← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Sam Harris & Konstantin Kisin Debate: Corruption, Israel-Hamas, Tucker Carlson, DEI & Migrant Crisis PT 2
00:57:58
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- [00:00]
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- [01:00]
Sam Harris
What social media and just the democratization of everything has given us is some insight into how rotten our institutions were in the first place.
- [01:09]
Tom Bilyeu
There's a kind of wokeification of the right that is happening.
- [01:12]
Sam Harris
It's like professional wrestling. Nobody cares that it's fake. If I was caught doing that, I, I would lose 100% of my audience.
- [01:19]
Tom Bilyeu
You have to hear what they have to say.
- [01:22]
Sam Harris
But that's a self reinforcing.
- [01:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Sorry Sam, let me just finish the point.
- [01:26]
Sam Harris
The smell of bullshit is detectable far enough off that you just don't have to spend time with it.
- [01:32]
Tom Bilyeu
You're not gonna put new media back in the tube, right? That's toothpaste is out. It's out there. People are going to have those conversations whether you like that or not.
- [01:41]
Sam Harris
And we have Islamist stealth groups in every western society, certainly in America and the uk.
- [01:49]
Tom Bilyeu
No, I agree with you. May I just on this. I agree with you. There is. And actually the prediction I would make is I think the era of the, you know, I agree with you podcast is kind of, I think that's that's coming to an end. I think the next step is going to be people having disagreements and doing that in good faith. Ideally. But the question is, I guess my question to you, Sam, would be if you feel that that's necessary, you are in a perfect place to do that job. You're someone who's big enough.
- [02:21]
Sam Harris
I just tried. I mean I just pick my battles. I mean it's either the Venn diagram for me is is it interesting and important? You know, sometimes I'll just go with interesting. I Mean, just y' all talk about physics and it's, it's just for fun. But on this kind of. And the question is, is it too much of an opportunity? Cause is it going to take me a month of my life to prepare for this podcast? Or is it even possible to do adequately, given a person's capacity to just refer to stuff that may not exist? And some people are unscrupulous enough that I have just seen. I have just seen in advance that there are enough reasons just not to talk to the person, not to take them seriously. That taking them seriously is already the initial error that no high quality debunking of their bullshit is going to overcome.
- [03:18]
Tom Bilyeu
But the reason we are where we are is largely driven by technology. You're not going to put new media back in the tube. That's toothpaste is out. It's out there. People are going to have those conversations, whether you like that or not. And I guess what I'm saying to you is, given that a lot of people, take your RFK example, given that a lot of people have hosted him on their shows and he wants to come on your show, I think you have a.
- [03:45]
Sam Harris
So what I did is I just took a half hour on my show detailing why I wasn't having him on the show, and I just, I told the story about Jordan's podcast and a few other things.
- [03:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, but that's just. But that isn't the same as engaging with a real human in a conversation in which you could combine a good faith approach, which you generally always have. I would say you could say, I'm going to approach this in good faith. And at the same time, in good faith, I have noticed these things that are fundamentally untrue or misleading or whatever about things that you have said. And let's sit down for a sufficient period of time in which we can actually explore that. Because the reason I'm saying this is I think that the idea that someone is out there being talked to in front of millions of people and the solution to that is either to ignore them or. I'm not saying this is how I think about it. I'm just saying how it might be perceived to snipe from the sidelines is not going to fix that problem. And that problem is largely technology driven anyway. So I feel like you in particular, I am less qualified to talk about many things, particularly scientific things, but you in particular have a unique opportunity where you can actually say, well, look, maybe it is going to take me a month of my time, but this guy is polling at 20% with the American public. No one else is going to do this. I'm going to dedicate that time and actually address this with the person where they have a chance to actually respond and the back and forth. And then if the audience can see that they're not answering your good faith, good mannered, good natured, but fact seeking questions, that's going to be very informative to a lot of people.
- [05:24]
Sam Harris
Yeah, again, I pick my battles and it really is just, it's a triage situation. I mean, there are lots of things to debate and.
- [05:33]
Tom Bilyeu
Is that really true, Samuel?
- [05:34]
Sam Harris
Some things are undebatable. I mean, I just, you know, I'm not going to debate someone who thinks that. I mean, I've had these debates in the past. It's like the history here is relevant. I mean, there's so many topics on which I've basically said everything I have to say and I just get dragged back to the topic again because it's in the connection between Islamic terrorism and some actual tenets within the real religion of Islam.
- [06:02]
Konstantin Kisin
Right.
- [06:02]
Sam Harris
So the problem of jihadism and Islamism more generally. Since October 7th, I've had to spend some hours on my podcast both talking about that solo and having people on who disagree with me. And I'd be very happy never to speak about that stuff again. I've debated Christian fundamentalists and I debate people about lots of things where I think the. Really, there's not much of a debate right now. There's no reason for me to talk to a creationist about evolution anymore. I've done that.
- [06:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Can we come back to the Islamic terrorism point? Because I think actually that's where. I'm sorry that I'm taking over here, brother.
- [06:42]
Konstantin Kisin
I love this by all means.
- [06:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Because I think the work you have done on that issue has been, I can't overestimate its importance. Because you're countering bad ideas that people have out there where there's a complete failure to analyze the reality and to make appropriate comparisons. For example, when I heard you talk about, you know, what Hamas did on October 7th, people compare it to America's reaction to 9, 11 or whatever. Right. Except America didn't drag women through the streets of New York City. You talked about this. Right. It's a very powerful way of, of debunking something. And this is the point I'm making to Whether you like it or not, the idea is out there. RFK is out there. And no matter how distasteful you may find those things, ignoring it, and even you doing A half an hour podcast in it is not going to make the same impact as you attacking that issue directly with the person. I appreciate really, truly that. And you know how when we had the conversation, our podcast, that ended up blowing up in your face and whatever. I hope you know that. I think you do know that Francis and I really were not involved in that, didn't enjoy that. We're not happy about it, and frankly were quite disgusted by some of the way that people reacted. Right. So this isn't me trying to put you back in the firing line of all that crap. But on the other hand, I. I am kind of speaking to your potential greatness in that area. You are uniquely placed to address some of these arguments. And I know that you don't necessarily always want to go back into that shit first, but on the other hand, I think the work you can do on some of those issues is really important. And I just, as a fan, would invite you if you feel that someone like RFK is polling at 20% and is talking shit. I really think, forgive me for saying this, I think you have a duty to take that on. I really do.
- [08:44]
Sam Harris
Well, on the specific point of his anti vaccine stance, I know he doesn't want to answer to the name of being anti vaccines, but that's definitely the net result of what he says about this. I just think it's not. I'm just the wrong guy to do it. I could do the homework and do a credible job of it, but the real people to do it are, you know, vaccinologists, immunologists.
- [09:09]
Tom Bilyeu
None of them have an audience. You do.
- [09:10]
Sam Harris
Well, no, but. No, but the way to do it is to set up is to pair him with somebody and moderate it. And I thought, and there were efforts afoot to do that, I'm not quite sure with people more qualified than me to do it and to even do it on a bigger platform like Rogan's. I'm not quite sure why those petered out, but I just think they're. I don't think it's important to focus on RFK in particular at the moment.
- [09:34]
Konstantin Kisin
Well, so I'll push this one last thing and then we'll leave it alone. So, like Konstantin, I believe you uniquely are capable of this, even if you need an immunologist there with you to debunk it, partly because of your credibility, partly because you're one of the only people I know that can think in literal straight lines. And so it's very easy to track what you're trying to say. I Wish I could do that. I think in fractals, I find it very hard to speak in straight lines, so that would be huge. The this is why I was making an appeal for have some barometer. So I would beg of you to make it popularity and culture that we say, hey, Sam Harris, we know he's going to touch anything, even if he has to get somebody else to come on the show to join him, whatever. But anything that cracks a certain level, he's going to have on. And I think part I really want you to do outreach to the people that are center left and center right that have been given memes by which to discredit you. You won't get far right, far left. I get that. But I think that there are people on either side that it will really help the zeitgeist if you can win them over. And part of why I think the clip on trigonometry popped off was, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but part of what you were saying was when you're in the middle of a political game and you know the other side is playing, that you should use those tactics as well. And so if we need the slow roll, looking at it, obviously don't lie. You were very clear about that. But that you can't just let an October surprise land and just be like, oh, well, gee, I guess we have to deal with it. Like, you have to understand that that was gamesmanship and you have to be wise in the way that you handle it. And so it feels that is the first time where I'm like, ooh, maybe. And now I'm speaking as myself. But I think this is very much echoed by other people where I'm like, oh, Sam, anybody else I wouldn't hold to the standard but you, I need that. You're the God's so not fair to ask of you. But like, you're the person who will suffer the slings and arrows to not do the violent uprising. You know, all the people that were just like, I'm going to let the dogs come bite me and I'm going to be the one that is steadfast through it, has a belief system and just sticks with it. And there are shades of that when you won't engage with rfk, who is clear. So speaking for myself, brother, I cannot bring myself to vote for somebody who has clear signs of cognitive decline. And I really don't want to vote for somebody that has clear signs of narcissism and being a threat to not doing a peaceful transfer of power. Like, both of those just seem like non starter answers. And so I have found myself more and more drawn to RFK in the limited amount that I've researched him. Admittedly not a lot. I'm trying to get him on the show though, as fast as I can. And I am doing that in part because you're not people that I think will really be able to do this thoughtfully are not. And so, yeah, I get that that's an unreasonable ask to make, but I think that, man, the world would be in a better place.
- [12:47]
Sam Harris
Well, one thing we should observe here is, I mean, there are so many asymmetries that are just not helpful. There's what we're suffering. The west in general is suffering this, but our elite institutions are suffering this. It is possible to weaponize the high integrity values of a culture against that culture. So if in the west we prize tolerance of diversity and freedom of thought and we welcome refugees, we understand that luck has not been spread equally over the surface of the earth, and we find the disparities in luck intolerable. So we want to welcome the unluckiest people in the world who are suffering political violence and oppression into our society. If they want to rebuild their lives here, all of those defaults are noble. We don't want to get rid of them. They're. They're at the core of our ethical integrity and our political stability and et cetera, et cetera. All of that can be weaponized against us by cynical and even evil people. Right. And it is in fact being done against us by jihadists and Islamists and to a great effect in Western Europe, to a lesser effect in America. But it's still just. We have to see that our political and ethical source code has a flaw in it. It's easily hacked. You can, it's just, we know, I mean, there's so many examples of this, but like, you know, Al Qaeda members were trained to know that if they ever were ever caught and put in prison, they could claim to be tortured and Amnesty International would show up and gum up the whole works and their infidel enemies would just torture themselves with their own ethical scruples trying to figure out whether any of these guys had been tortured. And they laughed about this. Right? I mean, you can extrapolate that to a hundred different cases. It is possible to weaponize high ethical integrity against those who have the integrity.
- [14:59]
Konstantin Kisin
This is why you don't want rfk.
- [15:01]
Sam Harris
No, I'm giving you just various examples of this. So the Rudy Giuliani moment was a moment of that where our senses. If this laptop is real, the New York Times has a journalistic duty to get to the bottom of it. And any hesitation to do that is a pathological sign of political partisanship. It's a failure of journalism. You have to just be Rudy Giuliani shows up with this awful laptop at the hour of his choosing, and you, the New York Times, based on your journalistic integrity, just need to open your mouth and eat it. Right? And I viewed that as an instance of high integrity values being weaponized against our establishment in a way that could have actually decided the election based on what we knew from the prior election, what James Comey's opening up Hillary Clinton's emails did in real time over those last 10 days. And. And again, I admitted on your podcast I thought it was a hard call. I called it a coin toss, a moment several times, but that didn't make it into that clip. So I was genuinely conflicted over what journalists should do. And I didn't think Twitter should have frozen the account of the New York Post that ran with the story. But there was definitely an argument to slow walk that knowing that Giuliani is this cynical political operative who picked his moment as an October surprise and the laptop was still going to be there in 12 days, and there was probably not enough time to get. There still hasn't been enough time to really get to the bottom of it because nothing's coming out of that laptop
- [16:50]
Konstantin Kisin
to get the point. You've litigated this many times, and I think your points are very clear, but people still feel some kind of way. And this goes back to we're living in conspiracy land, and when people get a whiff of you don't want to talk to rfk, they just start going conspiracy land about why you don't want to.
- [17:07]
Sam Harris
That there's a lack of credibility, there's an obviousness of certain errors, there's a lack of awareness of those errors on his part and the part of the people who support him. It's the same. I mean, there's so many topics I'm not inclined to touch because the smell of bullshit is detectable far enough off that you just don't have to spend time.
- [17:31]
Tom Bilyeu
But I think the point Tom is making, and I'm making to you both and Tom, tell me if it's not the point you're making is that you are in a position to smell that bullshit where other people may be drawn in by it and the world would benefit from you, sorry, diving headfirst into the bullshit. To help other people see that as bullshit and litigating that in the public eye for other people to learn from. I think, I guess what we're getting at accepted.
- [17:59]
Sam Harris
It's amazing how. I mean, I'm not saying that debates and debunkings don't matter, but it's just amazing how hard it is to change people's minds once they've dug in on certain points. Yeah, it's very hard. I've debated try to get a 911 truther to admit that all of those unconnected anomalies they found on that day don't add up to a plausible story. I mean, you can spend hours and hours and hours and hours and get absolutely nowhere.
- [18:29]
Tom Bilyeu
But if a 911 truth was, 16%
- [18:32]
Sam Harris
of Americans claim to believe that it was an inside job.
- [18:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. And 8% of Americans or 7% of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. That's not my point.
- [18:42]
Sam Harris
0% of UK Muslims think homosexuality is acceptable.
- [18:46]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't know if it's zero.
- [18:48]
Sam Harris
The last poll I saw was zero.
- [18:50]
Tom Bilyeu
Anyway, we're getting sidetracked. The point, I think, is that if a 911 truther was running on a platform, a 911 truther ism, and polling at 20%, there's no one in America I would rather have than someone who's qualified to have that conversation with a large audience to deal with that. And what I'm saying is, ultimately is kind of an invitation begging stroke challenge to you is to recognize that you are in a unique position. And the unwillingness to dive into that is. I don't think it's helpful, genuinely.
- [19:26]
Konstantin Kisin
I think we are at the point where convincing Sam to do the interview.
- [19:30]
Sam Harris
You can't convince me to do the interview. I can't convince someone's money present.
- [19:35]
Tom Bilyeu
No, but this isn't a Sam specific point. We're only having this conversation because we're here and I hope we're friends. Right. What I'm saying is there is a structural issue that is not going away. The podcastistan thing, the substackistan thing, it's not going away. No one is going to shut it down. There's not going to be regulation that stops it. We are past the point of no return on that. If we recognize that there's a fragmentation of reality happening and you are in a position. I'm not talking about you, let's say me, let's say you, other people. If we're in a position to do anything possible to try and reorientate those conversations towards whatever that North Star is in this case truth or an attempt to garner what reality is. If people are being put in front of tens of millions of people, the answer cannot be to simply sit in our ivory towers and to look down on that and to say, oh, that's bullshit. I'm not having.
- [20:40]
Sam Harris
I just think we're going to have to rediscover some of the same standards of journalism and intellectual honesty and integrity that the old institutions imperfectly embodied.
- [20:51]
Tom Bilyeu
But who's we? Who's the we?
- [20:53]
Sam Harris
The people out here on podcasts and on subject newsletters.
- [20:56]
Tom Bilyeu
But that's why I keep saying this to you, right?
- [20:59]
Konstantin Kisin
Here's one thing that maybe I can short circuit this just to keep it tight. Sam has made very clear, not here today, but elsewhere, that everybody that does a podcast is making an editorial choice. He's explained to us why he's not going to do RFK and a million other ones. We want him to for reasons I think we've articulated. So I don't think we're going to make progress there. But if you do zoom back out and you say, okay, then what is the path forward? You're saying that this is going to. We will rediscover journalistic integrity. You're, I think, maybe skeptical that where the hell is that going to happen?
- [21:29]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm actually saying a very similar thing. I'm just saying, given that we are people who have large audiences, I think when we talk about, we have to discover, we have to look inward and say, I think, well, if this is out there, I have to find a way of dealing with it that is appropriate to what I believe is the right way of approaching it. So to me, I think part of that is you pick people who are saying things that you're not sure about and you engage with them critically, but from a good faith place, you pick carefully the people. There are certain people with whom you can't do that.
- [22:02]
Sam Harris
Right.
- [22:03]
Konstantin Kisin
He's just saying RFK is one of the people you can't do that with. Not with his desires.
- [22:06]
Sam Harris
I don't think it's important. If he were, if it really seemed like he could be president, then I would probably dig in and do the work.
- [22:15]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, maybe we're agreeing more than I realized. Cause I'm highly disagreeable. But I guess what I'm saying is I think that all of us who are in this space have a duty to not only talk about the change we want to see in the world, but to actually be it. I agree.
- [22:31]
Konstantin Kisin
I just think that there are so many different types of podcasts that. So, for instance, Joe Rogan should just keep being Joe Rogan. So he's gonna have people come was aghast that he just like kept pushing Katt Williams, like, say more about what the claims per second were bordering on Alex Jones levels where they were just things I was so confused by. Now maybe I'm wrong about all of them and Kat is right. But there was no like push back and forth now.
- [23:00]
Tom Bilyeu
So now you're doing it.
- [23:01]
Konstantin Kisin
But what I'm saying is that's what Joe should do. Joe should have the kind of podcast that he wants to have. And it was actually really instructive as a host to hear him just like continue to open doors for Kat to like say more about something to expand on a point. It was utterly fascinating. It felt like I was watching an improv comedian who knows the. Yes. And. And so he. Cat would say something that to my potentially 10 years just sounded crazy. And Joe was just like, tell me more. Oh, I haven't heard that. Where does that go? Like, never once being like, you know, space aliens didn't come on cat spaceships. I mean, he didn't say that. I'm just saying that's how some of the claims sounded to my again, pot. Wildly uneducated ears. But he just kept opening door after door after door.
- [23:47]
Sam Harris
Do you think he should have Trump on this podcast?
- [23:49]
Konstantin Kisin
Yes, I'm saying that from a. I
- [23:53]
Sam Harris
think I would be a disaster. I think if he did it, he would have a responsibility to actually do a lot of prep and be able to hold him to some kind of journalistic accounting in that format.
- [24:08]
Konstantin Kisin
Do you block Joe Rogan as entertainment or education?
- [24:14]
Sam Harris
Both. Both. And you know, he's Joe. I mean, I love Joe. Joe's a friend and I mean. But what's happened to his podcast is it's become so big. He's got. It's just. It's a window onto the attention of so many millions of people and disproportionately young and misinformed on many crucial points. And there's a responsibility that comes with that. And he personally always has the out of saying, listen, I'm just a fucking comic and I'm stoned half the time. This is just for fun. I'm just having these conversations and you get to enjoy them. And he pulls the ripcord. But there are certain circumstances where it really matters that there be some guardrails. It's like giving Trump a four hour basically campaign commercial in front of probably 40 million people in the end and letting him just lie and bullshit and freewheel and basically turn it into a campaign event. That would be irresponsible. It just would be.
- [25:23]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, from what I understand, Joe has said he doesn't want to have Donald Trump on for that very reason. I would happily have Donald Trump on cuz we would challenge him.
- [25:31]
Sam Harris
Right, okay, but so the moment we acknowledge that, and I know Joe has said in the past that he, Trump has declined to have Trump on. Even Joe recognizes there that you have to be some caution is warranted. It's not just that if you just let someone talk long enough, they're going to hang themselves to your audience. Your audience is always smart enough to detect lies and misinformation. It's just not true. Even the host who's done homework isn't always smart enough to do that. And if you do no homework, you're definitely not going to be. So it's. I just think that now we're just talking about where the line is and is it irresponsible to put Alex Jones on and have him bloviate and find it funny? You know, that's. It just could be a matter of taste. I think it was irresponsible when he was out there telling people that, you know, Sandy Hook hadn't happened and he had a lunatic cult behind him who was actually targeting the parents of those murdered kids. I mean, so that was irresponsible and he got sued for it. I think rightly so. But yeah, on some level it's a matter of just. It's a judgment call and you can't actually draw a bright line between this is obviously good and worth doing and this is obviously an irresponsible waste of time.
- [26:56]
Konstantin Kisin
Yeah. To me the base assumption driving all of my thinking is that any one person is going to be horrendously bad at deciding what is true and what ought to be talked about. And so we should let whoever wants to talk talk go out and talk in whatever method they want. And yes, people are going to have to discern what do I turn to this person for. And the only reason that I was so interested in having the conversation about you and RFK is I turn to you for those things.
- [27:27]
Sam Harris
Right.
- [27:27]
Konstantin Kisin
I turned to Joe to bring me fascinating people. And look, make no mistake about it, I think Joe is, is the best of us. And, and I'm utterly blown away by what he's able to do because it's this utterly fascinating blend of education and entertainment. He can switch back and forth now to get somebody like him. I have to accept that sometimes a person that he has on that, I feel he should be more confrontational, more educational. He just for whatever reason that day woke up and shows entertainment. Great, fair enough. Who am I to coach this guy from the sidelines? So I want to see all ideas out in the marketplace and I want to see.
- [28:02]
Sam Harris
But you're not, it sounds to me like you're not acknowledging another dynamic here, which is the kind of reputation laundering of people in these contexts.
- [28:09]
Konstantin Kisin
No, everything's a trade off. So there is no final solution. I think the three of us have all quoted Thomas Sowell. There are no solutions, only trade offs. And so if you make the decision we need editorial, content, people have to be held to a standard. That's a certain trade off. If you're like, I want to make sure all ideas get out there. I think you and I might wildly disagree about Brett Weinstein and what happened during COVID My thing was I was getting so freaked out by my trigger, which is authoritarian top down rule. That's just. I'm wired to have a real fucking problem with that. And I saw people trying to silence credible voices. Now you may think this credible voice has got this all fucking wrong and audience capture and he's derailing. But with Tom Bilyeu's value system, my frame of reference, I'm like, you cannot fucking silence that person. Like, I'm just hard stop. End of story. Just. That is the one thing I will say you have to take off the table. That's my approach. It could be broken. And I will certainly again, I have a North Star and I'm constantly running the scientific method is my belief system. And the way that I move through the world leading us there, that remains the question.
- [29:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Just one tiny point on that. That's why I keep trying to get us all to point the finger at ourselves and go, if I don't agree with this particular way of doing things, how can I do this better? Ultimately, that's how this gets solved. It's not going to get solved by us criticizing other people. They're not going to change what they do because the three of us had a go at them. This is not how people work, generally speaking. Right. So that's why I think if to the extent that you have an ability to impact that, that's where, that's where actually we are able to be useful, you know.
- [29:48]
Konstantin Kisin
All right, I want to point these two high powered voices of something you guys brought up earlier, which is the death or the suicide of the west, however you want to think about it. If you believe that the west is worthy of defense, what is it about the west that makes it worthy of defense?
- [30:07]
Sam Harris
Well, it's many of the values we've mentioned here. I mean, what we have in the west and it's been fairly hard won. I mean, we have brushed back a tendency to theocracy in a Christian context for more than 1,000 years. We had this stark antagonism to scientific understanding and individual rights and we pried all that loose from, I would argue, completely false religious certainty to the point where now we have secular societies that are open societies where at least in principle, we're in a circumstance where the best idea can win, right? Where we can talk about things in good faith and we have the political freedom to do that. No one's getting thrown in prison by the state for anything they've said. I mean, this is especially true in America. And all of that is a machine of error correction. And it allows for the solution of all kinds of coordination problems that only good faith, well disposed cooperators can achieve together. And so I don't think it's an accident that democracy, the combination of democracy and capitalism and political freedom has been this engine of wealth and creativity. And we should want to defend that because the alternatives, all the alternatives that we know about suck. I mean, just where you have an ideology that captures everything with top down control of individual behavior and you try to make an economy run on those rails, or you try to make a political system conform and you have all of these awful experiments that we've seen communism being salient, but obviously fascism, all these variants that we are right not to want. And what we have coming over the transom and up through the floor is. A political movement and a religious tidal wave really of religious conviction coming into Western society which is using our values against us, right? Our values of tolerance, our values of openness, our values of wanting to help and our values of self criticism, where we have looked back on our history of colonialism and racism and all of our tendencies to xenophobia and selfishness and we have grown sufficiently embarrassed by that. Rightly so. And critical of that. Rightly so. And not disposed to ever make those mistakes again. Rightly so. And now we have genuine bad actors who know that whenever they merely use the term racism, that settles all arguments, at least left of center in our politics, right? You just call someone a racist and you've won, you've revealed them to be racist and you've won the argument. And we have, you know, Islamist stealth groups in every Western society I mean, certainly in America and the UK really trying to advance a theocratic agenda. We have Qatar, which is literally the largest funder of universities in Britain and America now more than any other country on Earth. Qatar, which is governed by a theology that comes straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood. All of this is insidious. All of this is in part what explains the frank delusion of our ostensibly most educated kids in the country when in the immediate aftermath of October 7, literally before Israel had done anything in response. This has nothing to do with dead babies in Gaza. This has to do with a knee jerk reaction against Israel being the bad guys. Even when you had over 1,000 people, you know, innocent for the most part, peace activists murdered in their bedrooms at dawn by a genocidal death cult, our smartest kids spending $90,000 a year on tuition, couldn't figure out who the bad guys were. On October 7th, we are the victim of a kind of psyop. And it's our own values that are being weaponized against us.
- [34:53]
Konstantin Kisin
How is the psyop running, Konstantin? What is it that it paresthetizes in our mind? Is it just distance from the winning of all these freedoms? Is it something else?
- [35:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, let me come back and just first talk a little bit about the west and what I think makes it great. I think Sam did a great job of outlining a lot of that. I would just maybe build a little bit on some of the things he said. And one of them is I don't. It is my experience that people in the west fundamentally do not understand even remotely how unique what we have in the west is, particularly when it comes to individual rights. I mean, we live in a world in which if you accumulate wealth as you have, you're essentially. That's your wealth, you're protected. This is not the case in most of the rest of the world today. There is no private property at a high level in Russia. Mikhail Khorkovsky was the richest man in Russia. And the moment he tried to say anything about, he just tried to give some money to an opposition party that was against Vladimir Putin. He ceased being the richest man in Russia almost immediately and went to prison for 10 years to a penal colony, eventually exiled. The same is true in China. Jack Machine billionaire criticizes banking regulations not xi banking regulations Disappears for a year. Not heard of, not heard from.
- [36:24]
Sam Harris
Came back, no longer criticizing.
- [36:26]
Tom Bilyeu
Came back with a very different opinion, just magically. And there are other people like that, but Bao Mao, I can't remember the other guy's name. These are just examples of Something that is routine. So the idea, and this is why our system works. This isn't like, oh, it's nice that billionaires can keep. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is our system works because the incentive structure works. The incentive structure in Russia or in China is not to create things of value to other people and therefore become rich as you have done. It is to serve the system, to serve the people above you. To serve the people above you in the hierarchy in their corrupt needs. If you do that, you will become rich in Russia or you will retain your wealth in Russia, and if you fail to do that, you will cease to be rich in Russia. So the reason our system works is because we have created incentive structures that take us forward that mean that talented, inventive, creative driven, passionate, smart people can profit from that talent, can profit from their own hard work and retain what they create. The same is true on almost every level. I mean, our technological progress, this is a self evident thing that smart people don't talk about, but I feel like sometimes it needs explaining. The reason the west is so technologically superior is not disconnected from its culture of freedom of the individual. I mean, this should be obvious to people, but for some reason we don't talk about it nearly enough. The reason we are the most technically advanced society in the world and in the history of the world is partly because we allow people to pursue their curious interest and to profit from them if they create something of value to other people. So I think sometimes when we talk about this idea of individual freedom, we talk about them in a kind of moral sense, like, oh, it's good, it's obviously good. It's obviously good for people to be free. Well, actually, yes. And also there are some very practical consequences of that freedom that are the reason we are where we are. So that's just a little bit of why I think the west is unique and it's worth protecting. And you know, we've used the word experiment a lot, talking about communism and others. We should be honest. Liberal democracy is an experiment and a very recent one and a very recent one. So like all new ideas, it can go off the rails very easily if the core of what made it what it is is not maintained. And I think the reason that many of us have been speaking up about this for some time now, and the reason I wrote my book and many other people have been talking about this is I think we're abandoning the things that made us who we are and we're abandoning some of the things which we ultimately, after centuries of struggle and bloodshed and violence and disagreement, we actually were starting to reach a place where we were identifying some of the memes, as you like to call them, that work in the type of society that we want to create. The idea that people should be treated on the content of their character was a meme that was developed through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of violence and a lot of discrimination and a lot of awful treatment of, in, in that particular case, black people. But if you go to other parts of the west, there would have been other, other ways of conceptualizing that that still exist. Right. And we eventually came to the idea that actually that. That ancient thing that is so hard wired into us, the tribalism, the call it racism, call it xenophobia, whatever, is just in group out group, that thing that is hardwired into us, we have an intellectual idea that can sit on top of that, that can mitigate a lot of that. That's incredible. It's an incredible. I mean, this idea doesn't exist in China. The idea that people are to be treated equally, irrespective of their race or ethnicity or religion. And I wrote a whole piece on my substack a while ago about talking about this, and I just gave example after example of, you know, in China we talk about racism all the time in the uk, for example. Right. And I just gave an example of a commercial in China where a Chinese girl is doing the laundry and a black guy comes up to her and he starts flirting with her and she's like, ugh. She shoves him into the washing machine, puts this product that's being advertised in, and guess what the payoff is? He comes out Chinese. Whoa. Right? This is not a long time ago. And it explains to you why they have a million Chinese Uyghurs in concentration camps. Right. The idea that all ethnic groups are to be treated equally does not exist in Russia, not even remotely. And Russia is to a large extent a multi ethnic country. It has large Muslim populations, it has large ethnic minority populations. The idea that they are the same as everybody else would seem absurd to anybody in most parts of the world. The idea that gay people should be treated the same as stray people, you would be laughed out of the room. People don't like hearing this in the west because they can't process that reality. But it's like, you know, this endlessly joked about queers for Palestine thing. They will throw you off a roof. That's what they're gonna do. To you. Yeah, yeah, right. And from that extreme, you can work your way down most of the rest of the world, they're not going to throw you off a roof, but you're not going to be treated equally. So we struggled and we fought and we went through a lot of horror to get to that place. And the symptom of that unraveling, that I'm deeply troubled by, is that we are doing the exact opposite. DEI is the exact opposite of that idea. And it's embedded in every institution now. The idea that you can pick people, you can say, this group has got better outcomes than that group. That means, and we need to treat these people better than these other people. It doesn't matter which way you play that dynamic. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you put black people at the top, white people at the bottom, brown people at the top, black people. It doesn't matter how you play that game. It always leads to bad outcomes. And the reason that antisemitism now is becoming much more prominent is a natural reflection of that worldview. It's a reflection of the worldview in which successful people are successful by virtue of privilege or corruption or abuse of others. And unsuccessful groups or groups that don't do as well in certain fields are there because they have been abused, because they've been taken advantage of. Once you implement that, you, every successful minority is going to be in the firing line, whether that's Jews, whether that's Asian Americans, whether that's African Americans who are first generation from Africa.
- [43:22]
Konstantin Kisin
Right.
- [43:22]
Tom Bilyeu
They're incredibly successful in America. You're going to see all these groups being attacked in some way, whether that's in words or other ways, because we are breaking the thing that made us who we are.
- [43:34]
Konstantin Kisin
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- [43:36]
Tom Bilyeu
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- [43:39]
Sam Harris
Oh, I had a question.
- [43:40]
Tom Bilyeu
Our host replied, super quick premier move. Wish I had a premier group chat. They won't even write me back.
- [43:46]
Konstantin Kisin
Book a top rated stay with a premier host. If you know, give herbo. Okay, so assuming that that gets embedded in the mind, on the back of compassion, essentially, like, look at these people. You can't leave them behind. Something I've talked about on my podcast before, because my mom was in transportation in a high school back where I grew up. There was this law passed called McKinney Vento, where no child left behind and they would drive a single school bus two hours one way to pick up one kid and bring him back. And I was like, that is compassion turned pathological. Like, that's nonsensical. How do we flip that idea? Because you're definitely not going to get people to buy into something that makes them feel discompassionate.
- [44:30]
Tom Bilyeu
I think that, look, we come back right to where we started. I think we have to be able to. We have to live in the real world. If we do not live in the real world, we will not survive. And when I say survive, I don't mean that we're all going to die tomorrow. What I mean is there's a difference between Rome and Italy. Ancient Rome, the great civilization, and Italy, which lives on the ruins. I don't mean this to insult my Italian friends. There's a difference between being a great civilization and selling trinkets on the ruins of that great civilization 2,000 years later. It's a big fucking difference. And every American is going to feel that. And every person in the west is going to feel that if we allow our culture to deteriorate to that point. So unless we orientate towards truth, which is the balance between empathy and compassion and pragmatism, that's where that place is, we will not survive. And that's why I keep telling people these depressing things. Because unless we get a grasp of where we're heading, I don't think we're going to correct the course. I really don't.
- [45:38]
Sam Harris
Well, it's also a matter of just consistency. I think the most effective way of arguing against these extreme positions is to show their internal inconsistencies and the reductio ad absurdum. So on the left, you take the woke left, they're highly sensitized around variables like racism and homophobia and political inequality between men and women. Say. So you take a feminist activist who is all in for Palestine, not especially disposed to think about who Hamas really is, and yet can effortlessly see that she's against a white supremacist theocratic Nazi cult. If these were white Christian nationalists, theocrat Nazis who thought women should stay in the house as breeders and just baking and having kids, and they expressed nothing but xenophobia and antisemitism and white supremacy. That's all instantly recognizable as evil. And yet you can connect all of those dots for Hamas or any other jihadist or even Islamist organization. And that's exactly who they are. That's exactly who the Muslim Brotherhood is. Right? It's exactly some of these groups that are actually funding Middle east studies departments at Georgetown and Princeton. That's who these guys are. Right? So the left should be able to see the internal inconsistency they should be able to see that if they're for women's rights, they're against 98% of girls in Somalia getting clitorectomies, right?
- [47:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
- [47:28]
Sam Harris
Or women in Iran deciding to take off the veil and being thrown into prison and tortured and raped and even killed for having dared to show their hair, right? And the most obscene distortions of moral intuition here can be seen in moments like when Linda Sarsour, this hijabi theocrat bully, gets picked as one of the women to anchor the Women's March, right? She's wearing Shepard Fairey does a hijabi poster. And the very symbol of essentially gender apartheid throughout the Muslim world is co opted as a symbol of women's empowerment in the west, right? It's just a complete nullification of moral intelligence. And the very real solidarity that should be obvious between women who care about their rights in the west and the women they ostensibly care about in the Muslim world who are being thrown in prison for taking the hijab off. I mean, it's just the confusion is so obvious. It's so right on the surface. Eventually people will be embarrassed by this. I mean, insofar as culture is incapable of improving itself, and we know it is, there's going to come a time when all these girls from Barnard and Columbia and, and Brandeis and all these liberal institutions are going to be embarrassed to look back at how they just got confused about the valence of religious symbols, who their friends were, who their enemies were at moment. I mean, it's just, it is as upside down as anything awful in our racist past. And it has the additional variable of being masochistic. I mean, at least with old school racist outgroup hatred, it was, you know, your attack, the victims are others. But what's happened in the West, I mean, to take another example from the uk, I mean, like the Rotherham scandal, right, where you have literally over 1,000 English girls, you know, some of whom are 12 years old, getting raped by mostly Pakistani men and no one is doing anything about it because everyone's afraid to be called racist. So literally the parents would come into the police station and say, my daughter was just gang raped by a bunch of taxi drivers and it wouldn't be prosecuted because the police department was so afraid of being called racist. The optics of the problem was so intolerable that everyone was allergic to it. It's this kind of masochism that is going to undo the west and it's going to undo the. I mean, I've been saying this for 20 years. And I think hopefully this will never come true. But we're seeing the signs of it coming true is insofar as the left can't get its head screwed on straight around this specific variable of Islamism and jihadism, it will potentiate right wing populism and a thirst for right wing authoritarianism across the West. And we will have fascist governments because as David Frum once said, if liberals won't police borders, fascists will. And that's where we're headed unless
- [51:02]
Tom Bilyeu
we
- [51:03]
Sam Harris
talk some sense to ourselves on that topic.
- [51:05]
Konstantin Kisin
What were you gonna say?
- [51:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, I was just gonna say, I mean, I completely agree with that because look, ultimately I have a piece coming out shortly about this. I spent a few weeks with Jordan on tour and I never really. I honestly understood why he talked about order and chaos so much. And ultimately a few things I've seen and experienced have made me. If you ratchet up the chaos enough, people will crave order so much they're not going to give a shit who's giving it to them. And this is why I think the only way culturally to solve this problem is you have to make the core Western ideals cool again. They have to be cool. It has to be uncool to, to be one of these woke people with blue hair. It has to be uncool to, to have the idea that different groups should be treated differently. It has to be. Why are you being like that? Do you know what I mean? That's what we have to do. Otherwise it's going to be the option that Sam described. I mean, what is happening? You know, I often get, I get very irritated when people say things like, well, we're giving all this money to Ukraine, but we can't even police our own border. Why does, just like the homelessness in LA that you drive past here every day, just like all sorts of other social problems, this isn't a money problem, it's an ideology problem. Right? And until we get that ideology out of power and replace it with one that is more sensible, we are going to ratchet up the chaos more and more and then the forces of order are going to come back. That's the story as old as time. We are constantly in the tension. And as you, I think you articulated last time I was here when we interviewed you, that balance is necessary between all things. There is a balance to be struck between chaos and order. You know, this is why conservatives often think I'm a conservative and they get really disappointed when they find I'm not. And people on the left Accuse me of being a conservative, even though I'm not. And it's not because I love order and I hate chaos. I'm actually very open to a bit of chaos. You know, I used to be a stand up, I like making offensive jokes, I'm pro legalizing some drugs, you know, on all sorts of issues. I like opening up the cultural space. But if you have a lack of order and an abundance of chaos, that's where we're heading and that's why I'm going. There's too much chaos going on. We got to be careful, not only because there's a balance that we need, but also if you mess with this, you do not know the forces that you're going to unleash. You do not know the forces you're going to unleash. Because what's happening with borders in the uk, that's crazy. What's happening in this country with the southern border, that's crazy. You can't have that and expect people to just sit on their hands. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
- [54:16]
Sam Harris
And the truth is it's not actually in tension. With real compassion, you can have the most compassionate immigration policy you want. You still want to implement it in an orderly way. You still want to know who's coming in. You want to be able to let in all the people you actually want in. And if that's 10 million refugees, well then let it be 10 million refugees, but at least know who's coming into the country. Right. So you can. I've never heard a defense of this specific form of chaos. You know, to take immigration as one example, it's like there's just, there's no reason for us to have this status
- [54:52]
Konstantin Kisin
quo and there's no reason we ought to or there's no reason to explain why it is.
- [54:58]
Sam Harris
Well, I mean it's. Logistically, it could just be too hard. I don't know that anyone has actually made the case that, that actually one person on my podcast made the case that it's just, it's actually physically impossible to have a non porous border. I'm not sure I believe that. But his argument was when you, the irony is, or the paradox is as you specifically with our southern border, as you create the infrastructure, you build the wall, you build roads to the wall so that you can build the wall, you're actually making it easier and easier to get right to the border so that you can actually go under the wall or over the wall.
- [55:37]
Konstantin Kisin
Yeah, I mean this feels like an incentive thing. So you have to change the incentive. So I don't know what all the things Biden signed into law when he came into office, but supposedly there was some 50. Some things that he did that made it more appealing to be somebody coming across the street.
- [55:51]
Sam Harris
Yeah, but putting families in cages and separating kids from their families and such that we can't even reunite them even was not a solution either. I mean, whatever remedy, however we close the border, it can't look like this just dystopian horror show where you've got people, genuinely desperate people who are just trying to seek a better life in cages and separated from their kids. Right. So we have to.
- [56:16]
Konstantin Kisin
I know nothing about that part of this story. I don't know why it has to escalate to people in cages. But show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Right. So there's obviously some incentive has changed. And then also, I don't think people understand that if you create an incentive, people are going to take advantage of it.
- [56:34]
Sam Harris
And so the one incentive that got changed was, listen, you know, it's no longer true that if you get to the border, you might never see your kids again and it will wind up in a cage. Right. Like that would. That was actually that the news of that horror was propagating back into the system.
- [56:48]
Tom Bilyeu
And so none of this has to be like that, though, Right? You could have a physical border, and then anyone who gets to that border just gets redirected to a legal port of entry where you have to make an application for asylum just like everybody else. Right. It's. It's an ideology problem. If there was the willing and look. And the reason we know this is there are examples where it's been fixed in recent years. In 2013, Australia had illegal immigration running at 17,000 people, which for their population of about 20, 25 million people, is a lot of people. People.
- [57:17]
Sam Harris
But they have these islands. I mean, they have geographical advantages.
- [57:20]
Tom Bilyeu
That what they had was a leader who was willing to do some unpleasant things in order to get that problem fixed. And in the short term, and in the interim, there were people who suffered as a result of that. In the long term, there are far fewer people who end up making the perilous journey across the ocean, dying, et cetera. This is the runaway compassion thing. Look, the idea that a country can have a border is uncontroversial. It's been the case throughout history. How many marine bases are getting invaded in this country? None. Because they have a border that's enforced that's protected.
- [57:58]
Sam Harris
Right. But, I mean, there's a larger geopolitical issue here, which I think our compassion should spread to, which is we should recognize that we have an interest in not merely exporting chaos beyond our borders. We want a world order that is more and more sustainable, more and more equitable. And so we have an interest, even just a purely selfish interest, to make life better in a place like Honduras so that we don't have so many Hondurans escaping the murder capital of the world or seeking to escape it, to come to America.
- [58:36]
Konstantin Kisin
Right.
- [58:36]
Sam Harris
So that's.
- [58:37]
Konstantin Kisin
So I have more to say. Yeah, I have more to say on this. So, Sam, if I can keep you for a few minutes, that would be wonderful.
- [58:42]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm so sorry, I gotta run. I've really enjoyed this. It's been a real pleasure to see you both.
- [58:46]
Konstantin Kisin
Absolutely.
- [58:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Always.
- [58:47]
Konstantin Kisin
Wonderful. My man. All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. To learn more about these complex topics, check out this episode with the one and only Jordan Peterson. Look how much I love my son. He doesn't even have a penis anymore. Those women online displaying themselves, they're not human. You're a fool if you think that's human. Jews, you know they have IQs that are probably 15 points higher.
- [59:14]
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