[Music]
okay
[Applause]
thank you all for coming out
well good evening Dublin as you've just
heard
Jordan pizza and Sam Harris met the
first time in person two weeks ago now
in Vancouver they covered an enormous
amount of ground and there is I think an
enormous amount of ground still to cover
but I've asked them if they would start
this evening in the following way you're
all familiar with straw Manning anyone
who follows politics knows straw Manning
but I've asked them to do the opposite
tonight to start by Steele Manning the
arguments of each other to present in
the best possible most fair most
rigorous light what they understand to
be the others argument on all of the
major issues were about to discuss
I'm gonna ask Sam Harris to go first and
we're gonna go from there right thank
you so first thank you all for coming
it's really it's an immense privilege
for us to do this and I should say many
of you have sacrificed a lot to come
here people have come from other
countries I'm told you all dealt with a
ticketing system that seems like it was
run from a cave in Afghanistan it's so
again thank you all because it's you
know it's it's one thing for us to put
this date on the calendar and say we're
gonna speak here it's another for all of
you to show up and this is a privilege
we certainly don't take for granted so
and it's an immense one so short and and
I should say that though much of our
conversation together will often sound
like we're debating it will definitely
there none of us are in the in the habit
of pulling our punches there's an
immense amount of goodwill here and it's
it's true on stage it's true off stage
and we're all trying to refine our
beliefs together in conversation so this
wooden none of us view this as a debate
though we might stridently disagree
about one thing or another what so what
Jordan I think disagrees with me about I
think he's worried that I we clearly
have a common project we are both
concerned to understand how to live
lives worth living how can we do this
individually and how can we build
societies that safeguard this project
for millions of people attempting to do
this in in their diverse ways and so so
many questions immediately come online
when you try to do that but what is the
relationship between facts and values
for instance or science and spiritual
experience or our ethical lives and we
have you know as for the moment
different answers to those questions
Jordan is concerned
I in my allergy to religion
insufficiently value the power of
stories in general and religious stories
in particular that there's there's
something more than just naked ly
engaging with facts as they are but we
don't simply come into contact with
reality we have to interpret reality we
interpret it through our senses and and
with our brains obviously but you need
frameworks and as jordan would say
stories with which to do that you don't
get facts in the raw and jordan believes
that i because my purpose so often is to
counter what i view as the dangerous
dogmas within religion i ignore the the
power and even the necessity of certain
kinds of stories and certain ways of
thinking about the world and our
situation in the world that that not
only bring many many millions and even
billions of people immense value are in
fact necessary for anyone however
rational to build a society where all of
our our well-being can can be conserved
so i think if in brief that's that's
jordan's concerned about me
so Sam is concerned I would say above
all with the minimization of unnecessary
suffering which seems to me to be a
pretty good place to start
and he's concerned that he's concerned
that in order to do that we need to
develop an ethic and that ethic should
be grounded in that realization that
unnecessary suffering is worth
contending with and dealing with and
that and that if we make too much of the
divide between facts and values then we
end up in a situation where our value
structure has no super subordinate
foundational grounding and this is a big
problem so generally in the
philosophical community it's accepted
although not universally that it's
difficult if not impossible to derive
values from facts but the problem with
that proposition is that you end up in a
situation where either you lose all your
values because they're just arbitrary or
you or you have to ground them in
something that isn't that that's what's
revelatory and Sam is concerned that one
of the negative consequences of
grounding your fundamental ethic in
something that's revealed is the
emergent consequence of irrational
fundamentalism and so obviously that's
worth contending with and so he's taking
issue with the philosophical idea that
facts and values have to be separate and
formulating the proposition that we can
in fact ground a universal system of
values in the facts and that we can
mediate between the facts and the system
of values using using our facility for
truth but even more specifically our
facility for rationality and that
rationality can be the mediator between
the world of facts and the world and the
world of values and so the problem I
have with that I guess if if we can skip
briefly to problems is that it isn't
obvious to me how to produce an ethos
with sufficient motivating power
to to ground that conception of the
minimization of suffering say and the
promotion of well-being in a way that's
that grips people and unites the society
and so I think that's that's part of
what we're discussing and trying to sort
out with regards to the potential role
of narrative and religious belief as an
underpinning to this ethos we seem to
agree on the necessity for the universal
ethos we even seem to agree I would say
on what that is because certainly the
minimization of suffering seems to me to
be a very good place to start we share
our concern with and a belief that the
pathway to that ethos is in some manner
related to our ability to speak the
truth but we disagree on what that has
to be grounded in and how it has to be
grounded my sense especially after
thinking about our discussion is that
Sam makes what rationality is do too
much work and I'm hoping that not that
rationality is irrelevant or unimportant
because it clearly is neither of those
but maybe the Devils in the details and
hopefully we can get down to the details
tonight and we we for me we brought
Douglas into the conversation he's here
to serve as much more than a mere
moderator and partly we've determined
that as Sam alluded to that what we're
actually trying to figure out is what
are the minimal necessary preconditions
for the construction of engaged
productive individuals with meaningful
responsible lives in a society that's
stable enough to sustain itself and
dynamic enough to change what are the
minimal preconditions for that what are
the and and and how do we ground those
presuppositions those preconditions and
what price do we pay for for having them
because you never get something without
a cost and we thought that Douglass
would be very interesting addition to
this conversation because of course he's
concentrated on such things as borders
and when you set up preconditions for
social order you also automatically
produce such things as hierarchies and
borders and they don't come without a
cost and so we hope
expand the conversation to include a
discussion of those issues as well yeah
before Douglass chimes in I just want to
reiterate the fact that he has not been
cast here as our moderator though if
Jordan and I run off the rails I expect
Douglas to put us back on in the King's
English
I'm not moderate enough to be a moderate
no but you're more moderate than either
of us are but so I want I want you to
reset the part of your brain that is
poised to begrudge the moderator taking
up too much time because every moderator
has felt that and Fred Weinstein was
brilliantly aloof and uninvolved in much
of our exchange together but but Douglas
really is a third participant here and
and he stands between Jordan and I on
some issues in an interesting way so
that there say we have a three-way
conversation here where none of us is
really sitting in the same spot so can I
make a quick observation about some of
this some of the progress that you've
already made in Vancouver some of the
progress I hope we can make tonight
seems to be I see one thing that hampers
it and let me go straight to it with Sam
which is I discovered the terrific
phrase the other day that our mutual
friend Eric Weinstein came up with we're
talking about the manner in which you
can discuss within the sciences certain
scientific problems and he said look if
you've got a scientist who you know is
also basically a very literalist
Christian you will listen to their
argument a whole long part of the way
and there's some where at the end of it
you know you're going to be worried
about it and he came up with this phrase
I've I love this face he says Jesus
smuggling right
Jesus smuggling is you're gonna follow
all the way yes yes and then the worry
is that when you get to the bit that
you're not so good on that's when
they're gonna smuggle in Jesus yeah my
suspicion is that you have a reservation
about some of what Jordan is saying
substructures on stories are much more
because you're worried but at some point
either on this stage or off it at some
point when you're not looking
no no yes or when I am looking it's
going to Jesus smuggle yeah yeah just
carry him in on a cross well that is an
all too apt analogy because it's it is
what worries me and it's but it's it's
more subtle than that because it's not
just to think that you're consciously
doing it is is a different claim like
you there's I don't think there's
anything insincere about your argument
for the for the importance of religion
but it's it's also possible we've all
met the people who we believe are making
insincere arguments and are really
they're they're consciously putting the
rabbit in the Hat and then pretending to
be surprised when it pops out right and
and in the analogy of magic is actually
interesting here because we be in a we
had over dinner we're talking about the
the the difference between real and fake
art and we were talking about this
parrot is paradox that art seems to be
incredibly valuable and yet the value
isn't located in the object itself or
can't be obviously located there because
a forgery
that is the materially the exact copy of
some masterpiece is essentially
worthless and the real masterpiece even
if it suffered some damage would be
incredibly valuable and so where is the
value to be located but what worries me
about your enterprise Jordan and the way
in which your you seem to be linking our
national project in our scientific
project where the religion is is right
here there's there's a difference
between and magic as a decent analogy
there's a difference between
paradoxically real magic is fake magic
and fake magic is real magic the only
the only real magic in the world the
produced by magicians is the fake magic
where the magician like someone like
Darren Brown will tell you actually no I
can't read minds and I did put the
rabbit in the Hat and this is fake but
but the the surprise is that even
knowing it's fake you can't understand
how this effect is being achieved
whereas the fake magicians are the ones
who are pretending to be real who are
who are hiding who are not acknowledging
the mechanics the real mechanics behind
what is in fact effective you know the
illusion of the rabbit pops out of the
Hat and what I worry with with some of
you or the way in which you discuss the
power of story the power of metaphor and
the religious anchor in there is that
the the leverage and the utility can be
had even while acknowledging the real
mechanics of it you know the fake the
fakeness of the magic right and you seem
to suspect that it can - that takes all
of them wind out of the sails I'm not so
sure I'm not so sure what if it's fake
and what if it isn't well like what so I
would say that I do consciously
participate in the process that you
described and but but you see I would
also make the case and this is certainly
one of the things that we've been we've
been discussing that you do it
unconsciously and let me make the case
for that Freeman because I'd really I've
been thinking about it a lot and I'd
like to see your response so here's here
what I really read the moral landscape a
lot and I thought about it a lot you
know and so this is what it looks like
to me so you you you make the
proposition that we have to breach the
gap between facts and values because
otherwise our values are left hanging
unmoored and that certainly brings about
the danger of nihilism but also a
potential danger of swings that hotel
the tourism something will you bring
about right Rudy
believe that and then you perform an
operation conceptual operation and you
say surely we can all agree that and
then you outline a story about this
woman who lives in this horrible country
and who's basically just being starved
and disease ridden and tortured her
whole life and having just a hell of a
time of it to put it in a phrase and
then you say well surely we can all
agree that that's not good and then you
contrast that with at least in principle
the sort of life that we would all like
to have if we could choose the life that
we have and then you say well we could
start with the proposition that we
should move away from this this terrible
hellish circumstance and we should move
towards this more ideal perspective and
you say if we could only agree on that
then and so and so like so far so good
but this is this is there's there's a
couple of things that go along with that
that are quite interesting and so the
first is that actually what you're
claiming is that the highest moral good
isn't existing in that better space the
highest moral good is acting in the
manner that moves us from the hellish
domain to the desirable domain it seems
to me to be implicit in your argument so
there's a pattern of behavior that
constitutes the ethic well I would say
that existing and that's in that better
space is good enough as well as I mean
that there's the there's the question of
what it takes to move from where you are
to someplace better and then there's
just the someplace that's better
both of yes well but but we perhaps we
could say look what's the ultimate hell
it might be existing in the hell that
you describe but it also might be this
is something worse I think I think that
participating in the process that brings
about that hell is actually a hell
that's even deeper than the hell
so it's an analogous argument there's
the state of being in a good state but
there's also the state of being that
brings you to that good state and then
there's the state of being that's in a
that's a terrible state and the process
that brings you to that terrible state
and one of the things that I've learned
from the archetypal and religious texts
that I've studied as well as the
philosophical texts is that the process
that transforms society into
thing approximating hell is a lower hell
no well the reason well let me just
close the loop on that because I'm
pretty sure I disagree one you can
imagine to counter examples one is you
can imagine a sadistic being a you might
even call him God who would create a
circumstance of Hell and populate it
with innocent souls right now that's
presumably that action it need not be
attended by a lot of suffering or you
could imagine some no but it's still
it's still wrong wrong yes no you could
even imagine someone who enjoys generate
exactly yes it could yes so that would
even be more wrong than not enjoying it
right okay so we want to separate out
two things we want to separate out these
states of being and the process that
brings them into being and I do believe
you do that in your work because
basically what you suggest is that the
appropriate way to act ethically is to
act in a manner that moves us away from
hell and moves us towards a desirable
state now the thing is is that as far as
I'm concerned there's a couple of things
about that the first thing is that I
wouldn't say that that mode of acting is
a fact I would say it's a personality
and that what you're suggesting is that
people embody the personality that moves
Society away from Hell towards heaven
for lack of a better term and the reason
terms and the reason I make that
argument is because I think that you
recapitulate the essential Christian
message precisely by doing that because
symbolically speaking at least as far as
I can understand stripped of its
religious quality of its metaphysical
context let's say that the purpose of
positing the the the the vision of the
ideal human being which independent of
the metaphysical context it's certainly
what the symbol of Christ represents is
the mode of being that moves us most
effectively from something approximating
hell to something approximating heaven
and then part of that part of that
message is and this is also something
that's dead along the lines of what
you're arguing is that the best way to
embody that is actually to live in truth
I mean so because I would say that the
fundamental Christian ethic metaphysics
accepted once again is to act in love
which is to assume that being is
acceptable and can be perfected and to
person
do that with truth and that you should
embody that and then I would say that
the purpose of the representation we
could call the meta fictions or our
archetypal representations is to show
that is in embodied format so that it
can be imitated rather than to transform
it into something that's diluted in some
sense to to an abstract rationality
because I don't think the abstract
rationality in itself has enough flesh
on it so to speak which is partly why in
the Christian ethic there's an emphasis
that the word which is something roughly
akin to rationality has two main has to
be made flesh it has to be enacted but
is the is the flesh made of dogmatism
and superstition and other worldliness
is that part of what gives it its shape
and necessity I think traditionally
historically it has been and that's been
the problem with religion if you if you
dilute it of everything that is
unjustifiable in the light of 21st
century science and rationality I think
you what you have to get down to is
something quite a bit more Universal and
less provincial than any specific
religion Christianity per se
well it's interesting too though that
you know one of the one of the things
one of the points that you do make is
that you do appeal to or assume the
existence of a transcendental internal
ethics something like that which I would
say by the way since we're going down
this direction seems to me to be
something very akin to the idea of the
holy spirit which is something like the
internal representation of a
transcendent universal ethic now
remember I'm trying to strip these
concepts of their metaphysical substrate
I'm not making a case at the moment for
the existence of the great man in the
sky we can we can get to that later I'm
saying that what what seems to be the
case is that we have underneath our
cognitive architecture and our social
architecture a layer of symbolic and
dramatic a narrative representation that
instantiates the same concepts but but
you know in a in a multi-dimensional
context one of the things we talked
about in Vancouver for example is that
the religion
enterprise doesn't only emphasize
rationality it it brings music into the
play and it brings art into the play and
it brings drama and it brings literature
and it brings architecture and it brings
the the organizing of cities around a
central space like it's it's pushing
itself it's manifesting itself across
multiple dimensions of human existence
simultaneously to me that gives it a
richness that cannot be diluted without
loss and and and also a motive power
that that a pure appeal to rationality I
don't think can manage and this is see
one of the things this is maybe a good
place for Douglas to leap in see one of
the things that Douglas has claimed upon
multiple occasions to be an atheist and
I don't know how he's feeling about that
at the present time but but it doesn't
matter if one of the things one of the
fears
Douglas has has pointed out was that
there are things that we've done in free
countries let's say broadly speaking in
the West that are worth protecting and
that in order to protect them in the
longest sense it's conceivable that we
need a cognitive structure or something
like that that can act as a bulwark
against those forces that would seek to
undermine and destroy it and Douglas has
been driven I would say to some degree
to hypothesize that for Christianity for
all its faults or we could say
judeo-christianity to broaden it for all
its faults might provide something
approximating that bulwark if we could
only figure out how to utilize it
properly so yes
I mean one of my problems on this is
that it seems that we are where we are
with belief in a whether we wish it to
be or not we cannot believe as our
predecessors believed even if we wanted
to we know too much more now and it puts
us in this very difficult position but
to denude ourselves of the entire story
seems to me to be a fool's errand for a
set of reasons one of which is from a
lot of travel a lot of speaking to
people from all around the world
it doesn't seem at all obvious to me
that what we have in countries like this
one is the default position of human
beings in fact it strikes me as being
very rare order even political order
political liberalism political freedom
very very unusual things and if you like
the things that helps to get you there
with all of the caveats with all the
caveats we can we could throw in all
evening and it's not the only thing that
got us there obviously but that if you'd
like
broadly speaking where we are you've got
to be very suspicious at the very least
of saying the whole story is no good we
don't need the story we can move on I
quote quite often the radical theologian
don cubit it was often described as an
atheist priest and cupid so somewhere in
the recent book he said you know we
can't help it he said for instance the
dreams we dream are still Christian
dreams whether we like that fact or not
and without being able to believe myself
certainly not being able to be a literal
believer I worry yeah I worry about what
happens when the square is denuded
completely and that's why this
discussions an item you to in particular
a ride on the cusp of this because this
is this is where I think a lot of us ah
even if we really wanted to believe we
basically can't and by the way very
quickly that's why I think there's Anna
channel just to refine my previous point
to you Sam that's why there's this
additional thing I think there is a fear
which you may have which I also have
which is if there's a risk that even
what I've just said never mind what
Jordan has also said there's a risk I
think some people feel or that you're
going to soften up the land somehow and
that even if neither Jordan nor I are
going to suddenly start Jesus smuggling
we might create the conditions that make
it easier for someone else to do that
yeah
is that a fair yeah and it is no photos
is very pristine of you so thank you let
me see if I can sharpen up what my
concern actually is here because it's
not even true to say that I think you
need to get rid of the Jesus story or
even or even not hey I don't even think
there's something problematic with or
aunt in your life around the Jesus story
I think that that can be reclaimed but
so for instance I was walking yesterday
and this fine City of yours and saw
someone on the sidewalk giving tarot
readings to people you know the tarot
deck spread out he had a few cards
spread out and he was soliciting people
and and I'm sorry to say I didn't sit
for a reading but you know two tarot
cards if you're familiar with them are
they've got the quintessential artifact
of New Age whoo right I mean these are
not you thought of as legitimate tools
of divination except by people who think
that there are legitimate tools of
divination and yet a tarot reading can
be truly powerful right I mean is it's
the this is built on something right
this is not just a a massive example of
self deception on the part of people
reading and people getting their cards
read it these cards can seem prescient I
could give you all a reading
now and 95% of you would find what I
would what the cards would say to be
relevant to your lives I could do it
with an imaginary deck I'm an invisible
imaginary deck I don't know anything
about tarot cards but I'm going to turn
over to cards now one is the Sun and the
other is the the fallen man now I know
so little about Tarot that I'm not even
sure the Fallen man is a tarot card or I
think was the hanged man that's a great
okay so I've got these two cards and you
know the Sun is clearly the the
representation of wisdom right and the
Hang demand is the is the representation
of lost opportunity and I can tell you
with some degree of certainty that all
of you are at a crossroads in your life
right where you have you you have good
reason to believe that you're not making
the most of your opportunities right now
I could go on like this for an hour
right and pretend all the while that it
has something to do with the car it's
actually being working in concert with
the dynamics of the cosmos such that
these cards that I turn over were they
real would be the ones that knew of
necessity we're revealing something
about your mind in this moment and
obviously people think in these terms
about astrology and sympathetic magic
and all the rest and religion is built
upon this kind of superstition there's a
way of understanding the utility of
using a device like this and the real
effect it has on you I mean if I turn
over the cards and ask you to look at
your life in this moment as though for
the first time through this lens
considering in this case lost
opportunities right of course it's going
to be valid that doesn't make it could
be an incredibly useful thing to do the
met my main concern is that at no point
you have to lie to yourself about your
state of knowledge about the mechanism
right you don't have to believe tarot
cards really were there there's deeper
deeper mechanisms that work with someone
who's actually good at that and so I
agree with what you said but they need
not be super national income
supernatural and in fact I think what
happens when you use a projective
technique like that because that's
essentially what it is if I'm good at
interpersonal attunement and I'm quite
intuitive what I'm going to do this and
everyone does this in the course of a
dialogue that's actually working well
I'm gonna flip over the cards and I'm
gonna start with generic archetypal
statements that are that are true in
some sense for everyone but then I'm
gonna watch you both consciously and
implicitly unconsciously with all of my
social intelligence and I'm going to see
through very very subtle signs on your
part when you respond positively to what
I'm saying and when you respond
negatively and I'm going to continue
down the lines that you establish by
your positive responses that's what
sherrod Brown does that's he's a
mentally right well it's exactly what
happens when children are interviewed
for example by people who lead them as
witnesses right the children infer from
the emotional expressions of the person
who's interrogating them what it is that
they actually want to hear and so
they'll be even work with that horse
clever huh exactly right that's right
exactly horses can do this so tarot card
readers can definitely do this oh so so
they so so so the the mechanisms behind
something like that even if it appears
entirely superstitious on the surface
are often deeper than is revealed at
first approximation so and I wanted to
talk a little bit if you don't mind for
a minute about rationality because the
the we've already agreed I think
definitely start me if I'm wrong that
there has to be an intermediary
mechanism between the world of facts and
the world of values and well since we've
talked I've been reading a variety of
commentaries on Immanuel Kant mostly
these have been written by Roger Scruton
by the way and this is actually that the
the issue that they can't what obsessed
about for most of his philosophical life
and what he concluded was that
empiricism can't be right and
rationality can't be right as
philosophical disciplines because you
need an intermediary structure that and
that we have an inbuilt intermediary
structure and that structure is what
mediates between the thing in itself the
world of facts let's say and the outputs
the values so then I was thinking
we don't quite agree on this I mean in
my summary of your overview of me I
would have agreed with that but for me
it's just facts all the way down okay so
you're great you're describing
glad to hear it then why do you need to
bring them well both but brain is yet
another part of reality I mean without
what I mean by a fact what is do
anything there what does the brain do it
has to do something because otherwise
you don't need it it does a lot the the
immensity your concern to the other
where I think we're going in this
conversation is how is it that values
can be another order of fact that seems
problematic to you it seems problematic
about you well it's problematic for me
for a technical reason which is that in
order to app you know and we see if we
agree on this in order to perceive and
to act which I believe are both acts of
value to perceive as an active value
because you have to look at something
instead of a bunch of other things so
you have you elevate the thing that
you're perceiving to the position of
highest value by perceiving it by
deciding to perceive it so get back
development I just that gets translated
in my brain into just more facts just
give me the facts of human perception
well that's fine that's that's no
problem
I'm perfectly happy about that and then
in order to act you have to select the
target of action from among an infinite
number near infinite number close enough
of possible mechanisms of action and so
what a biological organism does is take
the facts and translate them into
perception and action and the only
organisms that do that with one-to-one
mapping are organisms that are composed
of sensory motor cells like sponges
marine sponges which are composed of
sensory motor cells they don't have an
intermediary nervous system so what they
do is they sit in the water they make a
sponge they're so simple that if you
grind the sponge through a sieve and in
in salt water
it'll reorganize itself into this sponge
so that's quite cool the sponge sits in
the water
don't do
and what it does and what it does is
there's waves on it and so it those are
patterns and then the sponge opens and
closes pours on its surface in response
to those patterns so it Maps the pattern
of the waves right on to its behavior
with no intermediary of a nervous system
but it's it can only map waves that's
all it can do and it can only open and
close pores
that's it so it does one-to-one fact to
value mapping now what happens is that
as the as the complexity of a biological
organism increases two things happen the
first thing that happens is that the
sensory and motor cells differentiate so
now the organism has sensory cells and
motor cells so scent senses to detect
and senses and sorry cells to detect and
cells to act ok so then it can do it can
detect more patterns because it's more
sophisticated at the sensory port
perspective and it could do more things
because it has specialized motor systems
but then what happens is that as it gets
even more complex then it puts an
intermediary structure of nervous tissue
in there and that structure increases in
the number of layers of neurons and what
that means is that as as that happens
and as the sensory cells become more
specialized and as the motor output
cells become more specialized many more
patterns can be detected those are
roughly equivalent to facts and many
more motor outputs can be manifested but
a tremendous number of calculations have
to has to occur in that intermediary
nervous tissue and that's the structure
that I'm talking about that structure
exists and it translates the patterns
into motor output and it doesn't do it
on a one-to-one basis because there are
more patterns more facts then there are
motor outputs so what has to happen is
this tremendous plethora of facts that
surrounds us has to be filtered to the
point where you pick a single action
because you can tap act otherwise and so
the mechanism that reduces the number of
facts to the selected action is the
mechanism that mediates between facts
and values and it's not simply in and of
itself it's a fact that that exists but
it isn't as simple that what it does
isn't a simple fact you can't it you
can't explain it you can't
understand them why not why not for the
same reason that you can't look for the
same reason for the same reason that you
don't know what a neural network is
doing like you can train a neural
network notice there's a distinction
between facts and facts that we know
right there there is whatever it is the
case right and then there's our
understanding of it and our
misunderstanding of it so there are many
things that we think we know that we're
wrong about there are many things that
we are aware we're ignorant of and
there's this there's this larger always
this larger space of reality that we're
struggling to engage with and it may in
fact be the case that in evolutionary
terms of a we we know it's the case that
we're we have not evolved to understand
reality and large perfectly that's not
the sort of monkeys we are right and you
could even argue about one one cognitive
scientist who some of you may have heard
of Donald Hoffman is arguing now you
know very colorfully that human
consciousness or the human mind is is
actually evolved to get things wrong in
a fairly specific ways so that so as to
maximize survival and that that was the
argument I made in our first discussion
no but but but he was not quite because
there's still this still preserves the
difference between getting things right
and getting things wrong his argument is
that getting things truly right having a
nervous system and a cognitive
architecture that could really
understand reality quote reality as it
is would be maladaptive and he has some
he has some mathematical demonstration
of this that that that the the true the
quote true representations of reality
are categorically maladaptive and you
had that there's certain kind of error
that is and I'm not I'm not sure I'd buy
this argument but the fact that you can
make this argument the fact that you can
differentiate the adaptively useful
misunderstandings versus a true
understanding that's maladaptive the
fact that we can even talk about that
demonstrates to me that we have this
larger picture of
what is in fact true whether we know it
or not and this is what this is what
religion gets so catastrophic ly wrong
about religion gives you some other
mechanism whereby whereby to orient
yourself in this case revelation does
religion does provide those those
functional simplifications they're
simplifications appropriate to the Iron
Age approach well some of them give that
if then some of them are for sure and
that's why we have to have this
discussion because because mirror mirror
revelation and mirror tradition is
insufficient and I truly believe that we
can agree on that but back to the back
to the biological argument so because I
thought tonight I would make a very
strictly biological argument is that so
now the question is now so now you've
got your sensory systems that are
detecting the world of facts and you
have your motor output system which is a
very narrow channel because you can only
do one thing at a time
and that's one of the things about
consciousness that's quite strange it's
a very very narrow channel so you have
to take this unbelievably complex world
and you have to channel it into this
very narrow channel and you you don't do
that by being wrong about the world but
you do do that by ignoring a lot of the
world and by using representations that
are no more complicated than they have
to be in order to attain the task at
hand it's like you're losing using low
resolution representations of the world
they're not inaccurate because a low
resolution representation of the world
isn't inaccurate anymore than a low
resolution photo is but they're no
higher resolution than they need to be
in order for you to undertake the task
at hand and if you undertake the task at
hand and that goes successfully then
what you've done and this is basically
the essence of American pragmatism what
you've done is validated the you
validated the validity of your
simplifications so if the tool you have
in hand is good if the acts you have in
hand is sharp enough to chop down the
tree then it's a good enough axe and
that's part of the way that we define
truth pragmatically in the absence of
infinite knowledge about everything okay
so now you build up this nervous system
between the world of facts and the world
of values and it and it narrows the
world of facts and the question then is
how do you generate the mechanism that
does that narrowing and this is what's
useful that's not quite how the
the cake is layered what because the
facts are up here to write it for me -
for me to even notice that you're a
person right or to attribute beliefs to
you or to have a sense of being in
relationship at all this is one of those
higher-order interpretive acts based on
a many layered nervous system yes it's
not only bottom-up yeah yeah but yeah
it's bottom-up and top-down yes and and
but fat but facts are also on the top
right it's not that we have facts here
and values here it's it's well I think
what I'm trying to do I think maybe it's
one way of thinking about it is that you
you are using you're positing that we
can use rationality as a mechanism for
mediating between facts and values I
believe because otherwise there's no use
for rationality we can just have the
fact that it's a process even simpler
than that it's just that for me and I
think for everyone if they will only
agree to use language this way for me
values are simply facts about the
experience of conscious creatures good
and bad experiences give us our values
yeah but they're not simple that's a
little bit but there are the goods in
the balance some are very simple you
have in your hand put on a hot stove
he's incredibly simple any notice it'll
save your child if you do it well but
again put the unpleasantness of it no no
no it's not if you look at the way the
reward and Punishment systems work in
the brain you can easily train an animal
using reward to wag its tail if it's
being shocked electrically you can do
that and you can wire it very low to get
there's a range of unpleasant
experiences we can have where we can
construe them as pleasant or necessary
right and that's a kind of a higher
level issue but I'm talking about you
know the worst possible sensory
experience that all of us will greet
will agree is unpleasant right that
doesn't require a story to for us to
feel aversion to and there's there many
things like that in life that are just
just rudimentary where's just we are we
are organized in such a way that you put
us into fire we like it so are you
are you claiming then like this is
another problem this is where I think
that the argument that you make
although accurate in its rudiments let's
say is in sufficiently high resolution
because now it sounds to me like you're
including the domain of qualia
unquestioningly in the domain of facts
now you can do that and but we need to
know if that's what you're doing like
what are these facts you're talking
about
are they mere manifestations of the
objective world or do they shade into
the subject that there are there are
objective facts of joy about subjective
experience so yeah I can make I can make
true or false claims about your
subjectivity and and you can make you
can make those about your own
subjectivity right you can be wrong
about your own subjectivity
we're not subjectively incorrigible and
I might have said this last time in
Vancouver I mean whether the example I
often use here is to speculate about
what JFK was thinking the moment he got
shot right is not a completely vacuous
exercise they're literally an infinite
number of things we know he wasn't
thinking right so we make claims about
his conscious mind and at that moment in
history which are a scientific even
though the data are unavailable I said
many people get confused between having
answers in practice and they're being
answers in principle there there are
many trivial fact-based claims we could
make about reality where we can't get
the data but we know the data are there
so you know do you have an even or odd
number of hairs on your body at this
moment you know we you know we don't
want to think about what it would take
to ascertain that fact right but there
is a fact of the matter right and and so
it is with anything but so what is
somebody what is a person way there's a
many many facts are blurry because you
gave your gonna way way down to the the
one hundredth decimal plate place no so
it's like at a certain point you were
going to be rounding and someone's
weight at that point is changing every
microsecond because they're exchanging
atoms with the air so there's so there
there are facts that can be loosely
defined
this is still this is true of our
subjective lives - so if it is a fact
about you that when you when you were
praying to Jesus you felt an upwelling
of rapture right subjectively that can
be an absolutely true thing to say about
you we can we can pair that subjective
experience with an understanding of the
neurophysiological basis for it you can
think about it in terms of a larger
story about your life but all of this
can be translated into a fact-based
discussion about what's happening for
you and my only claim is that the value
part and hence the ethics part relates
to the extremes a positive and negative
experience that people have in their
life I'm not first of all I wouldn't
dispute I don't want to dispute the fact
that there are stable qualia pain and
pleasure for example and also that there
are fundamental motivational systems
that structure our perception so as the
nervous system increases in complexity
these underlying nervous system
subsections that produce these rather
stable qualia evolved hunger thirst
defensive aggression sexuality all these
subsystems that that that label
experience with with certain somewhat
inviolable labels I understand that
happens but the point that I'm trying to
make here is I think to try to increase
the what would you call the breadth of
the conversation about how facts get
translated into into values because it
seems to me the other thing that your
account doesn't take proper and this is
what surprised me so much about your
thinking when I first encountered it see
I think the manner in which facts are
translated into values is something that
actually evolved and it evolved over
three and a half billion years the three
and a half billion years of life and it
built the nervous system from the bottom
up and it built this reducing mechanism
that takes the infinite number of facts
and translates them into a single value
per action and it does that in layers
and so there is a relationship between
the world of facts and the world of
values and there has to be but it isn't
de Rivel one-to-one in the confines of
your single existence through pure
Cinelli it's way more complicated than
that well yeah if there's more to it
than rationality yes I mean right again
it's not rationality that causes you to
remove your hand from a hot stove and
it's not rationality that causes you to
liked the experience of love and bliss
and rapture and creativity over or more
than pointless misery and and despair
things other than rationality are
clearly necessary absolutely okay the
question is do we ever have to be
irrational to get the good things in
life and I would argue that that the
answer to does clearly no there's
nothing irrational about loving your
wife or your best friend or yourself or
even a stranger if what you mean by love
there is genuinely wanting happiness for
that person genuinely taking pleasure in
their company genuinely wanting to to
find a way of being where you're no
longer in a zero-sum condition with a
stranger or with a partner but you're
you're collaborating together to have
better lives what's in it so rationality
moves through that situation
continuously because rationality is the
only way that you and I can get our
representations of the world to cohere
it's it's when I say okay there's
there's a lion behind that rock don't go
over there that only that that only
makes sense to you if you're playing
this rationality game the way I'm
playing it if I mean something else by
lion or I mean something else by don't
go over there you know you're confused
and very likely dead or not if we're
trying to establish the proposition that
rationality is the mechanism by which we
make our worldviews cohere I would agree
with that in part we also make them cool
here because we're actually biologically
structured the same way and so there's a
proclivity for them to go here to begin
with
but we iron out our differences through
the exercise I wouldn't call it
rationality I would call it logos
because I think it's a more incorp it's
a it's a broader and that is where you
smuggling at Jesus yeah unconscious
let's say so I'd like it is the point of
order here I wanna I'm I'm disconcerted
by Douglas asylum yes
no I want to pivot because I know I know
how good he is when he actually speaks
so I want to pivot to another subject
because we can return to this we need to
first before you pivot
I mean having said to you what I think
your concern is with Jordan I mean it
strikes me that Jordans concern and I
share this just as I share some of your
concern that we expressed at the outset
in Jordan's fundamental concern it seems
to me is a 1 I fundamentally share which
is rationalism isn't enough and it's or
let me put it another way can you both
show me where it where it's obviously
insufficient like more like music but
but there's nothing but again so to say
that it's not to say that there's more
to life than being rational is not to
say and perhaps never to say you need to
run against rationality you need to be
irrational in order to get something
good let me express it a different way
yeah
we haven't tried the purely rational
approach yet we have applied it for very
long well many of us have been trying
for a couple of centuries at least which
is a blip yeah I mean the tiniest dot at
the end of human evolution so I think
that a concern which Jordan has in
certainly concern I have is if we try
this we can think of all sorts of ways
in which you can go wrong if you take
away all that's a supporting structure
you can think of any number of ways in
which you can go wrong and that I
suppose that that's at the root of the
the concern about where you might be
taking us or to put it another way if we
enter the world that you would suggest
not everyone may necessarily come out as
sam Harris okay give me one way where
you think it can go wrong and again this
we can't forget your caveat would you
start it with very smart person so then
you're basically saying that the stupid
people need their myths you know we
smart people on stage don't need them
right well I am not actually I'm I
looked I actually am saying that to some
degree that this look look if you're if
you're if you're not exceptionally
cognitively astute you should be
traditional and conservative because if
you are if you can't think well you're
going to think badly and if you think
badly you're going to fall into trouble
and so it is definitely the case and
this has been and what would you call a
a cliche of political belief for a long
time if you're not very smart it's
better to be conservative because then
you do what everyone else does and
generally speaking doing what everyone
else does is the path of least error
moving forward now that doesn't mean
that rationality is unnecessary what
does it mean little conservative the
stupid it doesn't mean that either right
precisely it doesn't mean a bit but all
conservative structures are not the same
either and that we have many warring and
incompatible versions of being
conservative true true and this is
exactly this is where rationality
actually does play its role although I
don't think it's best conceptualized as
rationality precisely it's it's
definitely the case that we it's to take
Douglass's point that we need to be
bound by our traditions but we need to
be judicious in their reason Tatian and
update and we have to do both this is
what the dialogue on religion this is
what shopping her says he says he
describes the tragedy of the clergy yeah
he pretty much he pretty much says look
if they don't believe it they recognize
it's a very useful metaphor but they
don't need to believe it it's they tell
it and he says the tragedy of the clergy
is they can never admit that what
they're saying is just a metaphor
right this is our for or after he threw
his housekeeper down the stairs look we
can all find flaws we all have skeletons
in our closet but that but that yes that
there is a way in which religion is what
he describes as philosophy for the
masses and that if you recognize that
most people are not going to spend their
lives studying philosophy they're not
going to be reading about the
differences between light knits and Kant
that religion has to do now I'm not
saying that I agree with that
particularly but there's a heck of an
argument with in there which a lot of
people will be living their lives in I
don't think it's a good argument if you
will recall or I just - just imagine
what it's like to be a child but
especially from the perspective of being
a parent
I mean you know I have two young girls
and they you know they're very smart
young normally they're smart but you
know one of them's four-and-a-half years
old and those almost nothing right so
she knows what I and my wife and our
society tell her on some level I'm at
what point is she going to think for
herself about these fundamental
questions and I mean she again she's
currently spending half the day dressed
up like Batgirl or Catwoman right so if
I told her that these superheroes were
real she would believe that for the
longest time and achieved if we lived in
a cult that thought they were real or a
whole society that by dint of its
geographic or linguistic isolation
managed to maintain a conversation about
in this case Batgirl and Catwoman that
they were real and that it was
absolutely important to honor them and
you'd burn in hell if you failed to do
this
this would be we would be meeting that
fully grown adults who believe this sort
of thing but it seems to me Sam that you
bring up the superhero thing quite a bit
so I think I'll go about that directly
so then I won okay so well so so you
make the case in a moral landscape that
they're an ideal is real because the
ideal that you define an ideal is real
and the ideal is whatever maximizes
well-being and gets us away from hell
you said not only is that real you all
say that's the fundamental axiom that's
the claim in the moral landscape so you
do make a claim that there is a real
ideal and I would say it well I wouldn't
necessarily put it that way but there's
a real we are in a circumstance where
things can't matter right weight
consciousness is the key is the
condition in which things can matter
where there can be a range of
experiences some of which are very very
bad if the word bad means anything
they're bad and some of which are very
very good if the word good means
anything and we are navigating in that
space we can't help but navigate or seek
to navigate in that space and religion
is one okaywell conversation and that's
that navigation problem and I would
argue that really means business now but
that girl in cat women are
approximations to a higher ideal that's
what they are and and to attempt this is
a biblical idea I'm I'm fairly sure for
birthday expense that a lot of parents
are perfectly content with bringing
their children up vaguely within the
story they've inherited and at some
point the children realize that the
fairy doesn't bring the money when their
teeth fall out and at some point maybe
around the same time or a bit later they
discover the Santa Claus doesn't really
come down the chimney and at some point
they realize that actually the whole
religious thing is a kind of metaphor
but he's got them through the formative
years in some way often with terrible
damage along the way I concede that but
also with something else and I'm struck
by the number of people this is why I
share some of what I think is Jordans
concern about the possibility of the
world your envisaging which is I can
think of a lot of parents now my country
and other countries as well who I'm just
very struck they themselves a kind of
baby boomer or 60s atheists humanists
whatever and I start to notice for
instance that they're enrolling their
children in Christian schools and I
saved them why are you doing this and
they have fairly coherent arguments
along the lines of what I just had look
I don't particularly believe this myself
but I think it's a pretty good way to
bring up the kids it's the structure of
a kind and I'm not sure I can find all
sorts of flaws in
but enough people are doing it that it's
something that needs to be addressed
well I it's I would say yes it speaks to
a real failure of imagination and an
effort in the secular community to
produce truly non embarrassing
alternative exactly and this is this is
across the board this is not just school
this is how do you conduct a funeral how
do you get married you know all of the
it what rites of passage can you offer a
thirteen year what are you doing here
what are we doing yeah yeah just to have
how to have the first people in history
to have absolutely no explanation for
what we're doing at all yeah it's a big
moment yeah yes and and that mean that
that sharpens up my concern perfectly
because to to shrink back from that
moment and resort to one of the pseudo
stories of the past I consider to be a
failure of nerve both both
intellectually and morally okay so let's
go back to the to the superhero idea one
of the one of the things you might
notice about superheroes is that some of
them are actually deities right so in
the Marvel Pantheon you have Thor for
example and so there's a there's a very
thin line between the idea of a
superhero and the idea of a god
especially if you think about it in a
polytheistic manner so the modern
superheroes and the Greek gods for
example share a tremendous number of
features in common and so here's here's
here's something to think about so
there's a reason that people admire
superheroes and it's because they act
out parts of the hero archetype that's
the technical reason they're obviously
acting something out because that's how
you can tell they're superheroes they
share some set of characteristics across
the set of superheroes that makes them
super heroes now the question might be
what is the essential element of being a
superhero that makes you a superhero and
the answer the way that that was solved
historically is that as polytheistic
societies developed and that
usually a consequence of isolated tribes
coming into contact with one another
they each have their are separate
deities and then over the course of time
those deities ward in actual wars with
people but also conceptually and out of
that polytheistic framework was
extracted something that was vaguely
monotheistic as all of those cultures
came together to try to determine what
their highest ideal should be so that's
the God of gods that's a way of thinking
about it or the king of kings that's
another way of thinking about it and
that's an implicit ideal and I could
make a case tells that to the Hindus
there's you tell that to the Hindus
we've got 1.2 billion people or maybe
it's 1.4 now who are operating in a in a
religiously saturated system that does
not conform to that ideal there is no
one on top they're still there still is
so arguably there's three on top of it
all but there's still there's still an
attempt to generate that polytheistic to
integrate that polytheistic reality
underneath a single rubric or you have
nothing but continual dissociation of
the culture and I'm not saying this is a
pretty good description of what's going
on in India at the moment well I'm not
I'm not saying that this is inevitable
either and there is a tension the
problem the problem this is Nietzsche's
observation and remember Jay Elliot as
well the problem with extracting out the
highest God from the panoply of gods is
the ideal becomes so abstract that it
disappears that's the death of God and
Elliot has tracked that phenomena over
multiple cultures not it's not something
that's unique to the West so the danger
of that abstraction is that it gets too
abstract and disappears and leaves us in
the situation the Douglas just pointed
out can I first back to the key the the
key issue of Elton John's glass which
you came up with the other night because
that's something I wanted to add to that
explain why I said Elton John's glass
just now oh well we came back to this
question of what makes something
valuable and I used as an example in
Vancouver one of those nights if I had a
glass here which I which I said was
actually it was the glass that Elton
John used the last time he played in
this theater suddenly it seems to be a
more valuable glass and
then Jordan and I argued about putative
what the status of that value was I
don't know where you want to take this
video well it's just one thing in
particular which is that the whole issue
of what it is you give value to and
let's let's say that that glass was
demonstrated for a time to having been
drunk from by Elton John at his final
concert of work latest farewell tour
whatever so that's already a glass with
something let's say that over the years
the whole attribution of that glass
becomes debatable over a long period of
time a lot of things are going to have
happened around it and to stretch this
to breaking point
possibly let's say at some point people
lose their lives over whether that is
Elton John's glass let's say that people
are going to lose blood listen let's not
just say that let's recognize that is
the world were living at with respective
religions so the problem is that we end
up when we're talking about religion
when we're talking it's the same thing
when you're talking about land you're
not just talking about any inherent
worth you're talking also about the
worth of things people have given up for
this yeah and so we end up giving the
layers of things what knows it's more
than that we inherit more and more
layers of the meaning because other
people before us have given that meaning
to it so that by the time you have this
object it's an object of worth even if
it's not of no worth in itself at all
because of the amount of worth of people
before you have given to it and that
seems to some extent what we're doing
with the religion that's extraordinarily
productive I think so see when you start
with the hypothesis of facts then you
kind of have to define what effect is
and so I think the simplest way of doing
that to begin with is that there's a set
of objective facts and that's the facts
about objective reality you can think
about that from a scientific perspective
and we're going to it we're going to
agree that that exists although it's
very complicated and difficult to
understand that exists as one set of
constraints on what we can do and what
we can't do
that's the objective world and then on
top of that and this is where things get
very very complicated you have this
layered system of meaning which is
partly a manifestation of these layers
of the nervous system that I described
but also partly a manifestation of those
layers of the nervous system operating
in social space over vast periods of
time so that would be the social
sociological agreement that's all
layered on top of the objective world
and it actually constitutes part of the
the lens through which you view the
world to the degree where you actually
see the layering in the thing so like
when you go to a museum and you look at
Elvis Presley Elvis Presley's guitar you
don't look at the guitar and think
that's Elvis Presley's guitar that's not
how your brain works
you actually see Elvis Presley's guitar
it's an active perception so it becomes
built right into your nervous system
even though the fact that that is Elvis
Presley's guitar and the reason that
that's valuable is because of a
sociological agreement about what
position Elvis Presley occupied in the
dominance hierarchy that we're all part
of and so what you see when you look at
an artifact like that is you see a layer
of dominance hierarchy overlaid on top
of an objective reality and that's
actually your phenomenal reality now the
thing that's so interesting is that that
layer of perception that's mediating
between the facts and you has a
structure and that's the structure that
I've been insisting is a narrative and I
think Sam thinks it's a narrative too
because his fundamental ethic is that
you should act in a way which means to
embody a mode of being which means to be
a personality that moves us from hell to
something approximating heaven okay back
Jordan what I'm struggling to understand
what I don't understand is how any of
that is a counterpoint to my concern
about religion so fret because I agree
with all that I mean there are some
caveats I would issue for instance these
posits my possible to walk into a museum
be shown a guitar not know it's Elvis
Presley's guitar and then be told it's
an Elvis presence Qatar and you can see
in real time that change insignificant
so that you can see the layers of the
perceptual or the meaning accrue
you might actually not even KITT you
might know it who Elvis Presley is and
not care Raisa there are many different
things on on on the menu here as opposed
to just holding the awestruck Elvis
Presley's guitar Sam you know and the
same is true of the Jesus story or
anything else that people you can find
layers of engagement with it that they
may be more and less useful yes but my
fundamental concern is that the the way
you are tending to dignify the religious
subset of stories as being foundational
necessary just we criticize at our peril
is giving people license to believe
things that they clearly shouldn't
believe things that are intrinsically
divisive intrinsically less-than-optimal
as far as organizing an individual human
life we can do better than Christianity
on almost every question purple with the
possible exception of building churches
okay so well the first thing is the
first thing is that I deeply agree with
you that that mechanism can go wrong
okay so you have the objective world and
it's one set of constraints and then you
have this interpretive structure and I'm
not saying that that interpretive
structure is infallible it clearly isn't
and neither is the process that gives
rise to it
you see this for example in conditions
like manic depressive disorder with
religious delusions or schizophrenia you
see what what you see in those
situations is a pathologize ation of
that overlay of meaning that can clearly
have yeah okay now the question is what
do we do about that how do we keep those
perceptual structures which are somewhat
arbitrary how do we keep them functional
and this is I think where your
discussion of rationality is so
important particularly when you say
rationality is what enables us to
establish what will you agree on in our
shared reality okay so so imagine this
so part of the way you weren't yourself
in the world of facts objective facts is
through your senses so you basically
have five dimensions of triangulation so
to speak to help you determine what's
there in the objective world and then
you have this multi-layer structure
that's partly biological and partly
socio-cultural that enable
you to distill that but it can go astray
partly because it ages and becomes
archaic which is and demented for that
matter which is partly your objection to
the fundamentalist types this has been
known for a very long time that this
sort of thing happens so what we do with
the way we solve that we have a solution
to that so partly the way we solve that
is through articulated discourse right
because you have a way of looking at the
world and I have a way of looking at the
world and we have to occupy the same
space so you're probably wrong about
some things and I'm probably wrong about
some things and hopefully if we talk we
can sort out the differences and make
things more stable right so but it and I
would put rationality right in that
place that's my rationale is prime but
the problem fair enough but but there's
a problem with that too and and I think
see the all the times we've talked so
far you've been I would say the avatar
of a scientific viewpoint and I'd been
cast let's say as the avatar of a
religious viewpoint but I've actually
thought this through scientifically a
lot and I can make a biological argument
for all of this and a developmental
argument so it isn't only rationality
that does this so this is what the thing
that was so cool about studying for
example Jean Piaget because one of the
things Piaget pointed out is that
children engage in negotiation if they
negotiate their rent in reality just
like adults do but they don't do it only
through articulated speech and neither
do adults what children do is they get
together and play and this is why play
is so important for children that starts
to happen when they're about three years
of all old because they can look outside
their own idiosyncratic perspective at
3:00 and they can start to take someone
else's viewpoint into consideration
which is what you have to do if you're
going to play and then what children do
is they invent little fictional
realities that's what they do when
they're pretending and so they assign
each other roles and they assign a plot
and a drama to the to the pretend play
and then they act it out
and in that action they bring themselves
into harmonious union right which is the
act of generating a game that everyone
wants to play and Piaget his observation
was and this is Nietzsche and
observation as well that the morality
that character
society isn't rationality top-down
although it's partly that it's also
interactions that are say play based and
bottom-up and that's actually how it
evolved to begin with because animals
generate societies that are functional
but they don't do it through rationality
they can't because they don't have
rationality they don't have articulated
speech they have something like an
embodied game now what happens and this
is a Nietzsche and observation he's the
first person I learned this from is our
morality emerged from the bottom-up
through through thousands hundreds of
thousands of years of shared games let's
say and and the interweaving of those
shared games into something
approximating a morality that we could
all live within peacefully that happened
bought him up and then what happened was
because we didn't know the mechanism
behind that because it's instantiated in
our nervous system invisibly we watched
ourselves act which is what we do and
then we told stories about that because
that's what we do when we watch yourself
act and then we encapsulated the
morality that evolved in the stories and
that's the religious essence of the
story ten seconds so we have to pivot to
Douglas for a important question but I
would just say in response to that
Jordan I don't disagree with much of
consequence in that my concern however
is that there is there's a there's a
reason why we differentiate childhood
from adulthood and all of us are stunted
to some degree or another in a fairly
perverse childhood and the reason we
what we confront now is a world largely
populated by dangerous children right
who are in their fifth and sixth decade
of life I mean run by populated and run
by yes and and it's so and really and if
anything typifies the childhood of our
species in my view it is religious
orthodoxy and insofar as we're breaking
free of the orthodoxy part and getting
something that's more scalable and with
it and can survive a more pluralistic
and cosmopolitan world it is because it
is being win
at every point by rationality and I
think that that at some point we could
have a fully defensible rational
honoring of many of the things you think
are essential like the power of story or
the power of ritual or the power of art
that is focused on some sacred purpose
and the question is how to get there but
we have a point of order here that's one
question but I want to hand over to the
audience for Q&A and for a couple of
minutes I've had a sign being waved at
me saying Q&A and really should obey
design yes so I think what's gonna
happen is we're going to use your
computer we're going to we're going to
ask the audience first I think that was
what we decided and you guys guess you
guys get to vote by noise there's an
inflection point here we can do one of
two things and all it when I'll let the
first people yell and then the second
people yell but the question is we can
either continue the discussion or we can
stop and go to Q&A so the first thing
we'll do is say okay how many of you
would like us to stop and go to Q&A
[Applause]
okay second second question how many of
you would like us to continue with the
discussion
that's that's a successful vote okay I
know the fish I want to go so I'm going
to seize the floor I want to ask a
question of both of you
okay it's about the three of us but I
think it's more about the two of you
each of us to one or another degree has
been described as a gateway drug to the
all right we've been attacked by by
people left-of-center as somehow
inspiring or pandering to
right-of-center and in many cases far
right of center ideas and and and
ethical and pseudo ethical commitments
I'm wondering yes I'm wondering I'm
wondering if we can steal man the
concerns that people have with us for a
few minutes before addressing them well
how do you how do you view this this
reaction to you to your work and well
I'm happy to do that first yeah can I
just say before I do I was going to say
it if we were gonna go to audience Q&A I
understand though I was reminded today
that there still a blasphemy law in
Ireland am I right on that I I await the
police I'm right aren't I yeah in which
case can I just say that I'm not gonna
be happy if we leave the stage tonight
and I have not both committed less right
[Applause]
and if children would like to do quickly
we could make it a full house I really
do think we should be blasphemous I
think I must have done that already but
I I'll have to go to the tape on that um
so well here's the thing
we've all had similar issue experiences
on them there are a number of people
among our friends and colleagues perhaps
you might say who've had it as well and
I think what's happening at the moment
is that there's a set of tripwires that
have been put across the culture and for
a long time if you went across these
tripwires you died reputationally
speaking because of the nature of the
media new media among other things that
sudden death isn't possible anymore all
these is not always possible so for
instance if the New York Times says that
Jordan is you know sort of leading
member of the Ku Klux Klan it's not just
that people don't believe the New York
Times anymore it's that they can go and
find out for themselves that this is a
lie
and that's a fundamental difference and
it means that people are surviving the
tripwire experience but there's a whole
set of these trip wires and I think
they've been they've been planted very
strangely among other things the one I
tripped on was he is long one think to
an extent it was the one you tripped on
Jordan it was more to do with funds and
pronouns was the first one the great the
great thing about this by the way is
that once you survived the first
tripwire you know in my case they sort
of merrily jump along in no-man's land
landing on ie D after ie D and strangely
I'm still here
but but you said I should steal a MANET
here's what I think is probably
happening there is a fear that in this
realm of uncertain values which we might
concede at anyway that we're in there is
only one thing we all agree on the one
thing we all agree on is we mustn't
become Nazis okay
broadly speaking that's the basis of our
ethics it's the only bit of history
anyone knows and they don't even know it
yeah so they think they're all over the
Hitler thing haven't got a clue
most of them all they know is Hitler's a
bad person this is why by the way anyone
anyone doesn't like in politics is
Hitler that Joyce Tom Lee Bush
Hitler if you had any sense of
historical reference you might say Henry
the fifth domineering father whose
shadow he had to step out of for
instance but they Henry the fifth Smith
who knows about that so it's everything
Taylor so if we agree that the one thing
we're all meant to do is not become
Nazis you build these incredibly deep
big trenches around anything you think
could be as it were something that would
lead us back to that the problem is is
that people who have done that trench
building include people who are doing it
for their own personal political game so
they build a set of trenches around
their political views and they say if
you come near this and you've gotten
into that trench and they were Nazi some
of it is for short-term convenience and
I have no doubt that some of it is
sincere but the amount of the amount of
lying about it makes me doubt that last
bit and let me add one other thing to
that one of the books I recommend people
read most to do with politics is a
brilliant book by Paul Berman who I
think you know as well yeah called power
and the idealists it has by the way the
worst subtitle of any book it's called
power and the idealists the strange
passion of yashka Fisher
[Laughter]
now distinguished left-wing German
politician though he is it's not it does
he doesn't leap off the shelf any huh
the strange passion of Yasuo Fischer is
an amazing book which I wish was taught
in schools because he describes in this
book how this group of Germans who grew
up in the 1950s had one aim but one aim
was we're not going to become like our
parents okay it's they think it's enough
orient their politics around what
happened the green movement melds with a
part of the German Left whole set of
things happen they end up agreeing with
the PLO and the hijackings in the late
60s and early 70s and before you know it
one of your skir fishes housemates is on
the plane as it's on the tarmac and he's
separating out the jews and the non-jews
think we've done it again the one thing
we were meant not to become was the
people standing on the ramp saying that
way that way and we did it if we went
all the way around so there's something
about this that I just wish was better
known but it's not as damn easiest all
that like your enemies don't come with
jackboots and swastikas like this it's
it's just not that easy
no they live inside you that's really
the case so let me try the steel man of
culture ok so so the first thing that
people assume about me is that I'm no
fan of the radical left and that's
absolutely and that's absolutely true I
am no fan of the radical left
and that's primarily because there's a
variety of reasons but it's primarily
because I believe that the radical left
airs in insisting that every possible
opportunity that the proper defining
characteristic of each individual is
their group membership I think that
that's you and you do have a group
membership in fact you have a whole
plethora of them which makes things
quite complicated as the intersection
lists have already figured out but
whenever someone brings a primary
orientation to the world that is group
centered rather than individual centered
I think they've already made a
catastrophic mistake and so I don't
approve of the collectivists now I don't
approve of left-wing collectivist and I
don't approve of right-wing
collectivists but the right-wing
collectivists haven't overrun the
universities and the left-wing
collectivists have so so that's a
distinct difference now the left-wing
collectivists enjoy acquiring a certain
linguistic hegemony because they know
that that's part of the way they can win
the battle and that's what they were
trying to do when they pass compelled
speech legislation in Canada as far as I
was concerned so I made a video saying
I'm not going to abide by that because
I'm not using the reprehensible
linguistic maneuvers of collectivists
who I detest so now when I did that you
see it was a very strange thing for a
Canadian to do because Canadians don't
do that partly because Canada works just
fine and so nobody comes up and says
waves the flag saying look we're
wandering off a dangerous cliff here and
so then if someone does stand up and say
that then the first thing that all the
other Canadians think and should think
is that there's something wrong with
that person and that would be me so then
the question would be well what variety
of things could be wrong with dr.
Peterson that's a very long list but the
ones that might actually a better
subtitles in it yeah
terrific title yes so so what happened
was I objected to the radical left that
was my perspective but the people who
objected to me or who were even critical
of me are curious about me thought okay
well if Peterson isn't part of the left
then where the hell is he and the answer
could be well anywhere on the political
spectrum including Nazi and of course
that's hypothetically true and if I was
a Nazi then that would be really useful
for all the radical leftists because if
you're a Nazi as Douglas has already
pointed out we've already decided that
you're a bad person and if I was a bad
person then no one would have to listen
to me and so it was in the interests of
the radicals who I was dispositions I
was disputing to cast me as a Nazi but
it was also a reasonable cognitive
maneuver because there was some
possibility although it's infinitesimal
given the tiny proportion of actual
Nazis in our society that I would in
fact be one and have gotten away with
hiding back at two major universities
for 25 years and also also at that point
I had 250 hours of my lectures on
YouTube which was basically every word
in essence that I ever uttered to a
student since 1993 and a huge part of
that actually consisted of very
trenchant criticisms of Nazis so it was
difficult to pin that on me so so so but
to give my critics credit they had their
reason for vilifying me and the reason
was if you object you might be a villain
okay so that's that's steel man number
one I'm not at least the kind of villain
they think I am although I might be some
other kind of villain altogether so then
the next steel man issue is the left has
a place okay so why well here's why in
order to act properly in the world you
have to do things everyone agrees on
that and to do things you have to do
them in the social world you have to
cooperate and compete with other people
and when
you cooperate and compete with other
people in the service of valid goals
valuable goals productive goals you
produce hierarchies you produce
hierarchies of competence and
hierarchies of power those aren't
exactly the same thing but at that
either way you produce hierarchies and
hierarchies dispossessed people they
dispossessed people because the spoils
go to a few that's the problem of the
unequal distribution of wealth and
because in any hierarchy of competence a
disproportionate number of a small
number of people do most of the creative
work and these are ironclad laws okay so
the problem with hierarchies are
necessary but the problem with
hierarchies is they produce
dispossession and the left in principle
speaks for the dispossessed and someone
has to speak for the dispossessed and so
when the lefties look at me and they say
well dr. Peterson is always speaking
about the necessity of hierarchies and
how can we be sure that he's not trying
to justify them in their current
position and obscure the fact that they
tend towards tyranny and deception which
they clearly do how do we know that he's
just not reifying the present power
structure for his own aims and why
should we trust him and that's a
perfectly valid objection now I believe
it happens to be wrong because I
understand the downside of hierarchies
and and I also think I understand how to
go about rectifying that but that's why
they're objecting insofar as they don't
as insofar as they're playing a straight
political game and not just the
ideological form of grandeur grandiose
behavior so there's one other thing in
this which is worth mentioning which is
the perception is that as it were aside
from let's say this is the center of the
political access and I'm going to have
to do this for you but okay that's the
right the presumption is it's just a
cliff like if you start by saying I
don't know I think people should pay
smaller taxes you're there and you just
go like that and then it's not sysm
and here's the really weird thing that
is disco because all of this look good
all of this is just the footnote still
to the 20th century and we're still
trying to work out what happened and why
and we don't know and in the history
books the period we're living in will be
the post Holocaust post-world War two
post gulag world when they were still
trying to sort out what happened behind
the crime scene tape okay so on the left
there's a very interesting thing which
is that you can go pretty much all the
way like this and first of all there's
not a very wide recognition that you
have the gulag not there's not very much
known about that people don't read
Solzhenitsyn they don't mean it so so
you think they pretty much power left
you just hit the vegans but there's
actually little action you might be you
might be like radical in your fairness
okay so the problem here is not just
they don't know what happened on that
side but it's worse than that there was
a there was a young girl a commentator
on the TV in London a couple of
morning's ago arguing about Trump and so
on as usual not very enlightening
discussion she's arguing with Piers
Morgan and she says you keep on saying
I'm a you know some supporter of Barack
Obama I mean I'm a communist
she said I'm literally a communist if
this girl had said you know you should
be more careful I'm I'm literally a
fascist
by the way edit that one carefully on
that I'm
I'm alive to YouTube the New York Times
headline is the exactly little fascist
admits but but if everyone is busy
searching around like in Canada that one
of the big discussion forums the Human
Rights Commission's found that there
were like 11 people on this neo-nazi
forum but it turned out half of them
were working for the Canadian government
trying to find me Oh Nazi Canadian
government constituted 50% of the
neo-nazis in the Canada so they're
stirring around looking for the Nazis
like this and on the other side it's
like mainstream all the television yeah
I'm a communist I'd love to go through
that again well okay so so here here's
another problem this is a really
interesting problem okay so you brought
out two things and one is no one knows
about what happened in Maoist China or
what happened in the Soviet Union which
is absolutely appalling because we
should all know that and so there's
obviously a cliff on the left side now I
would say actually there is the
possibility that as you move farther out
on each end of the political spectrum
the rate at which you deteriorate
accelerates so it's not linear I think
that's possible but having said that
that's also the case on the left now one
of the things we could say is well those
idiot leftists should get their house in
order because they won't differentiate
themselves from their radical brethren
okay so now we might ask well why we
might ask two things why and whose
problem is that exactly okay so the
first issue of why is well people who
are left-leaning have a hard time
drawing boundaries that's what makes
them left-leaning and I mean this
technically because left-leaning people
are high in openness to experience which
is a creativity trait so they like
information flow and they don't like
borders between things and they tend to
be low and orderliness so disorder
doesn't disgust and upset them okay so
they can't draw boundaries and that's
why they're on the left but boundaries
have their problems so there's some
utility and people who don't like them
okay but the second problem is and this
isn't a problem that's only germane to
the left it's the problem of the dam
twentieth century it's like okay when
does the left go to far an answer is
nobody knows like with the right-wingers
you can tell man it's like they make a
claim of ethnic or racial superiority
it's like barks Nazi right and then you
can see that this happens because even
back in the 70s when William F Buckley
was sort of a leading conservative he
put a box around the Ku Klux Klan in the
John Birch types and he said I'm not you
but none of that's happening on the left
okay why
well they say well we stand for
diversity it's like well everyone likes
diversity and well what about
inclusivity damn right man let's include
some people but what about what about
equality that'd be good that'd be good
let's have some equality it's like okay
well how much equality exactly well then
it's gradations right well equality of
opportunity
damn straight equality of outcome sounds
good how about no under no circumstances
whatsoever but you know what I can't
look
but here's the problem man you get
somebody you get somebody saying race or
ethnicity group member X is detestable
because of their group identity and you
think evil Nazi but then you see someone
saying well I just wish that everybody
could have an equal outcome what are you
gonna do you gonna punch them that's
what you're supposed to do with Nazis no
you're not you're gonna think oh that's
a pretty nice person it's like just
because you're nice doesn't mean you're
good and just because you stand for
equality of outcome doesn't mean right
but it's but the thing is it's a complex
technical problem right because it looks
like you need a multi variant equation
to define pathology on the left it's
like well if you believe this and this
and this and to disproportionately then
we have to put a box around you but it's
not like someone wears a symbol on their
damn shirt or cat hood onto their face
that enables you to identify them so we
have a real structural problem here we
don't know how to box in pathology on
the left yeah no one knows including the
moderate leftist but none of us know an
additional problem is that many of these
issues may not have a solution that we
can happily live with right so if it
takes it let's sharpen this up and this
is more in the interest of steel man in
our critics you take a problem like
immigration right now the the the
intuition that's driving the left I
didn't take the extreme case of an open
borders ethic you know but borders are
illegitimate borders are it's just in
principle a sign of selfishness and
xenophobia and and unearned privilege
right you one of us can take credit for
the fact that we were born into the
societies we were born into and yet we
have all of the advantages of having
been born there and so it is with with
all of you I mean we none of us are
currently living through this civil war
in Syria now and that's a good thing
for all of us and so the the the concern
here is that the moment you say well
immigration
potentially a problem right emigrate we
can't just all throw open the borders to
all of humanity because what would
happen what would happen is people would
continue to cross those borders until
the the level of well-being in in the
developed world diminished so much that
there was no reason to cross the borders
anymore right maybe they were just like
some principle of osmosis right so okay
so so so it's even it's even worse than
that
but the concern is that this is totally
ethically speaking this is a totally
illegitimate situation and to shine a
bright enough light on any particular
story in Syria say I mean you just you
give me the right family with children
and I learn enough about them and their
plight and I recognize within you know
30 seconds that if I were them I would
be desperate to get to Dublin or New
York or San Francisco or anywhere but
Syria right and it seems like a
completely it seems evil to in any way
perpetuate this lottery where you hold a
bad ticket and sorry that's this is this
defines the rest of your life and the
lives of your children and we end and it
there is no bright line where any of us
you know well-meaning people wherever we
are in the political spectrum or
wherever we are in any other question
there's no bright line where we can say
AHA that's exactly the that's the
solution that we we know is ethical that
we know we can defend against all comers
and it can survive every test of
narrative I've made this goes straight
to the power of stories you tell you
tell people a compelling enough story
about one little girl and it changes
policy I mean it's not what happened to
Angela Merkel and she just was faced
with one one denied refugee and all of a
sudden that the policy for Europe
changed and so this is up again this is
a I'm not saying there's a solution of
this but this is the fear to fit that is
that there's an there's an
of callousness on the part of Vietnam
speaking specifically to you Douglas
because it's been your issue or more
than ours yet how callous must you be to
be worrying about immigration and that's
that that's obviously there's a
counter-argument from the the right side
but there is a there's an ethical core
to it that is it's difficult to dismiss
and this is something which I mean it's
not just that issues almost every issue
we were talking about a bit of about
this at dinner that we seem not to be
well we just aren't ready for the
communications age we're in mhm and
we're just not ready for it our brains
are not yet able to cope let me give an
example the notion of private and public
speech that's just basically evaporated
so that if you this is the problem try
out an idea with your friends just throw
around an idea we've all done it
we're around ideas with your friends if
even one person is videoing it and might
post did this is whatever it is well
we're all in it's too dangerous to try
things out for most people that's a
problem of no borders and so this is it
so we are always vulnerable that are for
instance most people in Europe for
instance want
borders I mean they're like overwhelming
majority in every country want there to
be borders but if you show them a
footage of somebody being turned away at
the border that morning there's but we
don't know what to do with it we have
abstract principles we need to abide by
we want to abide by everybody wants to
abide by it but we don't know what to do
in this precisely this era and I think
we've just got our mother things work
and all sorts of ways to find ways to
think about this sort of deeper than the
ones we've managed so far one of them
yes is to cope with the idea of the
unbelievable luck but we've all got
unbelievable luck and then the questions
from that if I'm lucky what am i what
are my priorities what am i obligation
what am i open again cuz I'm lucky what
are my obligations and some people say
my obligation is to share my home with
the rest of the world if that's not that
it's worse than that
it's because I know lots of people
who've taken in a refugee and things
like that okay and I have unbelievable
admiration for them that's really
breaking the walk but if the different
people who called your bluff when you
said I don't see you taking in refugees
into your home and they said oh there's
one in the living room right now I
always want to turn up to their houses
with some refugees they I've got yours
right there sir there also aren't 50 in
the living room exactly right and that
okay so so so let's let's let's
elaborate on this this a bit more okay
so the issue is borders exclude right
and that's a postmodern proposition or
maybe you could take that even further
that borders exclude and privilege those
within the borders it's like yes okay so
let's take that seriously now part of
the seriousness is poor innocent
children are hurt at borders that
happens all the time okay the question
is are you willing to give up the
borders now let's think about what
borders are your skin is a border okay
and you're prejudiced in protection of
your skin for example you won't just
sleep with anyone you reserve the right
to keep that border intact right and to
be choosy about the manner in which it's
broached you're you likely have a
bedroom it probably has walls you have
clothing you have a house you have a
town you have a state you have a country
and those are all borders its borders
within borders within borders within
borders and you need those borders
because otherwise you will die so we
could not be too hypocritical about the
damn borders is like we don't know how
to organize fragile things without
putting boundaries around them and you
see that in Genesis right as soon as
people realize that I'm sneaking in a
little religion here in case of
as soon as people realize they become
self-conscious they wake up and realize
their vulnerability the first thing they
do is manufacture a border between them
in the world and we need borders between
us in the world and we pay a bloody
price for borders and I and I say those
words very carefully we play pay a
bloody price for borders and it's often
in the price of other people's blood and
so then the question might be well how
should you conduct yourself ethically in
a world where other people are paying in
blood for your borders and the answer
that I've been trying to communicate to
people is get your damn house in order
mayor as much responsibility as you can
act as effectively as you can as an
individual in the world because then you
can justify your privilege you can
justify your luck and your good fortune
and maybe within the confines of your
border you can be more productive and
useful than you would be in the absolute
absence of borders altogether and it
seems to me that that's the case and
then we have to have a discussion okay
the left doesn't like borders and the
right is more fond of them and they're
both right and so because we don't know
how strict the border should be or how
permeable it should be it shouldn't be
absolute so nothing moves between
borders if everything dies then but if
the borders disappear then we can't
survive so we have to have a discussion
about borders all the time and that's
partly that's partly what we're doing
here we have to be more sophisticated
about these sorts of things
very few people end up getting held
accountable for their own use in this
matter as among so many others there's
an enormous amount to gain by saying
something that's wrong and there's very
little to gain by saying something is
right on this I mean you just it's just
a world of suffering we're happy and
look the problem with this I mean this
is this is your this is your area of
politics more than it is mine but these
lines that are being put down on the
left at the moment of which this is one
these are the ones that are now coming
up I mean you could today's one you
can't now act a role that you're not
Scarlett O'Hara
pretend to be someone else a this is a
brand new rule the tool met Scarlett
Johansson who was cast in the film as a
trans transgender woman I think a man
will become a woman
it might have been the other way around
but it scarcely matters oh it matches
that's your fascist move yes that's my
breslar target because that's actually a
boundary - that's actually a border -
it's so it's another case where these
things reverse in a perverse manner like
where did that one come from
yeah well it probably came from the west
coast yeah yeah it it seems to me that
we need to somehow get comfortable with
the increasingly public moments of
uncertainty on topics like this because
so much of so much of safety
reputational safety as you were just
alluding is predicated in the public
sphere in either pretending to be
certain or falsely being certain on a
safe answer a safe and wrong answer to a
complicated part of this is is is the
pathology of basil instinct and so
because the rule now is if I feel sorry
for you I'm good right and so so let's
say there's a complex situation that
requires a tremendous amount of adult
cognitive computation to solve like what
do we do about the borders because
tearing them down is not the answer well
the person who stands up and says well I
see someone who's hurt by a border and I
feel empathy for them
then immediately says therefore I'm good
which isn't so bad but therefore I'm
also morally superior to you and this is
this is one of the true pathologies of
the empathic collectivists is that they
presume that their reflexive empathy
marks them out as morally superior and
that's appalling because part of it is a
it's too easy just because I feel sorry
for you doesn't mean I'm good partly
because I can feel so sorry for you that
I'm actually harmful to you and that's
what happens in the case of
overprotective parents for example so we
know perfectly well that that empathy is
not an untrammeled moral virtue it has
to be tempered by other virtues and
carefully tempered by other virtues and
so we have to stop allowing in our
public discourse the unquestioned
assumption that just because I manifest
more pity in the moment than you do that
I'm somehow a morally superior
individual in fact not only do we have
to question that we in fact have to we
have to deeply question it and say what
makes you think that you're that you're
just not taking things too far right
there because there's just as much error
on the side of too much empathy as there
is on the side of too little empathy and
that's a hard thing for everyone to
learn because empathy feels so good like
if you feel mercy towards a suffering
child it's like that is kind of an
indication that you're an ethical person
but that's not the basis for complex and
sophisticated foreign policy we know it
isn't because if we we know our empathy
diminishes yeah oh you know most linear
way with the numbers of people to
empathize with right so we spoke about
this one one night in Vancouver but this
has been tested where if you tell
someone that the about the plight of one
little girl you will elicit the maximum
empathic response and the met the
maximum of an altruistic response though
they'll give the most amount of money
they're gonna give to any cause to one
compelling story to save one little boy
or girl but if you start adding boys and
girls to the to the one keeping the one
the same people's empathy degrades and
they're actual at their altruism - grace
okay so empathy is non quantitative
almost by definition it's also partly
because in your life if you see a person
in trouble yes
you see a million people in trouble what
you should probably do at least to begin
with is run yeah what are you gonna do
it maybe you could give $1,000 to one
person but no but if you divided that up
among a million all that would happen
would you would you would be happy you
would have no money and they wouldn't be
any better off buts but but this is to
say that so much of moral progress today
entails unhooking from the highly
salient empathy driving story and
connecting with the the actual
quantitative reality to learn that it's
five hundred thousand people dying every
year from heart disease or whatever it
is or there's there's this five hundred
thousand people dying from this famine
the fact that that can't be made sexy
for our news cycle right the fact that
we lose attention is something we have
to figure out how to correct also it can
it's very interestingly akin to your
objection that you raised before is that
there are there are adult forms of
solving problems that aren't akin to
children's play which is something by
the way I agree with because I don't
think that the manner in which children
organize the world is the end of the way
that things should be organized it's the
basis for some of the organization but
this is akin to the same issue is that
the the basal motivational response is
the emotional responses no matter how
well-meaning aren't of sufficient
conceptual sophistication to deal with
incredibly elaborate and complex systems
and then we have another problem too is
that well that's really troublesome for
people because they want to do the right
thing globally and then you tell them
look you don't know anything you don't
know how to take this insanely
complicated system that we have and
improve it and just because you're
feeling pity doesn't mean that you're an
expert in the retooling of hydroelectric
systems for example and this one there's
one straightforward way to do that I
mean give an example there's a brilliant
Kurdish demographer who's a Swedish
citizen now who cited this fact that it
costs the same amount to bring one
refugee and keep them in Sweden as it
does to look up
100 refugees in Jordan Turkey or Lebanon
okay so the obvious thing from that is
you say look it's math less then to be
for instance bringing in thousands of
refugees to Sweden you could be looking
after hundreds of thousands of people in
the region why is that still a painted
argument it's because people aren't sure
you're not going to smuggle in racism
that's what I think are you sure you're
not just coming up with this democracy
gonna start with NGO figures and before
we know it it's Auschwitz that's what
they think right right but here's the
thing there's a shortcut solution to
answering almost every single one of
these problems is assume that your
interlocutor has good motives assume
that they are being honest in the way
that they're looking at it and that's
why I say comment about that okay so
this is something I deal with in my
clinical practice all the time okay so
imagine that you're naive and then what
what you are when you're naive is
someone who thinks you trust people
because you think everybody has good
motivations which is some sense what
Douglass's is recommending and they say
well that's just naive it's like just
wait a second though because here's the
developmental pathway first you're naive
and you trust everyone
and then someone cuts you off at the
knees or multiple people do or maybe you
cut yourself off at the knees because
you trusted yourself too much and you
didn't take into account the malevolence
that lurks in your heart and the hearts
of others and so that you get
traumatized by betrayal and then you
become cynical and you think Jesus I'm a
lot smarter now that I'm cynical and you
are because cynical is actually a move
up on naive but it's not the last move
the last move is to transcend cynicism
and to say that even though I know that
there are just as many snakes as in your
heart as there are in my heart I'm going
to hold out my hand in trust because
that's the best way to elevate both of
us and that is the prerequisite first
discussion and to concede that this one
I'm always going on about Aristotle on
this to concede that it's not between
good and evil but between competing
virtues but when it comes to something
like the Border's discussion you're
dealing with justice and mercy you
cannot only be driven by one of those
virtues you mercy itself will lead you
to hell yep justice on its own blind yes
unseeing can lead you to hell yes well
and so this also and we're running very
short on time here so this is also why
your emphasis on truth and thy emphasis
on truth is so absolutely important
because you and I obviously differ on a
variety of different things and and as
Douglas does with both of us but you
know that doesn't mean that doesn't mean
that I think that you're a bad person I
don't think that actually what I what I
think and what I fervently hope is that
some of the things that you think are
wrong actually turn out to be right in a
way that would be extremely helpful to
me and everyone I know if I incorporated
them like I really hope that because I'd
rather not be stupid and wrong if I
could help it because then I don't have
to wander into a pit and so I'm hoping
that if if we can have a genuine
dialogue and we can tell each other the
truth which is the crucial issue here
then I can find out what you know that I
don't know and that'll make me stronger
and it'll fortify everyone around me and
that's the basis for the right and
responsibility of free speech right you
have the right of free speech but that's
so that you can be a responsible bearer
of free speech so that you can say the
truth so that you can set the world
right and adjust the hierarchies and
make sure the borders are properly
functional and so that we can keep this
thing going properly and that is all
dependent at least in part well in large
part on the truth but also to some
degree on this faculty that you
described as rational because we're
engaged in a rot
I know rationality isn't enough that
that's my sense you know but it's
certainly an adult form of communication
and it's definitely their prerequisite
to a discussion like this which seems to
me really highly useful and which I'm so
happy that you're all Willie
to participate in how strangely how
strange that is notwithstanding yes well
we've been shown various cards that
would have diminishing increments of
time and now they have just stopped
showing his cards because we're totally
incorrigible but yeah I just want to
reiterate what Jordan just said there
you you all really are the occasion for
this conversation though you are are in
the audience and we're on stage we very
much feel that that this conversation is
with all of you and we know the
conversation continues in your lives and
again it's just a tremendous honor to
show up and and and meet all of you in
this space and so thank you for that I
do I want to I want to thank I want to
thank both of these men we have we have
never gotten together before like this
and it's really it's a it's a great
pleasure to be confronted and cajoled
and in your company like well thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
thank you thank you thank you all very
nice great