← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Toxic Thinking: How Our Primitive Brain Is Flawed & Leads To Dangerous Woke Ideology | Tim Urban PT 1
01:27:08
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If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off and Grainger is your trusted partner offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off and Grainger is your trusted partner offering the products you need, all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done
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I am really excited for this conversation today with Tim Urban, the man that turned his blog into a global movement according to Forbes Magazine. And it draws millions of people looking for high quality writing about complex ideas. And that is Tim's specialty and part one of this two part conversation we are thinking through the primitive mind and its nature, the tug of war between your individuality and society and the crisis of courage and woke ideology that's weaponizing words against all of us.
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Now.
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Did you know Impact Theory is now available on Amazon Music? Head over to Amazon Music right now to hear more Impact Theory episodes just like this and catch part two of this mind opening conversation with Tim Urban. Do not wait my friends. Subscribe to Impact Theory now on Amazon Music and become legendary. I'm Tom Bilyeu and I'm welcome to
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Impact Theory when things go bad. If we sink to bad times on that merry go round in the 21st century, with all the power we have and all the many different kinds of existential risks we have, nukes is just one of them. Now. It could be the worst ever.
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B
There's something going on in culture right now that is driving us into what you call the primitive mind, which is not necessarily an ideal place to be thinking from. What is the primitive mind and why in this unique moment do people find themselves there?
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C
I use the example of like skittles or brownies or you know, these things are hard to resist. Even though a huge part of your brain is saying like no, no no no no no. This is just like trash sugar. It's going to make you feel bad and you're going to gain weight. Like it's bad across the board, except it tastes good for one second. The primate doesn't understand that and it's thinking, we just found dents. You know, high calorie food. This is precious. Eat as much as you can because you don't know when we're going to get it next. Right? So it's this. We're crazy people. We're crazy. And we have this. We live in this advanced civilization where so many of our natural programming, you know, tendencies actually hurt us and misfire. So we're constantly in this kind of tug of war. And so that's the kind of general situation that applies to, I think, most problems in humanity and most personal struggles we have. You can kind of boil it down to there's this tug of war going on because we've been kidnapped out of our home forest somewhere and we've dropped into an advanced civilization and we're trying to do our best. So I like to think about how this applies to when I look at like political tribalism or something like that, which is very prevalent today. And something in the environment has. The environment's been changing super quickly. You know, social media just started and it's like completely changed the world. And the Internet is pretty new and mobile phones and there's just, just the. That's all these giant seismic environmental changes which throw off the balance in these tug of war we've got both individually and society, we have kind of a grand tug of war going on. And so I start, you know, that that's what I've been doing a lot of thinking about is okay, I see a lot of kind of things that are the political version of eating skittles and brownies, which is, you know, hating half the country and feeling like you're perfect and righteous. And the US group is great and the them group is awful. Like, that's just junk food of a different kind. Right. It's just, that's base, primal behavior that doesn't naturally make sense and does not good for us. It's not good for others. And it's on the rise, clearly. Right. You see it around you and you also see it in plenty of surveys and polls and. And so that's what I've been thinking a lot about. Why. Right. You know, what's, what are the environmental changes and why are they stoking this kind of decline in the national, the US at least in the national tug of war? And a lot of us as people,
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if we look at the primitive mind as us, 50,000 years ago. And we think about the baser instincts. Why do those base instincts feel good? Why is the righteous indignation such a. It feels. Feel so awesome. Why would that be? From an evolutionary standpoint, the program is very simple.
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C
And this developed over not just 50,000 years, but this is. This is, you know, billions of years going back, right? This through our whole evolution. The program is very simple in terms of its goal. The genes that you carry, they're still around right now because they happen to be unbelievable at survival, right? They've survived through fish, through reptiles and rodents and other primates and great apes, and now they're in you. You know, most of the genes didn't make it this far. So everyone today, their genes are amazing at survival. And so the. The goal of your programming is to. That you're the animal that is surrounding these genes. You're just kind of. You're developed in the way you are. You are physically and mentally who you are, because every little part of you is good at serving the core purpose which is keeping those genes immortal, passing them on. Passing them on, right? You're going to die, but your genes can stay immortal. If you.
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B
How dare you, Timur.
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You know what? Maybe, maybe it also with the crazy future we have, maybe we can upload our consciousness.
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I certainly hope so.
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But the point is that it just is so simple in so many ways. Something that helps you pass your genes along is going to, because of so much evolution, make the animal feel good. It's going to reward the animal with dopamine and other kinds of happy chemicals, because that's what the programming does. It basically, like, if you want your dog to do something, you give it a treat. But that's just what you're really doing is the dog doesn't care about the treat, that when they eat the treat, they get the dopamine hit, the dog cares about the dopamine hit, and it's addicted, right? Like. Like all of us. And so you give the dog a treat. It hits the dopamine hit. So that's like really the dog's brain is the one giving it the real treat, right? And you're triggering something that gives the. The. The. And so it's a similar idea with us is that the things your brain naturally rewards you for are going to be things that helped you to pass on your genes. So what does that mean, to pass on your genes? You have to survive, right? You can't die, especially at a young age, you have to survive, which means you need calories, you need to Stay safe. And then of course you need to reproduce, which is why humans are all maniacally obsessed with sexual. And then now the genes are in your kids. So suddenly you'll throw yourself off a cliff before you'll throw your kid off a cliff. Which makes no sense. Except it does if you're thinking about the fact that the genes are in the younger, healthier container now. So the genes are telling you protect that thing over yourself. Right? So again, so crazy, right? And this is all very obvious. I know, I'm not. It's just that if you think about, you know, why do skittles taste good? Because back then something that tasted dense and sweet like that was probably a really high calorie food, which was critical to eat because you didn't know when you were going to get food. Now your question, why does political tribalism feel good in the same kind of primitive, blissful kind of way? And it's because the tribes that you know to survive for your genes to pass on the best thing you really needed, you couldn't survive alone. Humans alone would just, would be in big trouble. You needed to have a village and a tribe around you. And so we are desperate to be, to seek out connection and community and to be in the good graces of the people closest to us. And if there's a group of cool kids and they're ostracizing the uncool kids, you really want to be in the cool kid group. That's just our DNA. We want to be included in our nightmares. To be ostracized, to be the one that everyone's talking shit about behind your back. We hate that. And again, that doesn't make sense. Who cares, right? It's just we're all going to die. Who cares what they're saying? Because our dumb primitive brains are horrified because they think we are now going to get cut out of this, the, the life raft, which is this support group, this, this, this community. And we're kind of out of that. We're going to die. And if you get rejected by a girl, when you go up to her, it's, it's horrifying because all the other girls now in the tribe are going to, you know, laugh at you and you're never going to meet, you're never going to pass on unions, of course. And today that doesn't make sense. You can get rejected and it doesn't matter. But our brains continually are misinterpreting the world around us.
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The way you describe that a seems really, really true, but also Begs the question then, how on earth did we get to the point where the Enlightenment is real, that we have the scientific method and we've created all this amazing stuff. We, at some point, somehow, some way began to elevate above that. And I don't know how kids today will take the following statement, but as a child of the 80s, it feels like we were doing really well for a while, at least in the U.S. freedom of speech was like a core tenant. Individuality, being able to think for yourself, being celebrated for that, now feels like we're going in the wrong direction. How did we, how did we get escape velocity at first, even before we, we talk about how we're getting pulled back down?
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If you think about how much, you know, self help books and people who give advice on the Internet and, and people who give medical, nutrition or fitness advice or productivity advice, right? And people build these systems. What's happening is that basically all of this is this struggle to, okay, let's make systems and habits and routines that can protect us from our own worst desires. So a simple one is don't buy unhealthy food for your house. If you want to eat more healthy, right? You know, commit to that, commit to a gym routine and form a habit. And so people are constantly in their own lives forming these systems which are like these structures that you can build, these artificial structures that you can build that can kind of support you and keep you afloat so you don't drift down into kind of your worst, your worst instincts and your most nonsensical instincts. They're not evil, they're just, they don't make sense for your life. They're going to push your life in the wrong direction. So we build all these systems. You have diets, right? A diet is just a system and you're going to maybe do it with a group of people. These are all ways to kind of outsmart our primitive instincts and try to kind of build a structure. So the Enlightenment is just that on a massive scale. The Enlightenment itself is kind of a ton of philosophy about the best systems that groups can use, that countries can
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B
use to use to what end?
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So the, the, if you, if a human is just following their base instincts, they're just, you know, scarfing down junk food, right? If a, if a group of people is following their base instincts, you've got warlords and dictators and slaves and super oppression and no upward mobility and no justice, right? That's the state of nature. We've done this so many times. You know, look at history there's so, it's just like, it's like you can have this moment when, you know, things seem better and then they, and then, and then there's civilization collapses and you end up with, again, you have these, these warlords and you've got, you know, dictatorships. And this is so. So humans have suffered so much by kind of falling into. Think about, you know, that the hierarchy is something that is kind of a natural thing for us to fall into this thing, which is why we all want to kind of please the scary authorities. And so the Enlightenment is trying to say, what is a better way here? What is the true human nature that produces that? Is it that you need a brutal dictator in order to control humans, because otherwise they will just get out of hand and start murdering each other?
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Or.
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And this is more what the Enlightenment thinkers thought is actually human nature isn't necessarily that bad. It just needs some basic laws and structures that can prevent people from. Prevent the worst actors among them from taking over and from overpowering each other and from harming each other. And at that point, actually, humans function, can function very well together. So it's kind of this nuanced thing between, you know, you have tyranny and anarchy, right? Which often. Anarchy often then melts away into tyranny. And doesn't it always. Yeah. And so this is saying, what if we do something in the middle where instead of saying there's these rigid ironclad laws and every single person is under the control of the king, you say, actually there's going to be freedom and the government's going to have a very limited ability to do anything. But there's going to be this big wide fence with ironclad walls on the wide fence, which is that you can't harm someone else, you know, physically, you can't steal their property. You know, things like that. Equal, equal justice under the, under the law, you're going to have, you know, equal rights. You're going to have very, you know, when you basically, you're going to be totally free. But if you start harassing people and punching people and stealing their things very quickly, you're ending. You're going to end up in jail. So there is an iron fist there, but it's very light touch. It only applies to very specific things. So they basically, if in anarchy, everyone's 100% free, which turns into a bunch of bullies and warlords, and now no one's free. The Enlightenment was like, okay, if we, if we have everyone be 80% free, but that last 20% no one can do. Then, then we think that not only will people be able to now live freely and safely, but also it'll foster all this productivity, all this natural competition with rules. The competition will flourish. And this to me is no different than a human's human creating a little group to do a diet with. Right. This is a mass scale structure that is basically that. That the rational parts of our brain can create that can say if we, if we just live within this structure, our worst instincts can't take over.
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B
Okay, this is. This is really complex and very nuanced, but I think incredibly important. And the reason that I wanted to talk to you and that I found your book so compelling is all of this stuff really matters. So I came to studying history very late. But the more I study history, the more I realize that the way that the society functions matters a lot. And if you. Meaning life and death, quality of life, being just tormented endlessly, or having something that is a pretty amazing place to be. So there are three books that I would encourage people to read if they really want to get a sense of what humans are capable of in the wrong direction. And that would be Mao, the Unknown Story, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and the Gulag Archipelago. Those are very terrifying books about what happens when the baser instincts go awry. And so when I think about, okay, how does this end up happening? Let me know what you think about. This thesis hypothesis may be more accurate. So you have. Humans have just a need for certainty. And when I'm teaching entrepreneurs, one of the things I teach them is you have to be able to intoxicate your team with certainty. And if you say, hey, this is the way forward, of course you're never going to know for sure. But like you have to put out, this is what I think we have to do to accomplish this goal. You've got to tell them, this is it, we're going to go do this thing now. Privately, you can have all the doubt in the world, but you need to have certainty to get them marching in a direction. Which is why going back to your idea of why this feels so good is that for humans have an innate desire for progress. I think that's just in terms of the primitive mind is just hardwired into us, which is what keeps us out there foraging and hunting and pushing. And if that didn't feel good, to your point about the. The dog's brain is actually what's giving it the treat, the dopamine reward. If doing hard things in the pursuit of Progress didn't feel awesome then we would never have become the most dominant apex predator the world has ever seen. So you have this innate push for progress and, and you have this crushing need for certainty. And so you have people that can rise up by giving you that certainty. And being nuanced is incredibly difficult. It takes as somebody who often struggles to hold very nuanced ideas. I think one of the markers of a high level of intelligence is that ability to really find a nuanced path through, through something. Now having grown up in America, I'm immersed in this American experiment. So I never really realized that it was an experiment that there it's fragile and that it could be lost. And that when you look at a tyrannical government where certainty is ruling the day, one person is just telling you you're going to go do this. And people can get behind it because they just hey, I followed the rules. And that's that even though it can be horrendous tyranny and that when I think of things like the woke mind virus, which seems to be really capturing people today, part of it is it sounds great, even though it may not be working. Part of it is that it gives people certainty on how to move. And then part of it is that finding the nuance of even though it sounds good, it's not working. Uh, they're using names that you never want to push back against, but the underlying idea may, may not be quite aligned. All of that gets very murky and very hard to navigate through. And so people end up getting pressured to be silent. They don't understand their own view because they're not able to talk out loud about it. They're not able to clarify their own view. And so they're never able to think through the problem. Well, to define that nuanced view and then to move forward with certainty and nuance. So it feels like a system that is very easy to get wrong and very difficult to get right. And so as when you were writing the book and you called it a self help book for societies, talk us through this idea of the latter so that people can understand how to think through these nuanced positions in a way without falling prey to just whatever is the popular narrative.
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Well, so we talk a lot about horizontal spectrums. We've got political, you've got the left, the far left and the left and the center and the right and the far right, right. So it's this one dimensional horizontal axis. We have a lot of those on any spectrum of opinion. You know, you could Just lay out the opinion of this extreme, that extreme, and then the things in the middle. And that's all what you think, right? Which is great. But like I was like, well, let's like build another axis, a vertical one that, that can be a how you think axis, so we can just talk about it. It's just, it's just, it's an important concept that I people know. But like, let's give it an axis. So I call it the ladder. And when it comes to thinking, it's just defined pretty simply where at the top, you know, you care about truth. That's what you're, you're acting the way someone acts when they care most about truth. And at the very bottom, what you care so only care about is confirming your existing beliefs. And then of course, it's a spectrum. So you can have like, you know, multiple rungs on that ladder. And it's not that some people are the low rung people, it's that we all have the tendencies to, tendency to kind of go up and down on this ladder depending on the day, on our mood, on the stage, in our life, on the topic. But once you're thinking about this as an actual axis that you can be on a ladder, then I think it helps you realize, okay, wait, I'm doing that thing where I'm trying to confirm my beliefs and I'm actually not going for truth deep down. And you can be more self aware. So what does someone act like when truth is their motive, truly? Right. I mean, if you think about this, if you just take it out of the realm of politics or religion or one of these really, you know, sensitive topics and you just, you know, you're trying to figure out how to fix something. There's, there's. You have a bunch of tools and you're trying to fix a machine that's not working and you have people around and if you're saying, I have a theory here that actually what we need is we need to cut the red wire and we need to like, you know, whatever, you know, put another metal plate here and someone else says, um, no, no, no, no, you, no, no, you gotta leave the red wire and cut the green wire. Right? You, you're, you're not gonna say you're an awful person because like, you're the kind of person who thinks we, you know, the green wire type people. Right. You know, you're not, no, why would you ever. That's crazy. You just, you would just. What you'd be doing is you try to assess, well, just Fully, without any bias, like you're trying to assess. Does this person know what they're talking about? Right. Is this person just someone who just, just out of nowhere says, I don't like the green wire? Or, you know, you'd ask their background and they'd say oh. And you hear them talk and you say oh. Like they have a lot more experience here than I do or they know, they understand this kind of machine better. Okay, so I'm going to listen to them and I'm going to update my beliefs. Maybe I, or I was so certain about the red wire and you know, they're, the fact that they think it's the green wire makes me reconsider whether I know this is just normal human thinking. Because you're. All you care about is which wire should I actually be cutting on this thing? So when you comes to a, if you're, if you truly are, if you're on the. That that's kind of top rung thinking. If you're thinking that way with your political beliefs or any other belief, you know, you'd have this belief and you would be so open to dissent and to challenge, you'd like, you'd seek out articles that are disagreeing with you because you're thinking that, you know, you can think of your belief as a little machine and you're trying to see if it's as strong as a machine as possible. You've collected all these little information puzzle pieces and you've assembled them together into a hypothesis. And you know that people have blind spots and people are biased and people make mistakes. And so this machine probably has some flaws. How am I going to find out what they are? I'm going to go out and test it. I'm going to, I'm going to find people who disagree with it and say, kick the machine. See what, See if you can break it. Right? Which of course is a debate or an argument. Are you going to go read things that disagree with you? You're going to read people that say, you know, this is built wrong. And if someone makes a good point and you say, oh, you know what, like you're actually. The machine's not standing up well to your dissent, you're not going to be offended or angry at that person or cut them out of your life, you're going to say, great, I need to update or I need to reconsider that. Right. Okay, so this is obviously like ideal thinking, right? And if we always thought this way, when you're thinking that way, you are a hyper efficient Learner, Right. You are you. If your motive is truth and you act that way, you behave that way, you're going to be the best at finding the truth. Eventually you're going to really. And you're going to have a natural humility and you're also going to end up with a lot of nuance because the truth is so often nuanced. So you're going to be open to that and you're going to end up refining your belief. And now your machine gets a little bit, a little bit sharper and a little. Your idea gets a little bit better. And now you get more information, you read more, you test your idea more and the machine gets a little bit better. And eventually you're going to have this very complex and nuanced point of view that is you worked really hard for. And it's going to be nuanced and it's going to be the best chance you have of being accurate. Now, that would be nice if we all thought that way. But of course, there's this primitive mind that we talked about, which is this part of your brain that is not wired for truth. It's wired for survival in 50,000 BC. And what that often meant was agreeing with the sacred beliefs of your tribe and believing them and the people who could believe what the tribe believed with full conviction. They survived well, they were, you know, they were on the in group, they fit in and that's what was needed.
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D
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C
This other part of our brain very much identifies with certain ideas. And when you identify with an idea, your brain has a tough time telling the difference between a sacred belief and your identity and your identity and your body. And so it's actually a lot of research where in FMRI experiments, people's fight or flight, parts of their brain light up. When certain beliefs, like political, are challenged, it actually lights those things up. And when people have those parts of their brain being lit up by this challenge, they are extremely unlikely to change
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their mind because they feel attacked.
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Yeah, when you. It's literally lighting up a different part of your brain. When political beliefs are challenged than. So this is a specific study I'm thinking of from 2016. And you know, there were like 10 non political beliefs that were challenged and then 10 of the, of the participants political beliefs. And the non political beliefs were much more likely to light up kind of the prefrontal cortex, like you know, rational centers of the brain. And the political beliefs were much more, when they, when those were challenged, the limbic system, the more primitive emotional, you know, parts the amygdala, the fear centers, the fight or flight parts of our brain lit up and the default mode network, which is a set of brain regions that are associated with internal introspection and you know, reflecting inwardly as opposed to listening to what someone's saying on the outside. And so when the political beliefs were challenged, minds didn't change. And when the non political beliefs were challenged, there was much more movement in the person saying, oh, I guess I was wrong. So it's that the natural or the logical kind of way to think would be as I said, obviously, why would you not want truth? Everyone should want that. Why would you want to be delusional? And that is what we're like most of the time. But then these certain areas like politics will trigger a crazy part of our brain that treats ideas and people as one and the same.
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Feels as my identity.
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Yeah, feels angry and hurt and offended when someone disagrees with them. That gets really riled up and gets, you know, you feel that emotion, you're really hyped up and you kind of hate that person maybe, and maybe even you cut them out of your life. And I can only be friends with people who agree with me on these topics. And that is madness. That is a totally weird thing going on in the brain. And so that to me is what I would call low rung thinking is when, and so when someone's, if someone's motivated by truth, we said what they did, they'll seek out dissent, they'll change their mind. Right. They want more information. They're humble when they're on the low rungs. And that whole, you're thinking a whole different way and you're, you're deep down, even if you don't know it at that moment. Your deep down motivation is to confirm what you believe to feel, to continue to feel strongly about it and to, to talk about how right I am and how wrong and bad those other people are who disagree with me. You're going to behave in a way that serves that motivation. So that's confirmation bias and cherry picking evidence that fits in all These cognitive, you know, fallacies that come up and these biases, those are all ways that your brain can make sure you continue to believe the things that you believe in the face of information that might be compelling, that says you're wrong, doesn't matter. You'll become a brick wall when it comes to those beliefs. And we all can. We all do this. And it's good to note when I'm, you know, if, if you can't. The good litmus test is if you believe something really strongly, ask yourself, is there anything someone could present me right now? Is there in this argument, is there anything this person could say that would make me say, you know what? I think I'm wrong. I need to rethink that. And if the answer is no, of course not. Every time they're talking, I'm just waiting so I can. Then, you know, you're in the, you're down in the low rungs, and that's okay. We all do it. But it's like it's a reminder. Calm down, Remember that you and your ideas are not the same. Be humble, accept that you might be wrong and like, listen and maybe you'll learn something. And remember, truth matters more than being right. And you have to continually remind yourself of this.
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B
Why does truth matter? Because
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C
when we have a more accurate picture of the world, we can do more for the world. When we have a more accurate picture of reality, we live better lives, we end up with fewer regrets. When you're also, when you're thinking that way, you tend not to be in a tribal mindset. You feel love for all humans. You don't feel. Feel this weird difference in empathy between the us group and then them group. You're your best self when you're in that mode. When, if you're seeking truth and you're remembering the truth is hard, it's going to bring this humility in and you're going to end up with a clearer view of the world, but you're also going to learn a lot more. Think of what is learning. Learning is getting your perception closer to reality, right? And so you're going to do that and you're going to learn. And so you're going to end up, you're going to end up knowing a lot more. You can make better decisions. You're going to end with more wisdom down the road. You can be, you can, You're, I think, morally kind of a better person. You know, you're. And yeah, and the alternative is delusion. Delusion that feels good in the moment. Just like eating Skittles feels good in the moment, but actually makes. You're not in touch with reality. And I think over the long run, I don't think that's good for. I mean, you know, maybe you could argue that some people are happy not knowing the truth, and maybe it's better that way, but I don't think most people would say that about themselves. And if someone wants to say, you know what? I don't want to know the truth, then okay, you know, I would say then, but I think, you know, 99 out of 100 people would say, I want the truth and I know the truth, and they think they know the truth. So it's not that they actively are saying, I don't care about the truth.
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B
You sure about that? So this. I've even heard you talk about this. So I guess one. Let me acknowledge. Uh, the only part of your answer that surprised me was the moral thing. So I'll follow up on that in a minute. Uh, but I.
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C
You.
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B
I think you're bang on, especially with the idea of identity. People end up getting tied up in that. But I've heard you say that when it comes to being right, when it comes to people trying to get to the truth, that some people are saying, no, no, no, like, truth is just a power game. And even this idea that there is something right or something better than another thing is just a structure in essence of oppression. So when you said that I think everybody wants the truth. Is that true?
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C
Well, you're talking about. I was probably referring to a very specific ideology, kind of this postmodern line of thought which says there is no such thing as objective truth and that everyone. That. That everyone has their truth. So that's. That's a very specific kind of. Very kind of far left kind of radical line of thought, which I think is actually. This is.
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B
Sorry, finish that, because that sounds very interesting.
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C
Oh, saying. I think it's. I think it's perfectly interesting, the concept that, you know, when you have. When you live a life as person A versus person B, you have total different subjective experiences. Yeah, I think that's interesting.
- [32:24]
B
Interesting.
- [32:25]
C
But I fully believe in an objective truth. It doesn't mean there's. Just because there's subjective experience, doesn't mean there's not also objective truth. It doesn't mean that we're always good at finding it. But the whole birth of the. The scientific method.
- [32:40]
B
Right.
- [32:40]
C
What is science is. It's just a. It's a process that anyone in the world, from any country, any language, Any age, any religion or race can participate in together. It's this giant global project that is just a method. It's a way of thinking, and it's a method for getting closer to the objective truth. So I'm not a postmodernist, so I would say I know that some people. So as far as whether they'd say we don't care about truth, I don't think that's what they think. They think that each person kind of has their own truth. And.
- [33:12]
B
But doesn't that mean by definition that there is no objective truth? And we're getting now to where I think this starts to derange. And again, for anybody listening, I just want to remind you, I worry about this going off the rails. Totalitarianism, genocide. Like, it gets scary fast. Just. I'll re point out the three books I mentioned at the top. Like, humans have a long history of killing a lot of people in the name of ideology. So this really feels like it's important to get right. It does seem like by definition, people that say that there is no objective truth, and that's just a big part of the power game that they are, they are actively rejecting that idea that it's.
- [33:52]
C
Yeah, and I think they're wrong. I think that they. But they're not saying we want to be delusional. They're saying that, you know, in, in this case, when you're talking about, you know, kind of the woke movement, what they're saying is that privileged people don't have access to the full truth, but oppressed people do, because oppressed people know the dominant narrative, which is the privilege narrative, because everyone knows that, but they also know the oppressed experience, which only they have access to. To me, this is, that's. It doesn't. That's not true. I think that if, of course, oppressed people have access to information that, but everyone is an individual and everyone has a ton of access to specific life experiences. And this kind of binary. People with that skin color don't have the full truth, but people that to me is just, it's not, it's rigid and childish kind of.
- [34:41]
B
What do they mean when they say truth that I, I actually don't understand. And you threw out a definition earlier that I think is pretty close to mine. But before I offer mine, what, when people say the truth, what do they, when postmodernists say the truth, what do they mean?
- [35:00]
C
Well, I would say, and I don't want to speak for people who, I, I, I'm not one of them, so I'll do the best I can. But you know, there's this thing called standpoint theory, right, which is the idea that I was just kind of referring to, which is that people are positioned in the matrix of oppression and that there's a kind of a current going on, like we're all in a river together. And that's the dominant narrative and that's the, that's kind of the forces of oppression and people who are, who benefit from that, which they would say in, you know, in other Marxist places they might say they're the ruling class in the US in today's kind of woke movement, they would say the straight white men, they are always swimming with the current. And so everyone knows what the current is like because we're all stuck in it, but they don't have any idea of what it's like to go against the current. And so people who are not straight white men, they have a totally different experience of reality. They actually have more information and what they say counts more because they actually have access to what they say about. What would they say about their worldview? It doesn't matter. So, you know, to me, what this actually is is a way that when there's a statistic or a set of data or an argument that comes out that disagrees with this ideology, to me it's a convenient way to say that's all a part of the dominant narrative. In fact, science itself, the scientific method was invented by white men. Which by the way, is not true. It's like that, that's part of my, you know, it's like it's such a. No. Does it gives no credence to cultures all around the world who created, you know, the scientific method together and have, have, you know, they give all this credit for something like science to white Western men by saying that this is a tool created by white Western men to entrench kind of their own power. And again, I'm, I'm saying what I, I'm trying to steel man, what I think they would say. I completely disagree with this entirely. I think that science is not, does not have a color or, and I think science is a way of thinking and it is the best known method, in my view, of finding the truth, of getting closer to it. Now you ask what is truth? It's just that there is the fact that there is also subjective experience which each person kind of has their own. Doesn't mean, that doesn't mean there's. That's part, to me, that's part of objective truth. Objective truth is Just reality. So you know, the Earth is, weighs this, this many kilograms and it, the gravity here is this strong and it's going around the sun and it's been doing that for this long. And humans evolved this way and we are now our brain works this way because of it. These are really hard questions, but to me there is an answer here. It's just that humans takes a long time for us to get closer to it. Some of the things like the diameter of the Earth, we got that one for a long time and they had no idea and there were different theories. Now we know it. It's a clear answer. We have the answer. We know the mass of the Earth, we understand some of how gravity works. But when it comes to, you know, evolution and why aren't you know where our memories are in our brains and we don't know, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It does exist. So, so to me I think, look, if you go to, you know, you talk about Mao, one of the things that in the Maoist revolutions they were very hostile, the radicals to science to, they would say the, you know, the intellectuals and the scientists, they are a part of our oppression, right? To me you show me a movement that is hostile to science and the notion of objective truth that is also humane and productive over the long period of time. And I will, I'll be surprised because I've never seen one. To me, when a movement is hostile to the idea of objective truth and science and very and almost always goes along with the good people, the good oppressed people and the bad privileged people. Right that's the, the or whatever it. Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe it's like Hitler. It's the good upper inner people and the bad outsider scum. Whatever it is, anytime someone's doing this moral dualism and they're anti science, to me that is just human primitive minds have gang, gang, ganged up together into kind of a religious movement that is, you know, masked in a certain kind of righteous politics and that it's actually almost always going to lead to really, really bad things, destruction and suffering and, and it almost never ends up serving the people. The movement supposedly is supposed to, you know, the Nazis were supposed to serve the, the patriotic German and the Maoists were supposed to serve the people, right? And, and make it a, give people a better life and, and woke movement is supposed to serve black Americans and women. And to me in all these cases, I feel like those are some of the people that are hurt most by these Movements.
- [39:48]
B
So yeah, dude. So this is, this is really, really important. So I'm gonna define what I think truth is and then answer why I think you. If you want to be a good totalitarian, top down movement, you have to find a way to bury science. So the truth is, from where I'm sitting, the human mind is a prediction machine. And the truth is the thing that as you get closer to it, allows you to better predict the outcome of your behaviors. So take Newtonian physics. So Newtonian physics got us a lot closer to the truth. And we were able to realize, oh wait, the earth is revolving around the sun. This is roughly how gravity works. We were able to predict the motion of large bodies. Very, very helpful. And I think we could land on the moon without Einsteinian physics. Almost certain that's true. So it's like, hey, pretty impressive. But then without general relativity and special relativity, we would not be able to do things like gps. We certainly wouldn't be able to do nuclear physics. And so as we got closer to the truth there, we were able to unleash the power of the atom. And so it's like, hey, we got closer to that. We're better able to predict the outcome of our behaviors and thusly unleash tremendous power, tremendous progress. And so truth in that sense becomes very useful. So even when you think about things like the social sciences, okay, you make a prediction, we're gonna put in this, this new law, whatever, and we expect X outcome. Now if we get a different outcome than that, then there was something flawed in our thinking. We were farther from the truth than we thought we were. But if we're willing to look at the results, we can actually get closer to the truth and we can structure something even better. And now next time when we run a new experiment, it's going to be hopefully getting us closer to the result that we wanted. So the reason that I think that in a totalitarian movement, which I will say that there are shades of that anytime where you don't allow a dissenting voice, you're headed down the path of totalitarianism. And I see that very much with woke thinking. So the reason that you would have to eschew science or anything else is, you know, you need a narrative to give people the certainty, to move forward and to take action. The problem with science, that pesky, pesky thing, is it tells you whether you're close to the truth or not because you can accurately predict the outcome of your behaviors. So if you're telling people, hey, here's the narrative, do These things and life will be better for everybody. And then you do those things and life isn't better for people or it isn't better for the people that you said it was going to be better for. It breaks the narrative. Yeah. So now it's like, oh, the very thing that I'm using to intoxicate people, people with certainty falls apart under the scrutiny of reality. But if I can say, oh, that, that test that you're going to use to see if this was effective or not, that is so flawed, you can't even do that. Shame on you for even bringing it up. And that's, you know, bad racist, whatever. Now you can keep the narrative intact. Now you can maintain power. And that, that's. That's where this starts to break down for me. I cannot. Until I started reading Nietzsche and the idea of the will to power, I could not understand why people would want a worldview that was obviously broken. Like, what are you getting out of it? You're not making progress. You're not getting anything better. Like, I like refrigerators and air conditioning and the Internet. These are amazing things. And none of them are possible. When you start saying, no, no, no, two plus two isn't really four. Like, what is happening?
- [43:46]
C
Yeah. I think of it as, why do people do what they do? Right? Because they have a worldview where they believe that the rewards are here and the penalties are here, and this is what's good, and this is what bad. Good people do and bad people do, and I want to be good. And. And so then behavior gets driven, right? They shake the same human nature. And you, and you, you give it a.
- [44:11]
B
Do you think that's where it starts? That doesn't feel like the first moment. That feels like how you get the second person into this.
- [44:18]
C
But it doesn't feel like what. Yes, but. But that's what I'm saying is if you can author the story that people believe you are, you're all powerful. You can play God, if you can. If I can convince a ton of people that I am, I speak to God, so I know no one else, but I know what's going to get you into heaven, which is the ultimate primal incentive. And by the way, there might. You might have a lot of sex with virgins there, which is another huge primal incentive. And everything you could ever want and eternal life and everything you're primarily scared of, heaven solves it. I know how to get you there. And by the way, I also know what's going to get you sent to hell. And now if they can believe that, that I know I have the answer. Now I can start saying, okay, here's what gets you into heaven, all the things that I want you to do. And you can drive the populace like a remote control car. And so if you take any kind of tyrant, they're always doing some version of that where they have a story. And if they can make that the story people believe. Look at North Korea, right? I went to North Korea for five days, and when. 2013.
- [45:31]
B
Why?
- [45:32]
C
It's fascinating.
- [45:33]
B
Why not afraid?
- [45:36]
C
I mean, I probably should have been more afraid, given that now they've started arresting some of the people. On this same tour guide.
- [45:40]
B
No, thanks.
- [45:41]
C
But it was so interesting because what I was immersed in for five days was the North Korean story. And it goes like this. The Korean War, which we think of as something that was from 1950 to 1953 and is over. And in South Korea, I think they would say the same thing that happened. And now we're the 15th biggest economy, you know, one of the big boys in the world. In North Korea, the story is that that war is ongoing, still going, that the south, the poor, our poor cousins in the south, they don't hate South Koreans. Our poor cousins down there are being occupied currently by the evil imperialist Americans. They use that term a lot of times, the imperialist Americans. The. They are occupying half our country. And the south wishes they could be free. And the only reason that we're free is because our great leaders, our brave leaders and our military are so powerful that the US can't get here. They want to take over here too, but they can't. And they're scared of us. And that's why. Why we get to be free people. And. But people down in the south, they're not free. That is a story that is very far from the truth. So what happens? What was what we told, you know, we were told before we went in, I had nothing to envy, which is a book about, you know, a North Korean defector. You cannot bring that into the country, they said. And the. They're saying the worst thing you could ever bring was like a radio that had South Korean stations. Because if people there knew that Seoul was not an oppressed place, but actually a thriving metropolis with people who are well fed and free and living their best lives, it would be a disaster. Right? And so they have this story, and some people believe it in the country, a lot of people do. And the people who don't know to keep quiet. And so if you can control speech, you can control what People believe. And if you control people believe, you can keep them acting the way you want, which is subservient to the dear leaders and worshiping the leaders and being conforming and conforming to all of that. If so, you, you are incredibly hostile to truth because you want to, you want to overpower people and you want to basically have people like marionettes and doing what you want. And so you can't. The truth would never work if that were the. So, so they, they. Every single measure in that country is of course there's no Internet. Right. There's so, so, so much effort put towards suppressing the truth. And that's always the case because if you can, if you can write the story that people believe, you drive their behavior. If you stop being able to do that, you can now, if that's now what science is, the reason science is great is because what science says is put away all the stories. We're, there's a, there is a big story, a real story called objective truth. And we don't, we don't claim to know it. Science never has. Even science has theories. They max out at theory because they say science is skeptical of its own conclusions and it assumes, you know, no. Scientists said, oh my God, science is broken because Newton's laws weren't the complete thing. They say, great, right? Science says, yes, let's be less wrong every year. Let's be a little less wrong. So science is saying there is a story that's real and we're just working together, humbly, collaboratively on trying to get closer to it, which is so different. So again, when something's hostile to science, they're almost always hostile to free speech as well. And they almost always are the kind of people that can't stand up in a real debate. They don't actually have real, actual, you know, evidence on their side. So if you can't hang in a debate, what you do is you say debate is evil and these are dangerous ideas that cannot be platformed. And if you platform them, we're going to punish you because you're allowing dangerous, harmful ideas to spread, which is harming marginalized people. Right. It's just the oldest trick in the book. There's a hundred versions of this and it's always the same thing. It's just authoritarianism for the sake of controlling people.
- [49:23]
B
Yeah, okay, so we saw the will to power sort of hanging out there, but for a second, I want to go back to identity this idea that people end up tying their identity to a set of ideas. And when that gets attacked, the regions of the brain light up that have to do with, whoa, you're attacking me. It seems to me that the only way out of this trap and that you can literally draw a line in the sand. In my life of before this realization and after, so I used to value myself for being so smart that was leading me down very weird paths because I would say I'm sort of middle of the road, I'm fine, I can get by, but I am not going to be celebrated necessarily for one of the great intellects of all time. And so I realized that by valuing myself for being smart, anything that attacked that notion was just, I could not have it. And so I had to switch what I built my identity around to being that of the learner. And once I switch my identity to, oh, I don't mind being told that I'm wrong. Oh, I don't mind realizing that I don't have the right answer. Oh, I don't mind whatever. Just like, hey, if it's true, meaning it, if I act as if that thing is true, I can better predict the outcome of my behaviors. I'm going to adopt that. And so it became about building my ego around my willingness to stare nakedly at my inadequacies. And so that like just radically changed my life. I don't see another way out of this. I think everybody, like, if you want to make your life better, that's the only answer. The only answer. Like, you need an ego, you need self esteem, you need to feel good about who you are, you need a sense of identity, you need to be able to say who you are and like, what value system you live by. Is there another way or is that the one?
- [51:12]
C
Well, what you're really talking about is you're taking a backpack that is heavy with rock size, with rocks that are this description of your identity and these characteristics you pride yourself on and the things you feel certain about and that you need to make sure everyone knows you're so smart about. And all these labels you put on yourself, right, those are all rocks that weigh down the backpack. It's heavy. What you're talking about is the magical hack of putting down the backpack and saying, actually, I'm just a learner, like you said, or some humble thing. I'm just an individual who's complicated, who evolves. And I'm just that awareness inside of the individual. And I'm going to try to get less wrong throughout my life. And I'm going to be wrong a lot though. And I'm going to evolve and I might be into this kind of stuff this year and then I'll change my mind next year. And I'm not part of any tribe or group necessarily unless it's in like kind of a fun way where I'm not taking it very seriously. It's, it's liberating, right? And you're light suddenly and now you're free to. You can start skipping around, learning stuff and exploring stuff and trying things. And you know, people will also like you more because you just come off more humble, makes you seem wiser and you know, your, your, your ego is not, you know, getting threatened when something so many different things happen. Right. You're not, not a little petty person. So. Yes, but this is, this is very hard.
- [52:46]
D
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- [53:13]
C
talked about meaning and identity and purpose and connection and all these things that we need. And one of my main problems with, with movements, a lot of certain political movements is the ones that. And this is no different than cults and other things. When they tell you all your answers are here you come and join our thing and you have meaning and you have purpose and you have identity and you have righteousness and you have connection and you have a community. You know who you are now because now you're, you are a blankist. You know, you're whatever it is. And when you come here, all of those holes that are so painful and so hard to fill, it's like a get rich quick scheme. Come here and you got it and you have all those things just join our army. Of course it's snake oil. It's a trap. Because those things are hard and they actually, they emerge from deep unique individualism that happens over long periods of time. You start to figure out meaning for yourself. You start to figure out, you know, your purpose and what you really care about and what you really believe. Right? One of the things these movements promise you is a full setup ready to go. One stop shop for all strong opinions. Now you know what every political issue you have, every moral thing, you know, it's easy now you have your answer. This is what the good people think. This is what the bad people think. Memorize the checklist and you're good to go. Read these core op EDS that are that we all pass around and you know you know how to say all the right arguments. And so to me, what those things are doing is they're not actually filling any of those holes. They're, they're, they're, they're, they're just a kind of a sleazy get rich quick scheme that, that lures in vulnerable people. These are almost, it's no, it's never bad, people joining these things or believing these things. It's all, often these things prey on people's empathy or their desire for connection or these human things. But it's, to me, it's very, it's no different than kind of an abusive cult in a lot of ways. And I think that what the wise thing to teach people, especially vulnerable people, is, is that, you know, you feel so bad about yourself for not having, knowing your meaning and not having strong opinions and not knowing what you think about all this. But actually, that's okay. No one really, you know, most people don't know, and that's okay. And because none of that is who you are, you're really this internal awareness and you're free to be any of these things. That's what I would want to tell people as opposed to saying, you know, you know, in a certain mentality, if you don't have strong opinions on everything, you sound like an idiot right now. Would say, no, no, no, that is not correct. Right. It's that the people who have unearned conviction about everything, they're blowhards and they don't actually, you know, their egos are just going buck wild. So I feel like it's the exact opposite advice. And I feel like somewhere along the way you got a much better message. You learned a much better message because. And I can say it's better because it's just, I think it's more realistic. And it is, as I said, it's liberating.
- [56:02]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. For me, it was getting kicked in the face by some things I did worked and other things I didn't, didn't. And I realized that I was arguing for ideas that made me feel the way I wanted to feel, but I knew that they weren't going to work in a business context. And I don't know if without the marketplace saying, hey, we actually will buy this, we'll pay money for this thing, we're not going to pay money for that thing. If, if I didn't have that just brutal, objective clarity of, ooh, one course of action, I go out of business. The other course of action, I thrive is very sobering. And that forced me to realize, okay, I. If I argue for this idea because it makes me feel smart or you're going to think I'm smart. If I can convince you but the market won't be swayed, I don't know if I ever would have gotten there. And so I see, I mean this goes back to something I already said, but I see really well intentioned people get lost in the sequence of every answer is going to be nuanced. Nuance is very hard. If you can't talk out loud, if there are certain ideas that are just off the table and you're not allowed to have them, then you're not going to talk out loud, which means that you're never going to go from wrong to right. And so you're just going to run down the checklist of I want to please my tribe and fit in and not be ostracized, which is leveraging the primitive mind against me. And this is where we end up. And so I'm really unnerved. I'm worried about the idea that you put it in your book but you use different words, the classic being hard times make strong men. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. And so you go in this loop and in the book you say, can we not just skip the hard times part? I worry that we can't.
- [57:57]
C
Yeah. And one that's especially scary because it's why I reframed it. Just because it wasn't. It's not quite. I just don't think that, you know, what is a hard man, a weak man or whatever it is. Sorry. It's a strong. And to me it was like what it really is to me is it's wise people create good times. Wise meaning people who see how bad things can get usually because they've experienced it themselves and they don't take anything for granted. And they work really hard with humility and collaboration because they know how important it is to build systems that create good times. When people have lived in good times for a few generations, they don't find them precious and they don't think they're stars every morning for oh my God, I get to wake up in good times. They just think this is how things are. In fact, actually things suck. And they start to, you know, you calibrate, this is no different than a human. If human is x amount of money and they just dream of having 10x and they get 10x all they suddenly have all these complaints about not having a hundred x right so it's the same thing. You get good times for too long, you stop appreciating it. And instead of all the kids learning civics and saying, okay, we have to all work together to keep good times, they say, good times are just how things are. Or whatever these times are, this is just how things are. And they stop teaching kids civics, and people start doing all the things that actually create bad times and loosening all of these. This really well thought out structure starts. All the different support beams start to weaken. So that's why I go from, you know, wise people create good times. Good times for too long creates foolish people. And foolish people eventually will drive you right into bad times. And, you know, bad times is, you know, whatever civilizational collapse, it's happened many, many, many times before, or just some awful, unwise war, whatever it is, and then hundreds of millions of people die. So for those people, that's the end of the cycle. But in the rubble, you know, a couple decades later, wise people emerge, and an excruciating process that usually the people who experience bad times aren't even around anymore. Their grandkids can be back in good times, right? So this is the cycle. And the reason that it's so scary right now is, you know, bad times, if you read history, it's, wow, it's a lot of bad times. And I just. They'll say things and I'm like, that sounds awful. Like, terrifying. Like, there's a lot of, like, actual King Joffrey's out there and like slavery, like rampant slavery all over the place for thousands of years. And it's like, imagine how awful that is and like rape and just complete massive injustice and crushing poverty, right? And so you think about how awful this is. But in some ways, what's weird is that the 20th century was, you know, the best yet in so many metrics, you have the best gdp per capita life expectancy, it just skyrockets around the world. You know, medical technology, extreme poverty is at its lowest ever. And so you have this incredible prosperity in that same century. When things did go badly, they went really badly. You had the biggest genocides ever. You had the biggest wars ever. You had suddenly a new thing which is complete existential threats, existential risks, like nukes, right? You didn't have an existential threat in the 1700s. There was nothing that might have killed all of humanity that we made that we did with our own foolishness, right? You didn't have that much power as a species. So Suddenly, in the 20th century, we're developing these giant magic wands that we can suddenly shoot at things and we might just kill ourselves. So the 20th century was the best ever, and also in some ways the most vulnerable and scariest ever with the biggest tragedies. So now apply that to the next century. It's just even more. We're going to have even better prosperity, Life expectancies continuing to go up. You're going to completely eradicate disease and poverty and it's going to be amazing, genuinely amazing. Except if this goes wrong, when things go bad, if we sink to bad times on that merry go round in the 21st century, you know, with all the power we have and all the many different kinds of existential risks we have, nukes is just one of them now. It could be the worst ever. We should be really scared. The stakes get higher as tech gets more exponential. The good times get better, but the bad times get worse. And right now, since we're just living in objectively pretty overall good times, people are not scared enough of bad times. They just take it for granted. It's just human nature. I do it. As soon as I finish this conversation, I'll go back on with my life and stop feeling scared. Because we just, I grew up this way and my parents grew up this way and like we just, we have a good life and that life is good and everything ends up fine. And that's right. We should not be thinking that way. We should be scared and we should be working really hard to teach kids civics and to say, you know, how can we be wise together and, and uphold this kind of liberal democracy?
- [62:46]
B
So what are the things that lead to bad times? Can they be described? Like I would say the second you talk about ending freedom of speech, you're on a one way street to bad times. So what make bad times and then we'll get to what make good kind good times?
- [63:04]
C
Yeah, well, this, you know, the Enlightenment was.
- [63:08]
B
Can you define them what the Enlightenment was?
- [63:10]
C
Yeah, exactly. The Enlightenment was a period of intense. I mean, it's funny because people, one of the theories is that that coffee, coffee shop started sprouting up and all these smart people who would normally have been in saloons singing songs and punching each other and playing games were suddenly in coffee shops dead sober, caffeinated and debating. And then they were going to write books about their debates and there was, you know, and so it was actually like a time when all of this philosophy blossomed and people were going back to Greek philosophy and saying, what have we learned? And what's the. You Know, this has been so much trial and error with Christianity and with democracy and all these things that have gone on. So what, what did we learn? What, what, you know, how should people live? And it's kind of the latest crack that at least the Western world came up with on the what's right and wrong for how people should live, what's the most effective and practical, but also the moral way that governments should, you know, how governments should work. And, and so the, the, the, and then the application of that was, you know, the US was kind of the first one. And now of course, hundreds of, you know, over 100 countries have now put that into practice, which is building actual countries based on that philosophy. So it was a lot of talk and suddenly it was being put into use. And the US had a unique opportunity because they didn't have the baggage it was for blank slate. They could say we can start from scratch. It was much harder to do that in Europe and other places. And so there were things like free speech, right, which was one of the major insights of this, which is that free speech is basically the foundational right on which every other right is based. Now if you think about what's the alternative to free speech, it's always the same. It's the people with the most power, whether it's cultural or government or physical violence, the people with the most power decide what's offensive, what's okay to say what's not. And almost always, if it's a king, it's a lot of dictators out there right now who are imposing censorship. And none of them are saying I impose censorship. They're saying I'm against hate speech, I'm against, you know, we are against blasphemy, right? Everyone frames it nicely.
- [65:26]
B
But what do you think then? Hate speech and blasphemy are a part of what leads to good times.
- [65:31]
C
But I, well, I think free, free speech is what leads to good times. And you can 100 people define hate speech and blasphemy a hundred different ways. I think things being said in a free speech environment, which some people will find to be hateful or blasphemic, is inevitable. Inevitable. So the alternative is you say, okay, actually hate speech is banned. Again, 100 people have 100 different definitions of hate speech. So what's actually banned? It's that the powerful people determine to be hate speech. In the case of a dictator, it almost always happens to be criticism of the government, non patriotic speech, or if it's a religious dictatorship, you know, you know, blasphemy against God or whatever it is. It is almost always if the alternative to free speech sucks in a lot of ways, you're going to have a lot of shitty people saying shitty things and it's going to, some of those things are going to hurt when they're said and some of those things are going to cause harm and they are. But the alternative is authoritarianism because someone has to lay down the law of what constitutes hate speech. And it's always the powerful people deciding what is inconvenient to their goals is what this becomes not allowed. So it's, when you think about it that way, you realize that free speech is the only thing that you can have. Otherwise you're just back in, you're back in tyranny. And so then another huge one of course was the voting system, right? It's been democracy forever, but specific modern version of this very complex big country, you know, Republic democracy. That is an insight that is a. Built on centuries of trial and error experiments still. And it's incredibly flawed, right? And who, who thinks the US Government system is, is great? I mean it's, it's awful in so many ways and it's often doesn't represent the will of the people and it's open to corruption and it's like everything else. But what's the alternative, right? I mean it's, it's, it's, you just have to always think like this is the kind of, the theme with Enlightenment governments is it's the less, it's the least bad outcome. So what's a threat to this? What creates bad times? If I consider the liberalism like a house that we live in, lowercase L liberalism, right, Like Enlightenment style, like classic liberalism, I consider it a house that we all in the US are living inside of, whether you're left, right or center. Politically, we are all, you know, in the liberal house, living under its rules and benefiting from its benefits. And, and it has just, it values the individual and it says that, you know, everyone is, you know, life, liberty and property or pursuit of happiness and that equality of opportunity is at least the goal. You know, of course we can argue about how well it's being achieved, but it's kind of a, it's a set of ideas that most Americans left, right and center say, yeah, well that's good, we just need to achieve it better, right? So to me, that house is one of the main things that creates good times and has, that has created modern good times. It is, we can always, we can owe, we owe our good times to that House, that house has kept people, most of the time, most people reasonably free, has engendered prosperity, and has again fostered at least the best crack at fairness that probably we've seen. You know, of course, there's been lots of unfair things. Jim Crow. I mean, we failed at the liberal house a few times, but the liberal house itself is mostly made good times. Now, what creates bad times is the house, the support beams starting to decay and crack and. Right. And so an example of that. This is why we talk a lot about wokeness, but the MAGA movement, I mean, what I see with Trump, there's a lot of things you could criticize Trump for, but the election stuff is, to me, if you're thinking about it, this is the liberal house. When he said before, both people Forget, before the 2016 and 2020 election, before them, he declared, I will accept the results. If I win, then this person wins and then doesn't win. And when the person doesn't win, literally tries to say the election is rigged. That is a mind virus of its own. He talked about the woke mind. That is a mind virus. It's a mind virus which says, whenever my candidate doesn't win, it must be rigged. And that is a support beam. That's the. That is right there in front of you. The decay of a support beam. Because what is the support.
- [69:46]
B
What would you call that? Support beam?
- [69:47]
C
The support beam is. So it's not just the system of kind of democratically elected leaders, because Russia claims to have that. It's the widespread trust that we actually have Democratic leaders. It's trust in the system so that we all can agree, my candidate lost, but it was still correct. It was still the right thing. That is magic. And then the peaceful transition of power where the losing candidate, Reagan, when he went out as the winner, but Hillary, when she lost. They're making almost the word for word the same speech. They would say, which is what, you know, you should want kids in America to learn that this is what separates America from so many countries of the past and so many others. Today is this moment, the peaceful transition of power. And when Hillary lost, she said, I lost, and I'm stepping down as, as a proud American stepping down. That's is the. That it's kind of an ethos. It's a religion in a lot of ways. It's an ethos that when your candidate loses, gets fewer votes, you accept it, and that is your president. That is a support beam. And so what Trump is doing is sending out a mind virus into a huge swath of America which says, actually the elect. The, the numbers say this, but don't believe it. And you know, corruption happens. So the question, I think the fair question is is he is partially right? Right. Is there some. But he made so many claims. And there's a, there's a, you know, I've gone into every, you know, all the major claims and I linked to a page in the book that I think is really useful, which is just going through all the claims and showing wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So this was not based in some actual corruption that was happening. This was a mind virus for selfish reasons. That is. There's a lot of mind viruses for selfish reasons. This is one. If you care about the liberal House, you have to be like, this is the probably, that's like the big support beam in the middle of the House is the trust in free elections. That is what separates. I mean, look how many countries struggle with just having a fair election when you can't trust that. Now you don't believe that's your leader. Now you, you know, now there's suddenly, you know, you want insurrection. Now you shouldn't. We shouldn't even follow the laws of this government. We shouldn't trust their cdc, we shouldn't, shouldn't trust their whatever. And so it's that, that's, that's. I'm. That is watching something decay. And then I think Wokeness is another one that is to me, that, that MAGA concept and Wokeness specifically, not social justice, because liberal social justice of Martin Luther King style is very much inside the house, very proud of the house and saying we need to make this house do what it promised and support all Americans and actually be fair and just. That's a proud liberal saying that inside the house, Wokeness is very specifically saying that liberalism itself is bad and exploitative and that free speech is bad. Right. That it's dangerous to platform ideas that we don't like, et cetera. And so that's a wrecking ball outside the house. And the MAGA movement is a wrecking ball outside the house. And if you're in the house and you're squabbling with each other about specific debates left, right and center, I think you have to pause and say, we'll get back to these, the wrecking balls. We all need to not allow the wrecking balls. And if you're on the left, you especially have to worry about. You're in charge of the woke wrecking ball and making it stop being so powerful, standing up to it. And if you're on the right, you're in charge. Because someone on the right yelling about wokeness only makes wokeness seem justified. Someone on the left yelling about MAGA just makes them seem, you know, so it's, it's. Are you, the first question is, are you pro house or anti house? And I am very much pro house because I believe that the House is what gives us good times. And the decay of the house is what will lead us to the bad times that so many people in history have gone through.
- [73:24]
B
And if we had to put a super quick definition of the house would be liberal values.
- [73:29]
C
Liberal values. Liberal laws and liberal. Yeah, liberal. It's two things. It's liberal laws and rules. So the electoral college and the First Amendment and the justice system, right, The Supreme Court, all these, that's one half of the puzzle. And the other half is liberal norms is the fervent, kind of almost religious defense of the liberal spirit. So if the government says anyone can start a business, right, Free market. But you're part of a cultural group that says anyone who starts a business is an evil bad person. And all your friends are going to stop talking to you and you're going to probably be fired from your job for trying to start a business and you're probably going to be, it's going to be hard for you to ever make money because everyone's going to think you're an awful person. No one's going to start a business. So you can have that law that says free market. But if the culture is, if the cultural norm is saying business is evil, you might as well not have free markets. So with free speech, the First Amendment isn't critical, right? You need it. But if, then, if free speech will get you destroyed socially and professionally, you don't have free speech, you might as well not have the First Amendment. So liberal rules and liberal norms and the kind of, the thing that glues it all together is the trust in these core liberal institutions like the justice system, like the, you know, the, the financial system and like the political system. And, and, and that the trust that things are fair and, and when, when, and that's why actual corruption, when the media actually becomes kind of corrupt, when, you know, when you know a president is actually corrupt, when you know that is does so bad because it really burns that trust. And then people start violating the norms because, well, they're violating it, whatever. And so we kind of lose that of kind shared kind of commitment. And without the norms, then the house is going to eventually crumble.
- [75:34]
B
Okay, so now we have a much better understanding of how the House ends up falling apart. How do we stop it before it's stopped by a rebound born of just unimaginable amounts of suffering.
- [75:51]
C
So I'm telling a story here, which is the pro house story, the pro liberalism story. And if you look at any polls or just have conversations, most Americans agree with me on that. Most, again, left, right and center. Most Americans are like, liberalism is good and the House is good and that free speech is good. And whatever most Americans think this and so picture that's like a story. And it is a story about, it's a story that says liberalism is a good thing and that we should defend it. And that story is this big powerful story. And there is, there's competing stories like the woke story which says liberalism is exploitative and bad and oppressive and just a cheap disguise for the same exact kind of oppression that is always occurred and that we need to be liberated from it, which is a term that specifically means like it's revolutionary. We need to, we need to have eventually a revolution that dissembles the master's house. And you can't use the master's tools to dissemble the master's house. No free speech. You have to actually use repression to write. So, so, so that's another story.
- [76:58]
B
How do people say that with a straight face?
- [76:59]
C
And by the way, that's okay. That's what's cool about liberalism. They say, sure, bring it in. You want to have a Marxist write a Marxist book in our country? Bring it, let's debate it, right? You want to be a far right person, bring it into the conversation, right? Let's have all the ideas here. Liberalism is supple and big and open and it says, bring it all in and let the best ideas win. Even criticism of itself. The west is critical of itself, right? Which is very, it's unusual, it's self critical. And that's, that's one of the things that makes it amazing. It also kind of puts it in danger in a lot of ways. But so liberalism says, sure, this is the big pro liberal book that, the story I'm picturing like a big book. And here's these other competing books. Bring it in, let's all debate it out. Now the liberalism book, most people agree with and I think it stands on much sounder ground. I think history backs it up. I think, I think looking at history says this book has been better, this story has been correct, has, has led to a better world, better good times than, than the kind of US versus them Marxist ideas, right? So I think it stands up to scrutiny and most people in the US believe it. So it should have no problem standing up. And then with the stories, that is the most powerful. That's what's taught to kids, that becomes that, that maintains the ethos. Right. What's happened in the last decade, last five years especially, is because of. Maybe it's because of social media, maybe it's because of some other complex factors. So many of the people that believe the big liberalism story have become scared to say it out loud because the woke story, or in a lot of cases, the MAGA story. If you're on the right, try to be a Republican politician right now and say the most basic Reagan phrase, which is that the election was fair and Biden is the rightful president. That's career suicide in a lot of the parts of the right. So right now you've got these wrecking ball movements that there's always wrecking ball, which is always movements that hate liberalism and think it's. But something's going on now that makes that much more scary to defy them. They actually can punish dissent a lot more than they normally can. Again, maybe it's because everyone's scared of Twitter mobs, who knows? But that's a little change that has made all the people who believe this story go silent. What happens when everyone goes silent? And so they still believe it, but it's in their heads. That story loses all of its power. And now this other story, which should not be able to start writing policy and entering companies and changing the way companies work that to serve it, and changing government policies and changing curriculum and educating and teaching little kids that this story, as opposed to saying it's one of the stories, which is totally fine, saying this is the correct thing. And any kid, any kid or your parents, they disagree with it. They're bad people, they're bigots, right? That's been allowed. They've been allowed to do that. And that's so dangerous. So to me, this is a kind of a promising thing because it's that if I thought that we needed a revolution that we needed, you know, to be liberated from this evil system, I would think, well, that's hard. It's a tall order. I don't think that. I think we have a good house and most people like the house. And the house can stand up strong if everyone just defends it. And they're just scared. And the fear is not that they're going to get murdered. No one is hanging, lynching people who Say the wrong thing. Right now, what they're doing is they're trying to get you fired, They're. They're criticizing you, they're shaming you. That's a soft cudgel. It's not a hard cudgel. So it's kind of a house of cards, a soft cudgel. If everyone just stops being scared and people start showing courage and then everyone starts copying each other's courage. This whole thing, these are marginalized back to the sidelines where they belong, and they're marginalized to the fringes until they can convince more people. Because that's how you actually make progress in liberal democracies. You have to persuade. And then these aren't good at persuasion, so they go back to the fringes where they belong until they come up with better arguments. And liberalism is fine. We have a crisis of courage right now. And that's the. And again, I think that's a nice problem to have because it means that we're so close. It's all the ideas are there that people know and they just need to start saying what they think. And that can start to happen like dominoes when people start doing it. So that's what I'm hoping for.
- [80:51]
B
I hope you're right. I do worry that Vladimir Lenin is correct. Give me one generation of children and I will change the world. That's a paraphrase. Was pretty close. First thing Hitler did was get a hold of the kids. You can get. Oh, God, there was one kid that like, ratted out his dad and his dad ended up being killed and they had like, statues of him. It's just. Oh, God, that's terrifying to me. And I do. One thing that I've been thinking more and more is that every generation, they get to have the world they want. And if you, if you didn't grow up with the liberal values, if you weren't taught civics, which is something I want to get back to. Like what exactly you want us to teach kids when we're teaching them civics? But if you weren't taught that, how much damage will one generation do? Because they're going to get the world that they asked for, good, bad or indifferent. And at least for, like you said, the last 10 years, there's really been an erosion of two of the two pillars that we've talked about so far anyway, the trust in the liberal democracy and then free speech, just to sort of round it. So I do worry about that quite a bit. What do we need to teach people that would get them Back on the. Not straight and narrow, but. But get them back to the things that lead to the good life, which I will round to being able to say what you think is true, being able to explore ideas so that you can hold a nuanced opinion, and then having faith in the system.
- [82:36]
C
I think, as I said, the liberal house is our best ticket to good times. And our liberal house stands strong if people believe in it and defend it and understand how it works, understand what the alternative outside is and they realize how important this is.
- [82:53]
B
So teaching how the government is structured.
- [82:55]
C
And so what I would want kids to learn is so then. And if the support beams are based on common understanding of the values and defending them, I'd want them to learn the value of those support beams. So free speech. I'd want kids to be taught that words. The old phrase sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me because, you know, have a thick skin towards words. And. And that if you disagree with someone, you can either walk away. That's a totally good option. You can have a debate, but you don't try to hurt them.
- [83:29]
B
How are you going to switch that? Because the. What was it? Jonathan Haidt and what he wrote about. I think it was 2014 is a year that he pegs just everything changed. And people went from believing in that to wanting to be protected. They want safe space. They're in a defense mode. How do we begin to unwind that?
- [83:49]
C
Well, so that's a specific ideology that has been. Teachers have been trained on that and the MA programs, they are ideological factories and they have been for a while. So these, A lot of these teachers go into schools. They've been indoctrinated. They indoctrinate kids into a specific. Again, it's. I don't mind as a liberal, I'm saying bring. If you. If your teachers wants to teach Marxism to kids, bring it. Just say this is one point of view and a lot of people disagree with it, then it's fine. And by the way, here's what other people think and here's what these people think and bring this. Then I have no problem.
- [84:18]
B
But how do we get back to that? If people are clamoring for safety.
- [84:21]
C
Okay, well.
- [84:22]
B
And they believe that words are violence
- [84:24]
C
because they believe that words are violence because they're being taught that. Right. So they have to be.
- [84:28]
B
You think that's it?
- [84:29]
C
Oh, of course.
- [84:29]
B
You don't think this has anything to do with social media?
- [84:31]
C
No, I think the reason I think that sticks and stones will break my bones but words won't hurt me because I was taught that that's a specific thing. It's not necessarily intuitive. And now I think that that WOKE ideology doesn't believe that. It believes words are violence. Specifically it says words are violence. And so, you know, and, and it even goes farther, silences violence. Right. So you actually have to, you have to not just not dis, not disagree with our ideology because that's violent, but you have to actually be an outspoken proponent of it because otherwise you're being violent. It's a huge manipulation. And it's the exact opposite of what you would teach in a liberal democracy if you wanted to uphold that democracy. You brought up Hitler, right. And you brought up Lenin, right. The Bolsheviks, and you could say Mao as well. One of the indoctrinating kids, one of the things that all of they had that the current movement, that WOKE movement does not have is the ability to murder your parents. If the parents are saying the wrong thing or if the kid speaks out in class, they're going to get sent to. Right now they actually, you know, there's a soft cudgel. And a lot of kids, I don't think believe necessarily what they're being taught or they're being taught something different at home. I don't think it's as easy as you, you can't really do it, have it with purity, indoctrinated generation today, it's much harder. There's the Internet, there's chat rooms, right. There's. So I, I don't think I, I, it's, I, I'm very concerned about what kids are being taught. I think it's also just, it's bad for the kids. It's really like sad. I'm sad for kids that are learning that if someone disagrees with you, they're being violent and that the right way to handle disagreement is to punish the person. That is what they're being taught. That you go tell the teacher, you know, you punish the person. Eventually you go and tell social media and you get them fired. Right. That translates right to that. I think it's bad for, bad for the kids. And of course there's all these, you know, rising anxiety and depression and all of this. You can know, you know, this correlation causation there. But I don't think that any of this is good for kids. But I also think it's awful for the society. But I don't think they have the hard cudgel. And I feel like they're. Again, I feel some optimism here because
- [86:22]
B
a lot of people see the optimism in the data.
- [86:25]
C
Well, what I see is, for example, I'm talking about this right now. If I were in Nazi Germany, I'm going straight to the gulag when I walk out of here because I'm sitting there and criticizing the Capital P party. Right. And so now you're going to really indoctrinate kids because no one's going to. There are so many people saying what I'm saying on the Internet right now. There is a very strong movement to. Against this right now. Parents are learning about this. And. And it's. It's not easy to actually indoctrinate. It's. It's not. And to indoctrinate a liberal democracy, it's hard. That's why liberal democracy is cool, because it is. There's some robustness there. It's, It's. It's hard to really, you can. Again, it's vulnerable to mob and things like that, as we just saw, because you don't have a dictatorship that can say we don't. We have free speech. It is vulnerable, but it bends, but it doesn't break very easily. Bends easily, but it doesn't break. Right. Which is the red scare. It bent. Right. All of our values are going out the window. We weren't acting like Americans. All these liberal values. The house was, but the house stood. So it's not that I. Again, I'm the person who just said we shouldn't get cocky. The house can fall down. But I don't feel hopeless. I feel like what needs to happen is people saying what they think. So when it comes to, like, kids and curriculum. Yeah, I think there are a lot of. There's a lot more awareness right now about this issue in K through 12 schools that wasn't there three years ago even. Right. This is new. Social media, you could say, is a big problem. That's. Everyone knows that now. Everyone talks about how social media is making us tribal and bad and unhappy and depressed. Ten years ago, everyone thought social media was great. That's when you're really vulnerable to it. So I just see a lot of progress. I see the country's wisdom starting to come along. And it looks to me a little. If I could zoom out, if I could predict, I would say that we look back on this time as like, we look back on the Wild west and that it was kind of social media sprung up. There was like mob rule. It was kind of chaotic. You know, this. The, you know, radical ideology kind of like, you know, started changing curriculum in schools and getting people fired. And this, this, this, you know, reactionary movement, you know, was denying the election. It was kind of nuts. And that because we didn't. We didn't have the. We didn't. We got, you know, the primitive mind won round one because in the chaos and then wisdom started to prevail. We created better systems, we created new kinds of social etiquette and, and wisdom started to come to prevail and people started to speak out, just like after the Red Scare. At some point it would have been terrifying to say, I think Communists should get to live here and be free and have the same rights we do. And they should be able to speak about why communism is great. And that's what a good American should. I can say that now. I would have been terrified to say that in 1951 or whatever. So we come out of these periods too. And so, I don't know, I feel very frustrated, but I also feel like there's a good route towards a better way.