UFOs: Examining the Evidence | Peter Boghossian & Michael Shermer

so when Kennedy says this happened and this happened and I'm like yeah actually he's right and enough people okay so how about we listen to him since he's running for president and we go okay these are the parts he's right these are the parts he's wrong and here's why he's wrong and so on and just put so yeah okay so you might be right he might be partially right even if he's a hundred percent wrong a lot of people think what he thinks so how strong is your position to counter what he thinks because other people believe it if you don't listen to him welcome to conversations with me Peter pogosian today I'm excited to have Dr Michael Shermer on the show he's the founding publisher of skeptic magazine and the host of the podcast the Michael Sharma show Michael was a monthly columnist for Scientific American for 18 years he's the author of several books including the New York Times bestsellers why people believe weird things and the believing brain both of which were instrumental in my intellectual development his latest book is conspiracy by the rational belief the irrational we talked about the substitution hypothesis aliens and the efficacy of debate it's a wide-ranging conversation and I hope you enjoy it thank you Michael Shermer it's a pleasure good to see you again Pete good to see you again yeah yeah um you've gone a long ways you know I met you at Portland State I know what a hell hole uh and my full disclosure for everybody I consider you a good friend I I hope there's some reciprocity in that and um there is yeah yeah yeah so to watch you make the transition from you know lecturing as a college professor to public intellectual activists that's right it's a different vibe yeah it's pretty crazy and you came to my class and you lectured in my class and uh that was great see at the time atheism was a kind of a Hot Topic right and the whole politics both Progressive and all that right stuff was not was just not quite taken off yet so it's it's almost feels like well the atheism thing is old now yeah yeah yeah now we have these new battles yeah and so that's one of the things that I wanted to talk to but I wanted to talk about a few things today so I interviewed Richard at Richard Dawkins and yes so I'll even take a step back so I've been using these conversations to kind of help clarify my own thinking about things and talking to people I respect so I have some questions about things I've been thinking about that I'd like to ask you about so the substitution hypothesis the idea that as the old religion dies a new one comes in it's Christianity dies now we're dealing with wokism uh before I tell you what Richard said about that what do you think about that do you think because you you've written extensively that the the brain is an engine of belief I think I got that line from your books right the brain is an engine for belief and belief is just the default State and so the the brain is the hardware and the software is what comes into it do you think there's any truth to the idea that for example once wokism dies some other derangement syndrome or some other Mass delusion or something else will come in do you think there's any truth to the substitution like that but that's probably a proxy for something deeper going on um it's it'd be like if we talked about the human sexual drive and that's why we have to have Playboy clubs if it's not Playboy clubs it's something else it's not the clubs those are just secondary things it's you know it's the Deep human sexual drive something like that so do we have a religious impulse well we have something deeper like I need to socialize with other people that think like us or believe similar things that have to do with something Transcendent or larger than ourselves and that can be fulfilled in many ways religion is one way meditation and or you know transhumanism or whatever your thing is and so that those get filled in and in this case you have a a secondary or a second deep um human nature impulse which is moralization that is we have a sense of right and wrong and we feel energized and motivated to do something about wrongs and injustices that we see everybody does that's normal that's why we have self-help Justice if the police system breaks down the court Criminal Justice System breaks down people will just take the line of their own hands because everybody wants the right thing to be done and Injustice is to be corrected so if you marry those two then you have you know religion as one institution that has this kind of higher power deeper goals that were energized to be part of that other people in our tribe also believe animalization component like they're right and wrong there's good and evil and we should fight against the evil and reward the good and so on so in a way I think social justice movement black lives matter uh me too the BLM lgbtq whatever these are all manifestations of this deeper these deeper impulses I think and so you know we had the civil rights movement and the women's rights movements the gay rights movements animal rights movements and so on and so this lace this lattice one is just another one of these uh driven by these deeper impulses so I I don't I don't think it it it's that when one dies the other replaces I just think there's multiple options on the table that they rise or fall due to other factors so you don't accept the basic premise of the substitution hypothesis no I think I think it's probably something deeper going on than than just that that that that one replaces the other because there's too many kinds of social institutions that people belong to so so let me ask a question so I've been thinking about this for a long time in skepticism way back when we skepticism and Atheism were the canaries in the coal mine one of the things that we saw was and initially people freaking out about lack of females at conferences lack of women at conferences and we saw a craziness take over that and anger a kind of the tuberation that I hadn't seen before I remember you sent me an email once or maybe you said this to me on the phone and I just thought this was so interesting the thing that you said to me all the people you've debated all and then I want to talk about the Joe Rogan debate things about all the people you've debated and they have been numerous about numerous things UFOs which I want to talk to you but we all want to talk about and you have debated a lot of people you've put some skin in the game if you will there's a you use that um phrase in your podcast with Avila but I never miss any of your podcasts by the way you put some skin in the game I can't I have so much on my mind I can't even I can't even remember where I was going with this uh because then I I felt I fell down a rabbit hole into my own brain well I think this back to the substitution hypothesis yeah you know we don't want to make the mistake of thinking something that's uh huge on our Horizon and it looks big you know like the whole woke Progressive trans lgbtq we hear about it all the time most Americans are not on board with this right look at the polls gallop and Pew and they ask people about this it's only like seven and a half percent of Americans think yeah this is a good idea yeah you're talking about you know over 90 percent of Americans think no this is this has gone too far yeah right so we don't want to say that replace religion because it hasn't you know religion is still okay quite active Okay so this is this is where I was going I got my my thought I rerun my brain so here's what I understand so in the skeptic and atheist movement a kind of new religion Grew From Within that movement the the woke is and the critical social justice here's what I'm trying to figure out bracketing the substitution hypothesis for a moment why is it that some people seem immune to these ideas to like whatever is morally fashionable like why is it that some people are just not susceptible and I'm I I have two things going on in my brain I'm trying to say this without being self-aggrandizing or arrogant and I'm trying to say this without flattering you because I don't mean I don't mean it that way like why is it that you for example have not succumbed to this alien craze or that you haven't succumbed to this wokism form of its age you know I'm 68 I'm a baby boomer most of the vocalism stuff is a gen Z you know people born after 1996. um and we know there's huge generational differences on trends like this what what's fashionable what people want to get into and this is definitely a gen Z or a late Millennial movement they could track it from when it started say 2014 2015 when it migrated into college campuses this is about when uh gen zier started to go to college and it continues now it can't just be age though it's not just age now there's multiple factors you know also politics again most you know half of Americans are conservative yeah right 75 million people voted for Trump as he reminds us constantly so um it can't be that uh you know everybody has fallen for this crazy woke cult or whatever they haven't most people haven't I mean half the country thinks anything liberal is crazy and then within liberalism you know anybody like who's let's say Gen X or older thinks most of this has gone too far so we're really talking about a a not very big movement that's actually very vocal and gets a lot of media attention so it feels like it's this huge thing you know the world's ending and you hear this on conservative circles all the time on Fox News and so you know oh my God this is happening and they're tearing America apart we're about to collapse no we're not you know there's some exaggeration there so is it is it so you're saying there's a suite of factors like age politics politics but even conservatives are affected by wokism even religions are affected by yeah so you know atheism went through several movements in the 90s it wasn't very big at all and it's the culture wars weren't focused on science and religion until late 90s and then Richard's book came out in 2006 The God Delusion that kind of launched oh my God the atheism movement's Gonna Get huge and then very quickly within months there was a cut between the militant atheists and the more conciliatory atheists right you know hitch and Dawkins and you got to get in there and be a bulldog and rip these idiots apart you know and then everybody else is like well no you know we should be nice about it and uh and then there was another cut around 2009 of the atheist plus right plus being social justice then that made it purely political a Schism in which that was really a kind of woke movement back then yes that was the earliest stage yeah yeah but actually some of that you can see earlier threads in humanism because when I you know kind of came of age in the 70s and 80s it's like well okay I'm no longer religious you know I was a Evangelical Christian for seven years Pepperdine I'm not doing that now so what's my world view well science yeah but science is kind of a more of a method what's my world view of what I do believe because atheism isn't immoral View at all it's just I just don't believe in God there's not well what do you believe in okay well so humanism you know Universal human rights for example is something that we're positively in support of but then but when I joined these humanist groups they had like the little boxes you take these are the things we believe yeah and they were mostly liberal political positions it's like okay what if I'm on board with half but not the other half or with 12 10 of the 12 boxes I ticked am I a humanist and so then it became very restrictive uh there and I thought oh this is a big mistake you know that we should be a big tent that everybody can join liberals Democrats Republic anybody and uh but I think this actually happens back to the larger picture they're all social movements you know are you a pure uh Marxist are you a leninist Marxist the stalinist Marxist the trotskies you think it's a necessary condition of movement I think it happens I don't know if how necessary it is but most movements seem to go through these splintering feminism you know who's the true feminism this is why we have third wave feminism and apparently fourth wave feminism right because why they don't agree about what's the right feminism even Iran's libertarianism or her objectivism went through this purging where right down to what books you read what movie you like to go to what cigarette brands you smoke I mean really bad stuff and if you if you're not ticking all the boxes you're out and it's like this is insane I've been observing this for so long and you know so I think there's just something about social groups within the groups egos fighting for money status I don't know what but they you know so so you don't or do you think does does this position so skepticism to me is not a set of tools that one uses to analyze there's not merely it's a disposition it can be that's part of it some people are naturally more skeptical and some are more open to new ideas that are you I mean your work one of the things that you've turned me on to in your work is that you can have have the tools but if you have the tools and don't have the attitude you'll actually dig yourself deeper into delicious that can happen right so the idea is that you want to have that that's why one of the most important things that I constantly talk about is belief revision so the the tools having the tools without the disposition is actually worse than not having the tools at all because that's why people believe weird things they dig themselves down so one thing we try to do is to teach uh what the cognitive biases are and watch out for them and you but there's one more cognitive bias that is the bias bias that is it's hard to see it in yourself you can train people to recognize it and they're good at that with a little training of your confirmation bias the hindsight bias and the my side bias and so on in other people so then you gotta take it another step well don't forget you might our group might be subject to that so you have to train that and that's really hard okay so uh I so my question to you is if someone doesn't naturally have these dispositions what's the best way to get them well your book you know how to have difficult conversations I think has a lot of tools there um you know so it's not just the facts but the way the facts are presented in a manner that doesn't threaten the identity of the person that you're trying to get them to change their beliefs so the examples I give if you know if you're a Christian conservative and you think creationism is what they're supposed to believe and you tell them no evolution is true and by the way you have to be an atheist to believe that they're not going to ever accept anything you say about that because that would be giving up their deepest religious identity and that's not going to happen so you have to just take that off the table you know you can keep your religion whatever we're just talking about genetics or Evolution or whatever and so the same thing would be with climate change you know that got uh bundled with Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth film and he was vice president of the democratic Administration so he's a liberal so climate change got bundled with liberalism so automatically when a conservative hears climate change their brain auto corrects to oh anti-capitalism anti-American anti-jobs you know it's like okay can we put these can we help so I don't want to say put the dispositions in people can we help people nurture these dispositions in Early Education from literature film I talked to Andrew Doyle a little bit about that he's fantastic by the way you know yeah I know your show with him was great um can can we use the existing educational infrastructure to help nudge people towards these dispositions I don't know Pete the way it's structured now I think we need massive educational reform uh the old model of the teacher standing up in front of the Blackboard and the students in rows it's effective for some things but the Roundtable seminar discussion debate open secure method Socratic method your street epistemology just doing that in the classroom I would like to see students offered the kind of thing I teach skepticism 101 how to think like a scientist or pinker's rationality or logic reasoning whatever the tools are at a much earlier age you know we have this method you know okay so you got to take uh you know geometry and then pre-algebra and algebra and then precalculus and calculus and all that all that's fine if you're going into engineering or one of the stem fields that uses those tools but most people don't 99 of people who go through middle school and high school never use those tools how about you know how statistics and probabilities uh explains most of what happens in the world you know uh uh you know that's why I use Leonard millennial's book The drunkards Walk where he talks about you know the regression to the mean the law of large numbers how most of what we see happening in the world is explained by statistics and probabilities Randomness and people just do not grasp this at all because they've never heard it right you know so or and well I'm at it about a course in basic economics you know how does the stock market work what is money I mean how can I get more of it yeah I read things like a while ago in fact I think it was in the 90s I read paulus's book mathematical and numeracy fantastic like really for me that was it a game-changing book to help clarify my thinking but so back to this idea that I'm going to ask you what pedagogies you think we should be experimenting with in schools you gave us some ways or heuristics or even ways to think about that Financial education money the Socratic method would be a pedagogy Bayesian reasoning basic you know just get off of black and white binary thinking that's right and wrong true and false and just think of everything as some degree of probability more or less then you can get people away from the you know I it's either absolutely true or absolutely false and since you think differently for me you have to be wrong right okay not merely wrong but an existential threat yeah that's right morally or evil right yeah that's why we use the likert scale when we do this technology yeah yeah it's good because people might be willing to move from here to here but if you go no you got to go all the way over there they're not going over there in one step yeah right um we talked about the substitution hypothesis we talked about Bayesian reasoning have to talk to you about aliens aliens yes well let's see let's use Bayesian reasoning well okay so before we even use Bayesian reasoning um before we go down there I had shellenberger on he talked about me the reason we're talking about this is when we not go around the world I'm telling you this as a fact and read can attest to this every single place we go we let people choose any topics they want there has not been a single time not one time anywhere in the world we've gone where people have not wanted to talk about aliens that's correct yes so now Bayesian reasoning well first of all it is a Hot Topic because first of all it's in the news a lot with the uaps and the government programs and whistleblowers and all that stuff okay let's see what they got but I think it's I think what you're experiencing there is something like back to the replacement hypothesis of of uh of a religious like impulse to think that there's somebody else out there that knows we're here and they have come here right I mean most people that are enthused about UFOs and aliens have zero interest in the seti program which is a rigorous scientific program to uh use radio telescopes to try to pick up signals from other civilizations and they've had zero success so far and they have a whole set of criteria this is what's going to count as a signal that's not a rotating black hole or whatever it's sending out a sequence of let's say prime numbers like Sagan used in contact there's Jody Foster with the cans on all of a sudden the prime numbers start coming through well that can't be a rotating black hole or or whatever so that must be a sign of intelligence no the DFO Community has zero interest in that so that tells us something this is a different group of people they're using a different epistemology where anecdotes stories The credibility and credentials of the eyewitness all that matters in the seti scientific Community none of that matters just show us the evidence and we'll believe otherwise we're skeptical but to the UFO Community all that stuff matters yeah it sounds like religious reasoning I think it is it is a little bit like that right you know who was it that saw the miracle you know uh oh he's a sheriff you know oh the the mayor oh the in that case what difference does it make with their position what their job is right and uh yeah so in fact I saw Mark Kelly the the pilot astronaut twin I posted this on Twitter his little video clip of him talking to NASA a NASA meeting and somebody asked about the you know the credibility of the eyewitnesses of these Pilots that saw these things and he says let me tell you about about eyewitnesses I'm a trained pilot an astronaut and you know we see stuff all the time that turns out to be nothing that we thought it was and he gave the example of being in the space shuttle uh in the with the cargo bay open because they were releasing something and and his fellow astronauts thought oh my God there's a tool or some kind of um object in the bay that they were looking at and it's like oh my God how big is it is it moving we better do something about this thing and he said it turns out it was the Space Station International Space Station that was 80 miles away oh wow and it's like and he says I've known Pilots that try to like rendezvous with a fellow pilot and turns out it's a buoy on the ocean so you can't really use it phasing and reasoning with that well hang on you can't trust the anecdotal storytelling credentials of eyewitnesses because we're all susceptible to Illusions biases and so on the Bayesian reasoning part comes I use this again people are black and white so you're saying alien you know 100 aliens have not come here no you're saying alien there's no one else in the universe We're Alone no no no no that's their they're out there somewhere right it's a different question from are they here right right so people get confused about this stuff I say okay let's just shift it to this correct you never this is called cromwell's Rule and Bayesian reasoning Oliver Cromwell you know me thinks and the bells of Christ you might be mistaken just think you might be mistaken right so are there aliens out there I don't know you don't know no one knows for sure they might be let's just assign a low probability and if new evidence comes in we'll raise our estimates of the probability that being true have they come here I don't know probably not but maybe show me your evidence and I'll believe it I'll give it a one percent or a 10 and so like recently somebody said oh Shermer you you gave this this Crush David grush a hard time exactly and then now you've changed your tune on Twitter it's like I I changed my tune because I talked to Michael schellenberger I was just going to talk to you about that and he told me he talked to what eyewitnesses to confirm what gresh said about his eyewitnesses so then I go okay all right so the Bayesian the probability of your priors your priors are this is what I I believe at the moment when I start believing this thing and then you update your priors based on new information that comes in it's like okay well then maybe that maybe that's true you know we have now we have two and the Marco Rubio comes well I've talked to people too oh okay there's a third one now it's still not evidence I can't say I know for sure that aliens have visited here but it means that the eyewitnesses that the one guy said which was you know okay maybe maybe not and then two guys like huh okay and three guys you know it's like if you hear this at the door you're like oh what was that if you hear they're like I wonder if somebody's at the door somebody's at the door right three data points tips us into very probable again you don't have to assign 100 or zero percent to something in between then people don't have to get so emotionally charged like you're saying 100 no I'm not saying 100 could be in between okay so one of the things I love that question that you asked shellenberger it's not hey has Reed seen the aliens over there no it's like have you seen the craft have you talked to anybody who's actually seen the craft as opposed to yeah there's a secret program over there and people have told me they've seen the crowd so yeah when schallenberger said yes I was like holy moly like that's another level now how my next question is how do you actually know that they're craft well okay so then that's a separate question so so first we have to establish you know can you can you trust Michael schellenberger Marco Rubio I think the answer to shellenberger Is yes yeah oh for sure yeah 100 okay so I trust what he says now what does he say he says he talked to people who said okay who are these people I don't know because he's not protecting your sources all right okay so that you know it's like all right I understand about privacy and classified the brush has a top secret security clearance top it is but he has some security clearance yeah okay and the people schellenberger talked to also apparently and same thing with Ruby okay so but what is it that they okay let's let's assume that those three people accurately reported what they were told okay what were they told who are these people we don't know what did they see well they said we saw something we saw a craft okay craft we may craft you know if you were in the 1950s and you saw the SR-71 Blackbird flying by you knew nothing about it or the stealth bomber you know it's like wow I just saw this incredible craft yeah we made that you know it could be something like that it could be you know well back engineering it could be a crashed Soviet satellite and we are back engineering their technology to see what they're doing because we do this absolutely okay so the leap to me and the thing with bayesianism is always hard to figure out those priors because you don't want biases to affect those but it seems to me oh I mean I would be I know obviously I have no security clearance but I would be flabbergasted if the United States did not have some secret programs with some hangers in some bases we must have that yeah we do have that okay so so okay so that for what reason well that's the question so so the leap to me seems to go from I've seen this and it's alien like that's a that's the largest leap yes in that whole yeah you know we have off-world technology how do you know how do you know it's off the world I mean was there some tests done on the materials yes there was these tests with the ratios and the Isotopes yeah but I saw nothing that was said there that would uh preclude it being some CIA experiment or DARPA DARPA does the craziest research the stuff we know about you know 99 of it is just completely bet crazy including a bat bomb where they they had this idea of capturing bats and then strapping a little bond in the back and then releasing them this is I think during the Korean War uh it might have been Vietnam anyway it's like what are you talking about the bomb ways more than the bat yeah but so they just spitball ideas like crazy and then they start developing building stuff to see what works so who knows somebody saw something like that and went oh my god I've never seen anything like that's off world okay so I what I wanted to do this before this interview but I couldn't do this so I just had to I couldn't ask someone um Ilya Shapiro is a buddy of mine I was going to ask him he's a constitutional lawyer so I started Googling around Googling this so so you can I'm not a lawyer you can take this for for whatever it's worth let's say that we really wanted to figure out if this were true from my understanding the way that we could do this literally overnight is the Senate intelligence committee could fly down to Roswell and get a hotel and they have my understanding and again I'm not a lawyer is they have access to everything there's nothing they can just I don't think that's even that's true I don't think Marco Rubio could fly to Area 51 and say take me in the back I want to see everything I don't think they'd let them I mean you have to have security it's really really special security clearance to get in there if it is I don't I don't know for sure but I doubt it right so that would be the ultimate test but okay so here's the problem what if Marco Rubio gets into Area 51 whatever and comes back so well I didn't see anything well you know what the ufologists are going to say well of course they hit it well the whole idea is he would you he okay so then there's another Bayesian calculus like how How likely is that so he doesn't tell anybody he's going down he and whoever else goes there first thing in the morning he Demands a complete lockdown I mean you could think through ways where we could do this complete lockdown of facility everybody has to sit on their bottom and put their hands on their head if anybody caught will be I don't know if he could have the authority they'll be they'll be charged with a felony or whatever I don't know what a military tribe I don't know what it would be but it would seem that there would be ways of figuring this out within the pre-existing legal infrastructure if they found positive evidence and Rubio came out and said all right I've blown the whistle off the whole thing we've had this program since the 1950s here's what we found and then everybody go finally disclosure but what if he came out and said nah to be honest it was just experimental aircraft that DARPA was working on there's no aliens do you think the UFO Community would be satisfied with that no they would say he was lied to or he's lying it's part of the cover-up yeah they're going to kill him unless he says otherwise yeah during the um the big uh invasion of Iraq when w said you know they have weapons of mass destruction they're going in there and the U.N inspectors went in there and six months later they come out and they go you know what he doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction Bush's initial the administration's initial response was that's because they moved them right that's how we know they have them because we couldn't find any it's like right we'd admit it so so the lack of evidence means it's true right right it's like that Credo Credo absurdom the you know the fact that there's no evidence for God means that there really is a God Like wait what so the only way we could really get at it is in the positive way you can't prove a negative it's just uh and you just you're just hand waving with conspiracy theories about the cover-up and so on that's not going to get us anywhere so then we have to shift back to this for Bayesian probability with the principle of proportionality as as David first articulated it or the egre principle extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence equity and there um you correctly identified the leap from interesting uh secret technology for spying on the Russians or whatever to aliens is huge that's a huge leap I mean everybody agrees on all sides the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence would be one of the top discoveries of all time since fire this is what I tweeted I'd put it up there with the resurrection of Jesus it's you know billions to one you know but but okay it's not zero right right it's not zero so uh so but we have to have some commiserate evidence to take us up to that level you know I'll go with you to the secret spy balloon we have to have some evidence to take us up to a maybe yes the default is not maybe right the default is extraordinarily unlikely right that's right so it perfectly I said yeah that's right wouldn't the wouldn't the question and that instance be a defeasability or a disconfirmation question to people who espouse these beliefs under what conditions well here I would employ your strategy of asking what would it take to change your mind yeah what would it take to change your mind under what conditions and then you would see so if it doesn't have to be marked or ideally it would be schellenberger uh said I think he said this on your podcast and he told me this this is the only this is the most bipartisan thing he's come across basically everybody wants to know what's true there's nobody who's you know right there's no right-wing constituations no we don't want anybody to know everybody wants to know about this okay so in an ideal world it would be someone on the left and someone on the right and someone as you said someone with no wings not right-wing not left wing and they all go in there together and if that's not enough and the Very idea that someone could say well they move them and then they have to do mental gymnastics well they have faster than light travel how do you think they got here you know they they FTL out or whatever it is so in that in those cases you're correct excuse me I don't think anybody's mind is going to change but I think it would shift the Overton window in terms of how people view The credibility of what they're seeing like I think someone with no dog in the fight would then look and say oh come on now like I listened to and I thought it was really really good on your podcast that you gave it to Avi Loeb about umulomoa like he was making claims beyond the warrant of the evidence and I'm no expert in this UFO ology and I'm certainly not a Harvard physicist but he was making claims beyond the warrant of the evidence he was because and I know because before I recorded that with Avi I talked to some astrophysicists uh who told me who knew all about a Momo they read the papers they know Avi and so on all ye very respectable scientists yes but he's just he's going beyond the warrant of the evidence and uh we most of us don't believe it yeah I talked to Brian Keating about that too oh yeah right yeah he's good Brian's fantastic he's just it like what's the evidence I think likeliest what's going to happen is it if there's Secrets being kept it's not because they're covering up aliens it's that they're probably doing stuff that they've always done spying on the Russians and the Chinese developing spy technology stealth aircraft whatever okay and we're not going to tell the public about this because we don't want the enemy okay but that's the thing that I don't understand like that's like if you legit I mean okay this is we both agree this is just there is no adjective to describe how Monumental this would be I mean this would be literally since five this would be so epic doesn't even begin to explain how huge this would be why wouldn't you get the whole caltac MIT ever why wouldn't you just make a Manhattan Project I mean none of this makes any sense there's like oh we want to keep it just no that's insane like it doesn't even on the face of it make any sense it's a little bit like the JFK assassination documents that they've slowly released some Freedom of Information Act finally now we have most of them and most of the revelations about it have nothing to do with the CIA or the FBI or Johnson is being involved in assassination it was you know secret Cold War covert activities of spying on other foreign leaders other countries rigging elections uh working with people to assassinate foreign leaders overturned regimes we don't like I mean we were doing all that I mean the CIA was involved in you know third world countries where there were um you know kind of a failed state so you have the Communist dictator and the fascist dictator and American business interests in those countries well the fact dictator is going to be friendlier to American business interest in the Communists will just naturalize the company and take it so we're going to support the fascist guy now we don't like that system but you know he's the son of a but he's our son of a right yeah so that was going on we know that now our project MK Ultra you know secret mind control experiments we didn't find out until much later that cointelpro FBI spying on Martin Luther King defense your book conspiracy yeah yeah so we know about that so if there's more that we don't know about it's probably in that big bin of you know this is what secret intelligent agencies do yeah not the little bin over here it's aliens Okay so two things one I am amazed at how many legitimately smart people have fallen for this like people I know people I I'm Amazed by that um but I want to show you read let's pull up a clip from Michael uh was this in where's this Australia okay this is at Speaker's Corner you know in London okay so just take a look at this video oh okay here we go is this you guys oh yeah okay here we go it's a little silly but let's take a look at it because these are ordinary people there are no actors just random people who participated wow okay tell him why you agree that aliens are visiting Earth nice and loud so he can hear because whenever there's nuclear activity the aliens get in there and they stop it because they know that we're stupid we are like fishing in an aquarium they put us here and they're watching us and we're just too stupid that's why they don't show themselves to us it's like the fish have nothing to do with us they know that they're there yeah and like we know we're here but aliens are just on another level but they watch over us thank you tell her why you strongly disagree with that you told me something that you could have made up there is no evidence for that there's no evidence against it there's more evidence for it because the Earth is tens of millions of years old and how can we be the only form of life in this whole of the universe of anything if you have a look in the star in the sky there are more stars stars than sand grains on the beaches of the whole Earth that's great that's great that's a that's such a good example of you know confusing are they out there somewhere exactly what you just said right and also the nuclear thing that's interesting because um they're just talking about this um uh nuclear site back in the 70s where there was some weird funky lights in the sky and there was some electrical problems in the technology system of the launching of the rockets and so on uh but this is the only time this has happened or one of the few times there's a few other sites where there's some weird lights uh and so they immediately lead to the aliens are upset about us having nuclear weapons like it's a clip from the day of the Earth Stood Still The 1951 film about the aliens coming to warn us about nuclear weapons right they're neglecting the base rate how often does this happen how many nuclear bases are there well a lot we have land-based missiles we have submarine-based missiles we have bomber based missiles that's the trick nuclear Triad how come the aliens aren't buzzing around the submarines uh and so on because you know that would just be that would be just as bad and how many um other sites have had lights around them that are not nuclear so you have to look at the counter factuals what compared to what what does that mean I have one anecdote this is a problem with anecdotal thinking compared to what how unusual is that okay so I just want to be crystal clear about one thing because when I was very involved in the skeptical movement I remember people would say to me you just don't want it to be true so let me be let me be totally clear with you right now I genuinely hope like I really truly hope we have the wreckage of down crap like from the bottom of my heart with oh that's where I was going so you hope it too so it's like you're not it's not that you don't want it to be true it's that you think that the priors the reasoning the evidence isn't sufficient so now here's the question that I have for you just as for the UFO people under what conditions would you be willing to change your mind I have for Michael Sharma under what conditions would you be willing to change what would you have to see to make you say holy like I was wrong I made a mistake I'm sorry we have downed alien craft we have been visited from people by you know people aliens since whenever Roswell whatever what would it take for you to change your mind somebody asked that on Twitter the other day oh it was Brian Keating literally what would you put on the cover of skeptic if it turned out you know this was I I would put we were wrong yeah we got you know all right whatever take well all right I was wrong would be even better right Michael schurmer well yeah but it's not just me there's a whole community of Skeptics so actually most scientists are Skeptics because most ideas in science are wrong also um so what would it take okay the Chinese Bible in is a nice model and that story first broke it's like what are you sure they're seeing what they think they're seeing this thing was way far away yeah and the pictures weren't very good and then in the coming days it's like the things started getting went over Canada and through the northern part of the United States and everybody and their brothers out there with their cameras and then it was slightly better photographs it's like yeah okay this definitely doesn't look like an illusion or anything and then we sent up one of our Fighters and there's a crystal clear you know high resolution photograph with the equipment hanging from the edge like okay that's definitely a identified aerial phenomenon not unidentified no question about 100 you know the Pentagon the president everybody Secretary of State yes this thing is there and we're going to shoot it down and we're pissed off at the Chinese the Chinese are going hey it's not ours or oops it's ours and it accidentally went off course for the fourth time it's like yeah okay so and it's in all the newspapers it's covered on The Daily News no one asks what's the credentials of the pilot who took that picture you know is he is he decorated how's his eyesight how trustworthy is that no one cares about that because there's the picture we can all see it so if that happened everybody would believe including Skeptics absolutely sure so what is that in that sense okay so here's for my my little bet my thousand dollar bet that no one will take me up on uh is that you know by January 1st 2024 the president of the United States Pentagon Secretary of State other world leaders will all announce we have made contact with ETS and here here's the evidence here's the photos here's the debris here's the hanger where we keep it okay so and then that would it so good so debris would do it for you physical evidence physical so physical evidence so not what are the Tic Tac I personally have never seen the Chinese spy balloon with my own eyes but I trust that you know a thousand news stories with videos and pictures are trustworthy and is not a conspiracy cover-up like the motherland so I just I just want to be clear what it would take for you to change your mind that the United States has been in contact this is such an insane conversation yeah I know sorry it is but everybody loves it so yeah here we go yeah and and again given how many people believe this it's what we need to talk about especially with you right so for you to to change your mind you would need and I don't want to put words in them on trying to figure this out not merely video testimony but the records of down craft yeah some physical evidence right okay but how would you know that that evidence was actually alien well okay so there we would then need several layers of well you know scientists from these different universities examine the material and determined it was not of this Earth and so on not just one person but you know Labs from all over the world non-terrestrial origin in the same way that you know if you're a biologist and you and you want to name a new species and you show up at the conference yeah and they go hey I I have a big announcement I found a a second by po primate they still extant on earth now oh my God oh my God show us well I I don't have the body actually because it ran off but but you know it was three in the morning I was asleep in my tent and I heard this noise and I snapped this picture real quick and if if you kind of use your imagination and squint you can sort of see the shadow it looks like how far is he going to get with a a room full of biologists nowhere I mean it's like come on dude come back next year with the actual body right and then we'll believe right yeah like Bigfoot I'm not wearing Bigfoot that's the analogy yeah for sure so the same thing with aliens just show me the body okay so just to me just to be clear you said something that you're willing to put up a thousand dollars of your own money yeah so could you please what what is your bet with people so the bet is you put up a thousand I put up a thousand we'll put in a third party account and that put a definite date on it so the date I put was January 1st 2024 I'm willing to extend it to another year or two if they want uh and that the criteria is the equivalent of the Chinese five balloon you know just the Secretary of State the president depending on All State yes we have made contact for sure 100 it's covered on the evening it's not just one news station that gets the exclusive and no one covers it I mean just the whole you know David gresh story and oh it's huge how come this was not even mentioned uh by ABC News CBS News NBC conspiracy it's a conspiracy because they have fact Checkers and they have they have screeners they go you know what this is too speculative for us we got to cover the real story okay so now I have two questions so is it correct that nobody's taking you up in that bet that's right and and but it's it's not some kind of gotcha bet I'm not just making up here this is there's a whole industry of the Betty the prediction markets money markets but uh not money markets of of uh not but yeah uh but but prediction long bets yeah yeah so and these have a long history of being more accurate on let's say political elections than polls do so if you actually have to put skin in the game you put your own money in and I'm gonna bet that Trump beats Hillary and the odds you know and the oddsmakers set it up you know it's three to one again so you put up a thousand if Trump wins you win three thousand and so on this is all done this is a whole industry of these social markets and they're pretty accurate nobody's take okay they won't even respond to me when I okay if nobody's taking you up on it to me that tells me they don't believe it or at least they're not very confident yeah or that they they're genuine conspiracy theorists they think think that the conspiracy is so deep is a lizard man or something insane it could be that yeah yeah I don't think they have the courage of their conviction they go on Twitter and go disclosure is coming any day absolutely 100 I hear that all the time the resurrection it's like okay so second coming is coming anyway any minute now right so okay how about we put a date on it oh no no no I'm gonna put a date on it okay so I know someone's going to listen to this and they say well if Shermer is so confident so I've just had to go at the people who wouldn't take her back but if Shermer is so confident why is it only a thousand well I didn't want to make it like the million dollar Challenge and no one would do it for financial reasons okay it's a modest amount it's not a thousand dollars I'm willing to lose a thousand bucks to find out that there are aliens I wouldn't that be great I hope you lose me too I know I know yeah I know but again I'm pretty confident that if we find anything that if Freedom of Information Act or Congressional investigations turn up anything it'll just be more stuff we were doing during the Cold War or even now it's just like the Wikileaks uh you know here you have millions of classified documents that were pretty damning of the US government same thing with the Pentagon papers you know they were lying about this that and the other we were spying on Angela Merkel there's cell phone calls we were doing this we were doing that very embarrassing for the state department nothing in there about aliens 911 is an inside job nothing like that the moon landing was fake nothing right so you know again the Afghanistan papers that revealed you know what was really going on in the Afghanistan were very very damning to the US government's Pentagon the U.S military nothing about you know and by the way they got aliens nothing so if there was a cover-up and there'd have to be some kind of paper trail somewhere yeah because you can't keep everybody's shut up not everybody in the world signs an NDA and right right and so on and even an NDA with something like aliens I mean that's just no these people sign ndas all the time and then and then blow right through them yeah and then and that's not even remotely like an NDA for an alien invasion or something crazy okay so I'm going to talk real quick about I want to segue that into you're on Twitter I'm on Twitter um it must took over Twitter my account exploded after we took over a Twitter Jack said that he wasn't Shadow Banning people which was technically I suppose true he was de-boosting people was they used another word yeah um and we can bracket that but Twitter wants to put you know this is misinformation and uh certain uh the BBC wants to have like you know disinfo a misinformation uh alert or what have you uh so I wanted to ask you about it oh yeah yeah what do you think about that I'm not crazy about it because who decides it I mean elon's pro-free speech but the moment he goes down that pathway then you have to set up some kind of committee and then you have the algorithms because how many people would you have to hire to monitor however many tweets there are per second you know million per second or something how you gonna monitor that state have to have computers doing it yeah Community notes they have um so it's interesting I I as a rule I don't talk about coven because I don't think anybody should listen to me because I have literally no expertise in any domain that would be even remotely applicable to that with that said uh you know Matt Ridley and others were talking about the lab leak hypothesis that was labeled a conspiracy theory everybody jumped on that that was labeled disinformation misinformation um and I do think it's important when you move in the public space that you say what you're wrong about things so I want to say what some things I was wrong about I was wrong about the hunter Biden laptop I genuinely believed uh and I would have assigned an extremely high uh likelihood that this was true that it was Russian disinformation I saw the letters signed by you know this is before the legitimacy crisis was hitting home in our institutions CIA FBI I'm like okay well you know um that was the first thing by the way the first moment after I realized oh my God maybe there is a deep State like maybe there really is it kind of is political kind of issue yeah like it's not quite as deep as as the conspiracy theorists may get out to be but again we know from um from disclosure measures of what the CIA and FBI were doing over the last half century that there's a lot of stuff that none of the public knows about not only that Congress doesn't know about it you know most of those Revelations you know like the church committee and uh right they revealed a lot of the papers around the Kennedy assassination had nothing to do with the CIA fpi involved identity assassination Oswald act alone that's what everybody says yeah so there are viruses there are conspiracies yeah so but other things that that uh that our government and intelligence agencies do that they don't want our enemies to know about therefore they keep them secret I get that I'm a big Pro free speech advocate so let Twitter just you know people post whatever they want but obviously there's edge cases you know you can't have some xcia guy or the Secret Service or whatever I I'm gonna post on Twitter the nuclear codes listen to our missiles we can't do that right or the educate you know Isis recruiting people on Facebook okay yeah you have some restrictions but the moment you go well you know if like here's my analogy you know Holocaust denial should be banned and it is it's illegal in a lot quite a few countries not here but even Canada it's considered hate speech and you can go to jail by saying you know I don't think six million Jews died all right what if I'm in the middle of the debate about how many Native Americans died due to European colonialism you know well how many here we're here pre-columbus you know is it was it 90 million 50 million 10 million you know there's debates about this we don't know there were counting there's no sense consensus right so and and how many of them died by disease versus extermination or war and conflict and so on and there's debates about that so what if I side on the low end I think it was only 10 million not 100 million that were here when Columbus came here and I think only maybe half of them died due to violence and the rest is disease something like that am I a denier Maya Holocaust denier um people we gotta have let people have their say even the crazies even the people that are just the bad intentioned you have to let them have their say so that the rest of them that might be right you know like the lab leak hypothesis I never understood why that had to be censored it was never even a conspiracy theory that the Chinese did this on purpose it was only that it was an accident and there was something to do with gain of function research which is done and it just something went wrong why is that why is that a problem to talk about and now it looks like that probably is what happened yeah and and it went from not only a conspiracy but a racist conspiracy to what people accept you know I want to use that to talk about Rogan's invitation with a hundred thousand dollars to the charity of the street it was a guy named Peter hotec or something Hotes uh to debate Kennedy and you you RFK and you've put things out on on Twitter about you think that Kennedy made false claims but I want a bracket whether the claims are true or not and I want to talk about that idea because I have I'm pretty sure so I have a strong opinion about this but I want to get yours and then I'll tell you what mine is do you think hotels should have accepted that debate offer I do I I mean first of all the the the the ante is now up to two over two million dollars holy yeah really a bunch of rich people jumped in and said I'll put in a hundred thousand and then holy I did not know that yeah it's like 2.1 or 2.6 million dollars to the charity of his choice how about you take the you go on Rogan debate Kennedy and then put 2.6 million dollars into vaccines that you're yeah that you work on producing why not do that or give it to the gates founder to Mosquito Nets whatever is your thing uh I my guess is the reason he doesn't want to do it uh because I have done this many many times is because it's a lot of work and it's not enough to know a lot about vaccines do what she does you have to know what is this guy going to argue what is his points and you got to go through them one by one like Kennedy will come up with well Joe let me tell you about this study that was done back in 1991 published in this particular Journal that found this thing here but you do it yeah you do it I know I know but again it's a lot of work and he could be made to look bad if Kennedy comes up with something he doesn't know about like again a secure Journal article published back in 1976 that showed Autism linked to blah blah blah and he's like uh I don't know that study well if you knew that study then you'd see I'm right okay so what is this is the risk what does it say about the state of trust and Sciences institution if well it's not good for the public uh the you know they say that happen and they go you know what what is this what's this guy's problem correct not only what's his problem but maybe RFK is on to the truth yeah maybe and then maybe there's this there really is this vast conspiracy I didn't know was up to two million I thought it was 100 000. um but you know why wouldn't he do this so here's my take on it if he were just a normal everyday scientist who had no Twitter account who never went on Rogan who had no social media profile who didn't move in the public space who kept on himself I probably shouldn't do it right I mean that would be up to him yeah that'd be up to him but I mean it's already in the public he already went on Rogan he's already has he's already participating in public life and people see him not doing that and I think then the conspiracy theorists really go crazy but one of the things that was so disturbing to me about this was that you said that he should debate and correct me if I I don't know the chronology I completely agree with you given the fact that he already participated in public life and then you and Tom Nichols had what I consider to be a very reasonable disagreement and then he blocked you yeah weird like that was crazy to me yeah they unblocked me it's like okay whatever okay so so I don't know if you want to go down the details of this but like you mean to tell me I mean he was on your show you've read his stuff I quote his book all the time I thought it was really good I think we do death effects produce I think we do need experts in the society I think that that's one of the reasons I'm so bothered by the crisis legitimacy in our institutions and there was something I don't know if it's like a 2023 moment or something with like he's caught in the orbit of critical social justice where you don't debate or you don't talk to people or it's not that Michael Schumer is wrong he's an enemies I don't know what it was but I was so disappointed that he blocked you yeah yeah I know but maybe it's Twitter that drives people crazy that makes them very polarized I'm not sure I mean part of the problem again I mean you you identified it perfectly if it was a nobody that doesn't do debates it's not in the public then he has a lot to lose by going on Rogan yeah but this guy he should be able to do this and if he considers himself a public servant like my job is to get out there and okay well this guy who's running for president again how can you platform RFK Jr how can you play he has a platform yeah over a million Twitter follow he's not only does he have a platform he is I don't know if he'll actually debate Biden because the DNC but he is the most likely if there is somebody who's gonna uh um I don't want how do I challenge Biden would be a polite way to say it it would be RFK and he's part he's actually oddly enough he's extremely popular among many left-leaning Republicans many songs yes it's interesting yeah last pull I saw was uh like 20 of Democrats are not supported so it's not just that he's not a nobody it's not only that it's not a nobody but he moves in the political space right so it would seem would be even more incumbent upon someone else who already moved in the public space and for you to point that something like that out and then for someone to say to you well you know basically right for someone to say that to you and then the consequences to block you to me that says far more about them now to his credit he unblocked you but I think it's part of the craziness that we're experiencing now right yeah so um yes that's that's a problem so could we apply John John Stewart Mill's Pro speech Trident argument to this you know 100 wrong partially true 100 true yeah yes absolutely I mean uh okay let's go through those uh what's what's wrong with listening to RFK Jr I mean we should listen to him why well first of all he might be uh he might be right about some things and listening to him with Rogan three hours you get a lot of stuff right so when he talks about the regulatory capture by big Pharma and big tobacco and stuff I know enough about that you know that's actually true I have all sexual in my conspiracy book on um the capturing of the regulatory state by big tobacco through Naomi areske's book merchants of doubt and how they apply they applied the same methods to Casting doubt on climate change and it's like yeah that's actually true that actually happened or big Pharma you know kind of cheating the regulatory system to get uh drugs through like this is why we have an opioid crisis because they lied to the public and to doctors saying we have clinical evidence here's our data showing that these drugs are not addictive they were lying so when Kennedy says this happened and this happened and I'm like yeah actually he's right and enough people okay so how about we listen to him since he's running for president and we go okay these are the parts he's right these are the parts he's wrong and here's why he's wrong and so on and just so yeah okay so you might be right he might be partially right even if he's a hundred percent wrong a lot of people think what he thinks so how strong is your position to counter what he thinks because other people believe it if you don't listen to him right so one of the things that you did and I speak about this is you went to was it Treblinka the concentration camp and the claim from the Holocaust deniers was wires among among the claims was why is there no lock on the door oh yeah there was a mad housing yeah I'm sorry I know it doesn't lock it uh yeah yeah so you went and you and I think this is an example less of debate but when someone makes a claim when someone else answers that claim it doesn't Fester right right so the back of this seems to be called a backfire effect the belief that just talking about it will backfire on you and the people will believe it even more the false hit but in fact those studies didn't replicate right and it looks like now that people do change their minds so let me let's let's change this so um that those Neiman and rifle or something that that study was very influential in my work and it was very influential for why when I have conversations with people across divides I don't invoke any evidence because of the backfire effect but if you look at this at the studies in which those uh to see if you can replicate it I have a problem with those studies and that is I think that the backfire effect is still operative depending upon the moral valence of the claim the stronger the moral claim the more likely it is so I and again I have no evidence I only have a and truly a um mountain of anecdotal evidence for this but strong moral claims elicit a backlash when providing evidence so I question the fact that question that's a testable hypothesis yeah yeah it could be again back to uh in my previous example of you know if you're challenging somebody with some facts but also challenging their core beliefs correct by which they identify themselves This Is My Religion this is my political party identity level salience moral concerns yeah that's that's that's that's a great way to put it yeah that's right and therefore and there you have to do an end run around that and see we're not talking about that just stick that off the table keep all that I just want to talk about this one little fact right here just you know CO2 missions or whatever it is and uh you know here's the studies and so on and just just focus on that so let me ask you if I made a personal question are you homeschooling your son no Montessori okay they have a constructivist pedagogy but at that age I think it's work it works it's not epistemological constructivism it's like you know nurture their interest and and uh it's very Hands-On yeah Maria Montessori develops some I think very effective ways of teaching math and reading uh counting you know 1 10 100 1000 you know the ten thousand block and so on these little beads yeah you know I've walked it through it with him it's like oh this is really good learning to read I've been you know he's only seven he's just doing it now and it's it's pretty effective also there's no you know a classroom with rows of desks right right like those little Prussian Soldiers the educational system was developed to make good little soldiers good little workers it's not like that at all and and you know he's a little guy with high energy you can't sit make them sit down like that so they do a lot of running around I think I think we do what you're getting that how about when he's in middle school or whatever you know all the even in Santa Barbara the schools and the woke and stuff is everywhere exactly right so my wife and I she went to an all girls catholic school in Cologne Germany and we were thinking even though we're both atheists we'd rather have a Catholic school for our little guy than one of these crazy woke schools where he's told he's not a boy he's a girl or whatever craziness will be going on I am hopeful if you want to get to the you know have we hit the turning point on this yet that now that Bud Light and Nike and all that stuff with the uh with Dylan Mulvaney and all that uh it could be that is now not going to be in Vogue for young people anymore it's like oh corporate America's got behind this that's not the cool thing to be anymore so if the social contagion hypothesis is true that most of this is being driven I'm completely convinced yeah it could be that now that's not the socially cool thing to do so it's going to be something else and then this will die down the only you know I mean I don't care what people do with tattoos or dye their hair change their hairstyles you know I'm a boomer we rejected our parents it's values and so that's fine but it's the permanent change irreparable damage they're not okay so let me let me get out of position so let me ask you a question about that the older I get um be 57 next month the more I think it's going to be 50 something again feeling my age all the time um uh so the older yet the more I realize we have to start making compromises with our fellow citizens so here's my my take on the trans thing yeah absolutely uh under no circumstances should anybody under the age of 18 be allowed to medically transition no Lutheran none of that however people have to have some dominion over their own body they need some kind of sovereignty what do you think about the idea and I've gotten a lot of heat from people on the left about because I don't personally think it's a left-wing or right-wing issue but I've got a lot of people for lack of a better world who participate in critical social justice who are adamant that children believe they're born you need to listen to their self-experiences Etc and then for people on the right that say it should be 25 your brain isn't fully developed at 25. where are you on that well I already draw the line yeah so I think there's a different phenomenon so gender dysphoria which affects very young children from an early age who identify as the other sex you know these are like tomboys girls that are tomboys that like to play with trucks and cars and run around and Rough and Tumble play and so on and there's boys that are more effeminate okay and so the gender dysphoria is sort of extreme version of that then there's this new thing rapid onset gender dysphoria which seems to happen later in teens as kids become go through start puberty their bodies are changing they're uncomfortable with this they're anxious depression all the hormones you know it causes all sorts of things and um the first category of gender dysphoria looks to be you know just vanishingly small just like 0.01 percent not even that just like one out of 200 000 people very very small this is huge I mean as we see it's like a five thousand percent Spike and people are self-identify as the other sex or no sex at all or whatever that appears to be social Containment all the evidence is that's a social contagion because it's not happening in other age cohorts if it was just that Society is more liberal and so there's more freedom to come out that's the claim it should happen in the other age cohorts you know not just 13 to 17 but 18 to 22 and 23 to 28 and so on all the other age cohorts and it's not happening in any of those so um there are people I know trans that you know who who tell me that you know they never felt comfortable with it they they you know one guy to get the woman now is I just could not stand that I had a penis I just did not want this to felt like an alien part I just it's not who I am and had it cut off and you know that happens and I you know we should show sympathy for these people they really are experiencing something this has nothing to do with the rapid onset gender dysphoria this is the original gender dysphoria so I think if we separate that then we can use evidence to talk about different things then you know in terms of where to draw the line well we already we already deal with these issues what's the right age for drinking uh alcohol you know 21 18 how about voting 18. alcohol 21. how about getting a driver's license you know used when I was you know 14 at 15 I think I got my driver's license now it's older 16 I guess and I mean you have to draw a line somewhere you know this is how the law Works biology doesn't work that way some people could drive when they're 12. so what's your line uh for the trans thing I would say adulthood generally 18. that's mine yeah that's mine and then um you know before that okay so the argument is that but if you don't let them do it early and they go through puberty it's too late that's right well yeah but you know could you know somebody could say well I identify as being able to drive at 12. and but we have to draw the line somewhere so we have laws um I suppose there could be some edge cases where with parental consent and the doctors are you know and there's been many many years of checking and so on me even though but there's always a risk of that going too far yeah you know where the parents are super woke and they're getting virtue signals by saying my child is the other sex and we're on board with their transitioning and they make the decision this could all be settled Pete very soon if there's lawsuits so as you as you know better than anybody our brains are not wired for double-blind peer-reviewed Testimony our brains are our peer review our brains are wired for Testimony uh that's a great book don't sleep there are snakes um these missionaries yeah about these missionaries who or this missionary who goes into proselytize to a tribe who's never been uh nobody could penetrate their language but they they only communicated basically you know do you know Jesus do you know someone who knows Jesus is it like so so the testimony was there um privileged epistemology you had Helen Joyce on your show uh so I'm gonna show a clip here we have a clip cued up read yeah I'd like to I'd like your take on this because this was to me so interesting I read and I heard Jason D Hill the philosopher said that the actual instance of trans is 0.06 I mean I don't believe there's any actual incidence of Trends I don't believe it's that kind of thing it's a culture-bound syndrome you think the whole thing is a no not the increase not like yes I I I believe the whole thing is a culture band syndrome oh my god really yeah yeah completely completely because they're what does it mean to say that a man can really be a woman in sandwich so you don't believe that there's anybody like Buck Angel or any of these people who literally have something in their brain absolutely not absolutely not if Buck Angel had lived in a different Society in what sense could Buck Angel have ever got the idea into Buck Angel's head that they were meant to be a man or were really a man that's really funny okay that yes what's your take on that okay I actually depends on what what it is the it we're talking about I mean a a man can't become a male can't become a female and vice versa it's not possible to literally reprogram your entire body every cell in your body all your genes your gonads you start producing you're a man and all of a sudden you can start producing eggs because you took test out you took Androgen or whatever that will never happen so technically if that's what she means then yeah of course there's no such thing I think what's actually happening though is there are other factors hormonal factors probably in the womb in the utero changes that are different and from an early age again I mentioned this that you know these tomboys um and maybe what she means there is that those are just tomboys and maybe they grow out of it maybe they become lesbians no she means my interpretation is this why it blew my mind like there's the whole thing is a cultural Bond syndrome like all of it yeah I don't know I I don't know about that um I don't know okay so would there be then the question is would there be a way to test that is there a test for that I guess it would come down to really the biological measures you're using to determine or the psychological measures of tests that are given at an early age or something like that yeah so one question I'm not sure yeah but but it just it never occurred to me and I I told a friend of mine I asked a friend of mine who's a professor was a PhD anthropology I'm like all of this is like like literally all of it and this individual said to me well if you think gender is a construct then wouldn't it naturally follow that it was yeah except it's not just the construct also very much grounded in biology or else why would the transitioners need to transition physically if it's nothing to do with Biology why do you have to get breast implants to feel more female so why do you want to wear a dress why do you want to grow your hair along you know these secondary sex characteristics are part of the gender identity and those are biologically driven so there's it's such a mixed thing and we're in the middle of this part of the problem we did a whole issue of skeptic on trans there's not much data on most of these issues I mean just I mean how many de-transitioners are there I don't know nobody knows well we have lots of addicts there are reasons for for people there are reasons for that but yeah well in part because um it's so new it's just starting to happen maybe people just started the transition a few years ago so they're just starting to detransition now could be most of them detransition could be almost none of them we just don't know so a lot of you know our conversation is driven by a lack of data yeah and then we we would need to make some kind of a calculus I don't know how we would make this but the number of people who are wrong and basically could never have they get their generals immediately they can never have an orgasm they can never children later so we need to we would need that versus the number of people if this is an actual has a biological basis or would need to kind of weigh those I guess maybe that would be an argument for a better filter to filter out who is quote unquote legitimately trans but for that you'd need a test so then all right it's called it's you know it's complicated so then there's uh again they may be just gay waiting the medical model of watchful waiting they just turn out to be gay and that's perfectly fine it's totally acceptable now and so on maybe some of it is you know these uh guys who are Auto gynophilia right who are aroused sexually by feeling like they're female or dressing I'm reading a book about that now yeah I'll tell you anyway so but I mean we know that that is not a acceptable hypothesis for those who identify as trans because it sounds like it's a just a kind of a perverted sexual Kink yeah and I don't feel like what I'm experiencing is a sexual Kink yeah you know so there's been pushback like Michael Bay that was Michael Bailey's hypothesis he's a gay guy you know he thinks these are just gay guys that like dressing up because they get off on it they're not really women and but but the trans women who these are guys male to female trans who identify as women now they're going hey you know they don't like that hypothesis you just tell me I'm a sort of a sex Kink and it's more than that okay so that's one of it and uh you know again I just we just don't know that much yeah I want to switch to talking about your last book conspiracy is there any conspiracy or something you formally considered a conspiracy but learn more about it and now no longer yeah a lot I mean most of the stuff that came out that I mentioned cointelpro FBI's program to spy on U.S citizens uh I mean the stuff with Martin Luther King Jr that we now know that our own government that was signed off by Robert F Kennedy the original you know when he was attorney general under his brother Jack you know signed off on spying on him recording his sex in hotel rooms to blackmail him our government did that Robert F Kennedy did that on Junior the senior and you know and and the FBI you know they all signed off on this they got you know court orders and so on against our own citizens okay there's a lot of that that goes so you've you've changed your mind and the reason I didn't think our government was that corrupt yeah this is the Deep stair that deep State come on that's a bunch of actually there's something to that yeah not not in the Q a nonsense but that you know there's a lot of stuff that goes on that not only do you and I not know about most of Congress doesn't know what they're doing yeah you know bouncing to something else on that Vivek Rama Swami is running for president as a republican yeah we'll we'll bracket the likelihood of that his campaign has gained a lot of steam lately I'm gonna be on his show to talk about education he wants to do away with the FBI literally wants to do he wants to just do a great cleansing Department of Education gone he wants to I don't but I mean I don't know enough about it but it would seem it would seem like we need some kind of Federal Bureau of invest to investigate corrupt police departments to I mean it would seem like that we need something but the problem is these candidates they always say stuff like that you know Robert F Kennedy Jr the other day was saying you know we have 800 900 base military bases around the world you know what do we have them there for just racist conflict cost trillions of dollars I'm going to close them all on day one when I'm president it's like no you're not you're not stuck going to happen in the same way that Obama said I'm going to close gitmo when I get president I remember that you know yeah yeah and and I'm going to tell our NATO allies we're gonna have no more first use policy we're going to end the no first use no sorry understanding that that we're going to implement no first use on nuclear weapons because at the moment we we can launch our weapons anytime we want it doesn't have to be defensive yes it can be preemptive if we want and he said we're going to put an end to that and then our NATO Ally said no you're not we have a tree that says you have to add oh okay never mind does your skin I think I think that's what happens when you get into office yeah back to the Deep State I think they take them in the back room and they go okay here's what's actually going on in the world oh crap I I didn't know that because I said I was gonna yeah yeah don't worry about that you can't do that all right and I think there's a lot of that in a sense I could see that as a good thing because we would need continuity and some kind of continuity and policy and yeah yeah I mean even for all the the Trump derangement syndrome that people had and so on most of what he did was pretty typical standard Republican stuff you know lowering taxes um you know juicing up the stock market and the economy deregulating business tightening up the Border you know foreign policy decisions yeah that's there was nothing crazy about that there's only so much he could do uh and you know he tried to do even more but that didn't happen so I think our the Republic is pretty strong I'm reasonably confident 2024 is not going to be the end because everybody's projecting do you have thoughts it's been in the news a lot lately and people have claimed that it's a it's a conspiracy theory do you have thoughts in the on the world economic forum oh well I've never gone I've never been invited to Davos I suppose I'd go I got invited but I I don't think it's quite the secret cabal that it's been made out to be by the conspiracy theorists on the other hand I do think a lot of those things go on all the time I mean Adam Smith warned about this in The Wealth of Nations you know it's rare that uh industry leaders get together before they start contriving to control prices yeah yeah that's what people do so you know you know Peterson is having something in London I think it's in October I got an invite to this Arc have you heard about that I've heard him talking about something alternative to that to to the office of world economic Forum what's it going to be um I don't I'm just so busy I haven't really even I I don't know what it is um I should look at it I don't know if I'm gonna go um but Rita and I had such a good time in London uh highly motivated and and I really believe um it's for my limited understanding it's a program for an alternative future uh the European conservative heads a piece about it but again I don't know that much about it hard to say I mean uh you know somebody had to come up with the idea of the European Union or the United Nations I mean these things have to start somewhere so maybe this is the one most of those things don't go anywhere uh because they're not practical enough you know I mean most of us live in the world of ideas and ideologies you know we read books and get go to TED talks and things like that but most of the world runs on the kind of boots on the ground you know is this going to fix the potholes out of my street yeah what you're talking about because that's what I care about yeah yeah all right so so I talked to Glenn Lowery yesterday and I really like Glenn I've always liked Glenn is a no-nonsense evidence-based analytical thinker and I asked him he told me about his kids his grandchildren and I asked him what he thinks his grandchildren should know what do you think your sons can I mention his name on it yeah Vincent Church yeah what do you think Vincent's what would you like to tell Vincent's children like what what should they know uh that the truth matters and how we get there is the hard part in which we have to talk to other people to find out what's true that's probably the most important thing in terms of you know intellectual epistemology other than that you know be empathetic and uh you know just understand other people differ from you on all kinds of ways and try not to be judgmental I mean really that's kind of what it comes down to what what's next you're gonna write another book yeah so the next book is going to the follow-up to conspiracy is called Truth what it is how we determine it and why it matters uh it's kind of the kind of the general theory version of what I presented in here my tripartite theory of why people believe comparison great title yeah truth yeah well because that's the problem now I mean that's the issue so not just you know I'll go through all the Bayesian reasoning signal detection Theory and rationality and logic and critical thinking and all this stuff that I do but apply it to lots of things not just science and religion but morality how do we determine moral values facts and values that kind of stuff but art literature myths you know I'm really been thinking a lot about myths Jordan Peterson Joseph Campbell kind of you know truth in myths a different kind of Truth a mythical truth or psychological truth you know these are not empirical scientific kind of claims that you can test it's a different kind of thing so I try to listen to Jordan sometimes he's out too far out there for my kind of thinking but I try to find so what's he after here with this story about the dragon or whatever you know oh he's after this core thing here about human nature something like that so one thing I've been thinking about is I'm old enough now to have seen what you've seen in that different ideologies come different ideologies go do you think there's any kind of a like a universal prophylactic against this to protect our institutions like is there something because I see for example what's happened to the ACLU and the splc and now I'm even on unfortunately I'm not listed as you know on the main but I mentioned in the splc and because James Lindsay they really they really hate James Lindsay they have a pathological hatred of Jim do you think there's a kind of I don't know like all right the only way I can think of say is a universal prophylactic to prevent our institutions from being hijacked by alternative ideologies or epistemologies so that they stay true and discharge their mission statement I have the answer here please chapter I had on rebuild truth I think I turned pretty close to it um this was based a lot on Jonathan roush's book The Constitution I love that he was he's also with uatx yeah he yeah yeah he outlines uh what needs to be done not just in science but journalism um you know the criminal justice system and so on uh fallibalism you know the ethos that any of us might be wrong objectivity a commitment to the proposition that there is a reality and we can know it through reason and appears disconfirmation reality-based individuals who understand that their claims will and must be challenged you know accountability reality-based community members recognize that being wrong is undesirable but it is inevitable you know pluralism the acceptance of an insistence on Viewpoint diversity all right that's a good diversity we like diversity but how about Viewpoint diversity right civility right be nice develop and fellow elaborate protocols which encourage people to argue calmly and depersonalize their rhetoric like stuff in your book and how to have impossible conversation professionalism you know there's experts credentials they do count for something you know you you got the union card you know what the what the rules are of our community and then finally number eight no bullshitting it's my favorite a complete rejection of Behaving without any sincere regard for truth right so is not just lying is I don't care the liar cares about what the truth is yeah the bullshiter doesn't care yeah yeah right so I think if we have built into our institutions journalism science criminal justice and so on some kind of system like that where there's checks and balances you know this is why it's good to have editors in fact you know somebody says hey I you know I found this story okay do you have a second Source the third story hours yeah okay yeah um awesome okay all right very generous with the time where can people find skeptic.com is for the magazine uh michaelshermer.com for my books and articles and stuff and Twitter and Twitter at Michael Shermer yeah awesome and I I want to thank you um first of all I want to say I really value your friendship and our relationship and I want to thank you you were pivotal in my intellectual life and your books have been yeah it's really true your books have been North Stars for me and I'm incredibly grateful not only for a personal relationship but for the work you do so thank you so much you're welcome thank you for your work awesome thank you foreign

Channel: Peter Boghossian

Views: 46,301

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Id: 9oEG6T7dmps

Length: 89min 54sec (5394 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023