonna if anything get more firm in those
beliefs when you when you had them
challenged so
politics is one of those topics that
just it literally literally lights up
different part of our brain it's again I
think we come back to primitive mind
higher mind here it's like it it gets
our higher this is one of the things our
primitive mind comes programmed to care
a ton about and so it's going to be very
hard for us to stay rational and calm
and and looking for truth because we
have all this gravity towards well it's
weird because politics like what is
politics like to talk about it's a bunch
of different issues and each individual
issue if we really talk about tax policy
like why are we being emotional about
this I don't think we're actually that I
mean we're yeah we're emotional about
something else yeah I think what we're
emotional about is
this my side the side I've identified
with is in power and making the
decisions and your side is out of power
and if your side's in power that's
really scary for me because that goes
back to you know the idea of who's
making who's who's pulling the strings
in this tribe right who's and who's the
chief is it your family's patriarch or
is it mine you know like we might not
have food if if we don't win this you
know kind of whatever you know Chief
election so
I I think that it's not about the tax
policy or anything like that and then
and then it gets tied to this like
broader I think a lot of our tribalism
has
really coalesced around this we don't
have that much religious tribalism in
the U.S right now they know the the the
Protestants and the Catholics hate each
other we don't have that really right
and honestly you you say people like to
you know say we have racial tribalism
and everything but
uh White cons you know a white even a
kind of a racist white conservative guy
I think takes the black conservative
over the woke white person any day of
the week right now so that's the
strongest it tells me that Source
television is way stronger tribalism
right now I think that that that that
white racist guys you know loves the
black
conservative guy compared to the white
wolf guy right there's no so so to me
not again not that racial tribalism
isn't a thing of course it's always a
thing but like political tribalism is
the number one right now so race is
almost a topic for the political
division versus the actual sort of
element of the attractive it's a
political football it's yeah so there's
uh I mean this is dark because so this
is a book about human civilization this
is a book about human nature but it's
also a book of politics yeah about
politics
um it is just the way you listed out in
the book
it's kind of dark how we just fall into
these left and right checklists
so if you're on the left it's maintained
where we weighed
universal healthcare good mainstream
media fine guns kill people us is a
racist country protect immigrants tax
costs bad climate change awful raise
minimum wage and on the right is the
flip of that reverse where we weighed
Universal Health Care bad mainstream
media bad people kill people not guns
kill people us was a racist country
protect borders tax Gods good climate
change overblown don't raise minimum
wage I mean it has you almost don't have
to think about any of this well it's
like literally So when you say it's a
book about politics it's interesting
because it it's a book about the
vertical axis right it's specifically
not a book about the horizontal axis and
that I'm not talking I don't actually
talk about any of these issues I I don't
put out an opinion on them
um those are all horizontal right but
when you so and rather than are you know
having you know another book about those
issues about right versus left
I wanted to do a book about this other
axis and so on this axis
the reason I had this checklist is that
this is a low part of the low rung
politics world right low wrong politics
is a checklist and that checklist
evolves right like Russia suddenly is
like popular with the right as opposed
to you know it used to be you know in
the 60s the left was the one defending
Stalin like so they'll switch it doesn't
even matter the substance doesn't matter
it's that this is the approved checklist
of the capital P party and this is what
everyone believes that's a low rung
thing the high rungs this is not what
it's like high rung politics you you
tell me your one view on this I have no
idea what you think about anything else
right and you're gonna say I don't know
about a lot of stuff because inherently
you're not going to have that strong an
opinion because you don't have that much
info these are complex things
so there's a lot of I don't know and
people are all over the place
it's that when it you know you're in you
know you're talking to someone who has
been subsumed with low rung politics
when
if they tell you their opinion on any
one of these issues you could just you
know you could just rattle off their
opinion on every single other one and if
and if in three years it becomes
fashionable to to have this new view
they're gonna have it that's you're not
thinking that's Echo that's Echo chamber
culture and I've been using kind of a
shorthand uh of Centrist to describe
this kind of
a high wrong thinking but people tend to
I mean it seems to be difficult to be a
Centrist or whatever a hiring thinker
it's like people want to label you as a
person because it's too cowardly to take
stance yeah
um somehow as opposed to ask saying I
don't know is the first statement the
problem with Centrist is that would mean
that in each of these tax cuts bag tax
cuts good it means that you are saying I
am in I think we should have some tax
cuts but not that many you might not
think that you might actually come do
some research and say actually I think
tax cuts are really important
that doesn't mean oh I'm not a Centrist
anymore I guess I'm a far you know no no
that's why we need the second axis so
what you're trying to be when you say
Centrist is Hiram which means you might
be all over the place horizontally you
might agree with the far left on this
thing the far right on this thing that
you might agree with the centrists on
this thing but but calling yourself a
Centrist actually like is putting
yourself in a prison on the horizontal
axis and um and it's saying that you
know I I whatever the on the on the
different topics I'm right in between
the two policy wise that's not what you
are so yeah that's what we we're badly
missing this other axis yeah I mean I I
still do think it's this
like for me I am a Centrist when you
project it down to the horizontal but
the point is you're missing so much data
by not considering the vertical because
like on average maybe it falls somewhere
in the middle but in reality there's
just a lot of nuance issue to issue that
involves just thinking and uncertainty
and changing in the given the context of
the current geopolitics and economics
and just always considering always
questioning always evolving your views
all of that not just not just about like
oh I think we should be in the center on
this but another way to be in the center
is if there's some phenomenon happening
um you know there's a terrorist attack
you know and one side wants to say this
has nothing to do with Islam and the
other one the other side wants to say
this is radical Islam
right what's in between those is saying
This is complicated and nuanced and we
have to learn more and it probably has
something to do with Islam and something
to do with
um the economic circumstances and
something to do with you know
geopolitics so in in a case like that
you actually do get really unnuanced
when you go to the extremes and all of
the Nuance which is where all the truth
usually is is going to be in the middle
so yeah but there is a truth to the fact
that if you take that Nuance on those
issues like warn Ukraine covid
you're going to be attacked by both
sides yes people who have who are really
strongly on one side or the other hate
Centrist people I've gotten this myself
and you know the this the the slur that
I've had thrown at me is I'm an
enlightened Centrist in a very mocking
way so what are they actually saying
what does enlightened centers mean it
means someone who is you know Stephen
Pinker or Jonathan height gets accused
of is you know that they're
highfalutin you know intellectual world
and they don't actually have any they
don't actually take a side they don't
actually get their hands dirty and they
can be superior to both sides without
actually taking a stand right so I I see
the argument and I disagree with it
because
I firmly believe that the hardcore
tribes they think they're taking a stand
and they're out in the streets and
they're pushing for something I think
what they're doing is they're just
driving the whole country downwards and
I think they're they're hurting all the
causes they care about and so it's not
that it's not that you know it's not
that we need everyone to be sitting
there you know refusing to take aside
it's that you can be far left and far
right but be upper left and upper right
if we talk about the you use the word
liberal a lot in the book to mean
something that we don't in modern
political discourse mean uh since this
higher philosophical View and then you
use the words Progressive to mean the
left and uh conservative to mean the
right can you describe the concept of
liberal games and power games
so the power games is is what I call the
like basically just the laws of nature
as the
when laws of nature are the laws of the
land that's the power game so animals
watch any David Attenborough special and
when the little lizard is running away
from the the you know the bigger animal
or whatever
um and I use an example of a bunny and a
bear I don't even know if bears eat
bunnies they probably don't but pretend
bears eat bunnies right so it's like in
the power games the bear is chasing the
bunny
there's no fairness there's no okay well
what's right but you know what what what
what what's legal no no if the bear is
fast enough
it can eat the bunny if the bunny is can
get away it can say living in so that's
it that's the Only Rule now humans
have spent a lot of time in essentially
that environment so when you have a
totalitarian dictatorship
it's and so what's the rule of the power
games it's everyone can do whatever they
want if they have the power to do so
it's just a game of power so if the
bunny gets away the bunny actually has
more power than the Bear in that
situation right and likewise the
totalitarian dictatorship there's no
rules that dictator can do whatever they
want they can they can they can torture
they can you know flatten a rebellion
with a lot of murder because they have
the power to do so what are you gonna do
right and that's that's kind of the
state of nature that's our natural way
you know that you know when you look at
the Muff watch a mafia movie
you know there's we do a lot of we have
we have it in us we all have we all can
snap into power games mode when uh it
becomes all about you know just just
actual raw power now the liberal games
is is you know something that's
Civilizations for thousands of years
have been working on it's not invented
by America or modern times but America's
kind of was like the latest crack at it
yet which is this idea instead of
everyone can do what they want if they
have the power to do so it's everyone
can do what they want as long as it
doesn't harm anyone else now that's
really complicated how do you define
harm and and the idea is that everyone
has their a list of rights which are
protected by the government
and then they have they're inalienable
rights and they're they're protected you
know those are protected uh uh Again by
you know um from from an invasion by
other people and so you have this kind
of fragile balance and so the idea with
the liberal games is you that there are
laws but it's not totalitarian they will
build very clear strict laws kind of
around the edges of what you can and
can't do and then everything else
Freedom so unlike a totalitarian
dictatorship actually it's it's very
loose there's a lot of things can happen
and it's kind of up to the people but
there are still laws that protect the
very basic and alienable rights and
stuff like that so it's this much looser
thing now the vulnerability there is
that
it so so the
the benefits of it are obvious right
freedom is great it seems like it's the
most Fair they you know that that
equality of opportunity seemed like the
most fair thing and
um and you know equality before the law
you know due process and all of this
stuff so it seems fair to the founders
of the Us and other Enlightenment
thinkers and it also is a great way to
manifest productivity right you know you
have um you have Adam Smith saying it's
not from the benevolence of the butcher
or the baker that we get our dinner but
from their from their own self-interest
so you have you can harness kind of
selfishness for for progress but
um it has a vulnerability which is that
because the laws it's like the
totalitarian laws they don't have an
excessive loss for no reason they want
to control everything and the US you
know in the US we say they're not going
to do that and so the the second it's
almost two puzzle pieces you have the
laws and then you've got a liberal
culture liberal laws have to be married
to Liberal culture kind of a defense of
liberal Spirit in order to truly have
the liberal games going on and so that's
vulnerable because Free Speech you can
have the First Amendment that's the the
laws part but if if you're in a culture
where anyone who you know speaks out uh
against Orthodoxy is going to be shunned
from the community well you're lacking
the second piece of the puzzle there
you're lacking liberal culture and so
therefore you um you might as well be in
it you might as well not even have the
First Amendment and there's a lot of
examples like that where the culture has
to do its part for the true liberal
games to be enjoyed
so it's just much more complicated much
more nuanced than the power games it's
kind of it's kind of a set of basic laws
that then
are coupled with a basic Spirit to
create this
very awesome in human environment that's
also very vulnerable
so what do you mean the culture has to
play along so for something like a
freedom of speech to work
there has to be a basic what decency
that if all people are perfectly good
then perfect freedom without any
restrictions is great it's where the
human nature starts getting a little
iffy without being cruel to each other
or start being uh greedy and uh Desiring
of harm and also the narcissist and
sociopaths and Psychopaths and Society
all of that that's when you start to
have to inject some limitations on that
freedom yeah I mean if if um
so that what the government basically
says is we're going to let everyone be
mostly free
um but no one no one is going to be free
to
physically harm other people or distill
their property right
um and so we're stuck we're also we're
all agreeing to sacrifice that you know
that that 20 of our freedom and then in
return all of us in theory can be 80
free and that's kind of the the bargain
um but now that's a lot of freedom to
leave people with and
a lot of people choose it's like you're
so free in the U.S you're actually free
to be unfree if you choose that's kind
of what an echo chamber is to me it's
you know
um you can you can choose to kind of be
friends with people who
uh essentially make it make it so
uncomfortable to
speak your mind
that it's no actual effective difference
for you than if you lived in a country
if if you can't you know criticize
Christianity in a certain community
that you have a First Amendment so
you're not going to get arrested by the
government for criticizing Christianity
but if you if but if you have this if
the social penalties are so extreme that
you it's just never worth it you might
as well be in a country that it
imprisons people for criticizing
Christianity and so that same thing goes
for for wokeness right this is what
people get you know cancel culture and
stuff so when the reason these things
are bad is because they're actually
they're depriving
Americans of the beauty of the freedom
of the liberal games by you know
imposing a social culture that is very
power games it's basically a power games
culture comes in and you might as well
be in the power games now and so liberal
if you live in a liberal democracy
it's it's you there will be always be
challenges to a liberal culture
now lowercase L labral um there'll
always be challenges to a liberal
culture from people who are much more
interested in playing the power games
and would and and there has to be kind
of an immune system that stands up to
that culture and says that's not how we
do things here in America actually we
don't excommunicate people for not
having the right religious beliefs or
not you know we don't disinvite a
speaker from campus for having the wrong
political beliefs uh and if it doesn't
stand up for itself it's it's like the
immune system of the country failing and
power games rushes in
so uh before chapter four in your book
uh
uh and the chapters that will surely
result in you being burned at the stake
you write quote we'll start our
Pitchfork tour in this chapter by taking
a brief trip through the history of the
Republican party then in the following
chapters we'll take a Tim's career
tanking Deep dive into America's social
justice movement as you started to talk
about okay so let's go uh what's the
history of the Republican Party
and looking at this through my vertical
ladder I'm saying what is this this
familiar story of the Republicans from
the 60s to today what does it look like
through the vertical lens right does it
look different and and and is there is
there an interesting story here that's
been kind of hidden because we're always
looking at the horizontal now the
horizontal story you'll hear people talk
about it and it's they'll say something
like the Republicans have moved farther
and farther to the right
and um and to me that that's not really
true like it was Trump more right-wing
than Reagan I don't think so I think
he's a lot of actual policy yeah yeah so
it's so we're using this again it's just
like you're calling yourself Centrist
but it's not exactly what you mean even
though it also is yeah
so I again this I was like okay look
this vertical lens helps with other
things let's apply it to the Republicans
and here here's what I saw is
I looked at the 60s
and
I saw an interesting story which I don't
think that you know not everyone's
familiar with like what happened in the
early 60s but in 1960 the Republican
party was very it was a plurality you
had progressives like genuine you know
Rockefeller you know pretty Progressive
people
um all the way to you know then you had
them you know moderates like Eisenhower
and Dewey and then you go all the way to
the you know farther right you had gold
water and you know what you might call I
I call them the fundamentalists um
and so
it's this interesting plurality right
something we don't have today and what
happened was the the Goldwater
contingent which was the Underdog they
were small right the Eisenhower was the
president
uh who had just been the president and
was it seemed like the moderates were
you know it was that's the he said you
have to be close to the center of the
chess board that's where that's that's
how you maintain power these people were
very far from the center of the
chessboard but they ended up basically
have like a hostile takeover they
conquered their own party and they did
it by breaking all of the kind of
Unwritten rules and Norms so they did
things like they first started with like
the college Republicans which was like
this feeder group that turned in you
know a lot of the politicians started
there and they they went to the election
and they wouldn't let the the current
president the incumbent speak and they
were throwing chairs and they were fist
fights and eventually people gave up and
they just sat there and they sat in the
chair talking for you know their got
their candidate until everyone
eventually left and then they declared
Victory so
they basically they they they they they
came in there there was a there was a
certain set of rules agreed upon rules
and they came in playing the power games
saying well actually
if we do this you won't have the power
you know we have the power to to take it
if we just break all the rules right and
so they did and they won and that became
this hugely influential thing which then
they then they conquered California
through again these these people were
taken aback these you know these these
proper Republican candidates were
appalled by the kind of like you know
the insults that are being hurled to
them and the intimidation and the
bullying and eventually they ended up in
the National Convention which was called
like the right wing Woodstock it was
like you know the Republican National
Convention in 64 was just they again it
was jeering and they wouldn't let their
moderates so their their progressives
even speak and there was racism you know
you know Jackie Robinson was there and
he was a proud Republican and he said
that like he feels like he was a Jew in
Hitler's Germany with the way the blacks
were being treated there and it was
nasty and but what did they do they they
had they had fiery you know plurality
enough to win um and they won they ended
up getting crushed in the general
election and they kind of faded away but
to me I was like what that was an
interesting story I see it as
um I have this character in the book
called The Golem which is a big kind of
a big dumb powerful monster that's the
you know the emergent property of like a
political Echo chamber it's like this
big giant it's stupid but it's powerful
and scary
um and to me I was like a Golem rose up
conquered the party for a second knocked
it on its ass and then
and then faded away and to me when I
looked at the Trump Revolution and a lot
and not just Trump the last 20 years I
see that same lower right that lower
right monster kind of
um
making another charge for it but this
time succeeding and really taking over
the party for a long period of time I
see the same story which is the power
games are being played
um in a situation when it had always
been the government relies on all these
Unwritten rules and Norms to function
but for example you have in 2016 Merrick
Garland gets a gets nominated by Obama
and their Unwritten Norm says that when
the president nominates a Justice then
you pass them through unless there's
some egregious thing that's what has
happened but they said actually this is
the last year of his presidency and the
people should choose I don't think we
should set a new precedent where you the
president can't nominate people uh
nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the
last year so they they passed the throw
and it ends up being Gorsuch
um and so they they lose that seat now
three years later it's Trump's last year
and it's another election year
and Ginsburg dies and what did they say
they say oh let's keep our president
they said no oh actually we changed our
mind we're going to nominate Amy Barrett
so to me that is classic power games
right that there there's there's no
actual rule in what you're doing is they
had they did technically have the power
to block the nomination then and then
they technically had the power to put
someone and they and they're pretending
there's some principle to it but they're
just extra they're going for the a
short-term Edge at the expense of what
is like the workings of the system in
the long run and then what do the
Democrats have to do in that situation
because both parties have been doing
this is they either can lose now all the
time or they start playing the power
games too and now you have a prisoner's
dilemma where it's like both are end up
doing this thing because and then
everyone ends up worse off the debt
ceiling All these power plays that are
being made with these these holding the
country hostage this is power games and
to me that's what Goldwater was doing in
the 60s but it was a healthier time in a
way because there was this plurality
within the parties reduced some of the
national tribalism and that there wasn't
as much of an appeal to that but today
it's just like do whatever you have to
do to beat the enemies and so I'm seeing
a rise in power games and I talk about
the Republicans because they did a lot
of these things first they have been a
little bit more Regis but both parties
have been doing it over the last 20 30
years can you place uh blame or maybe
there's a different term for it at uh
the subsystems of this so is it the
media is it the politicians like in the
senate in Congress is it Trump so the
leadership is it
um or maybe it's us
human beings uh maybe social media
versus mainstream media is there a sense
of where what is the cause of what is
the symptom it's very complex so Ezra
client's a great book while we're
polarized where he talks about a lot of
this and there's there's some of these
are you know it's really no one's fault
first of all it's the environment has
changed in a bunch of ways you just
mentioned and what happens when you take
human nature which is a constant and you
put it into an environment
Behavior comes out the environment is
the independent variable when that
changes the dependent variable the
behavior changes with it right and so
the environment has changed in a lot of
ways so one major one is
it used to for a long time actually the
the the the first there was the
Republicans and then the Democrats just
had a Stranglehold on Senate on Congress
there was no it was not even competitive
the Democrats for 40 years had the
majority
and so therefore it actually isn't a
decent environment to compromise it
because now we can both you know what
you want is Congress people thinking
about their home district and and you
know voting yes on a national policy
because we're going to get a good deal
on it back at home that's actually
healthy as opposed to voting and
lockstep together because this is what
the red party is doing regardless of
what's good for my home District you
know an example is Obamacare you know
there are certain Republican districts
that would have actually officially been
benefited by Obamacare but every
Republican voted against it so and part
of the reason is because there's no
longer this obvious majority every few
years it switches it's a 50 50 thing and
that's you know partially because it's
become so we've been so subsumed with
this one National divide of left versus
right that
um that that that that people are not
people are whoever you know they're
voting for the same party for president
uh all the way down the ticket now and
so you have this just kind of 50 50
color war and that's awful for
compromise so there's like 10 of these
things you know that have redistricting
but also it is social media it is you
know I call it hypercharged tribalism
you know in the 60s you had kind of
distributed tribalism you had some
people that are worked up about the USSR
right they're National that's what they
care about U.S versus a foreign some
people that were saying left versus
right like they today and then other
people that were saying that they were
fighting within the party but today you
don't have that it's it's the the you
have ideological realignment so you kind
of got rid of a lot of the in-party
fighting and then there's hasn't been
that big of a foreign threat not nothing
like the USSR for a long time so you
kind of lost that and what's left is
Justice left versus right thing and so
that's kind of this hypercharged
Whirlpool that subsumes everything and
um and so yeah yeah it's I mean you
people point to Newt Gingrich you know
people like there's certain characters
that enacted policies that stoked this
kind of thing but I I think this is a
much bigger kind of environmental shift
well that's going back to our questions
about the role of individuals in human
history so the the interesting one of
the many interesting questions here is
about Trump is he a symptom or a Cause
because it seems to be from the public
narrative such a significant
Catalyst for some of the things we're
seeing this goes back to what we were
talking about earlier right like is it
is it the person or is the times I think
he's a perfect example of it's a both
situation I don't think that I don't
think if you pluck Trump out of the
situation I don't think that Trump was
inevitable but I think we were very
vulnerable to a demagogue and if you
hadn't been Trump would have had no
chance and so what and why were we
vulnerable to a demagogue is because you
have these
Mommy I think it's specifically on the
right
if you actually look at the stats it's
pretty bad like the people who because
because it's not just who voted for
Trump a lot of people just vote for the
red right what's interesting is who
voted for Obama Against Romney and then
voted for Trump who you know these are
not racists right these are not hardcore
Republicans they voted for Obama
and where did the switch come from
places that had economic despair where
Bridges were not working well that's a
signifier you know we're we're paint
chipping in the schools you know these
little things like this so I think that
you know you had this
a lot of these kind of rural towns you
have true Despair and then you also have
a and the number one indicator of voting
for Trump was distrust in media and the
media has become much less trustworthy
you know and so you you have the the all
these ingredients that actually make us
very vulnerable to a demagogue and a
demagogue is someone who takes advantage
right there's someone who comes in and
says I can pull all the right strings
and Pull and and and push all the right
emotional buttons right now and get
myself Power by taking advantage of the
circumstances and that is what Trump
totally did
it makes me wonder how easy it is for
somebody who's a charismatic leader to
uh capitalize on
cultural resentment when when there's
economic hardship to channel that so
John height wrote a great article about
like the true we basically we like truth
is in an all-time low right now like
it's the media is not penalized for
lying yeah right MSNBC Fox News these
are not penalized for being inaccurate
or penalized if they stray from the
Orthodoxy
on social media it's not the truest
tweets that go viral right and so Trump
understood that better than anyone right
he he took advantage of it he he was
living in the current world when
everyone else was stuck in the past and
he saw that and he just lied he
everything he said
you know it doesn't the truth was not
relevant at all right it's just it's
just truly it's not relevant to him and
what he's talking about he doesn't care
and and he knew that neither do is a
subset of the country I was thinking
about this just reading articles by
journalists
especially when you're not a a famous
journalist in yourself but you're more
like in your
times journalist so the big famous thing
is the institution you're a part of to
do like you can just lie yeah because
you're not going to get punished for it
you're going to be rewarded for of the
popularity of an article so if you write
10 articles
it's there's a huge incentive to just
make stuff up you got to get clicks to
get clicks that's the first and foremost
and like culturally
people will attack that article that
says it's not like one half the country
will attack that article saying is
dishonest but they'll kind of forget the
um you will not have a reputational hit
right there won't be a memory like this
person made up a lot of stuff in the
past no they'll take one article at a
time and they'll attach the reputation
hits will be to New York Times the
institution yeah and so for the
individual journalists there's a huge
incentive to make stuff up totally it's
it's it it is and it's scary because
it's almost you can't survive if you're
just an old school honest journalist who
really works hard and tries to get it
right and does it with Nuance like what
you can be is you can be a big time sub
stacker or big time podcaster A lot of
people do have a reputation for accuracy
and rigor and they have huge audiences
but
um if you're working in a big company
right now
um it's I mean especially I mean I like
I I I think that many of the big media
brands are very much controlled by the
left and but I will say that that the
ones that are controlled by the right or
even more egregious not just in terms of
accuracy but also in terms of you know
the New York Times for all of its
criticisms
they have a handful of uh they they
every they here and there they put out a
pretty
you know a an article that Strays from
the they know Barry Weiss wrote there
for a long time and then you've got
um they wrote an article criticizing
free speech on campus stuff you know
recently um and they have you know they
have a couple very you know left uh
Progressive friendly conservatives but
they have conservatives that are
operating the op-eds Fox News you know
you're not seeing thoughtful uh
Breitbart you're not seeing thoughtful
progressives writing there right there's
some degree to which the New York Times
I think still incentivizing the values
the vertical
the high effort so the you're allowed to
have a conservative opinion if you do a
really damn good job yeah like if it's a
very thorough in-depth art kind of and
if you kind of Pander to the progressive
senses in all the right ways you know I
always joke that you know Ted you always
have a couple you know token
conservatives but they get on stage and
they're basically like so totally you're
all you know where the the progressive
systems are that's right about all of
this but maybe maybe you know
libertarianism isn't all about you know
it's just so there is an element but you
know what it's it's something it's
better than than being a total tribal I
think you can you can see the New York
Times tug of war the internal tug of war
you can see it because then they also
have these awful instances you know or
like you know the firing of James
Bennett which is this whole other story
but like they have you yeah you can see
it going both ways but in the 60s what
did you have you had ABC NBC CBS you
know the 70s you know you had these
three news channels and they weren't
always right and they definitely
sometimes narrative together maybe about
the Vietnam or whatever but
they if one of them was just lying
they'd be embarrassed for it they would
be penalized they'd be dinged and they'd
be known as this is the trash one and
that would be terrible for their ratings
because they weren't just catering to
half the country they're kidding they
all located under the whole country so
both on the axis of accuracy and on the
axis of neutrality they had to
you know try to stay somewhere in the
the reasonable range and that's just
gone one of the things I'm really
curious about is I think your book is
incredible
I'm very curious to see how it's written
about by the Press
because I could see click I could myself
write with the help of charge GPT of
course click bait articles in either
direction yeah it's easy to imagine your
whole book is beautifully written for
click bait articles yeah if any
journalists out there need help I can I
can help you yeah okay I can write out
the most atrocious criticisms yeah uh
I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm ready I'm braced
um yeah so speaking of which uh you
write about social justice you write
about two kinds of social justice
liberal social justice and uh sjf social
justice fundamentalism what are those
yeah so like the term wokeness is so
loaded with baggage it's kind of like
mocking and derogatory and that's I was
trying not to do that in this book
um if it's the terms a little bit
baggage you're already kind of you're
you're from from the first minute you're
already behind
um so
to me uh it also that when it when
people say wokeness is bad social
justice is bad they're throwing the baby
out with the bathwater
um because the the pro you know the
proudest tradition in the U.S is liberal
social justice and what I mean by that
again liberal meaning with lowercase L
it is it is intertwined with liberalism
so Martin Luther King Classic example
his I Have a Dream speech he says stuff
like this country you know
is you know has has made a promise
to all of its citizens and it has broken
that promise to to its black citizens
right
in other words liberalism the
Constitution the core ideals those are
great we are not living up to them we're
failing on some of them
so Civil Disobedience the goal of it
wasn't to to hurt liberalism is to
specifically break the laws that were
already violating Liberty that were the
laws that were a violation of liberalism
to expose that this is illiberal that
the constitution should not have people
of different skin color sitting in
different parts of the bus and so it was
it was kind of a it was really patriotic
you know the Civil Rights Movement was
saying this is a beautiful you know we
have a we have a liberalism is this
beautiful thing and we need to do better
at it so I call it liberal social
justice and it used the tools of
liberalism to try to uh
to try to uh improve the flaws and that
we're going on so free speech you know
Mario Savio in the 60s was a you know
he's a leftist and what would the
leftists doing in the 60s on Berkeley
campus you know they were saying we need
more free speech
um because that's what social liberal
social justice was fighting for but you
can also go back to the 20s women's
suffrage I mean so the the you know the
Emancipation the the thing that America
obviously has all of its these These are
these are all ugly things that it had to
get out of but it got out of them you
know one by one and it's still getting
out of them that's what's cool about
America and liberal social justice
basically is the practice of saying
where are we not being perfect liberals
and now let's fix that
so that that's the idea of liberalism
that permeates the history of the United
States but then there's interplay heaven
and so many good images in this book but
one of them is uh is highlighting the
interplay of different ideas over the
past uh let's say 100 years so
liberalism is on one side there's that
thread there's Marxism on the other and
then there's post-modernism
how do those interplay together so it's
interesting because
Marxism
is and all of its various you know
descendants obviously there's a lot of
things that are rooted in Marxism that
aren't you know the same thing as what
Karl Marx preached
but what do they all have in common
they think liberalism is bad right they
actually think that
um
that the opposite of what Martin Luther
King and other people uh in the Civil
Rights and other movements they think
the opposite they think he thinks you
know liberalism is good we need to
preserve it they said liberalism is the
problem these other problems with racism
and inequality that we're seeing those
are inevitable results of liberalism
liberalism is a rigged game and it's
just the power games in Disguise there
is no liberal games it's just the power
games in Disguise and there's the upper
people that oppress the lower people and
they convince the lower people it's all
about false consciousness they convince
the lower people that everything is fair
and now the lower people vote against
their own interests and they and they
work to preserve the system that's
suppressing them and what do we need to
do we need to actually there's much more
revolutionary we need to overthrow
liberalism right so people think is oh
you know like what we call a wokeness is
just you know a normal social justice
activists activism but it's like more
extreme right it's this no no it's the
polar opposite polar opposite and so
um now that's that's the Marxist thread
now post-modernism is kind of you know
this term that is super controversial
and I don't think anyone calls himself a
postmodernist or take all this with a
grain of salt in terms of the term but
what's the definition of radical the
definition of radical to me is
how deep
you want change to happen at so so um a
liberal Progressive
and and a conservative Progressive will
disagree about policies the liberal
Progressive wants to you know change a
lot of policies change change change
change right and the conservative is
more wants to keep things the way they
are
but they're both conservative when it
comes to liberalism
um beneath it the liberal kind of
foundation of the country they both
wanted they both are become
conservatives about that the Marxist is
more radical because they want to go one
notch deeper and actually overthrow that
Foundation now what's below
what's below liberalism is kind of the
core tenets of modernity
um this idea of reason and
um the notion that there is an objective
truth and
um uh science as it's the scientific
method right these things are actually
beneath and even the Marxist if you look
at the Frankfurt School you know these
these these these post-marxist thinkers
and and Marx himself they were not
anti-science they believed in that
bottom bottom
Foundation they were they were they were
they were actually wanted to preserve
modernity but they wanted to get rid of
liberalism on top of it the
post-modernist is even more radical
because they want to actually go down to
the bottom level and overthrow they
think science itself is a tool of
Oppression they think it's a tool uh
where oppression kind of flows through
you know they think that the white
Western world has invented these
Concepts like you know they claim that
there's an objective truth and that
there's you know reason in science and
they think all of that is just one
meta-narrative and right and and it goes
a long way to serve the interests of the
powerful so in the sense that so it's
almost caricatured but that that is to
the core of their beliefs that math
could be racist for example oh yeah
absolutely not the educational math but
literally math the notion in math that
there's a right answer and a wrong
answer that they believe is a
meta-narrative that serves white
supremacy or in in in the post-modernist
might have said it serves just the
powerful
um or the wealthy but to so what social
justice fundamentalism is is you take
the Marxist thread that has been going
on in lots of countries and has and and
who over the upper and lower is that's
what they all have in common but the
upper and lower you know and for Marx
was the ruling class and the oppressed
class it was economic
um and then uh but you come here and and
the economic class doesn't you know
doesn't resonate as much here as it did
maybe in some of those other places but
what does resonate here in the 60s and
70s is race and gender and these kind of
social justice disagreements and so what
social justice fundamentalism is is
basically this this tried and true
framework of
you know this Marxist framework
kind of with a new skin on it which is
American social justice and then made
even more radical with the infusion of
post-modernism where you know not just
as liberalism bad but actually the sign
you know that like you said math can be
racist so it's this kind of like
philosophical Frankenstein this like
stitched together of these it and has
and and so again it's called you you
know they they wear the same uniform as
the liberal social justice they say
social justice right you know Racial
equality
but it has nothing to do with liberal
social justice it is directly opposed to
Liberal social justice this is
fascinating the evolution
of ideas if if we ignore the harm done
by it it's fascinating how humans get
together and evolve these ideas so as
you show Marxism is the idea that
Society is a zero-sum I mean I guess
zero sum is a really important thing
here uh zero-sum struggle between the
ruling class and the working class with
power being exerted through politics and
economics then you add
critical theory Marxism 2.0 on top of
that and you add to politics and
economics you add culture and
institutions and then on top of that for
postmodernism you add science you have
morality basically anything else you can
think to stitch together Frankenstein
and if you notice and which is not
necessarily bad but in this case I think
it's actually violating the Marxist
tradition by being anti-science and and
you know and it's violating the
post-modernism because what
post-modernists were they were Radical
Skeptics not just of they were Radical
Skeptics not just of the way things were
but of their own beliefs they and what
and social justice fundamentalism is
suddenly is not at all uh self self
critical it says that we have the
answers which is the opposite of what
post-modernists would ever say this no
you just have another meta-narrative so
and it's also violating of course the
tradition of like liberal social justice
in a million ways because it's it's
anti-liberal
um and so this Frankenstein comes
together meanwhile liberal social
justice doesn't have a Frankenstein it's
very clear it's very it's a crisp
ideology that says we need we there are
trying to make we're trying to get to a
more perfect union they're trying to to
to keep the promises made in the
Constitution and that's what it's trying
to do and so it's it's much simpler in a
lot of ways so you write that my big
problem with social justice
fundamentalism isn't the ideology itself
it's what it's Scholars and activists
started to do sometimes around 2013 when
they began to wield a Kajol that's not
supposed to have any place in the
country like the US so it's the actions
not the ideas
I don't like the ideology I think it's a
low-rung ideology I think it's morally
inconsistent based on you know it
flip-flops on on its morals depending on
the the group I think it's Echo chambery
I think it's um I I think it's it's it's
full of inaccuracies and kind of can't
stand up to debate so I think it's a lot
but but there's a ton of lowering
ideologies I don't like I don't like a
lot of religious doctrines I don't like
a lot of political doctrines right
the U.S is a place inherently that is a
mishmash of a ton of ideologies and I'm
not going to like two-thirds of them at
any given time so my problem the reason
I'm writing about this is not because
I'm like by the way this ideology is not
something I like that's not interesting
the reason that it must be written about
right now this particular ideology is
because
it's not playing nicely with others what
what I if you want to be a hardcore you
know Evangelical Christian go in the US
says Live and Let Live not only are you
allowed to to have an echo chamber of
some kind you're it's actively protected
here Live and Let Live they can do what
they want you do what you want now if
the Evangelical Christians started
saying by the way anyone who says
anything that conflicts with Evangelical
Christianity is going to be severely
socially punished and they have the
cultural power to do so which they don't
in this case they might like you but
they don't have the power but I'd be
able to get anyone fired who they want
and they're able to actually change the
curriculum in all these schools in class
to to suddenly not conflict with no more
evolution in the in the textbooks
because they don't want it now I would
write a book about why about Evangelical
Christianity because that's what every
liberal regardless of what you think of
the actual horizontal beliefs
doesn't matter what they believe when it
when they start violating Live and Let
Live
and shutting down other area other
segments of society and in kind of it's
almost like a you know not to you know
it's not the best analogy but like it's
like a a Neco chamber is like a benign
tumor and what you what you have to
watch out for is a tumor that starts to
metastasis that starts to forcefully
spread and damage the tissue around it
and that's what this particular ideology
has been doing do you worry about it you
know as an existential threat
to to liberalism in in the west in the
United States
is it a problem or is it
the biggest problem that's threatening
all of human civilization it's I I would
never I would not say it's the biggest
problem it it might be I wouldn't if
someone if it turns out in 50 years
someone says actually it was I wouldn't
be shocked
but I also I would I wouldn't bet on
that because there's a lot of problems
I'm a little Sergeant drop it it is
popular to say that kind of thing though
and it's less popular to say the same
thing about AI or nuclear weapons which
worries me that I'm more worried about
nuclear weapons even still than I am
about wokeism so I've gotten I've had
probably a thousand arguments about this
that's one nice thing about spending six
years procrastinating on getting a book
done is you end up test battle testing
your ideas a million times so I've heard
this one a lot right which is
there's kind of three groups of former
Obama voters one is super woke now yeah
another one is super anti-woke now and
the third is what you just said which is
sure Wellness is over the top right
they're not you're not woke but
I think that the anti-woke people are
totally lost their mind and it's just
not that big a deal right
now here's why I disagree with that
because it's not it's not wokeness
itself
it's that
a of radical
um political movement of which there
will always be a lot in the country
has managed to do something that a
radical movement is not supposed to be
able to do in the U.S which is they've
managed to
hijack
institutions all across the country and
hijack
medical journals and universities and
you know the ACLU you know saying all
the you know activist organizations and
non-profits and and certain ngos yeah
and many and many tech companies and
what so it's not that I think this thing
is so bad it's a little like we said
with Trump it's that what I'm what's the
reason Trump scares me is not because
Trump's so bad it's that because it
shows it's it reveals that we were
vulnerable to a demagogue candidate and
what wokeness reveals to me is that we
are currently and until something
changes will continue to be vulnerable
to a
um
a bully a bully movement and a
forcefully expansionist movement that
wants to actually
um
destroy the workings you know their
liberal gears and tear them apart and so
so here's the way I view a liberal
democracy is it is a it is is a bunch of
these institutions that were that were
trial and error crafted over you know
hundreds of years
and they all rely on trust public trust
and there's certain kind of feeling of
unity that actually is critical to a
liberal democracy's functioning and with
I see this thing is as a parasite on
that that whose goal is and I'm not
saying by the way each individual in
this is I don't think they're bad people
I think that it's it's the ideology
itself has the property of its goal is
to tear apart the pretty delicate
workings of the liberal democracy and
Shred the critical lines of trust
and so you talk about Ai and you talk
about all these other big problems
nuclear right the reason I I like
writing about that stuff a lot more than
I like writing about politics this was a
fun topic for me is because I realized
that like all of those things if they're
gonna have a good future with those
things and they're actually threats like
I said we need to have a wits about us
and we need the the liberal you know
gears and and levers working we need the
liberal machine working and so if
something's threatening to undermine
that it affects everything else
we need to have our scientific mind
about us about these foundational ideas
but I I guess my sense of hope comes
from observing the immune system respond
to wokism
there seems to be a pro-liberalism
immune system
and not only that so like there's
intellectuals there's people that are
willing to do the fight you talk about
courage are being courageous and there
is a hunger for that such that those
ideas can become viral and they take
over so I just don't see a mechanism by
which wokism
accelerates like exponentially and takes
over like is expand it feels like as it
expands the immune system responds uh of
the the the immune system of the of
liberalism of of basically a country in
at least the United States that's still
ultimately at the core of the individual
values the freedom of speech Just
freedoms in general the freedom of an
individual but that's the battle
so to me it is like a virus and an
immune system yeah and
I totally agree I see the same story
happening and I you know I'm sitting
here rooting for the immune system but
you're still worried well here's the
thing so a liberal democracy is in
always going to be vulnerable to a
movement like this right and there will
be more because it's not a totalitarian
dictatorship because if you can socially
pressure people to not say what they're
thinking you can suddenly start to just
take over right you can break the
liberalism of the liberal democracy
quite easily and suddenly a lot of
things are illiberal
on the other hand
the same vulnerability the same system
that's vulnerable to that also is hard
to truly conquer
because now the maoists
right similar kind of vibe they were
saying that science is evil and as a you
know and that they're the intellectuals
are you know it's all it's all this big
conspiracy
but they could murder you
and they had the hard cudgel in their
hand right and the hard cudgel
is scary and
um and and you can conquer a country
with the hard cudgel but you can't use
that in the U.S so what they have is a
soft cudgel which can have the same
effect
initially you can scare people into
shutting up you can't maybe imprison
them and murder them but if you can
socially ostracize them and get them
fired that basically is going to have
the same effect so the soft cudgel can
have the same effect for a while but the
thing is
it's it's a little bit of a house of
cards because it relies on fear and as
soon as
that fear goes away
the whole thing falls apart right the
soft cultural requires people to be so
scared of getting canceled or getting
whatever and as soon as some people
start you know Toby Luca of Shopify I
always like think about you know he just
said you know what I'm not scared of
this soft cudgel and spoke up
and said we're not political at this
company and we're not a family we're a
team and we're going to do this and you
know what like they're thriving you will
be on this podcast his seems like a
fascinating he's amazing he spoke up
he's one of the smartest and like
kindest dudes but he's also
um he has courage at a time when it's
hard but here's the thing is that it's
different than that you need so much
less courage against a soft cudgel than
you do the Iranians throwing their
hijabs Into the Fire those people's
courage just just blows away any courage
we have here because they might get
executed
that's the thing is that you can
actually have courage right now and it's
so
don't worry about it
um
oh man the irony of that and you talk
about so two things to fight this
there's two things awareness and courage
what's the awareness piece
the awareness piece is
um
is is under first just no understanding
the stakes
like getting our heads out of the sand
and being like technology is blowing up
exponentially where our society's trust
is devolving like we're kind of falling
apart in some important ways we're
losing our grip on some stability at the
worst time
that's the first point just a big
picture and then also awareness of I
think this vertical axis or whatever
your version of it is this concept of
how do I really form my beliefs where do
they actually come from where you know
did they are they someone else's beliefs
am I following a checklist
um how about my values you know I used
to identify with the blue party or the
red party but now they've changed and
and I suddenly am okay with that is that
because my values change with it or am I
actually anchored to the party not to
any principle asking yourself these
questions
um asking you know looking for where do
I feel disgusted by fellow human beings
you know that maybe I'm I'm being a
crazy tribal person without realizing it
how about the people around me am I
being bullied by some Echo chamber
without realizing it
um am I the bully somewhere right so
that's the first just just I think just
to kind of do a self-audit and and and
um and I think that like just just some
awareness like that it's just a
self-audit about these things can can go
a long way but if you don't if you keep
it to yourself it's almost useless
because if it doesn't if you don't have
without you know awareness without
courage does very little so courage is
when you take that awareness and you
actually export it out into the world
and it starts affecting other people and
so courage can happen on multiple levels
it can happen by first of all just stop
saying stuff you don't believe if you're
being pressured by a kind of a ideology
or a movement to say stuff that you
don't actually believe just stop just
just just stay in your ground and don't
say anything that's that's courage
that's one first step
start speaking out in small groups
starts you know actually speaking around
see what happens the sky doesn't usually
fall actually people usually respect you
for it like you know and it's not not
every group but like you'd be surprised
and then eventually you know maybe start
speaking out in bigger groups start
going public you know Global go public
with it but and you don't need everyone
doing this look some people will lose
their jobs for it I'm not talking to
those people most people won't lose
their jobs but they have the same fear
as if they would right and it's like
what are you gonna get criticized or are
you gonna get a bunch of people you know
angry Twitter people will will criticize
you like it yeah it's not pleasant but
actually that's a little bit like our
primitive Minds fear that really
back when it was programmed that kind of
ostracism or criticism will get leave
you out of the tribe and you'll die
today it's kind of a delusional fear
it's not actually that scary and the
people who have realized that can can
exercise incredible leadership right now
so you have a really interesting
description of censorship of
self-censorship also as you've been
talking about uh who's King mustache and
uh this Gap I think I hope you write
even more even more than you've written
in the book about these ideas because
it's so strong this this censorship gaps
that are created between the dormant
thought pile
and uh the kind of thing under the
speech curve yeah so first of all so I
like to think of
I think it's a useful tool is this thing
called a thought pile which is if you
have a On Any Given issue you have a
horizontal spectrum and just say I could
take your brain out of your head and I
put it on the thought pile right where
you happen to believe about that issue
now I did that for everyone in the in
the community or in a society and you're
going to end up with a big mushy pile
that I think will often form a bell
curve if it's really politicized it
might form like a camel with two humps
because it's like concentrated here but
for a typical issue it'll just form you
know a fear of AI you're going to have a
bell curve right you know things like
this that's the thought pile now the
second thing is a line that's I call the
speech curve which is what people are
saying so this feature curve is high
when not just a lot of people are saying
it but it's being said from the biggest
platforms being said in the you know on
the you know in the New York Times and
it's being said by the president on you
know in the State of the Union those
things are the top of the speech curve
now and and then as you know and then
when the speech occurs lower it means
it's being said either whispered in
small groups or it's just not very many
people are talking about it now a
healthy when a when a free speech
democracy is healthy on a certain topic
you've got the speech curve sitting
right on top of the thought pile they
they mirror each other which is
naturally what would happen more people
think something is going to be said more
often and from higher platforms
what censorship does and that censorship
can be from the government I so I use
the tale of King mustache and King
mustache she's a little tiny Tyrant and
he's very sensitive and people are
making fun of his mustache and they're
saying he's not a good King and he does
not like that so what does he do he
enacts a policy and he says anyone who
has heard criticize anyone who's heard
criticizing me or my mustache or my rule
will be put to death
and immediately at the town was because
his father was a very liberal it was
always free speech in in his kingdom but
now King mustache has taken over and
he's saying this is a new new rules now
and so a few people yell out and they
say that's not how we do things here
and that moment it's what I call a
moment of truth
did the king's guards stand with the
principles of the kingdom and say yeah
King mustache that's not what we do in
which case he would kind of have to he's
nothing he can do
or are they going to execute so in this
case it's as if he laid down an electric
fence over a part of this thought pile
and said no one's allowed to speak over
here the speech curve maybe people will
think these things but the speech curve
cannot go over here
but the electric fence wasn't actually
electrified until the king's guards in a
moment of truth get scared and say okay
and they hang the five people who spoke
out so in that moment that fence just
became electric and now no one
criticizes King mustache anymore so I
use this as an allegory now of course he
has a hard cudgel because he can execute
people but now when we look at the U.S
what you're seeing right now is a lot of
pressure
which is very similar an electric fence
is being laid down saying no one can
criticize these ideas
and if you do you won't be executed
you'll be canceled you'll be you'll be
you'll be fired now what is that fence
electrified from there no they can't
actually they're not working the company
they can't fire you
but they can start a Twitter mob when
someone violates that speech curve when
someone violates that speech Rule and
then the leadership at the company has
the moment of truth
and what the leaders should do is stand
up for their company's values which is
almost always in favor of the employee
and say look you know even if they made
a mistake they make people make mistakes
we're not going to fire them or maybe
that person actually said something
that's reasonable we should discuss it
but either way we're not going to fire
them and if they said no what happens is
the Twitter mom actually doesn't have
they can't execute you they they go away
and the fence has proven to have no
electricity what's been the problem with
the past few years is what's happened
again and again is the leader gets
scared and they don't they get scared of
the front when they fire them boom that
fence has electricity and now actually
if you cross that
it's not just you know a threat like you
will have you'll be out of a job like
it's really bad like you'll have a huge
penalty you might not be able to feed
your kids
so that's an electric fence that goes up
now what happens when an electric fence
goes up and it's proven to actually be
electrified the speech curve morphs into
a totally different position and now
these new people say instead of having
the kind of marketplace of ideas you
know that turns into a kind of a natural
belt curve they say no no these ideas
are okay to say not just okay you'll be
socially rewarded and these ones don't
that's the rules of their own Echo
chamber that they're now applying to
everyone and it's working and so the
speech curve distorts and so you end up
with now instead of one region which is
a region of kind of active communal
thinking what people are thinking and
saying you now have three regions
you have a little active communal
thinking but mostly you now have this
dormant thought pile which is all these
these opinions that suddenly everyone's
scared to say out loud everyone's
thinking but they're scared to say
everyone's thinking but no one's saying
and then you have this other region
which is this the the approved ideas of
this now cultural kind of dictator
and those are being spoken from the
largest platforms and they're being
repeated by the president and they're
being repeated all over the place you
know even though people don't believe it
and that's this Distortion and what
happens is the the society becomes
really stupid because active communal
thinking is the region where we can
actually think together and now no one
can think together and it gets it gets
siled into small private conversations
it's really powerful what you said about
institutions and so on it's not trivial
to from a leadership position to be like
no we we defend the employee or defend
the
um yeah the the employee the person with
us on our like because we don't there's
because there's no actual
uh ground to the any kind of violation
we're hearing about so the mob they
resist the mob it's ultimately to the
leader I guess of a particular
institution of a particular company and
it's difficult oh yeah no no it's not I
don't if it were easy it wouldn't it it
there wouldn't be all of these failings
and by the way this is that's the immune
system failing that's the liberal immune
system of that company failing but also
then it's an example which means a lot
of other you know it's failing kind of
to the country it's not easy of course
it's not because what because we have
primitive Minds that are wired to care
so much about what people think of us
and even if we're not gonna you know
maybe first of all we're scared that
it's going to start a because you know
what you know what what do mobs do
they don't just say I'm going to
criticize you I'm going to criticize
anyone who still buys your product I'm
going to criticize anyone who goes on
your podcast so it's not just you it's
now suddenly if if if if Lex becomes
tarnished enough now I go on the podcast
and people are saying oh I'm not buying
his book he went on Lex Friedman no no
thanks right and now I get by there it's
a call I call it a smear web like you've
been smeared and it's so we're in such a
you know bad time that it smear travels
to me and now meanwhile someone buys my
book and tries to share it someone said
you're buying that guy's book you know
he goes on Lex Freeman you see how this
happens right so that hasn't happened in
this case but that so we are so wired
hey that is kind of bad right like that
is actually like bad for you but but
we're wired to care about it so much
because it meant life or death back in
the dead yeah yeah yeah and luckily in
this case we're both uh you probably can
smear each other in this conference this
is wonderful I I smear you all given
given the nature of your book
um
what do you think about freedom of
speech as a term and as an idea as a way
to resist the mechanism this mechanism
of uh dormant thought pile and
artificially generated speech
this ideal of the freedom of speech and
protecting speech and celebrating speech
well so this is this is kind of
the point I was talking about earlier
about
King mustache
made a rule against for he's created
official because just I just love the
the one of the amazing things about your
book as you get later and later in the
book you cover more and more difficult
issues as a way to illustrate the
importance of the vertical perspective
but there's something about using
hilarious drawings throughout that make
it much more fun and it takes you away
from the personal somehow and you start
thinking in the space of ideas versus
like outside of the tribal type of
thinking so it's a really brilliant I
mean I would advise for anybody to do
con when they write controversial books
to have hilarious drawings it's true
like put the silly stick figure in your
thing and it lightens it does it
lightens the mood it gets people's guard
down a little bit you know and it works
it it reminds people that like we're all
friends here right like we're you know
that's like you know laugh at ourselves
laugh at the laugh at the fact that
we're like in a culture War a little bit
and now we can talk about it right as
opposed to like getting like religious
about it but but basically like King
mustache had no First Amendment he said
we the government is censoring right
which is very common around the world
right Government Center all them the US
you know again there's some you can
argue there's some controversial things
recently but basically the US the First
Amendment isn't the problem
right no one is being arrested for
saying the wrong thing but this graph is
still happening and so so freedom of
speech when people if what people like
to say is if someone's can't complaining
about like cancel culture and saying you
know this is this is you know an
anti-free speech
people like to point out no it's not the
government's not arresting you for
anything this is called like you know
the free market buddy like this is
called
you know you're putting your ideas out
and you're getting criticized and your
precious Marketplace of ideas there it
is right I've gotten this a lot
and this is not making a critical
distinction between cancel culture and
criticism culture
um
criticism culture is a little bit of
this kind of high wrong idea lab stuff
we talked about criticism culture
attacks the idea and and and and and and
and
encourages further
discussion right it enlivens discussion
it makes everyone smarter
cancel culture attacks the person very
different can criticism culture says
here's why this idea is so bad let me
tell you cancer culture says here's why
this person is bad and no one should
talk to them and they should be fired
and what does that do it doesn't enliven
the discussion it makes everyone scared
to talk and it's the opposite it shuts
down discussion so you still have your
first amendment but first amendment plus
cancel culture equals you might as well
be in king must you might as well have
government censorship right first
amendment plus criticism culture great
now you have this vibrant Marketplace of
ideas so
there's a very clear difference
um and so when when people criticize the
cancel culture and then someone says oh
see you're so sensitive now you look
you're doing the cancel culture yourself
you're trying to punish this person for
critics like no no no no
every good liberal and I and I mean that
in the lower case which is that anyone
who believes in Liberal democracies
regardless of what they believe should
stand up and say no to cancel culture
and say this is not okay regardless of
what the actual topic is and that makes
them a good liberal versus if they're
trying to cancel someone who's just
criticizing they're doing the opposite
now they're shutting so it's the
opposite things but it's very easy to
get confused you can see
people take advantage of the and
sometimes they just don't know it
themselves the the lines here can be
very confusing the wording can be very
confusing and be without that wording
suddenly it looks like someone who's
criticizing cancel culture is
canceling but they're not
you uh applied this thinking to
universities in particular
there's a great
yet another great image on the trade-off
between knowledge and conviction and
it's what's commonly actually can maybe
explain to me the difference but you uh
it's often referred to the
dunning-kruger effect where you uh when
you first learn everything you have an
extremely
um high confidence about
self-estimation of how well you
understand that thing you actually say
that dining cougar means something else
so yeah it's everyone I post this
everyone's like Dunning Krueger and it's
a and it's what everyone thinks Dunning
Kruger isn't Dunning Kruger is a little
different it's it's you have a diagonal
line like this one right which is the
place you are it's the I I call it like
the humility tightrope it's a humility
Sweet Spot it's exactly the right level
of humility based on what you know if
you're below it you're insecure you
actually have too much humility you
don't have enough confidence because you
know more than you're giving yourself
credit for and when you're above the
line you're in the Arrogant zone right
you're you need to you need a dose of
humility right you think you know more
than you do so y'all want to stay on
that tightrope and Dunning Kruger is
basically a straight line that's just uh
has a lower slope so you start off you
still are you still are getting more
confident as you go along
but you
start off above that line and as you
learn more you end up below the line
good later so but anyway so this wavy
thing this wavy thing is is a different
phenomenon and it's just related but so
this idea so for people just listening
um there's a child's Hill pretty damn
sure you know a whole lot and feeling
great about it that's in the beginning
and then there's an insecure Canyon you
crash down acknowledging that you don't
know that much and then there's a growth
Mountain growing up Mount grown-up
Mountain uh where after you feel ashamed
and embarrassed about not knowing that
much you begin to realize that knowing
how little you know is the first step in
becoming someone who actually knows
stuff and that's the uh the grown-up mom
and you climb and climb and climb uh
you're saying that in universities we're
pinning people
at the top of the child's Hill so so for
me this is a very you know I think of
myself with this because I went to
college like a lot of 18 year olds and I
was very cocky I just thought I knew it
I know and um when it came to politics I
was like bright blue just because I grew
up in a bright blue suburb and I wasn't
thinking that hard about it and I
thought that you know
um and what I did when I went to college
is met a lot of smart conservatives and
a lot of smart progressives
um but I've met a lot of people who
weren't just going down a checklist and
they knew stuff
and when I and suddenly I realized that
like a lot of these views I have are not
based on knowledge
they're based on other people's
conviction everyone else thinks that's
true now I think it's well you know I'm
I'm actually like
I'm I'm transferring someone else's
conviction to me and who knows why they
have conviction they might have
conviction because they're transferring
from someone else and I'm a smart dude I
thought why why am I
why am I like giving away my own
independent you know learning
yeah abilities here and just adopting
other views so anyway it was this
humbling experience it wasn't just about
politics by the way it was that I had
strong views about a lot of stuff and I
just I got lucky not or not lucky I
sought out
you know the kind of people I sought out
were the type that loved to disagree and
they were man they knew stuff
and so you're quickly in you know in in
again ideal lab culture it was an idea
lab and also I also went to I started
getting in the habit I Started Loving
listening to people who disagreed to me
because it was so exhilarating listening
to a Smart part when I thought there was
no no Credence to this other argument
right the the the the this side of this
debate is obviously wrong I wanted to
see an Intelligence Squared on that
debate in particularly I wanted to go
see I actually got into Intelligence
Squared in college I wanted to see a
smart person who disagrees with me talk
it became so fascinating to me right it
was the most interesting thing that was
a new thing I didn't think I liked that
and so what did that do that that shoved
me down the humble tumble here and
number three it shoved me down where I
started to and then I and then I went
the other way where I realized that I
had been a lot of my identity had been
based on this faux feeling of knowledge
this idea that I thought I knew
everything now that I don't have that I
was like I felt really like dumb and I
felt really almost like embarrassed of
what I knew and so that's where I call
this insecure Canyon I think it's
sometimes when you're so used to
thinking you know everything and then
you realize you don't it's like it's and
then you start to realize that actually
really awesome thinkers they were if
they they don't judge me for this they
totally respect if I say I don't know
anything about this and say oh cool you
should read this and this and this they
don't say you don't know anything they
don't say that right and so
and not that I'm by the way this is not
to say I'm now on grown-up mountain and
you should all join me I often find
myself drifting up with like a helium
balloon oh I think I read about the new
thing and suddenly I think I have I
think I I you know I read three things
about you know a new AI thing and I'm
like I'll go do a talk on this I'm like
no I won't I don't I I just I'm gonna
just be spouting out the opinion of the
person I just read so I have to remind
myself but it's useful now what the
reason my problem with colleges today
is that it's I was a graduated in 2004.
this is a recent change is that
all of those speakers I went who
disagreed with me a lot of them were
conservative
so many of those speakers would not be
allowed on campuses today and so many of
the discussions I had room big groups or
classrooms and this is still you know
this was a liberal campus
so many of those disagreements
um uh they're not happening today and
you I've interviewed a ton of college
students it's chilly it is you know
people keep to themselves so what's
happening is not only are people losing
that push-off child's Hill which was so
valuable to me so valuable to me as a
thinker it kind of started my life as a
better thinker they're losing that but
actually what college a lot of the
college classes and the vibe in colleges
a lot of what is now saying that there
is one right set of views and it's this
kind of you know woke ideology
um and it's right and anyone who
disagrees with it is bad and anyone and
and don't speak up you know unless
you're gonna agree with it it's teaching
people that child's Hills that you know
it's nailing people's feet to child's
Hill it's teaching people that these are
right this user right and like you don't
have any you nothing to you should feel
a complete conviction about them yeah
how do we fix it
is is it part of the administration is
it part of the culture as a part of the
uh is is a part like actually instilling
in the individual like 18 year olds the
idea that this is
the beautiful way to live is to embrace
the disagreement and the growth from
that it's awareness and courage it's the
same thing so first of all just get when
awareness is people need to see
what's happening here that kids are
getting losing the they're not going to
college and becoming better tougher more
robust thinkers yeah
they're actually going to college and
becoming zealots they're getting taught
to be zealots and they at in the website
still advertises you know wide variety
of I've you know the website is a bait
and switch you listen to all the
universities yeah it's a bait and switch
it's it's still saying here you're
coming here for a wide intellectual
basically they're advertising this is an
idea lab and you get there and it's like
actually it's an echo chamber that
you're paying money for so if people
realize that they start to get mad
hopefully
and then courage I mean starts you know
yes Brave students there's been some
very brave students who have started you
know big think clubs and stuff like that
where it's like we're gonna have you
know present both sides of a debate here
and that that takes courage but also
um courage and Leadership
um like the the it's it's like if you
look at these colleges it's specifically
the leaders
who show strength
who get the best results
remember the cultural is soft so if a
leader of one of these places says you
know the the college presidents who have
shown some strength
um they actually don't get as much
trouble it's the ones who Pander the
ones who
um
uh in that you know in that moment of
truth they they they shrink away then
they get a lot more trouble the mob
smells blood
for The Listener uh the the podcast
favorite Liv bury just entered and your
friend just entered the room uh do you
mind if she joins us please I think
there's a story she has about you
so live
you mentioned something that there's a
funny story about we haven't talked at
all about the actual process of writing
the book is is there you guys made a bet
of some kind
yeah
is this a true story is this a
completely false fact it's true Liv is
she's mean when she I didn't I did not
know mean live she's like she's like a
bully she's like scary I have to have
that have that screenshot so Liv was
FaceTiming me and she was like
she was like being intimidating I took a
screenshot and I made it my phone
background so every time I opened it I
was like so to give the background of
this it's because if you hadn't noticed
Tim started writing this book how many
years ago six 2016. mid 2016. right as
sort of a response to like the Trump
stuff not even yeah it was just supposed
to be a mini post I was like oh I'm so
like I was like I'm looking at all these
like future Tech things and I feel this
like uneasiness like ah we're gonna like
mess up all these things why there's
like some Cloud over our society let me
just write a mini post and I open it up
to Wordpress to write a one day little
essay
and things went on politics it was going
to be on like this feeling I had that
that like this feeling I had that
um we were our Tech was was just growing
and growing and we were becoming less
wise what's up what's up with that and I
just wanted to write like just like a
little like little thousand word essay
on like something I think we should pay
attention to and that was the beginning
of this six-year nightmare
did you anticipate those the blog post
would take a long while
um
I don't remember the process fully in
terms of I remember you saying I'm
actually writing this is it's turning
into a bigger thing and I was like um
you know because the more we talked
about remember we were talking about it
I was like oh this goes deep because I
didn't really understand the full scope
of the situation like nowhere near and
you sort of explained it I was like okay
yeah I see that and then the more we dug
into it the sort of the deeper and
deeper and deeper it went but no I did
not anticipate it would be six years
let's put it that way and when was your
Ted Talk on uh procrastination so that
was that was March of 2016 and I started
this book three months later it fell
into the biggest procrastination Hall
that I've ever fallen into oh wow the
irony isn't lost on me I mean it's like
it's I I just like I like how much cred
I have as for that Ted talk I'm like I
am legit procrastinator that is not I'm
not just saying it like it wasn't just
that sure because I mean it did you know
you did intend it to start out as a blog
post but then you're like actually this
needs to maybe multiple and she does
make it into a full series you know what
I'll turn it into a book and then as
well and and what what also what Liv
witnessed a few times and my wife has
witnessed like 30 of these is like these
these 180 epiphanies or I'll be like
I'll like I'll have a moment when I'm
and I don't know what you know sometimes
it's that there's a really good idea but
sometimes it's like I'm just dreading
having to finish this the way it is and
so this epiphanies where it's like you
know what I need to start over from the
beginning and just make this like a
short like 20 little blog post list and
then I'll do that and I was like no no I
have like a new Epiphany I have to and
it's these and and yeah it's kind of
like the crazy person a little bit but
anyway can I tell the story of the the
the bed go for it all right so things
came to my head when we were in we were
on vacation in the Dominican Republic uh
Tim and his wife me an eagle
and we were in the ocean and I remember
you'd been in the ocean for like an hour
just bobbing in there becoming it and we
got talking and we were talking about
the book and
you know you were expressing just like
this
you know the just the horror of the
situation basically you're like look I
just I'm so close but there's still this
and then there's this and
um an idea popped into my head which is
the you know poker players often uh we
we will set ourselves like negative bets
you know like uh essentially if we don't
get a job done then we have to do
something we really don't want to do so
instead of having a carrot like a really
really big stick
um so I had the idea to ask Tim okay
what is the worst either organization or
individual uh or that you if you had to
you know that you would loathe give a
large sum of money to and he thought
about it for a little while and he gave
his answer
and I was like all right
what's your net worth he said his net
worth all right 10 of your net worth to
that thing if you don't get the draft
because oh that's sorry but just before
that I'd asked him how long like if you
had a gun to your head onto your wife's
head
and you had to get the book into a state
where you could like send off an edit to
the art to a draft to your editor how
long he's like oh I guess like I could
get it like 95 good in a month I was
like okay great in one month's time if
you do not have that edit yeah
really scary ten percent of your net
worth is going to this thing that you
really really think is terrible but
you're forgetting the kicker go on
the kicker was that because you know
procrastinators they self-defeat that's
what they do and then Liv says I'm going
to sweeten the deal
and I am going to basically match you
and I'm going to put in I'm going to
send this like a huge amount of my own
money there if you don't do it so and
and I can't that's that would be really
bad so not only are you screwing
yourself just screwing a friend and she
and she was like and and as your friend
because I'm your friend I will send it I
will send the money
I mean like that you know like tyranny
yeah um and um
I got the draft in yeah
I know well I was Igor could have tested
this like actually it was it was funny
because it was it was like supposed to
be by the summer solstice or whatever it
was it was like a certain date
and it was like before I got it in at
four and I got no I got it in at four
a.m like the next morning but then and
and and and and they were both like that
doesn't count I'm like it does it's
still for me it's the same day still
it's okay can you imagine how fucked in
the head you have to be yeah so like
literally technically pass the deadline
by four hours
an obscene amount of money to a thing
you loathe that's how bad his his
sickness because I knew the hard hard
deadline I knew that there was no way
she was gonna actually send that money
because it was 4am so I knew I actually
had the whole night so yeah you know I
should actually punish you and Justice I
should send like a nominal amount to
that thing no thanks no but uh is there
some micro like lessons from that from
how to avoid procrastination writing a
book that you've learned yes well I've
learned a lot of things I mean like
first don't take don't write like a
dissertation about like proving some
Grand theory of society because that's
really procrastinating like I I would
have been an awful PhD student for that
reason some and so like I'm gonna do
another book and it's going to be like a
bunch of short chapters that are
one-offs because that's like it just
doesn't feed into because your book is
like a giant like framework there's
Grand theories I know all through your
book I know and I learned not to do that
again I did it once I don't want to do
it again oh with the book yes
yes don't do another one of it looks
look some people should it's just not
for me I I you just did it I know and it
and it almost killed me okay so that's
the first one but secondly yeah like
basically there's two ways to fix
procrastination one is you fix it's like
a picture you have a boat that's leaking
and it's not working very well you can
fix it in two ways you can get your
hammer and nails out and your boards and
actually fix the boat
or you can duct tape it for now to get
yourself across the river but it's not
actually fixed so ideally down the road
I have repaired whatever kind of bizarre
mental illness that I have that makes me
procrastinate in a very like I just
don't self-defeat in this way anymore
but in the meantime
I Can duct tape the boat by bringing
what I call the Panic monster into the
situation via things like this and this
scary person and having external
pressure to have external pressure of
some kind is critical for me uh it's
it's yes I don't have the muscle to do
the work I need to do without external
pressure by the way I live is there a
possible future where you write a book
and Meanwhile by the way huge
procrastinator that's the funny thing
about this yeah yeah I mean how long did
your last video take oh my God is there
advice would you do you give to Liv how
to get the videos done faster well it
would be the same exact thing I mean
actually I can give good procrastination
advice Panic monster
um well we should do it together it
should be like we have this date but
right you know it's it's um we're
actually just do another bet I have to
have my script done by this time yes
yeah if I go to get the third part out
because then you'll actually do it um
and um and and it's not the thing is the
time in but it's like if you if you
could take three weeks on a video and
instead you take 10 weeks it's not like
oh well I've also I'm having more fun in
those times you're the whole 10 weeks
bad so you're just you're just having a
bad time and you're getting less work
done and less work out it's not like
you're enjoying your personal life it's
bad for you for your relationships it's
bad for your your own you keep doing it
anyway yeah well a lot of people why do
people uh have troubles keeping a diet
right yeah primitive mind why'd you
point at me
what's your procrastination weakness do
you have one everything everything right
now everything it's everything preparing
for a conversation I had your book
amazing book I really enjoyed it I
started reading it
I was like this is awesome it's so
awesome that I'm going to save it when
I'm behind the computer and can take
notes like good notes of course that
resulted in like last minute everything
everything
I'm doing in my life not everyone's like
that you know people self-defeat in
different ways some people don't have
this particular problem Adam Grant is
that he calls himself a precrastinator
where he gets an assignment he will go
home and do it until it's done and
handed it which is also not necessarily
good you know it's like you're rushing
it either way but it's better but some
people have the opposite thing
um where they will um the the the the
the the looming deadline makes them so
anxious that they go and fix it right
and the procrastinator I think has a
similar anxiety but it they they resolve
it in a totally different way well they
don't solve it they just live with the
anxiety right right they deliver things
that now I think there's a even bigger
group of people so there's these people
that Adam grants there's people like me
and then there's people who have a
healthy relationship with deadlines but
they're still part of a bigger group of
people that actually they they um
they
need a deadline there to do something so
they actually they still are motivated
by a deadline and as soon as you have
all the things in life that don't have a
deadline like working out and like
working on that album you wanted to
write they don't do anything either so
there's actually like that's why
procrastination is a much bigger problem
Than People realize because it's not
just the funny last second people it's
anyone who
um actually can't get things done that
don't have a deadline
you dedicate your book quote to tandas
who never planned on being married to
someone who would spend six years
talking about his book on politics but
here we are uh what's the secret to a
successful relationship with a
procrastinator
that's maybe for both of you
um well I think the the first most
important thing you already started with
a political answer I could tell okay
good no no the first and most important
thing is because people who don't
procrastinate if you don't it's like you
will they people in the instinct is to
judge it as like uh
that's either either just think think
they're just being like a loser or
they're taking it they'll take it
personally you know uh and instead to
see this as like this is this is a uh
some form of
addiction or some form of ailment you
know they're not just being a dick right
like they have a problem and so so some
compassion but then also maybe finding
that line where you can you know maybe
apply some tough love some middle ground
on the other hand you might say that you
know you don't want the the significant
other relationship where it's like
they're into one nagging you maybe
that's you don't want them even being
part of that and I think maybe it's you
know better to have a live do it instead
right having someone who can like create
the infrastructure where they aren't the
direct stick you need a bit of carrot
and stick right maybe they can be the
person who keeps reminding them of the
carrot
and then they set up the friend group to
be the stick and then that keeps your
relationship yeah in a good steak like
looming in the background that's your
friend group okay at the beginning of
the conversation we talked about how all
of human history can be presented as a
thousand page book
uh what are you excited about for the
what do you say that first page
uh so the next 250 years what are you
most excited about I'm most excited
about
um have you read the Fable of the Dragon
okay well it's an allegory for death and
it's you know Nick Bostrom and he talks
about the he Compares death to a dragon
that eats 60 million people or whatever
the number is every year and you just
every year we Shepherd those people up
and they feed him to the dragon and that
there's a Stockholm syndrome when we say
that's just a lot of man and that's what
we have to do and anyone who says maybe
we should try to beat the dragon they
get called Vain and narcissistic
um but someone who
tries to someone who goes does chemo no
one calls them Vayner narcissistic they
say they're they're you know good good
for you right you're a hero you're
you're fighting fighting the good fight
so I think there's some disconnect here
and I think that if we can
get out of that Stockholm syndrome and
realize that death is just the machine
the human physical machine failing and
that
there's no law of nature that says you
can't with enough technology
um uh repair the machine and keep it
going until no one I don't think anyone
wants to live forever people think they
do no one does but until people are
ready and I think when we hit a world
where we can ex we have enough Tech that
we can continue to keep the human
machine alive until the person says I'm
done I'm ready I think we will look back
and we will think that anything before
that time that'll be the real A.D BC you
know we'll look back at BC before the
big advancement and it'll seem so sad
and so heartbreaking barbaric and people
will say I can't believe
that humans like us had to live with
that when they lost loved ones and they
they died before they were ready I think
that's the ultimate achievement but we
need to stop
criticizing and smearing people who you
talk about it so you think where that's
actually doable in the next two 250
years
okay a lot happens in 250 years
especially when technology is really
exponentially yeah
and you think humans will be around
versus AI complete takes over whereas I
mean look The Optimist in me and maybe
the stupid kind of 2023 person in me
says yeah of course we'll we'll make it
we'll we'll figure it out but you know
I mean we are going into
um create you know I have a friend who
knows as much about the future as anyone
I know I mean he's really he's a big
investor and you know future Tech and he
um he's really on the puzzle things and
he just says Future's gonna be weird
that's what he says if you're just gonna
be weird
don't look at your the last few Decades
of your life and apply that for it and
say that's just what life is like no no
it's going to be weird and different
well some of my favorite things in this
world are weird and speaking of which
it's good to uh have this conversation
it's good to have you as friends this
was an incredible one thanks for coming
back and thanks for talking with me a
bunch more times this is awesome thank
you Lex thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Tim Urban to support
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me leave you with some words from
Winston Churchill
when there's no enemy within the enemies
outside cannot hurt you
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time