Sam Harris, author and neuroscientist - BBC HARDtalk

welcome to hard talk i'm stephen sack thanks to the internet and this the mobile phone our ability to inform communicate and persuade has never been greater and yet public debate seems more toxic more divisive than ever before so what's happening are intolerance and extremism winning out over reasoned debate well my guest today is the american neuroscientist philosopher and podcaster sam harris he goes into intellectual territory where few others dare tread on race and religion he generates lots of heat what about light sam harris in california welcome to hard talk happy to be here thanks stephen sam you have an extraordinarily popular podcast in which you talk with leading intellectuals across the world but you also express your own trenchant opinions in a host of books that you've written which is more important more meaningful to you the conversation or expressing your strong opinion uh good question i think i kind of split the difference there because as i as you know i don't do much in the way of standard interviews i'm really i'm really trying to have a conversation every time i do a podcast so i take up probably 40 percent of the bandwidth in any in any interview so it really is it's you know i get to hear myself talk to my heart's content and perhaps to the exasperation of certain guests when you choose guests for the making sense podcast which is listened to by millions of people across the world do you like to bring people in with whom you know you disagree and disagree really quite profoundly occasionally yeah i mean you know a little of that goes a long way i mean depending on how profound the disagreements are but uh i you know i think what's important is to be able to talk about substantial issues and significant differences of opinion in a way that's civil and that converges on some kind of solution i mean i think the only tool we have for making intellectual and moral progress is conversation and it's persuasion if we can't persuade one another based on argument and evidence we really i mean in the end we have no appeal but to force you know or force of numbers or you know i mean it's just it really you know we shed the the veneer of of civilization pretty quickly and so i i really do view conversation as a kind of sacred tool i'm just wondering why you have such faith in conversation and dialogue when it seems to me we live in an era of digital communication where where frankly exchange of views and information is easier than ever before and everybody can put their opinion out there on a platform and yet far from easing uh humanity's ability to get along it seems to be polarizing dividing and creating an ever more toxic environment so your faith in conversation may be misplaced yeah we i didn't say i was an optimist uh i'm not i mean i just think i see no alternative right i think it's the only literally the only tool we have uh i mean there's there is simply no other way to influence the the thoughts and opinions and behaviors and intentions of other human beings and so yeah but i you know i'm quite worried that we have created a a kind of psychological experiment you know that we've run on all of humanity or most of humanity all at once without anyone's consent wherein we've created these a circumstance where people can be successfully isolated with respect to to certain kinds of dogmas they can pursue any crazy idea to their hearts content you know for year after year and find support for it online the internet is having this dual function of allowing us to get access to really the totality of human knowledge instantaneously but it's also allowing our our sense-making to shatter and and our epistemology to allow for a kind of balkanization of thought i want to turn to perhaps one of the most contentious debates frankly tearing america apart right now that is race and racism and how to respond to what many people appears to be the clear evidence of discrimination at every level in american society including policing and the justice system you have spoken out against black lives matter you seem to regard it as a form of identity politics which you say is a poison a poison in america today why do you say that well first let me say that i i acknowledge that racism is still a a tremendous problem in certain parts of american society and you know globally uh and that racism is is something that we absolutely have to oppose and and criticize and i mean you know it is a problem for which there is a remedy and we have been you know pursuing this remedy for for many many decades in the u.s but we've made a lot of progress right and we're now living at a moment where we are having a kind of uh moral panic advertised to us and and black lives matter is one of the the names of this movement and one of the you know the the groups you know it's a very loose group but it's one of the groups that is is um uh making the most noise on this topic at the moment and it it's as though we have made no progress it's as though this moment in american history exemplifies the worst uh symptoms of racism and uh that's quite delusional i mean obviously we've made a tremendous amount of progress obviously this is one of the least racist moments in human history uh generally globally and in in american history and um but but but may i stop you yeah just to point out that the obvious that you sit with me we're both you know let's be honest white uh middle-class comfortable educated people who represent perhaps the the dominant uh grouping in our respective societies and and who are you in the end to tell black americans how they should feel right now because so many of them look around the reality of their own lives their children's lives and see a system which is systemically racist not least when it comes to the police and they feel it is their right and their duty to express a level of anger frustration and an unwillingness to accept that which is surely understandable well it's in part understandable but what is really understandable is that there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding being amplified so so if you're going to be outraged over the uh racist behavior of racist cops or the racist consequences of systems that that promulgate racism whether there's any actual living racists around to to uh implement those systems uh well it's not a choice is it we we are we are surely duty bound to be no of course right i'm as concerned and as outraged as as anyone is about those things but i'm doubly or additionally concerned that we not find racists where they don't exist right that would if you're going to find racists everywhere you're you're going to find the real racists nowhere right i mean you're and you're going to do an immense immense harm uh in the process and so to take you know the variable of police violence it's very important if you're going to worry about uh the consequences of racism and the way it's causing black men preferentially to get shot and killed in america you have to find out whether in fact that's happening right whether in fact black men are being shot in greater numbers right in proportion to uh the numbers of encounters they have with police officers and whether they're whether they're if they're having more encounters with police officers per capita there's any explanation for that other than racism right my concern currently in america is that any disparity you find whether it's with respect to police violence or employment or wealth or any any variable of interest and of great social importance currently on the left anywhere you go left of center politically the only explanation that is acceptable and this really does have the the kind of the quality of a kind of blasphemy test in a religion the only explanation that is that is acceptable this moment is white racism or or systemic racism now on the point of police violence it just so happens that the only data we have suggests that while while african americans have more encounters with the police uh and there's there you know i think there are obvious reasons for that and they're actually in fact roughed up by the police more than than white americans are um they're not killed more in fact they're killed less than than white americans are per encounter which is to say that if you come under the attention of the police in america and uh they draw their guns on you uh your chances of being shot appear to be slightly higher if you're white at the moment but hang on it breaks everyone's expectations this is fascinating because it gets to the heart of your intellectual approach to lots of things you know you are i think a self-proclaimed rationalist you say that you are determined to be driven by the evidence by data by the science not by emotion and still less by things like religion or any other faith-based knowledge uh belief system so so evidence matters but if you look across the piece it's you've relighted on one piece of evidence but surely there's an overwhelming tract of evidence about incarceration rates what happens to black kids in schools what happens to black people in employment how many jobless black people there are there is clearly a story in america of systemic discrimination which black people are saying right now they will no longer tolerate without expressing their anger and when you make the point you've just made it it does sound to some like you're you're sort of lacking a level of compassion or even emotional intelligence or ability to empathize with the situation of the other well well no the first of all it shouldn't because i'm concerned about the real suffering of real people but the we have to acknowledge that we compound that suffering when we give false notions about its actual causes right so if you're going to look at and again and and i'm you know i'm on record every time i touch this topic acknowledging that uh we still need criminal justice reform and the war on drugs in the united states in particular has been a disaster and it's especially been a disaster for the black community all of those things uh should go without saying and and there are changes that need to be made there but if you're going to again if you're going to to ascribe the status quo across the board the fact that that um uh there's the kind of wealth inequality and equal inequality with respect to crime and violence in american society that breaks along racial lines if you're going to ascribe that to white racism or or white racist or policies that white that white people are not changing because they advantage them right you will continually stumble upon errors of great consequence right it's simply not the case that there are white racists with their racism producing the level of violence we see in the black community in the inner city in a place like chicago the point that many black americans are making right now and i'm going to quote to you the words of just ones his sincere carabao who works as the social justice coordinator at the american humanist association he's addressed your uh podcasts on this issue your interviews with other people on this issue and he says sam harris's definition of racism places an underlying emphasis on intention and he says that's how sam harris defines the number of white people who are racist as a tiny tiny minority however says mr carabo when discussing racism it is important to remember it isn't about intent it's about impact and in that sense it involves a far greater proportion of the white community well as stated i wouldn't necessarily disagree with that intention isn't the only thing that matters obviously if there are policies that in effect create racist outcomes whether anyone intends it or not we should figure out what those policies are and we should change them right so that's you know that is what people tend to mean by systemic race to racism or institutional racism and i'm i'm completely on board with the project of discovering that and correcting for it right but what we have now in american society are allegations of racism or or uh the experience that people are having millions of people are having simultaneously of watching a video of let's say a police shooting you know you know in the prototypical case it'll be a you know white cop shooting we don't have to imagine it sam we we see it right now we're watching over and over jacob blake being shot in wisconsin you know we don't have to use our imagination i would tell you that that that that video is not evidence in and of itself that video is not evidence of racism right you can be you can see videos of white people being shot in precisely the same circumstances and um i mean we have a massive problem of guns in our society we have a massive problem of poorly trained cops i mean that that video in particular against several of these problems one is that that when someone rushes to their car uh in defiance of police commands and opens the door and reaches in in american society unlike in the uk it is only rational for the cops to assume that that person is retrieving a gun so he can turn around and start shooting cops in the face which which happens right and every cop knows this to move on from race to religion you're very well known for having written a book end of faith that espoused your belief that religion was essentially preposterous but amongst your believe views on religion is a clear feeling that islam is a more malign a more dangerous set of beliefs than many other religions and i just want to quote you something you said actually a number of years ago almost 14 years ago where you talked about muslims in europe and you said muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of host countries they exploit the values of those countries to the utmost they demand tolerance for their backwardness misogyny their anti-semitism and their genocidal hatred preached in their mosques i i just wonder again if you're looking for calm considered rational conversation do you think your own words there are helping yeah well as you acknowledge that had the kind of topspin one one wrote with in the immediate aftermath of september 11th right i mean this is this is my conversation my style of conversation about islam has moved on from there i wrote a book with majid nawaz a fellow brit who used to be a muslim extremist who is now as rational and secular a person as you could ever hope to find and we had a kind of debate uh that that that um uh converged on a on a really a happy conversation and a friendship that became this book islam and the future of tolerance so people can get my my most recent framing of the issues there but you know i mean to your to your fundamental point yes it is taboo to say wherever you happen to stand in culture whether you're secular or whether you're religious that religions are different with respect to almost any variable we we care about where they you know they they claim different things they emphasize different things uh there are different points in in in their history and their engagement with modernity and yes islam is it's not an accident that jihadism is a phenomenon in islam and it's not a phenomenon in anglicanism or mormonism or scientology i mean these i want to know in the real world what this means for you sam does that mean that when donald trump uh back in 2017 imposed that travel ban which was quite clearly aimed at muslims and he listed i think it was seven muslim majority countries which for security reasons he said could no longer travel to the united states were you cheering him on on my on my behalf my point is that you characterize muslim immigrants as a group of people within which there will be a small minority you say who are statistically going to be jihadists which is precisely what donald trump would say yeah okay but the so yes hence the need to vet immigrants and refugees and have you know honest conversations about what we're looking for we're looking for people who believe specific things about martyrdom and apostasy and blasphemy and the rights of women and whether it makes moral sense to hurl homosexuals off of rooftops right and people who are recruiting for isis are happy to join isis or people who in your own country will drop out of medical school for the pleasure of of going to to live in syria so they might be able to martyr themselves for isis right this is a phenomenon of contagious ideas that we have to speak honestly about and it's not it's only happening in one religion now in addition to i mean the reasons why i didn't agree with with donald trump's travel ban is that one it was completely incoherent because it was not even targeting the countries that posed the greatest ideological risk at that point or that were the the worst reservoirs of this kind of jihadism but two i i you know i have long said that the most valuable people on earth with respect to dealing with this problem people we most want in our societies are secular muslims and moderate muslims and and people who can actually bridge the gap between the you know the the non-muslim community and the secular community and the religious extremists who are who are albeit a minority but still a problem within the muslim community so we need people like majid nawaz and ayan hirsi ali and and you know dozens of other secularists and and moderates uh and apostates who i've supported and we need them to figure out how to midwife this this uh renaissance and within the muslim community where in something like enlightenment values take hold in the widest possible way uh it's obvious that i'm not going to accomplish that it requires somebody who's in the community to do that generally people i think associate you particularly with a a a very strong brand of atheism and there was that famous time you debated with chris hitchens and richard dawkins and you you all of you said you know religion is extremely corrosive and damaging somebody then asked about spirituality and while the others didn't really bite you said actually no there is room for spirituality in my life and i'm just wondering what that means for you ultimately despite everything you say about science and evidence and rationality do you believe in some sort of higher power some non-human force at work well it's not a matter of believing in a higher power it's a matter of experiencing the fact that that consciousness is intrinsically mysterious and it's it's the context in which all of our most wonderful experiences appear right and it's always the context of all of our suffering and the mechanics of that is something we can understand more and more and and uh change our lives for the better but it's also the context in which um human life can get better and better and i think some some classically spiritual values like self-transcendence and unconditional love right are at the core of any movement in the direction of of greater and greater human well-being and should be at the core of any ethics we use to talk about those possibilities so yeah i mean so i have no doubt that it's possible to become something like the historical person of jesus whoever that was or buddha or any of these great patriarchs and matriarchs of our religion so there's a baby in the bathwater there that i think we don't want to throw out as atheists but the question is do you ever have to believe anything irrational in order to explore those possibilities in yourself or in in society and i think the answer to that is quite clearly no i'm just remembering close to the beginning of this interview you gave a hollow laugh and said i'm not telling you i'm an optimist so when you tell me that you do believe in transcendence and you believe uh that we can all turn ourselves into better beings by looking within and pursuing love and all of that we're not doing it are we i mean that is just as we look around the world and around our societies right now that is not happening uh well we're not doing it well i would certainly agree yeah i mean many of us are trying and that's all we can do is is try both personally and i think most importantly protect norms that allow us to live by our deeper wisdom even when we are personally liable to fail right so we want laws and tax codes and norms of discourse that that anchor us to our better selves or our better possible selves or make it easier for even mediocre and conflicted people to behave better and better right and what we have rather often are systems of incentives that are set up to make even very ethical people you know behave unethically right or even fairly honest people to behave dishonestly and to just anchor back to the the beginning of our conversation what i'm most worried about in our style of discourse around these charged issues like race is that it is causing even fairly scrupulous and honest people and well-intentioned people to be dishonest and sloppy and actually um practice a kind of of politics of personal destruction uh where they never and effectively to behave like psychopaths you know on social media and in print and and in various journalistic encounters um where they never would do this if if the incentives weren't aligned that way right so i i would like to change our incentives around conversations of the sort we we have today um and uh we yeah but we have a lot of work to do to do that i would agree with that and sam harris in the spirit of a strong belief in conversation i thank you for being on hard talk thanks very much yeah pleasure thanks steven [Music] [Music] you

Channel: BBC HARDtalk

Views: 447,840

Keywords: BBC Hardtalk, Stephen Sackur, politics, interview BBC, Sam Harris, neuroscientist

Id: wUmcZsrVZkU

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020