The Ugly Decline Of Morality In The Digital Age - Alex O’Connor (4K)

Alex OK Conor welcome to the show how splendidly we progress uh the first time on a Skype call second time was in person in Austin and now something of a sort of cinematic production I fear that next time we'll be in 3D or something it's good to see you again good to see you as well mate uh how are you feeling in the aftermath of Peter Hitchens validated Vindicated uh I must say that I was a little bit I was in two minds about uploading that that interview he does there was a bit of a a mixture of opinion coming from him he wasn't speaking entirely clearly must have been something on his mind he said as he's getting up to walk out I don't think you should run this and I'm thinking look if if if my guest tells me that they don't want me to run an interview for any reason it could be because they've had a bad hair day then I'll respect that and so I thought damn am I really going to have to you know be the bigger man here and just not post this at all but then he kept saying oh run it if you like I can't stop you from running it I just don't think you have any moral right to run it and I asked him why and he said it was because I a propagandist for drug decriminalization a subject which prior to that by the way I'd spoken about once ever and that I'd intentionally tricked him to appear on my podcast in order that I might fool him into a conversation about drugs now before the podcast started I said Mr Hitchens you have uh about three subject areas that we both talk about where I think there's a bit of crossover that you've either spoken about or indeed written books about and those are the decriminalization of drugs I also mentioned this in my email the existence of God or religion I should say God and religion is the topic and uh the third was monarchy at this point he says well you know monarchy is a bit boring okay notice listener that he did not take this opportunity to tell me that he thought that drugs were a bit boring and would rather not really talk about drugs at all or for too long okay fine so I'm thinking I agree with you the monarchy is incredibly boring in fact that's the entirety of my point about the monarchy is that it's essentially just boring more than anything else so let's just do the other two so I say we'll run for about an hour ideally he says that's good you know and I say but you know if the conversation flows it can be an hour and a half it could be two hours and okay he says well look you know I say sometimes they can be 3 hours long he says well 3 hours might be a bit long but we'll see how we do so I'm thinking about an hour and a half an hour and a half on what was now in my view two subjects so at about 40 minutes into this potentially 90-minute podcast on the same topic when he told me that we've been going around for too long on said topic I was a little bit bemused but I did think to myself maybe I've done something wrong here maybe I have upset him in a way that obviously was not intentional you know I wasn't trying to bring this out of him although you know it does do quite well for the channel it's not like it's something I would do intentionally so I did think to myself well maybe I've done something so I listened back back and I send it to some friends including you and thank you for listening to it and and saying that like most people just said you have to run this he's he's been completely unreasonable and so there have been criticisms people have said well you know what it was a bit boring or yeah it was going around in circles I submit that that was his fault by the way uh because he does this thing which I've noticed in a lot of philosophical and political discussion uh which is the sort of I know this one attitude when you do a lot of interviews I find that you have a sort of I know this one and so they answer the question that they heard not the answer that was asked exactly and and it and it happens especially when it's it's easy enough to make that mistake if you're not listening carefully so he was talking about uh the well I I asked him about the decriminalization of of of cannabis and he says that well this will essentially mean that a lot of more children will be smoking it he he had this contention that children would end up smoking cannabis and I thought to myself well okay I can understand that concern of course but I think the tobacco industry has suffered quite a blow in still being perfectly legal to buy as an adult but but kids just aren't smoking cigarettes anymore it's just not a thing that's really done why is that in other words we've had quite a successful education campaign whereby it's not popular for kids to smoke anymore and yet it's still perfectly legal can't we have a similar approach to cannabis potentially by the way not a good view potentially a perfectly rebuttable view I'm not sure but I wouldn't know because I didn't get a rebuttal to that view instead I just heard you know all you can do is is do the whole which by the way is a genuinely quite tired line in this debate the whole oh what about smoking or indeed another point where I brought up alcohol well all you can say is what about alcohol what about smoking and that's not what I was doing at least I contend that's not what I was doing because that's what he heard he goes oh I know this one I've heard this before yeah and and you haven't read my book it didn't seem to occur to him that it is possible Mr Hitchens to read your book and yet still after having done so disagree with you yeah it's sometimes when you hear people speak especially guys that are a little bit older I think there is a there is kind of like reverse agism that goes on which is who is this sort of young whipper snapper person who I maybe have heard of or haven't heard of much and um almost like a Blas kind of discrediting of the thing it's like this is and this is your show but it's my show so to speak and um yeah it was like I thought his attitude was p and unlikable and uh my favorite part was when he threw the pillow at the microphone throwing the pillow down with and and he kept sort of walking back over he says he says you know I I don't want you to post this and obsessed with no opinion about you before I decided that I absolutely do not like you it was it was uh it was quite something and a lot of people messaged me saying hey like uh I'm so sorry that happened like you know you're doing all right and I'm thinking sorry sorry I thought there's no way that this is happening I mean when it looked like he was about to get up I thought surely not but then internally I'm thinking like go on then do it do it because I don't think I've done anything wrong here it was the podcasting equivalent of come on mate have a go yeah but you know you know the weirdest thing was because he he sort of gets up to go and he walks out and he stands at the door and he's and it's I wish you kind of could have seen his body language it was it was very there's one point where you can see it when he walks back into shot and he says something and then after he said it he just sort of stands there looking at me as if to say like what have you got a go and so he keep going like I'm going to go now I'm going I'm going to I'm going and waiting the podcast playing hard to get equivalent it must have been something like that yeah it was like it was like the person who wants the fight but wants to look like they didn't initiate the fight and and I don't think it's my fault I'll leave it up to the to the Judgment of The Listener or the viewer I don't think it's my fault that he spent 17 minutes 17 count them 17 entire minutes stood at the door telling me how much he personally dislikes me telling me how much he doesn't want to see me again I've I've wanted to do that for as long as I've known you so well we'll see how we do yeah today uh you're going to try and convince me of the existence of God today you managed to convince chat GPT that's right which means does it mean that I'm smarter than chat GPT if you convince me more quickly or more slowly or not at all I don't know um I I I do know that it it means that well well chat gbt if it's going to inherit eternal life I I sort of wonder how that's going to work in heaven I I don't know I mean I I don't know if recursive nightmare for everyone as they walk around and they've got the chat GPT logo floating about yeah the interesting thing about chat GPT is that you you sort of you can you can essentially convince it of anything and so I wasn't quite sure if it was even a very good video idea because I'm sure I could just as easily convince it that God doesn't exist well at least you can be thankful that it wasn't able to say it had no opinion of you before but it absolutely does not like you and then get up and walk out quite right some people in the comments did say that at least you know chat GPT stuck around until the end that would be a task in fact that's another video idea I got chat GPT to storm out of an interview even I probably couldn't do that uh didn't this get brought up you debated Ben Shapiro yesterday how did that go I haven't even seen you it went well I think uh it will probably be out around the time of this this interview maybe slightly before slightly afterwards uh it was it was a good conversation we were discussing whether or not religion is good for society and stand for young Benjamin to take at the moment I suppose so I mean it was a very much sort of don't mention the war type type scenario um I mean the the producers had said look we want this to be an evergreen conversation we want this to be something that people can listen to at any point and also Ben had just the night before been to the Oxford Union and I haven't seen that yet either but saw that he went had at it with a bunch of uh people on the other side of the fence so to speak he didn't have a very good time he said to me that it was the most tense thing that he's ever done wow the most tense thing he's ever ever been a part of well I saw something that was kind of interesting was the video was only shot on what appeared to be iPhone yes uh so there was no maybe they just wanted to get it up early as opposed to waiting for the Oxford unions official video to come through seems to be the case they they do seem to be planning to upload it in fact when I was recording with Ben I think his team were in The Green Room sort of furiously subtitling to try and get it out potentially before the Oxford Union I'm not entirely sure but I mean it sounded like a a hell of an evening and so the next day he was saying that it sort of felt like a nice break from that what to sit opposite you you are the comfortable leather pair of shoes that he can put on I think Ben relaxes in argumentation I think he genuinely enjoys it I I think there's no contradiction to say that he was having some time off by sitting there and and and having a having a SP but he was having a break from the politics in other words he was able to just argue about something a bit more perennial and a little less uh a little less fiery I suppose what have you learned so you are I've been a massive fan of you since before you came on the podcast and since then we've become friends and you've come out to see me in Austin we spent a ton of time together you're probably my favorite person to watch debate people because it's kind of a little bit like watching uh Batman versus Spider-Man or something because I know you well and we've argued a lot but I and I know maybe Ben Shapiro but I don't know what will happen when these two people come together you were president of sock sock detic Society yes yeah you part of debate sock and all of this other stuff at Oxford given that you've got a relatively illustrious Heritage of both formal and informal debates what is your assessment of Ben Shapiro's debating style his ethical consistency his ability to deploy logic etc etc now that you've gone mano a mano in the ring well he has obviously a an incredibly High verbal IQ he can construct a sentence out of nowhere and do it very quickly and he's also very difficult to interrupt not that I particularly wanted to I mean he'll he he would throw sort of maybe two or three points out at once and and you want to Bud in and do them one by one you don't want to be rude of course so so I let him finish but it was amazing how they just glued together into one wall of text you know I I I've seen comments on some of the videos that I was watching of him in preparation to talk to him where people would would were not being funny in saying that they play the video on 0.75 speed because it makes him sound normal there was there sort of an episode with uh with Constantin and Francis trigonometry and he's talking about religion and its relation to the fenyl crisis and people were saying that if you and it was very fast and if you play it on 0.75 you forget that you've done that and you're just hearing somebody talk at a normal volume at a normal speed and then Constantin comes in sounding like a blue whale or something out of nowhere so he's he's he's very quick yeah um but also I thought very charitable this is the thing I think people get bench airo wrong I went to his Cambridge Union event uh after this this discussion SL debate in because it was in Cambridge that's that's why we were why we were out there and and so I went to this event and I was talking to a lot of the students afterwards and you hear a lot of people saying about bench per that he's a bit of a bit of a grifter or well I'm not really a fan or you have the sort of secret fans who are sat in the chamber going like well you you know it's it's I think it's just it's important you know if you're going to disagree with someone you sort of have to hear the thing that you're going to disagree with In the Flesh you can say that you like bapiro it's okay you know um but people see this this side of him of the sort of slightly sneering SMY owning the college student kind of thing but I think in many ways he matches the energy that he's given and so taking him seriously and listening to what he's saying and being willing to to concede a point to him he will do the same thing and I think that happened in this conversation you know it's it's steadfast we're saying what we think to each other at one point we both accuse each other simultaneously of being delusional but in such a manner that if you say something you get a sort of like yeah yeah no that's a fair point actually maybe we should put it this way instead or or yeah you know actually I see what you're saying no you're right I should have said this instead that kind of attitude which is the kind of thing that people think bencho is incapable of for some reason humility you know what I mean yeah and it's a kind of it's a it's a hidden humility because it comes out not in the attitude not in the not in a sort of he not going to like give way to you emotionally he's not going to be like oh you're right it would just be if you if you pay attention to the way he's constructing an argument and changing it subtly based on your responses you know that he really is listening and really is trying to engage with what you're actually saying and that's a kind of humility that I don't think can really be faked yeah I am friends with a bunch of guys that have worked with him over the years and uh I know for a fine fact that part of his debate prep involves a number of break glass in case of mass offense uh sort of Escape hatches and that there's layers of how uh deep and how aggressive he can go so I would love to know actually I might email him and find out what he's got on you just in case I ever needs to actually pull that pin um but well he said to me when he walked in uh I saw the Peter Hitchens thing as everybody's been saying to me recently so he'd at least seen that so he knows how I behave and he he he knows in other words that if he did start sort of screaming at me that I would probably just sit there and take it right okay a like the philosophical cck that you are right yeah yeah you're kind of a little another quote for the for the Twitter bio I think yeah have you have you updated it to I absolutely do not I've decided I do not like you Peter Hitchens it's it's in there somewhere I think it's I actively dislike you is the quote that's now in my bio I'm constantly shifting it around I don't think I'll ever get rid of unusually it you were doing what was it that you did for a while making theists question their beliefs and lesbians question their sexuality since I don't know what you're talking about I remember that in your I have no idea what you're talking about we really have't known each other a long time you know what I found yesterday I was uh I sort of stumbled across it while looking for an email trying to find out where we were filming today h and I found the original email that you sent me in must have been 2019 when we first met and it was amazing it was this sort of hi Alex uh been watching your stuff for a while like it was sort of three four paragraphs of texts I'd love to sit down and have a conversation with you I think that your views will be of big interest to my viewers and then I I've already spoken to these people and it was a bunch of people that I I hadn't heard of wasn't really in my sphere um and it signed off Chris Williamson voodo events fantastic yeah wow my previous life yeah I had uh filling nightclubs in my signature until only six months ago and I realized I needed to get rid of it but no it's um it's cool man I think you know if I could invest money in people uh you George Mack Zach my housemate Ginder Bogle Rob Henderson you know even Southerland I don't think that the the market has priced in his talent and um it's so funny cuz like what I did for almost all of my career in NTI was find different kind of talent right it was like degenerate party talent but find kids that had good work ethic and and and some skill and then bring them in and sort of train them up uh so keeping a finger on the pulse of what's happening with regards to Trends if who is appropriate and blah blah blah but yeah man I'm you know there is a point I I will happily say it now there is a point that's going to occur within the next few years where something happens with you being involved that just catapults you into like super stardom like I would absolutely bet a [ __ ] ton of money that this is going to happen you've got some what's that big thing you're doing soon can we announce the big thing that you're doing soon that even bigger debate I think not only because it's still very much up in the air okay however if and when that happens if and when that happens going to break the internet that could be unless this does it for me well very well might do this is the biggest platform you've been on so when was the last time that you're aware of in your world of philosophy that something like a a step change like the equivalent of the discovery of the higs boson happened in philosophy yeah just every now and again something does come along that's a bit revolutionary and a recent example and by recent consider we're talking about the history of philosophy here 20th century uh the theory of knowledge is completely exploded by a man called Edmund Geier uh and this is this is actually I I think quite fascinating I'll be interested to hear what you think about this so knowledge is really difficult to Define people didn't used to have as much of a problem with it like if you had to give a definition of knowledge what does it mean to know something this isn't like a trick question I'm just I'm just interested what do you think to know something uh to be able to accurately predict what happens in the world okay so it's got something to do with it being true in the world and your ability to predict but you can also think about things in the past right like you can know that Napoleon existed or something so so prediction ability to infer yeah to infer to to sort of to have some kind of belief about the world which is accurate which is accurate which is which is true um sure but then imagine for example you're in a you're in like a locked concrete box with no windows MH and I don't know like a like some Voodoo Mystic tells you that it's raining outside and they they're just like insane they're on drugs or something and and and they just tell you that it's raining they're convinced of it and and for some reason you believe them totally irrationally and it just so happens that it is by coincidence raining outside did you know right so you have a belief about the world which is true but it would seem very strange to say that you know that it's raining outside right and so since Plato and the Ancients we've sort of had a consensus on the idea that knowledge is Justified true belief JTB so you need to have a belief that's true you need to of course believe it to be true but you have to also be justified in that belief and that's what makes it knowledge so if you if you see that it's raining outside through the window and you believe that it's raining outside and then it's true that it's raining outside now you can say you know that it's raining as right okay and this is just essentially consensus for for potentially thousands of years we're talking about here and then Edmund G in at least one account this may be apocryphal but it said that he sort of hadn't really published anything and was being compelled to to get something in a journal and he just sort of reaches into his papers of random things he's been writing pulls up the one on the top and and hands it off for for submission this is about two or three pages long and it just upends the whole thing with with essentially counter example which are now known as gatier cases so his example was to say okay imagine that you're in a job interview and uh the your your interview goes really quite well and the person person says to you you know I I I shouldn't really be saying this but I I I think you've got it and so you go back outside and you're feeling pretty good there are other candidates but you you've got a a pretty Justified reason to think that you're going to get the job then the other guy goes in and while you're waiting for him you know you're just fiddling around in your pocket and and you take out whatever you got in your pocket and you've got 10 coins and you're just fiddling with your 10 coins so you develop a Justified belief that the person who's going to get the job has 10 coins in his pocket cuz you you're pretty sure you're going to get the job and you just by chance you just had a look and you've got 10 coins so you got a Justified belief that the person who's going to get the job has 10 coins in their pocket there's been some kind of like freak mistake or something maybe they've read your name wrong on the form or they the person who told you they thought you got it meant to speak to the other person but it turns out the other guy actually gets the job but just by sheer coincidence he also has 10 coins in his pocket the question is did you know that the person who would get the job would have 10 coins in his pocket you have a Justified true belief that the person who gets the job would have 10 coins in his pocket but it seems in this circumstance you didn't know that that just seems wrong seems like a wrong account it's a bit of a sort of clunky example and he gives another one which is also maybe a little bit clunky but this sort of Sparks this type of Affair called a getia case well you told me I think over dinner the best Getti a case which was the person behind the Hedge yes so this is better I think so so I I think it's actually better firstly it's better to experience them for yourself and there are simpler explanations as well so I was dy I was in a car driving around a bend and Over the Hedge I see this this small child sort of bouncing up and down behind the Hedge and I thought to myself oh cool I'm about to see a horse I mean it looked like the kid was riding a horse and I I was like yeah cool we're going to see a horse and we ride around this Bend and the kid was actually on uh his or her like dad's back and that's why she was high up and and bouncing up and down but just by sheer coincidence in the field behind them was a horse and I couldn't believe it I thought I've just experienced a gtia case I had a Justified true belief that I was about to see a horse the difficulty with that one is that it's probably not justified to believe that I was about to see a horse because I probably should have thought that it could have been a father but a much more simple example and this actually happened to me once I was in the the US capital building in the in the Crypt and they have the clock that used to be in the House of Representatives and they said that the reason they replaced it and brought it down here was because they were fed up of winding it up they didn't want to wind it anymore and I looked at it and I and I asked the the tour guide lady I said oh well do they still wind it while it's down here and she said no and I thought but it's the real it's the time it says the time right now and she was like oh right yeah it must be a coincidence and I was like the only one looking around like hey that's that's pretty that's pretty extraordinary I mean I guess it happens twice a day right but this is a geet case if you if your watch break but you don't know that it's broken you got a reliable watch but today it's broken and you look at the time and it's stopped on halfast 3 and so you look at it and you think oh it must be halfast three and it does actually just so happen to be half past three did you know it was half past three that's a Geier case Justified true belief and yet seems weird to say that you that you know it so geier's Revelation here was something like what you're talking about a sort of genuine novelty in history of philosophy and they come about quite rarely but they they do occur this episode is brought to you by element element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't it's a healthy alternative to sugary electrolyte drinks it's got a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium you might ask what do I want with an electrolyte drink well it'll regulate your appetite it'll curb Cravings it'll help improve your brain function best of all it tastes phenomenal first thing in the morning this orange element salt in water is outstanding your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day so it's pointless having a morning coffee your adrenal system which is what salt Aon is active so this will make you feel more alert more awake and improve your hydration best of all they've got a nobs no questions asked refund policy so you can buy it and if you do not like it for any reason they will give you your money back that's how confident they are that you love it head to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box that's drink LM nt.com slod wisdom what happens Downstream from that in the world of philosophy just a massive migraine basically people start coming up with arguments responses you know so people start say oh maybe it's not justified true belief maybe it's like causally related justification to the cause of the but presumably kind of in the same way that I guess a new um scientific discovery is made about the way that we metabolize glucose or about what happens if you take this amount of nicotine or the role of Metformin in PR preventing high blood pressure or something there are stacked on top of that one assumption a number of other assumptions but with philosophy especially something I imagine like the philosophy of knowledge it's so foundational that having this entire universe built on this particular Foundation then means that the entire house of cards collapses down and people then need to rebuild all of this nightmare on on top of it yeah well most the philosophy is just a consistency test as it is in something like mathematics it's just that we accept that there are certain axioms that even even mathematical axioms you know you can you can you can question them um I mean veritasium just made a quite good video about ukian geometry and how it sort of just accepted for a very long time that for example you know if if you have a right angle then it if you sort of join up the two lines coming off that right angle you'll create a triangle whose interior angles add up to 180 degrees and then people start thinking about what about like curved geometric spaces what if you do this on a globe if you put a triangle on a globe the angles aren't going to wet up in that way and these These are sort of like uh axioms of mathematics that essentially they don't necessarily get proved wrong or thrown out but people realize that you can think about things differently and so most of what we're doing is actually just testing for consistency and so there it's actually quite difficult to prove an axiom wrong because you kind of need an axiom just to get off the ground and the rest of everything you're doing is just consistency tests with that Axiom this is one of the most interesting things I learned from you maybe in the first ever episode that we did as you were teaching me about the difference between ethics and matter ethics as someone that isn't formally trained in either um and you I use this all the time it's such an interesting uh mental model to think that in order for me and you to have a discussion about ethics our meta ethical Foundation we need to agree on that because out of that if we don't the entire ethical discussion on top will just continue to fall back to uh definitional problems and well you're presuming that so you can't discuss the stuff that happens on top of you unless you discuss the stuff that's underneath and this is It's the entirety of the trans debate right it's the entirety of lexical uh overwhelm that if you can't agree on the definition of words the argument about the words and what they then refer to just collapses in on itself and continuously just falls back to an argument about the definition of words yes this happens with for example Freedom there are lots of different ways of conceiving a freedom famously freedom from and freedom to right uh is is freedom just being left alone or is freedom being empowered to do things that you should be able to do and then when you have people arguing about nationalized healthcare for example one person says to be free you need to be healthy and one person says to be free you need to spend your own money as you please and not be forced to fund other people's Healthcare now both of these people can be right they're just defining Freedom differently of course so you're quite right and um that's why met ethics is quite important I mean AJ a pointed out in language truth and logic that the vast majority of ethical debate is not ethical debate it's descriptive debate it's factual debate if you look at the so-called ethical debate gun laws in America for example people are talking about statistics they're saying X many people die per year oh well don't you know that more children are killed by swimming pools uh don't you know that like if we in if we introduce you know if we ban certain types of weapons or blah blah blah that this many less people will die all these kind of things are just descriptive factual statements that people like to dispute with each other and that's why they like say we have the facts on our side but the actual ethical question that that undergoes it all is is is hardly ever even reached you know and so most of the time people are actually arguing about that I mean the same thing with an abortion debate for example you know questions about biology when does Consciousness emerge can it survive on its own with outside of the womb this week or this week you know this kind of stuff will it increase the number of women who die or decrease the number of women who die but none of these are ethical questions and people think they're having an ethical debate when they're actually just having a debate about facts that can be resolved in principle by scientific empirical inquiry the ethical question is the more interesting one that's often assumed and if people think that they agree with each other or understand each other in the same way on that ethical first point then you're in for a disaster what do you wish if they don't I mean yeah what do you wish that uh more people could realize when it comes to understanding ethics and consistency in their own lives is there something that a little red pill or a particular Insight that you wish you could deposit into the mind of the populace that you think would make their lives a little bit more easy or their sense making a bit more simple I don't know about making lives easier but I I I do think that people should recognize the extent to which emotions dominate our ethical thinking I mean I I'm I take a I think it's seen as a relatively Ecentric view that ethics just is the expression of emotion this was something popularized by that same AJ AER in a book that was so troubling to the philosophical consensus at the time that there's a story of a I think it was like a maybe a dean of baile colge or something who when a student came in everybody wanted to talk about this book and they were so scared of the implications of it that he literally throws it out of the window because he he just doesn't want to talk about it because a is talking about how the only things that can be meaningful are those which are analytically true or empirically verifiable if you're if the statement you're making isn't isn't something you can at least in principle test empirically or something that's just a torty two and two is four then what you're saying is literally meaningless and people came to him and said well what about ethical statements you can't prove these in principle and they're not torical and he said well the way that they're meaningful is that they are expressions of emotion and it gives birth to this view called emotivism which is really a philosophy of language more than a philosophy of Ethics it it tries to describe what people mean when they say good or bad and famously he comes up with this analogy that saying murder is wrong is like saying boo murder and saying murder is or you saying given to charity is good as like saying yay charity it's just an expression emotion it's not even the same thing as saying I like charity or I don't like murder because those things can be true or false they have truth value it could be true that I it is just a psychological fact that I don't like murder he means murder is wrong that statement is just the expression of the emotion y boo murder and I think even if you don't agree with him to that extent as I more or less do if you begin to recognize the extent to which emotions are dominating your ethical conduct pay attention to what it feels like when you analyze something as wrong I think it belongs in the same category as because you've got this sort of emotion site of uh soup of sort of stimulus going on inside of you what is it like to feel like something is wrong and and we know that people people seem to change what they rationally do based on how they're feeling I mean I don't know if you've come across Terror management Theory before it would surprise me if you hadn't the the idea that all human beings are doing is trying to manage their fear of death and that that's what motivates all all human activity and there have been some interesting studies in this some of them are harder to replicate than others but I mean the the first one the most famous was uh some I think Arizona state judges and they were being asked to recommend a bond for the solicitation of prostitution and what the researchers did was they asked them to fill out a just a form first and on half of the forms they just mentioned death they just put in a few questions about death and what do think happens after death you know who would you put in your will that kind of stuff nothing nothing too extreme and they found that the bond that was set by the judges Inc I mean I think the I think the average bond for the control group was was less than $100 and for the ones who are reminded their of their death was more like2 or $300 on average what does that imply so the the interpretation of teror magment theory was that when we're reminded of our deaths we need to tempor arily more heavily reaffirm the sort of death denying aspects of our culture the reason that we do things the reason we create art the reason that we get out of bed the reason that we have conversations like this is because in in some way it's traceable back to trying to essentially deny our own death Ernest Becker wrote a book called The denal of death right and this is this is essentially the idea and so for judges it might be something like by participating in the legal system they're participating in something that's a bit beyond them and therefore it exists outside of their own mortality and so the thesis this mortality salience hypothesis as it's known is that for a judge if they're reminded of Their Own Death what they will temporarily be compelled to do is more harshly reaffirm that thing that is you know the the death denying aspect of of their daily life which is participation in the legal system so more harsh penalties right okay that to me seem the explanation seems a little bit tenuous I'm not sure about that but it does seem strange that when you remind people of Their Own Death they will you know Christians and like Muslims will become more derogatory towards Jews people of different nationalities will sit further away from each other people will when asked to draw pictures of currency will draw physically larger pictures of currency people's opinion on whether they prefer a picture of a forest or a picture of you know Suburban neighborhood will change on average like these these things are extraordinary just from being reminded of your own death of course the biggest manifestation of the denial of death would be religion and that that would also explain why you know religion deals a lot with death and why why sort of if you remind people of Their Own Death they also become religious which by the way is true of atheists as well people who don't believe in God will still become more religious even if they don't ultimately believe in God when reminded of Their Own Death yeah I um I've been thinking a good bit recently about how people do an awful lot especially in the modern world that is death denialism masquerading as something else I think the productivity movement very much is that you know trying to fit more into less time if only I could get more life more work more output out of my one unit of days or whatever um I think that a good chunk of the health and fitness world uh the longevity movement the biohacking movement all of that is absolutely death denialism and you can see as well nutrition all of the the arguments about is it better for me to be carnivore or vegan should I go high carb or low carb can I do intermittent fasting should I be using ketones exogeneously ultimately the reason that I think these arguments are so vehement and passionate especially when you think it's diet guys right it's diet it's like I want to have aspartame you want to have sugar like how does my asame consumption or you impact your sugar consumption but what it hits at for a lot of people is a certainty about I can predict and project out into the future how long I'm going to be able to live or die and I'm going to be able to compare myself to this other person and their conviction in their particular approach which derates my Approach implicitly suggests to me you're going to die sooner and that causes me to be [ __ ] terrified it's the same reason why people are so how long do you need to do it's not VO2 max that's most important it's HRV it's not its resting heart rate it's not its galvanic skin temperature we're not looking at that we're looking at tmia length we're not looking at that it's whatever all of the things you know the entire field of health and fitness which I'm a big part of uh I I think is a good chunk of it is death denialism just masquerading as getting big biceps yes uh so sometimes it is more obvious I think we need more nihilists uh Health influencers who will sort of say you know I need to I need to when the question is asked you know should you eat white bread or brown bread or whatever it is you know they'll sort of begin with the question it sort of depends on your your your views on the intrinsic value of life um also if you're a bit of a utilitarian I mean people often say that being unhealthy might be unethical because in a country with nationalized Healthcare you're a burden you're you're you're a burden but but are you I mean who costs the taxpayer more the person who eats a bunch of burgers and has a heart attack and dies instantly or the person who lives into old age and therefore has some kind of long-term health problem like Alzheimer's I need to I need to interject here so you ring me probably three years ago four years ago you ring me and I'm in the gym and you say something like what are you doing it's like I'm in the gym what are you doing uh just whatever whatever catch up a little bit I was like what's going on what's what's happening and you said I'm trying nihilism and I said what do you mean and he went as a life philosophy I'm trying nihilism and I still don't know what you mean so how is your experiment to make nihilism great again going well I was getting a bit Fed Up of people saying oh you're an nihilist oh you're an a well they wouldn't say it in the terms of nihilism theyd say are you're an atheist yeah right yeah I mean I there was a there was a cliff of Jord Peterson on the Lex Freedman podcast um and he says oh you're secular and you and you go to art galleries yeah well what makes you think you're secular and the head turn is real he he he does that you know yeah and I thought to myself what on Earth are you talking about man you think you can't be an atheist and enjoy art now I tried my best to understand what he was getting at and I think he was trying to basically say that in order to enjoy art you need to have some kind of value and in order to have any kind of surface level value you can always ask the why that why that question why do you value this why you know the the classic sort of why do you why do you go to school to get a good grade well you don't just want the grade why do you get the grade you do it to get a good job and so on and so forth happens with value and so why do you go why do you value art because you maybe Value beauty or something and Peterson's whole thing is that whatever's at the top of this value hierarchy is in his definition Divine he he just defines it as such and so he essentially said that like you know people claim that they that they are nihilists but they don't live like that I thought well what would it mean to really live like a nihilist and you know I I guess I tried to nasiz but he's right in to the extent that I think most people don't live like their nihilists what would the definition of living like anilist be I think it would just mean the rejection of of of any such thing as a non-contingent reason for acting be more accessible you you would need to to to really think that there's no reason to do anything outside of essentially your crude preferences and biological drives right and I think the reason why people think that nihilism is unlivable is because they have this image of somebody just immediately becoming a raskolnikov type figure and just committing a murder or something but they forget that these people still have their memory and they're going to be embedded in in a in a culture and an upbringing that's their preferences are essentially still going to be aligned I mean pendulette was once asked if you're an atheist why don't you kill and assault you every person you want to and and he says I do I do kill and assault everybody I want to which is precisely nobody you know and very clever gets a bit of an Applause but I mean the the difficult question ethically is what happens when somebody doesn't have that view what happens when somebody does just disagree with you but I don't know it it was It was kind of boring just to interject out to so you could see um um the meaning making machine of society and cultural norms as being useful to constrain the behavior of those outlier people the ones who would go out and and commit the Litany of mass murders but you know Mom told me that I'm not supposed to squash bugs when I was 5 years old and this is now carried on through but yeah I think you know for most people we are the descendants of the people who avoided at least for the most part killing people that were close to us and we feel a lot of the time like we're now close to each other yes yes um I think that's probably true the issue is that the more that we try to explain away these these mechanisms uh we try to understand why in our evolutionary history we might have evolved certain moral tabos this kind of stuff it begins to essentially take the complete ethical Force out of it and that's what people think leads to leads to nihilism once you have fully explained why something would be considered immoral just on evolutionary grounds you've essentially taken out the the moral Factor Al together and you're explaining it in terms of you know genetic preference yeah there's no more meaning there's nothing there's no additional fluff or feeling of anything but this is you know I've spent a lot of time over the last few years talking to evolutionary psychologists evolutionary biologists people that have looked at the evolution of culture as well from a memetic standpoint too and it does seem to me that culture is is just like exclusively an Adaptive response to coordination at Large Scale MH and that all of the things that are encoded in that are effective ways for your tribe to not blow itself up would you say the same thing about morality in general yes so then how do you escape this this nihilist conundrum that that you think all it is you know the reason why you're not killing people is just because you sort of evolved that way doesn't that kind of take out some of the meaning so I think if you were permanently self assessing why you do the things you do and the inputs that you feel but what that doesn't account for is the fact that we are self-deceptive quite right yeah and the sense of being a human is one that is imbued with meaning I often use this term about how um you are not personally cursed as a a reassurance and it was something that was reassuring to me if I was was spending a bit of time where I was feeling sad or down or whatever uh it would feel like whatever emotion I was going through whatever unpleasant emotion I was going through was like a personal curse and this makes sense when you look back at how the gods were personified as different sorts of emotions right that you know Cupid had an arrow that hit you or that you know you had gods of War you had Gods of Wrath you had gods of envy you had gods of narcissism because it the experience of a thing of a thought of an emotion of state is not just the confused chemical signals of your body and now I can just reverse engineer this even the inter the interaction of you and whatever's going on in the social group around you isn't just that it's imbued with meaning because you interpret things in this soup of experience which scales things up from just what's happening to and it feels like there's something there feels like there's some there there right yes yeah yeah you you can't escape that illusion if it is an illusion this is another thing that I spoke to to Ben about first name first name basis it seems now Mr um Mr sh I did I did try that in you know when I was emailing back and forth about setting up that event I I was I went to type out sort of like well oh it would be great to talk to Mr Shapiro about it just didn't feel right you know I just couldn't bring myself to do it um at least not behind his back not to say that I'm rude behind his back but it felt even weirder that he wasn't there to sort of appreciate the courtesy anyway he said like you know that I don't believe in Free Will I don't know if you believe in Free Will perhaps we can talk about that he's like look you don't you don't believe in free will but but you you act as if Free Will does exist all the time and I remember thinking what do you mean what what do it what does it look like to act as though Free Will doesn't exist the very argument or one of the arguments against free will is that you are essentially driven by your biology your your genes your your will you know the the Arthur shophow line that you can do what you will you just can't will what you will in fact you have to do what you will that's that's what that's what drives Behavior if that's the case then then why do you have this Vision in your head that if you lack a belief in Free Will you're like not going to get out of bed in the morning the very argument is that you will get out of bed in the morning because you desire to go and get some breakfast that's like the whole point and so any argument of that form where people say well you don't live like that's the case I always like to to to think what would it look like to you then you know if I could ask Jordan Peterson when he says well you don't live like an atheist what would that look like to you and I don't know if he might say something like well you'd probably be this this morally depraved you know self-interested blah blah blah like maybe but is that really what you think I mean I don't know but yeah I think it it it forgets the fact that you are a product of your time regardless of your beliefs from that time right I understand the judeo-christian values that everything is based on you know it's like a common talking point from those guys but okay how am I supposed to extricate me from that completely shake the etcher sketch of my value set and then take it from the beginning and let's not forget like a lot of those values have grown out of what would have been an Adaptive response in any case yeah so the illusion is there the illusion is unshakable and so it sort of is a bit senseless to me to us particularly on the Free Will thing like why don't you act like free world doesn't exist what what do you mean I I I literally it's unintelligible to me did you listen to my spolski episode yet no I don't think so so his new book determined science life without Free Will um every time that I talk about free will people get upset why is that that's the question for you I think the reason inert joke about how it's not their fault ha it's like my least favorite genre of joke that's that's done no free of my own in philosophy it's every single time no free of my yeah um I don't know I don't know and it's something that the conversation about Free Will is such a turnoff for people that I actively push it further into episodes I actively don't title episodes that have got that in it I can uh surreptitiously coax people into thinking about it but the response is is very it's a lot amount of high amount of dissatisfaction people don't like to think about that now it may be because it's dry I'm open to that that's true um it may be because it threatens their sense of agency and sovereignty which is something I've kind of built this channel off the back of like you can enact change within your own life internalize your locus of control stop being such a [ __ ] Etc uh and so maybe I'm a a like the a victim of My Own Foundation in that regard that I've selected for a particular group of people but it's happened a few times few different conversations about it tangential um one guy was a compatib like quasi compatibilist uh shaking your head why are you shaking your head I that that it's just the most ludicrous compromise to me comp compatibilism can I can I am I right in saying that compatibilism just kicks the can down the road and plays lexical overload with things I think more or less right A lot of the time you're just also dealing with essentially a redefinition of free will it's what I don't mean that I mean this thing yeah yeah Sam Harris has called it the uh the the Atlantis fallacy he he had an extended argument with Daniel dennet a compati list about Free Will and Daniel dennet would would talk about all about how this exists and this exists and this and and Sam was like yeah that that's true but you're just not talking about what people care about in Free Will what you're doing is we're trying to ask if Atlantis exists and you're pointing to Venice and you're saying look here's a city it's you know got a lot of water and and it it's it's kind of old and and these are all true but but it's it's just not Atlantis yeah and what most people are talking about when they try to bring free will back into the discussion is just not free will it's as straightforward as it gets in my view I mean there are versions of Freedom that that can be sensibly uh believed in it kind of depends on what your conception of Freedom means but if you mean something like authorship over your actions if you mean that we could have rewound the clock and I could have done something differently that I could have worn a different shirt I don't think that the answer is is is yes logically yes you know the possible world's discussion earlier there's a possible world where I'm in a different shirt but I guess like physically possibly metaphysically I couldn't have made a different Choice well regardless possible regardless of what you believe or don't believe about free will uh the response people's response to it is fascinating to me absolutely fascinating and maybe yeah maybe it is that degree of control almost like the denial of death like I wonder have they done experiments on when people are reminded that they do or do not have free will that their behavior adjusts not that I know of but I would love to see that because if it is I maybe it is true but I think if it is true I I can understand why it might be quite like fatalistic I mean it literally is quite fatalistic really to to say that there's no freedom and I can understand why that might make someone sad and that sadness might motivate their behaviors slightly differently but I think that intrinsically if there way to control for people who are sort of happy or sad about it because you can believe in there's no Free Will and and be like thank goodness it's all out of my hands if you can control for that and show that people do they are like less productive or or they you know don't get out of bed as much then then I think that would be meaningful and and it might be a sort of second order reason not to have this conversation I I don't know if there's been such a such a investigation as that has a death which by the way I think the a good example of the death denial thing is to think about your your magnumopus if you if you were sort of working on the great life work or something and you're about to die and and you're just about to sort of to to finish it off suppose you found out that after you publish this and you die a week later you found out that a meteor was going to come and destroy the Earth everybody dies does that make you more or less enthusiastic about finishing your project now for most people I think it's it's going to make them less enthusiastic it would certainly make me less enthusiastic but why what's the difference to you it doesn't make a difference you're going to be dead beforehand anyway nothing's going to change seems to suggest that maybe you know the the desire to get this done before you die in the first place isn't just as people like to claim for the for the love of the art and it's all in the process no it's because here's a work that's going to outlive you here's something that's going to help you to escape your own death and when faced with the inevitability of the destruction of even that the motivation goes down down I wouldn't be surprised if simply reminding somebody who's writing a play or something that one day heat death everything evaporates including your new book if that would make them less motivated to finish the book which to me implies that that the the reverse collery is that the reason you are making the book isn't in some way indebted to the fact that you think it will outlive you and therefore is an exercise in the denial of death didn't Ernest Becka die at an unfortunate time I don't know much about his personal life I think he did but there there are some yeah there there are interesting coincidences like that dotted across a lot of the thing about coincidences is that is that so many things happen all the time that the only extraordinary thing would be if there weren't some extraordinary things like that like alberu was killed in a in a car crash and he was killed in the a car crash with a with a train ticket in his pocket so it seemed like he decided at the last minute to go in the car instead and he had previously said that the most absurd way to die would be in a in an automobile accident and that's how he dies Sigman Freud was terrified of I I think it was the number 63 it was like 63 or or maybe it was maybe it was like 48 I can't remember it one one of the a number around around that he was just terrified of it had had a real sort of forb boing about it for some reason and he he got a phone number that ended in that number and it freaked him out he got a hotel room that had that number and and and he just became convinced that he was going to die at that age guess when he died 48 no when he was like 80 sometimes it it goes wrong you're a dick you are a dick rest of that was true though all right what's your sexy Paradox that you wanted to show me oh yes get Paradox out the lad think think about this right um now I I I can't remember what the source is and I want to attribute the person who does it um maybe I can find it get let me find it because I I want to make sure that they get the they get the credit for it I was told about it by a friend and um you have to give me a minute because I want to I don't want to you know pass this off as my own we you do with everything else I think it's called the yeah the anthropic so so it's a website called rising Rising entropy. comom um is is is seemingly the origin of this Paradox but I was told about it by a friend and it's it's I guess okay so imagine that and what this does is it is it shows us that different ways of thinking give us wildly different answers to the same problem different ways of like looking at a problem so imagine that there's a maniac who and and it's called the anthropic dice killer if you want to look it up there's a maniac who is kidnapping people and murdering them and what he does is he kidnaps one person and he blindfolds them and he rolls a dice and if that dice is a six then it'll kill you if not he'll let you go free and what he'll do if he lets you go free is he'll go and pick up two people kidnap them blindfold them roll the dice if it's a six kills you if it's anything else go free then it's four people then it's eight people and it it doubles so it's an exponential until he hits a six until he hits a six now you wake up knowing all this information you wake up blindfolded and you know you know these facts and you know that the dice is about to be rolled but you're blindfolded you don't know how many people are there with you you're given a button that you can press that will make the chances that you're killed half one and two so if you want to you can press this button and 50% of the time it will just kill you immediately and 50% of the time you'll get to go free or you can let him roll the dice okay what do you do do you press the button or not so at least on the surface this is to do with the probability of one in six versus one in two yeah but there is this escalation thing that's happening in the background so I would presume that you would say don't hit the button because that has increased the chance of you being killed from one in six to one in two right which great and this and this seems true and and it it is true that yeah I mean like you've got a one and six chance of dying and if you press the button youve got a one and two so you're better off rolling the dies but if you think about it as a as a sort of uh as one big block then then something very strange happens because if you consider all of the people involved if all you know is that you've sort of woken up and you're somewhere in this process then interestingly like say it gets to number two it gets to round two then there have been three people involved three victims involved first one and second two and two of them end up dying and one of them goes free mhm so if you find yourself in this situation as a victim you've got a more than half probability that you're in the second group that ends up dying I suppose that actually it ends in the third group right now there are how many people involved you got one then two then four then four yeah so we've now got seven people involved right and four people end up dying and so if if you sort of wake up in this scenario you've got a four in seven chance that you're going to die that you're going to be one of the people who dies which is more than half and this continues such that if you consider the fact that that it doesn't matter where it ends you're always going to have a slightly higher than half chance that you're in the group that ends up getting killed but is it is it more than half given that each round of the dice roll is only one in six yeah because it's about like if in in fact it gets to number three right like you know you know that you're going to be in the the there's a more than half chance that you're going to be in the group that dies if it if it in fact gets to number two then there's a more than half chance that that that you're going to die if it in fact gets number four so I'm going to hit the button is that right well maybe I I mean it seems ludicrous to hit the button but but thinking about it this way it seems like that's what you should actually do it's simultaneously the case that you have got a one and six chance of dying because you're doing it on the role of a dice but at the same time if you think about the fact that that one of these groups is going to end up dying and it doesn't matter where it ends the chances of you being in that group are always going to be slightly higher than half right from a a population level the anthropic dice Kor because it's the anthropic principle is he thinking about yeah what's that I once read a Sci-Fi book uh that was there was a threat of the end of the world and they were looking to get Humanity off the planet and there is a theory that uses almost this exact same idea which says that if you take the entirety of human history and you were to pick a time at which you were to live and you have this rapid increase toward Humanity it works out that it's it's more likely that you are within some percent of the end of humanity right yeah because of itial growth precisely are you familiar with this idea I don't think so but itting the same kind works the exact same yeah as long as that graph is going up at the at the requisite speed then then yeah right and this is the exact same thing I mean the the the version on the website actually involves Snake Eyes so so it's two dice and instead of it being one then two then four it's one then 10 then 100 then a thousand they get K it ramps up more quick and now and now you're rolling snake ey so so it's a one and 36 chance and it turns out that if you add up the probability of of of like you know n number of cases it it's something like a 90% chance versus the half that you get to press which just seems ludicrous and it seems two things are true at once depending on just how you look at the problem so sometimes problems like this are just to do with the way you word them I mean there are tons of like these sort of interesting math paradoxes which aren't paradoxes at all you must be familiar with the man who walks into the hotel pays 303 goes up to his room and the bell booy says or or or the guy behind the bar says the manager says oh no he should have only paid 25 we've got a deal on so he calls the bell boy and says can you go and give him5 back to the man in the room and the b boy thinks to himself on the way up like this guy doesn't know any better he doesn't know how much he owed I'm going to I'm going to pocket three pound for myself I'm only going to give him two pound so he goes back to the room he says excuse me sir sorry you paid you know you paid 30 pounds you paid too much Here's 2 p change so how much has the man now paid 25 no 28 28 and how much has the bell boy got in his pocket two he gave the he gave the guy two pounds back right where's that money come from yeah he's got three so the B boy so the man's now only paid 28 he's paid £3 he gets two pound back from the bell boy so he's got he's paid 28s the B boy's got three pounds in his pocket which makes 31 so where's the extra pound come from actually no he hasn't the guy paid 25 plus now he's got two back that's right so it it's it's the way you word it so like stps people and you can do it the other way around as well you can say that the guy goes up and he gives the B boy gives three3 back to the guy so he's only paid 27 but the B boy's got he's got it's only and it's only 29 and and this you know it sort of goes viral on social media because people are like how the hell does it work it's the uh blue and black or green and gold dress it's like I mean for those that yeah I guess there is it's like those and that there is a real answer to what the what the actual what's actually going on there I based on how how you word it it's how people you know Short change when when they when they scam people at a at a at a bar or something I mean the easiest way to to visualize that particular problem is to imagine that the man was only supposed to pay2 you know so the B boy goes up and gives him 28 he's supposed to give him £28 and decides to pocket two P for himself you say oh so he gives him you know gives him 26 back so how much has the man paid like4 and how much the wild boy got like26 which is ludicrous but you'd be how easily people can be completely nly stumped by it and it's all in the it's all in the wording so a problem like the anthropic dice killer I wonder how much is just sort of to do with the the way that you describe it you know have there been any uh paradoxes that sent you into a fug state for a little while was there anything that captured a particularly long amount of time that you sort of couldn't stop considering H um well most of the famous ones since since I first started learning about paradoxes like the famous Monty Hall problem that that that obsessed me for for well I wouldn't say obsessed me but I was I was sort of Blown Away by it there's also you know the multile problem that you'll definitely have heard of this before this um it's the game show and the three doors right yeah you know what I'm right um there are interesting paradoxes that aren't actually paradoxes there's there's a book by Jim Al KH called paradox which is a description of SoCal paradoxes so like I think I think's Paradox is when people used to think that the Universe was infinite infinitely large I mean there was this problem that if if empty space is filled up fairly randomly with stars I mean we know there's a lot of stars in the sky and and galaxies and objects that emit light then there should essentially be no darkness in the sky the sky should look kind of like an overcast day because like the the the gaps in the sky you know going to be fild up and any amount any small Gap you might think the stars are really far away they'll also be like closer together therefore emitting more light visually and they'll be bigger and and and so if the universe is infinite you should just see a sort of overcast day and it it was a paradox it was like how does this how does this happen and it basically became an interesting proof that the universe has a beginning that the universe is not in fact infinite just the fact that it gets dark at night because if it were actually infinite there should be a a sort of overcast view ol's Paradox and like I say it's sort of a paradox but not really a paradox familiar with the bues void do you know this I think so this is like my favorite part of the universe I'd say like I'm mapping it like my favorite barbecue restaurants in Austin and it's a huge what's what's referred to as a super void which is a a period of the universe an area of the universe which has way fewer galaxies in than you would anticipate and given what's the principle of like homogenity across the universe that it should be it should be relatively similar right like thermodynamics yes that it should entropy and and you just now you're just saying space words at me well you know like when you spray spray in aerosol can and it will eventually equally so the point is that there shouldn't be huge fluctuations in the way that we see the universe everything should be spread relatively evenly now I found out that um supposedly at the point of the Big Bang there were 1 million particles of antimatter and 1 million and one particles of matter and it is that one to 1 million and one ratio that is exactly where everything that we see comes from and this minor imbalance is actually what's permitted everything to exist but this particular bues B one with an um out tees bua super void uh it's just super [ __ ] interesting it's this Gap where there's way fewer galaxies than there should be why should this exist given that we've got this sort of principle of homogeneity Across the Universe and that's one of my favorite things to like learn about yeah it's it's a but is it is it that we know about this void because of the the disbalance or is it that we hypothesize the disbalance because of the the the knowledge of the Void we know based on mapping of I think uh I'm not sure if it's telescopic or if it's microwave background stuff but we know that it's there right and the question is what the [ __ ] is this thing doing that yeah well that's a bit like sort of dark energy when we discover that galaxies are spinning a little bit too quickly on the outside there seems to be something like pushing them along what do you make of the um fine chune Universe idea uh a lot of people describe it as as the most powerful argument for God's existence Christopher Hitchens in the back of a car once said that that was really what what gave him pause I don't find that it moves me very much I mean it does seem quite extraordinary that had any of the constants of the universe the force of gravity for example if it was stronger or weaker by the most unimaginably small amount then it would either be strong enough that the Universe would collapse in on itself or it would be uh so weak that you atoms couldn't even form or or at least objects couldn't form and everything just gets blown apart at the Big Bang um three explanations for this it's it's chance it's necessity or its design and Chan is seems like a ludicrous suggestion I mean there are lots of different constants and it may be the case that we discover this sort of theory of everything that reduces it down to one still a huge mystery as to why it has the sort of the constant that it does but would mean that we're not talking about lots of different constants in harmony uh somehow happens to be unified one way the idea of it sort of necessarily being that way doesn't seem that out of the question for me like people people put it in the language of saying that had the constants been different by this amount the universe couldn't exist and what people often hear is the chances of the constant being as it was was the same number but I don't think that's the same thing it might just not possible that it could have had a different value what's that is it the Observer selection effect of this this doesn't work for the fine-tuning argument I I think so the so-called like anthropic principle the universe seems designed for human life it seems OD like people might point to for example the Earth's perfect distance from the Sun in the so-called goldilock Zone had it been a little bit further out or a little bit closer humans couldn't exist and the easy answer to that is to say well yeah but if you didn't exist then you wouldn't be there to observe that it didn't exist right and so you say given the size of the universe life might develop somewhere possibly multiple places and the places where it's going to be observed coming about is where it comes about so no surprise that works there but the the fine tuning concepts of the universe we're not talking about like we're not talking about like a potential billions of earths that could all give R to human beings we're talking about if one of these constants was different by a tin by the tiniest amount nothing exists and and sure it is still true that didn't not happen we wouldn't be here to observe it yeah my my my friend Josh Peri has given me an example in the past of like I don't know you can imagine like a series of highly trained knife throwers just just just just lob like 100,000 knives at you in an attempt to kill you and they all Miss perfectly cutting out the silhouette of your body behind you absolutely perfectly just like uncanny and someone says well they must have done that on purpose it's like a trick right and you say no no I I think it's just just happened by chance you say well that's ludicrous oh well if it didn't then I wouldn't be here to to observe that it did would I it it still just wouldn't wouldn't do it for you even though that is true you know had you been killed you wouldn't be there to observe it it just seems such an unlikely coincidence that that just doesn't work for the when we're talking about the actual fundamental uh stuff of of the universe which is why people are so troubled by it but I do think generally speaking with all of these kinds of things fine-tuning Consciousness is another example that's broadly in the scientific real realm that people think that this just can't be explained without reference to a God maybe they're right I don't know but if you intuitively were to step into a time machine and look at some people having this conversation and you said like like imagine them looking back and and saying gosh can you believe it they hadn't worked out fine tuning yet they hadn't figured out the constants are they hadn't figured out the science of con Consciousness yet I can I can conceive of that just just intuitively I can see someone doing that but when I think about my Arguments for atheism the problem of evil Divine hiddenness this kind of stuff I can't imagine somebody looking through a time machine similarly at a conversation that I have and going gosh can you believe it they hadn't worked out the problem of evil yet they hadn't worked out Divine hiddenness yet I think these are perennial problems so where you have these scientific Arguments for the existence of God I guess I just have more of a trust that they will one day be explained in a way that won't require recourse to a Divine author in in a way that my criticisms of religion will probably not be similarly resolved we had a great conversation in Austin as you explained to me about the potential historical accuracy or inaccuracy of Jesus's resurrection can you go through that a little bit yeah I mean this sometimes is used as an argument for the existence of God but I think more successfully is used once you've already establish the existence of God to to try to establish the truth of Christianity and that is a bunch of historical facts surrounding Jesus's uh alleged resurrection that you sort of have to ask what the best explanation is for now you can't historically prove a resurrection but you can historically prove events and then ask what the best best explanation of those facts is so people will often point to the fact that there was a man called Jesus walking around morally teaching people who was crucified by the Romans and that a few days after his death was seen or people made claims that they hadd seen him uh after he died and the question is how do you explain these facts the gospel reliability is an interesting question in general and people will often on the surface level say look the Bible contradicts itself it's full of contradictions and there are some seeming contradictions in in the gospel stories but of of course what a lot of people neglect to consider is that when we're talking about a text as a historical document contradictions shouldn't make us think that it's uh like less accurate but more accurate if historical sources contradict each other that's evidence of their accuracy rather than evidence of the opposite because if this is a mythical story that somebody's making up you would expect the details to concur that is if you're questioning two suspects in some kind of murder trial or something and their stories match up perfectly like to the tea the timings everything it arouses suspicion seems like somebody's inventing something someone's coming up with a story here and trying to trying to perfect it now people have this idea that a bunch of people got together and tried to fool the world into this sort of mythical story of of you know this man rising from the dead do you think they would have made the mistake of just including these blatant contradictions I don't know in other words I think if somebody was making it up they probably would have taken more care is there a term for this I'm sure there is right I'm not a historian I couldn't tell you what it is um but we we we do see contradictions on the minor points we don't really see much disagreement about the major points I mean there is still enough disagreement that I think to arouse suspicion I mean I'm saying this as if I'm some kind of Christian or or theist I sort of put on that hat when when I'm asked to have a conversation of this kind I mean it does seem to me suspicious for example that the gospel of Mark which is the earliest gospel contains no post-resurrection appearances and then the gospel of Matthew does include post-resurrection appearances the Gospel of Luke includes even more it's only in the Gospel of John that we get for instance dting Thomas which is the the latest gospel um canonical gospel I should say that's where that arises and in fact the story of doubting Thomas famously he doesn't believe that it's the Risen Christ and Jesus says come and touch my wounds and he touches his wounds and he and he and he says my Lord and my god um and Jesus says you believed because you've seen blessed are those who believe without seeing so in my view what we have is this so-called mythological development of no post-resurrection appearances and as the time goes on as we get further away from the source stories get more Fantastical ending in a moral a moral lesson to believe without evidence yes yeah this to me does seem a little bit suspicious so it's it is a fascinating mystery like uh you know something very strange happened on Easter morning because how do we explain the fact that this man gets crucified by the Romans and then people claim to see him after he died and we're willing to be put to death for that belief now okay maybe he didn't die unlikely as they say the Romans knew how to kill people and supposedly you know they check and they go to they go to to to break the legs of the other prisoners as they're taking them down from from from their their their crosses uh they were taking them down sort of temporarily and they hadn't died yet but when they go to break Jesus's legs they realize he's already dead which is why his legs don't get broken and they and they stab him in the side with a stick to make sure that he's dead I mean you know like this was a very effective method of killing people and they knew how to do it so it's unlikely that he just somehow survived this um is that the guy that stabbed him with the spear and supposedly this Blood on the spear was this he get someone STS him with the spear like after after the right after he's on the cross and it's essentially to check his dead um okay so likelihood is that he was actually crucified and then a few days later people are claiming to see him maybe they're lying but then you don't tend to go to death for something you know to be a lie you're willing to be put to death for things that you think are true that are false but very rarely are people willing to die for beliefs that they don't actually believe themselves that doesn't really happen so they probably weren't lying as maybe they were maybe they were mistaken fooled yeah now I I I've known you since about 2019 which is probably it would have been slightly longer than Jesus was with his disciples but spending every single day with this person living with this person eating with this person and then you've only seen him a few days ago and somehow imagine somebody managed to convince you that they were me even if I had a twin brother they probably wouldn't be able to convince you that it was me or maybe they were hallucinating in groups the one of the earliest uh gospel New Testament sources is the is the the letters of Paul the earliest and in one of those letters Paul refers to Jesus having appeared to 500 people all at once and in some of the gospels you get at least some group appearances at least more than one person and sometimes you know groups of disciple the the TW all seeing Jesus all at once you don't get group hallucinations like that and so it doesn't seem like they were they were they were mistaken either and so if they're not mistaken they're not making it up what explains the fact that these people claim to see him after he had died and the the the Christian apologists will say that the only real plausible explanation is that he really did rise from the dead now it's a it's a interesting argument and it's quite powerful however my my response has always been that this sort of process of elimination is very clever and that's how it it's usually run but it can go the other way I mean imagine I were trying to prove that there was such thing as a group hallucination I know it's extraordinary but there was a group hallucination and I tried to prove it by saying well what are the other explanations or maybe they lied well they wouldn't do that because they wouldn't go to death or maybe a man rose from the dead but come on that doesn't happen that that breaks all the laws of physics so the only remaining option is this kind of depends where you start but it is weird something very strange seems to have happened on that morning I can see why philosophers go mad because you were able to simultaneously convince yourself of something and then convince yourself of the opposite and unconvince yourself of everything that you've believed yeah but that's that's I think one of those famous quotes of Socrates is that you know the the sign of wisdom in a man or something is is the ability to entertain a belief without holding it or without becoming convinced by it or something like that and I I think it's um something anybody can do if they want to it's and it's why philosophers are so people think that philosophers are better at doing this I don't think that's true I think they're just talking about stuff that's far less far less political far less real and so so they're less likely to get they're less likely to to be offended at the prospect of considering the falsehood of their of their beliefs maybe until you get into religion I suppose you definitely seem to be able to have an ability to drop into and out of arguments on both sides of the same fence and play with ideas in a way that I think is is rare and presumably a bit of a disposition but also largely trained because you can sit and convince chat GPT that God exists or try and turn me into a theist and then stand on stage and do the exact opposite uh and just I I think that there's probably quite a lot to learn from how people who have spent a good bit of time playing with ideas in philosophy dispassionately have that separation between themselves and the idea and the belief and what it means to them and the emotion and kind of that whole like ambient mess yeah it's playing is is a good word because it's fun you know it's enjoyable that's why it's it's fun to talk about you know theory of knowledge because who like really cares it doesn't you know it doesn't grow corn as they say or make corn how you however you're supposed to say it and uh and and that's fine because if it did then it would suddenly all get a bit serious and it kind of really matters whether you get it right or wrong whereas here we're just sort of sort of having fun but you can I don't know I I can kind of see why Heretics would get burnt at the stake when religion had Social Power because you know you you become convinced that this is the source of meaning this is the source of truth without it we are nothing now being threatened and then it turns out that maybe there are actually some holes to poke here what are you going to do I mean you can't let them do that because this is literally you know societally calamitous and so you know they they end up getting burn at the stake that's what also annoys me I mean you mentioned earlier this this recent resech urgence in the idea that oh we're all sort of balancing on judeo-christian values may be kind of true in a sense but it does kind of get on my nerves that after I said this to Ben yesterday that the history of religious persecution against the very developments that those religious groups now like to claim as their own I think the religion has shown to be wrong on a number of things I listed them yesterday the position of women in society the state of homosexuals at least practicing homosexuals the position of the Earth in relation to the sun the age of both of those celestial bodies wrong about the common evolutionary ancestry of all animals including the human animal wrong about the ownership of other human beings as private property as is explicitly condoned not only in the Old Testament but also in the new and now not only does religion sort of I religion fails to come to us with with an apology and Contrition and say maybe we were wrong it says no no no those things are ours all along it says yes we may have shown the instruments of torture to Galileo because he suggested that the Earth might orbit the sun rather than the other way around but hey didn't you know that the Scientific Revolution is essentially judeo-christian in origin yes the Old Testament gives you explicit uh instructions about exactly how to either buy or steal other human beings and keep them sometimes as your sexual property but don't you know that the Abolitionist Movement is essentially judeo-christian in origin yes I know that St Paul says that man is the glory of God but woman is the glory of man and that I suffer not a woman to teach not to Asser authority over a man rather she should remain silent for Adam was formed first then Eve but don't you know that social justice movements are essentially judeo-christian in origin yes you know we we know about the stoning of homosexuals and the the fact that if even St Paul says that they're not getting into heaven but don't you know that the LGBT movement is essentially sort of riding on judeo-christian principles it seems to me relatively offensive to the people who have managed to secure these developments against the very religious Traditions that now like to claim them as their own yeah both cause and Def it's like being punched in the face by somebody who then comes over and gives you a bandage for it yes I mean people like to refer to and this is I'm sort of rehashing some of the stuff that I said yesterday here it's sort of a people like to point out that the the people who really got the Scientific Revolution going were often Believers in God you know Galileo believed in God Newton believed in God in fact Newton spent but people would fascinated to discover his Diaries to find that he spent more time writing about theology than than science mad man for the last 30 years doing Alchemy right right but here's the thing right like if and and as I said yesterday I I don't claim that this is the case but if it were true that science had like undermined religion and Christianity if it were the case that that actually these things aren't compatible with each other then when somebody says well that can't be the case because don't you know that the people who sort of founded the Scientific Revolution were religious well what else would they have been if they hadn't yet invented the mechanism by which their beliefs would come to be undermined it's like saying that it's amazing that the person who invented the Motorcar didn't own a motor car beforehand you see what I'm saying it sort of I don't know it seems very strange to and and it's very recently that the popularity of this has increased as you say I mean you go back to the to the mid- naughties at the height of new atheism and it was very popular to talk about how religion's sort of always getting in the way of Science and maybe that was a bit crude but I think we're seeing an equally crude annexation of all of the beneficial social developments of the past 100 years as somehow necessarily standing upon the judeo-christian tradition it couldn't have happened without them is this a uh scrabbling for something to hold on to given that the collapse of grand narratives has had some poor externalities over the last couple of years is it co is it just Mass cope I think so I think that nihilism as it were carries with it the feeling of being naked you you sort of thrown off what were essentially optional clothes to reveal what was there all along but when you actually face it to Nature it's embarrassing it's scary and you will do anything you can if you find yourself naked in public to find any clothes to put on not just your old ones doesn't matter what clothes any clothes are better than no clothes and this is what people are beginning to realize and so they're scrambling for their old clothes again and trying to legitimate and yes and and and trying to trying to put them on um and that's why it's easy as well for people to go around poking holes in other people's clothes it's very easy to do but that's what the success of a movement like new atheism consists in in the fact that all they had to do was just tell other people why they're wrong you only need to poke coals in other people's clothes but if you need to like sew your own shirt yeah that gets a little more difficult see as swi said that the the purpose of philosophy is not the cutting down of forests but the irrigation of deserts that's very interesting yeah I I've thought about this for a good while um the seductiveness of being a Critic as opposed to being somebody that makes suggestions uh and the lack of preparedness of anybody to put forward any proposals for anything you it's easy for both sides accuse each other of being reactionary right the reactionary right the reactionary left uh and ultimately for instance perfect perfect example of this is in the world of dating and sort of mate selection in The Mating Market uh everybody can provide criticisms about what's going wrong and almost nobody provides any action able steps to improve it Beyond something that is eliminative rather than additive right like well if we could just stop doing this then this would be fixed it's like I don't think that that's quite the way that it works and there's another very unique protection mechanism that's given which is it's very hard to criticize someone's criticism or at least being a a Critic leaves you open to criticism way less than being a proposer oh yeah right if I if I put something forward if I posit a potential solution for you to be able to come back and say well this is [ __ ] and this is [ __ ] and this is [ __ ] makes complete it's very easy to do whereas for you to say for me to critic you what you did and then for you to come back and go well actually this and this and this about it's like n it kind of gets all a little bit abstract and it's a few degrees removed from anything that feels real yeah Simon C can't write a song you know like if the world was full of Simon cows then we'd end up with no music somebody's got to do the building here you can't just be a Critic and this is what I think has been the reason for the success of the sort of anti-n atheist stuff that we've been seeing recently I mean you'll have seen this even the new atheist themselves sort of treat it like it's a it's a dead animal and in many ways it is and I think it's got to do with the fact that yeah they they they've done a very good job of of cutting down the central pillar of what has traditionally been the reason the people getting out of bed in the morning and then when people are there saying well what do we put in its place they're like see you you know I'm out and they go off and do different things and and what are people to do and that's why was it the job of the new atheists to provide something to well maybe not some some people are just good at diagnosing problems KL marks is a good example like K marks is diagnosis of of of the way the world works are fascinating to read and Incredibly useful even if you disagree with them but obviously attempt to sort of build uh societies on those ideas alone have failed seems like you need something a little bit more um I just don't think it's true the religion stuff I mean and so that's why I think we're seeing this because people are beginning to realize that it probably isn't true they can't get like quite get behind the truth claims but they recognize that there's some utility in having other people believe that it is true and I don't know where that leaves us because in this discussion about whether religion is good or bad for society I said yesterday look I will accept your premise wholesale that religion is good maybe even necessary for society what do you want me to do if I just don't think it's true might just lie to my children raise than believing something that I I don't believe is the case because I think it will somehow be beneficial to society I don't think it works like that I don't think people can actually fool themselves sure you can act as if God exists and that's what someone like Peterson says that people do already but ultimately if you just say well I think that you know it's I should just act like a Christian because it's good for me then when push comes to shove and you really have to make a moral sacrifice if you're not actually a Christian you're probably not going to do the actually Christian thing well I wonder whether this is afforded to people because of the convenience and comfort of Modern Life the fact that having to really really something on the line it's mostly Ling as you know belief systems and I'll pick up that piece of trash and I will you know give money to this person on the street yeah people have sort of forgotten I mean it's like Bourgeois religious belief it's so so irregularly that we have to make genuine moral sacrifices of the kind that used to be common place throughout the history of humanity that we've sort of Forgotten our ability to do so and I think that if you push people now they they recognize that they probably wouldn't make those sacrifices did you see the Mr Beast poll where he asked would you rather have like a million dollars or like a random person on Earth dies or something like that if you press this button no and like I think it might have been a majority of people a slim majority said they you know press that button yeah kill kill someone random I'll take a million bucks and and I actually kind of believe them I think they actually would and people want to say that that's because we've lost you know our belief in God I don't know maybe I I think a better explanation is just that like you say we've become too comfortable and so when somebody says in other words like oh well you know this must be due to due to to decline in religion and the fact that we've forgotten our judeo Christian Heritage I mean you'll probably hear that a lot from people that you might talk to on this podcast they'll say something like that just think to yourself like is that really the best explanation is that the only explanation could it be something to do with the growth of Technology could it do could it be to do with something of something to do with the growth of comfort yeah and is it more likely to do with that and maybe it's not the lack of religion that's causing the other stuff but but this other source that's causing both of those things yeah I've been thinking a lot recently about uh stuff that is literally true but figuratively false and figuratively true but literally false and uh it kind of seems a little bit like the beliefs that you're talking about here it may be comforting increasing in happiness adaptive to kind of act as if these things exist uh the belief in free will actually uh believing in Free Will or sorry yeah determinism generally is something that may be literally true but figuratively false yes and that's kind of where I've come to as an opinion with this that largely it's through designed ignorance that I just don't think about it that much precisely the reason it evolves that's why it exists it's an illusion because it it it does something for us and and that's fine I have I have I've never had a problem saying that but when the sort of opes under which I'm having a conversation with benjiro is that he made a video called The Atheist delusion and in that video he says like look you can't have free will without God I say yeah I agree you can't have free will without God you just also can't have it with God and he essentially says like well you know there's sort of a I don't know how free will works but it's sort of a mystery that I'm I'm willing to accept wholesale and I'm like well this is fine but who's the delery one here you know what I mean like I I've got no problem with you saying like well I I see that this or benter by the way but I have no problem with somebody saying well yeah I mean maybe Free Will doesn't exist but it's better to act as though it does it's like okay fine but then don't don't say that I'm the one acting under a delusion I mean delusions can be good they might evolve for a good reason but but I don't know I I guess I find it difficult to treat something as true that isn't it's a bit like the gun is always loaded that's one of Brett Weinstein's example examples it's it's not true that the gun is always loaded but we're just going to pretend that it is and that's much better that least to a good Society if we but like you can't actually act like it's true like if you ask me to put money on like opening the gun and seeing if there's a bullet in there you can behave in a way that functions as if it were but then when push comes to shove and you really need to make a decision yeah you're not going to be able to do it unless you really believe it so this only works in low stakes situations yeah so so you know it's it's all too easy to say oh you know we we'll just we'll just sort of act as though it's true good example here using the using the act as if the gun is loaded thing uh you do not point it at anybody you do not leave it around the children you do not do the rest of it if a uh robber breaks into your house you don't go downstairs with said gun acting as if it's loaded exactly exactly right and so the moment that it actually really matters like in the prior case it only matters when it goes wrong right but when it begins to matter when it goes right and that it goes right this principle just doesn't work and so I'm I'm suspicious of his efficacy in other words I think we might need to actually start acting in accordance with what's true which by the way is what people have been saying for a long time oh why don't we all just act in accordance with what's true and then suddenly when you begin to realize that maybe Free Will doesn't exist maybe morality is just a social adaptation suddenly this idea of acting in accordance with what's true as as a as a point of principle goes out the window and it's amazing how I've I I sort of see deontologists virtue ethicists transform before my very eyes into utilitarians out out goes the principle of live in accordance with the truth outgo the principles of honesty and and sort of lack of intentional self-deception because well we want the greatest good for the greatest number you know a better more functional Society comes about if we just pretend as though this is the case what happened to The Virtue what happened to the principle what happened to the deontological ethics it's just out the window all of a sudden I think sometimes people like to have their cake and eat it too in that respect I like to act in accordance with what I think is true and when somebody challenges me and says well you don't act as as though you don't have free will I I just don't know what that means I don't know what that looks like it probably looks something like this Alex okon ladies and gentlemen Alex it's been a while since I've had you on I think I'm going to be joining you on your show at some point soon hope so what can people expect of you over the next couple of months what's coming up uh hopefully that conversation with benir which I'll mention for 16 billionth time uh we will be will be out I've got a few debates coming up Oxford Union Durham Union something at Cambridge on the monarchy uh so you're being known for the appear Morgan's propelled you catapulted you to the Forefront of the anti-monarchist yeah I'm becoming something of a royal correspondent for for for that news new an anti- Royal correspondant hey my my Twitter bio is growing growing by the minute on this podcast where should people go they want to keep up to date with the stuff you do uh just type in my name Alex of Conor I am technically still Cosmic skeptic uh that's my old handle I tend to go by my Christian name now but the handles are still all there so you'll still find me that way too Alex I appreciate you thank you mate thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode you will love my fulllength 2hour Long podcast with Douglas Murray go on press it

Channel: Chris Williamson

Views: 406,155

Keywords: modern wisdom, podcast, chris williamson, Chris Williamson modern wisdom, modern wisdom podcast, chriswillx, Chris Williamson Modern Wisdom Podcast, Alex O'Connor on morality, Cosmic Skeptic moral philosophy, Ethics discussion Alex O'Connor, O'Connor's views on ethics, Cosmic Skeptic on moral values, Philosophical views on morality, Alex O'Connor ethical debates, Morals in modern society, O'Connor's moral reasoning, Cosmic Skeptic ethics analysis, Moral dilemmas Alex O'Connor

Id: bSJhaTWZxQs

Length: 99min 9sec (5949 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024