Hi, I'm Ian Kennedy and welcome to the contemplative primate, the contemplative primate podcast began as a series of interviews. I conducted as a part of the contemplatively Der ship program. An initiative. I started at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to help students apply insights from
- Traditions to business leadership. While contemplatively leadership, will continue to be a theme on the contemplative primate. The podcast, will more broadly, explore our place in the universe and how to live better lives as humans on Earth to do. So, I'll interview experts from Fields, including biology physics, economics, psychology computer science, Neuroscience, philosophy, and various contemplatively and religious Traditions before we get into our first episode, a little bit about your host.
In a former life. I was a Green Beret in the Army. Special Forces deploying to Iraq, Thailand, South, Korea, and the Philippines. I've studied economics physics and computer science at Cornell, Columbia and Stanford and along the way I've developed a fascination with meditation and Consciousness that has deepened over the years. For my day job. I work at the Venture Capital firm khosla Ventures helping to invest in early stage technology companies. Therefore, the contemplative primate will also explore the
Sometimes fraud and sometimes harmonious relationship between technology and Society. Now to our first guest, in the first episode of the contemplative primate. I talked to author, philosopher, and neuroscientist Sam Harris. Sam is the host of The Making Sense pod cast and creator of waking up a meditation app, that seamlessly Blends neuro science philosophy and ancient wisdom. Unlike other apps that treat meditation as a way to relieve stress, or fall asleep.
Waking up aims to fundamentally change the way that you experience. The world waking up is the only meditation app that I recommend to others. And if you don't believe me, you can ask my dad who recently, finished Sam's introductory meditation course on waking up and now refers to Sam as his new best friend. Sam was gracious enough to spend more than two hours on Zoom with more than 100 students. From the Stanford Graduate School of Business. As part of the contemplatively Der ship program, prior to the event, a number of my classmates expressed concern.
Over Sam's Presence at school, citing the series of vocs articles that criticize CM for his podcast with Charles Murray. We therefore begin the conversation by discussing the context behind and Fallout from those articles and then move on to discuss the ethics of lying, the role of luck. And success, compassion free will the nature of Consciousness. The pitfalls of being a guru and the relationship between meditation and ethics. At the end of the conversation, CM answers questions from the audience.
Sam is without a doubt. One of my favorite public intellectuals and has influenced my thinking perhaps more than anyone else. It was a true joy to speak with him and I'm excited to finally share their conversation with a wider audience. And with that, I bring you, Sam Harris.
Hi everybody. I just want to kick things off by thanking Sam for thanking him for being here, to do it. Thanks. Absolutely. I know a lot of the audience are very happy to see you and there's some in the audience that are more than happy to let you know about the controversy around the box article that was written three years ago. So I just wanted to kick things off by giving you a chance to sort of address your views on racial science and why you Charles Murray on the platform and I guess one more.
I'll be around platforming and issues related. Yeah, so I'm happy to talk about this. I'm, I think would be a shame if we spent too much time on it, but I'm happy to answer if what I say here is insufficient. You know, I'm happy to take questions in the Q&A period about this. So Charles Murray famously wrote this or infamously wrote this book. The bell curve back in 1994. I think which was not focused on racial differences in IQ. Though. There was a chapter on
Rachel differences in IQ was focused on the cognitive stratification of society or what he, he, and his co-author Herrnstein thought, you know, was quickly becoming a society that was getting stratified along cognitive lines because of the incredible rewards that were accruing to people who had certain skill set, and the skill set is on their account, highly correlated with IQ. And so, you know,
500 years ago, if you had, you know, three standard deviations above the mean in IQ and you're pushing a plow, you know, it didn't really redound to your advantage all that much. But when you're talking about an environment, where there's something like a winner-take-all phenomenon around, who gets to work at Goldman Sachs or who gets to, you know, start a nice ass business. That scales. We're
We're witnessing a massive amplifier of inequality along this variable. And this is again, this is Charles Marie's account. So he's he was fairly destroyed for the chapter, on race and, and because I had believed all the pr around this at the time, I didn't read the book and I thought, okay. This is some white supremacist asshole who got into Academia somehow and I don't have to pay attention to this and I was happily ignoring it.
Or whatever 25 years. And then he went to Middlebury College to talk about a very different book and got D platform violently. I mean, he was, he and his organizers were actually, you know, shouted off the stage and met by a mob, who attacked the car. He was in and gave the his organizers. Who is this, you know, liberal Professor, who was there, had been invited him to debate his his beliefs, you know, she wound up with a concussion and a neck.
Injury. And it was just, it was a great one of these crazy scenes that, you know, are still possible in our society, where you have people who are just unwilling to have a peaceful conversation about a scholarly issue and I became so I suddenly became interested in his case because I saw him as a kind of canary in the coal. Mine like, okay, here. Here. There are now many, many examples of this kind of thing happening. And while I had zero interest in
I'm at very little interest in IQ as a measure of intelligence zero interest in racial differences in IQ or much of anything else. I'm keenly interested in our inability to talk about things and it's just it's obvious to me that whether we're looking for differences in groups or not. We're going to find them because will be ambushed by data, you know as we study anything about human nature.
Psychologically biologically, socially we're going to we're going to discover a signal that's reporting human difference and whether that's human whether a difference is environmentally raw or biologically or both as you know, generally the case we need to talk about these things and we need to be able to absorb these facts.
As politically and ethically, benign because they all have to be in the enemy hit me. So my default position here is that we need to get to a time where we care, no more about differences in skin color than we care about differences in hair color. Right? I mean, differences, in hair color. Have no moral or political significance, and they shouldn't, right. So the question is, how do we get to the time where skin color and ethnicity and country of origin and all
Of these other superficial variables are not charged in this way. And don't don't land into any other conversation like a barrel of plutonium. So I'm interested in Just In The Free Speech, hyper-partisanship aspect of our conversations on a variety of topics. And so I had Charles Murray on the podcast to talk about this and these Vox articles were a highly
Scholarly or pseudo scholarly response to that conversation and I subsequently had one of the scientists who wrote one of those articles are co-wrote, one of the Articles page Harden on to the podcast, to explore our differences of scientific opinion and there really weren't many to explore. I mean, you can listen to that podcast and we do not disagree about a whole lot except she was very safely messaging from from within the sort of taboo constrained space of
Charles Murray, you know is beyond the pale and without actually pointing out the scientific errors. He so has supposedly made, right? So it's it's very
You know, I do again. I don't think we should be looking at the one question. I asked Marie, which for which, he didn't give a great answer in my opinion, was why spend a lot of time paying attention to this, right? Like why why look for differences in groups? And you know, he didn't die. I don't think he has a great answer for that. But the deeper answer is whether we're looking or not. We're going to find them and it can't matter.
Right. And it's, at least. So, here's again, another background assumption. If you are going to test, every you, no discernible group of every, you know, every population of people, you know, whether whether it's a coherent population or whether it's just a self-identified one, and not all that coherent in the end, which, you know, racial differences are often that case. I mean, you know, to call someone black is to ignore that there's more genetic diversity on the continent of Africa than anywhere else, right?
Of to fixate on race in that way is is for the purposes of some conversations makes sense. But for the purposes of others, doesn't at all. But the bet the background fact is however, you you, parcel 8, the human Community, right? If you say, let's talk. Let's compare the Norwegians or just people who think they're Norwegian with the Italians, or the people who think they're Italian. I mean, some number of people be wrong about that, right?
And you compare them, all those two groups with the Inuit or the Australian. Aborigines or people, who know, someone who lives in Silicon Valley, right? In any groups, you're going to pick, right? If you, if you measure them on anything, you care about, you know, IQ being one, but if you, if we could standardize a test of of
And ability to detect, you know, facial displays of emotion or an awareness of One's Own emotions or propensity to violence, or you no sense of humor. Anything you could possibly care about. It would be an absolute miracle. If all those groups had that precisely the same mean, on those tests. There's just no way they do. We know this, it would be it's impossible. So whether you're looking for a human
Differences or not, you're going to find them because we're studying these things about ourselves and we're right to study these things because we're curious and because, you know, many of these lines of inquiry could admit of in science that will actually help people, right? Like if you're going to study human violence, right? Because you want to find a cure for human violence. It's on some level, you will find different groups with different propensities for human violence, weather and weather.
That's culturally mediated or biologically or both.
You will be ambushed by that those data, right? The in a wit, and the and people whose ancestors for, you know, for the last thousand years have been in in South Africa, very likely don't have the same propensity for violence. I mean, would just be it would be a happy accident politically if that were so right. And again, there's a cultural story to tell about that and a and quite possibly a
You know, really, you know, receptor density is in various parts of the brain, right?
We're either we can either absorb this stuff as grown-ups and have a dispassionate conversation about it and knowing that our political goals are to get to a time where everyone has all the opportunity, they can use and we have incredible levels of equality and and prosperity or we can Panic every single time. A
Story scientist says something that sounds politically combustible. You know, that and we're very much in that latter situation now and much of the media business model is predicated on keeping us in that situation where we, you know, we explode over every
You know, thought crime or perceived thought crime and it's is destabilizing and you know, social media is a big part of it. But anyway, so I worry about this and I had Charles Murray on my podcast to talk about this and you know, some of you in the audience, it sounds like our are dealing with the aftermath of that. And again, I haven't talked about anything but I mean, this is a tremendous amount of misinformation attached to me on this topic and, you know, I consider Vox to be
Largely culpable for that.
It's not Sam, you have any follow-up questions on that, feel free to ask, but it will move on for now before we get too far off the rails at just wanted to ask you about the title of the event, which I really likes just how to be less of an asshole time. And they're actually at, you know, if you concerned about the, the box article, which is ingested. You take your own advice here, but what we're good guys, what did you know what that statement sort of what the title means to you? And what's the heart of the message that you like?
Convey here to Future Business Leaders. You're going to have a tremendous amount of influence in the world.
Well, and there are many aspects to this, but I was profoundly influenced by a course. I took it Stanford, as a believe, a freshman might have been a sophomore with with Ron Howard, whose Emeritus there. I don't think he teaches anymore. He was in the the what was called, the engineering economic systems department, but I think that became operations research. You know, what was that?
Management science and engineering no management. Okay. Yeah, so I've completely lost touch with with Ron except I did interview him for this book. I wrote lying which you know you something like 20 years later was my distillation of what I learned in his course and his course was a very simple course. It was a, it was a seminar.
Had maybe 12 people in it and my nose was undergraduate or graduate, but he it was just a conversation about whether it's ever ethical to lie. Right? And obviously, we everyone comes in understanding. There are certain cases where clearly wrong to lie, and it's clearly harmful and it, you know, understandably destroys reputations and all that. But virtually 100 percent of people come into that course, thinking that there's a certain class of lies that are not only benign, but necessary.
White Lies and or whether you are whether they're white lies or not. It's not obviously wrong to have two standards of Ethics. One for your personal life, one for your friends and family and one for people you meet in business, say right? I'm so like an example that might be relevant to you in Business Schools, like in this situation, I you know, was recently in look at what look at the thinking that you go through when it
It comes time to value a company, right? Like let's say you're going to, you're trying to come up with a plausible valuation for your company because you're you're running a seed round for investors and it's natural to want it to be valued as high as as plausible. Right? And and so you're offering someone a chance to buy Equity at a certain price, but that what if the conversation is suddenly shifts and you and it's a question of whether it's you know, you're offering your sister an
Entity to buy Equity or a friend of your sisters and many people find I think, I mean, you tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the default ethics here is that I think it's a I think it's the default setting for most people that it's totally rational. And ethical to have to essentially keep two sets of ethical books here where you it's obviously you want to get the highest price possible for people who you don't have a real relationship.
Ship with yet and to feel very differently when it's a friend or, or a friend of a friend who may be buying shares in your company. But I mean, I think it's that's worth looking at. I think it's probably unethical. I mean, you can be, if you if you value your company, you know, you there's whatever valuation you can. Honestly, make is the one you can honestly make and maybe there's some range there where, you know, you can be pushed around a little bit, but
It's some in the end. I think when you look at it, it's not I don't think we want if you really want to to not be an asshole and you want to make the world a better place and you want to have and you don't want to be continually ambushed by the awkwardness that follows the discovery that you had one orientation toward a person. Assuming, they were just, this was just a business conversation and a very different one. Once you recognize that there are
Or a friend of a friend. Yeah, I think you want to keep one set of books, right? You want to be rigorously honest across the board. And once you commit to that, you find your life. Changing radically me. Just it really becomes a mirror held up to both your mind. You made me discover. What kind of person you are you, because you can't hide from yourself anymore. I mean, when it, when you honestly, you don't want to talk to somebody because there's some something invidious about them that you believe, right? You have to confront that thing.
I mean if you like, you know, you don't have you don't, you don't have recourse to lying about the reason why you, you know, don't want to go to their party or don't want to be in business with them or whatever. It is. You just actually have to be straight with them. And then that then you discover what it's like to give people that kind of feedback. And then you on the on the, on the opposite on the far side of that. Those moments of honesty, you often discover new relationships and kind of new layers to friendships. And so, anyway, it's a very important course.
Just committing to being honest. And that's one aspect here. But, you know, I'm happy to talk about ethics generally and I think ethics are the most important topic we ever really touch. It is it's the it's the operating system for basically every attempt at cooperation and civilization. Really, so I think it's, you know, it's this is the center of the bullseye. So whether you and a conversation about business,
Honest, ethics really is a in the end just a subset of that larger conversation.
Yeah, I absolutely agree there. I think maybe to make things a little more concrete here. We can just continue on ethics. I know you've been very critical of the whole Business Leaders particularly in social media. And what comes to mind is Mark Zuckerberg, who I think you might be able to attribute a lot of misinformation, to sort of our problems with misinformation now to Facebook and, you know, he's in a situation where I've heard that he doesn't use this tool and he doesn't let his children use his tool.
So I wanted to know if you want to comment on that. Well, I mean he clearly has a hard job. Right? I mean, it's not, I don't think it's anywhere written that if you build a platform that connects three billion, plus people or whatever it is now that
There is a way to build it. That is benign, right? Or that. Doesn't fragment Society horribly. Right? Like I just, I don't know that. There's a maybe. We'll get to the point where all of these problems can be solved algorithmically, but we're clearly not there now, right? So if you just submit it to algorithms, you get all of these edge cases and not so edge cases, where, you know, you got Republican Senators, who are legit senators.
And may even be expressing legit opinions who are going to get D platform for something. They say that seems adjacent to you know, what a white supremacist would say or has said and so that that's untenable. You can't just keep kicking members of Congress off the platform. And so it's a very difficult problem and the fact that you have, you know, Legions of people hired to watch awful videos of people committing suicide or whatever it is. It's yeah, I mean these
These are the externalities of a bit, you know, it's easy to see how they stumbled into this without a lot of foresight. And just did not know what sort of Mayhem they would be creating but that they've created it. I think is is not open to doubt at this point. I just think we have an immense problem on our hands and we were talking before this event started about this and you know, as I said, I think we have all been enrolled into this vast psychological experiment to which none of us ever.
Ever consented, right? It's not at all obvious. That it that it ends. Well, right? So we have to, we have to figure out what are the variables that are making it impossible to have serious fact-based discussions on the most important topics of the time, right? And just what is it? That's making it. So toxic. So polarizing so enabling of misinformation and so sanity straining.
The end,
right? And I'm not just talking about, you know, police violence or, you know, the variable of race, which is it's understandable that those are hard to talk about, but we should take covid, right week. We literally could not agree that we had a pain damn pandemic on our hands. It was worth taking seriously and we have something like half of our society. Now still that is
Quite sanguine about getting covid, right? As just no no big deal and quite scared to get vaccinated for covid. Right? I mean, they're they're actually happy about getting something that just gets squeezed out of a bat, you know, or, you know, or a bad and a Pangolin combined and they'll take that all day long, but they don't want to take. This is engineered vaccine that tens of millions of taken before them, which we
Understand pretty deeply at this point. And so it's all upside down and it even that's virtually impossible to talk about. Once you add the variable of politics. So, yeah, we have a lot of work to do and social media is not helping. Yeah, to continue on that thread Sailors. I kinda wanted to ask you your, we briefly talked about Twitter before he started this. I know, I think it's been said that you have a provocative Twitter account, and I have even heard you say on podcasting.
Referencing your own snide, remarks other the I think Paige Hardin was the one right. He said recently, you've decreased her Twitter user. So I just think the question is here here is like, how do you see yourself in this and your Twitter presence in this rational discourse to are you always helping yourself here and and I guess on a related note, which is something we want to get to later. Like, how does how does that sort of persona that you have on Twitter? Sometimes relate to your dedication to compassion for others?
I guess I'll take the last part first. I think there are.
Misunderstandings around the concept of compassion. I don't think compassion always need to take the form of conflict avoidance, or a kind of a new age, you know, unctuous syrup syrupy Embrace of differences of opinion as though, no one is ever really wrong. And no one should ever really be judged for before doubling and tripling down on being wrong. Right? And then
Whenever really has bad motives that are that it's appropriate to be outraged by, right. I do think that there's while I, well, I think that being angry is almost never useful in the purposes of actually trying to have a conversation and trying to rectify a difference of opinion. I do think it's outrage and anger are
Indispensable salience signals, right. Like when you become outraged over something, that's it. That's a an alarm that goes off. That tells you that this is worth paying attention to, right. Like there may be or may be worth paying attention to and and and then I think you need to let go of your anger and outrage and just have a conversation but I don't think compassion in those conversations. Always takes the form of walking on eggshells or just being slow to call bullshit.
On somebody's bad arguments and been bad motives frankly. And so see. I don't I don't disavow everything that I've put out there that has seemed Barbed or seem designed to make somebody else look ridiculous when they really should look ridiculous. But yeah, you know, I do think much of my engagement on Twitter has been counterproductive to do, much less of it. I really pick my battles much more and even the ones I pick I
Often think better of in the anime. The page Harden thing was was a an example of being pleasantly surprised by my being, probably a little more snide than I should have been turned into something, seemingly useful and I invited her on the pie, kind of reset invited her on the podcast and we had a nice conversation that many people found useful. For me, a little goes a long way. Now on social media. Again, there's a kind of a framing effect that makes you blind to the circumstance. You're actually in it because on
Her everyone come sort of looks the same. As I said, whether I'm talking to, you know, a blue checkmark that I have immense respect for or someone without a check. Mark. I have immense respect for or a blue checkmark who's a you know, a genuine imbecile or you know, some Anonymous Maniac it's not is graphically not as clear as it would be if you were, you know sitting at you know at a conference in person and somebody walks up and their advertising all of their dysfunction.
And ideological commitments. Just, you know, all that's coming out of their pores face-to-face. You you quickly understand whether a conversation is is never going to go anywhere and and kind of when to pull the ripcord on social media. It's less clear and also because everyone is not just having a conversation their messaging to their own audience, the very principle of conversation gets deranged, right? I mean people is it still performative, right? People are
Not for the most part interested in in an exchange. They're interested in landing a blow on you for Their audience, you know, certainly, whenever one of these polarizing topics comes up, I do that much less even when I think, you know, even when I've kind of triple checked my motives and the facts, I still declined to do it often. Now. I'm a my latest dunk on some piece of media was just might
Tweeting, you know, I fear that not dunking on this will give me an aneurysm, you know, so there I'm kind of sort of dunking without dunking. It's very hard to know. What is right in the, in that space because I think being on Twitter journalistically, and intellectually is almost an imperative at this point because of the, you know, we can tell ourselves a Twitter isn't real life. But you know, it has a way of suddenly becoming real life. And if you're not on Twitter, you didn't see it coming in some sense. I mean the whole Trump phenomenon.
Was a confection of social media as far as I can tell. I mean, he would not be prey. He would not have been president and not have almost been present at the second time around, but for Twitter and Facebook and to have not been there was to have not seen it coming and to have not understood the aftermath. I try to use it more and more carefully, but I'm not sure I have the right, you know, recipe at this point. Imagine nobody does.
So did it shift gears a bit? Stay on that the compassion topic. I think that you've been speaking about more recently is 3. Well, and this is something that I grew up with for a long time and I found fascinating and specifically I've heard a couple instances where you've talked about the implications for free. Well for people who maybe take credit for their for business success, so I was wondering to get briefly lay out the case as as briefly as possible. The case against Free Will and what that means for how we treat one another and also how we sort of take credit for our accomplishments.
Yeah, so let me briefly the issue is that. No one has made themselves. Right? No one has picked their parents and therefore pick their jeans and no one picked the environmental influences that sculpted their their nervous system into you know, the current, you know to take any time point in your life, you know, the the current state of your brain that allows you to do anything is not something that you the experiencing self.
We have created, right? And it's not something that you the the organism have created, right? You have inherited all of your causes in each moment and you certainly didn't create the social context in which you're appearing. That allows for certain things to succeed and guarantees that other things will fail, right. So, even if you're the most self-made person imaginable, right, even if you have me, you were born to either you to
To quickly died in a car accident and you were raised in an orphanage and then you escaped and encountered, one dickensian nightmare after the next, but found your way to Silicon Valley and started something brilliant. And and now have a unicorn on your hands and are miraculously socially well-adjusted and, and have married well and have a great family and you're happy, right? You didn't create any of the things.
Things that allowed for that, right? Even if you put forward massive effort and you exerted, massive discipline, and you read a thousand great books and were changed by them, right? They, you didn't, you can't account for your ability to produce that effort or to Foster that kind of discipline in yourself and all of the answers to that riddle of your being who you are. Are either genetic or environmental or
Some combination of the two and there's nothing else and if you think there's something else, if you think you have an immortal soul that is integrated with this clock work somehow.
Well, you didn't pick your soul, right? You are in no position to account for the fact that you did. You weren't given the soul of a psychopath who was, you know, not only a psychopath but an unintelligent one, right? You know, I mean just just imagine the circumstance of being a psychopath. Who's not intelligent, right? What are your chances of succeeding in life, so we didn't make ourselves and you know, there's so many good things. People are scared of that Epiphany. They think many they think it's destabilizing.
I think they think it probably gives you no reason to make an effort to do to accomplish good things in your life, that it's just corrosive of being a,
Motivated highly engaged, you know, emotionally intelligent person. But on the contrary, I find that it's the opposite. It has the opposite effect that many people assume there's no fatalism implied by this picture of and once Free Will goes out the window. The first objection you hear is well, then why do anything? Why don't just want to watch? And I just sit in bed and see what happens. Well, I'm the first answer. There's you can try that and we just try to sit in bed and see what happens. And after, you know, a couple of
Hours passed your usual wake-up time. You're going to get hungry. You're going to get antsy, you're going to this things. You want that you're going to be, you can feel the impulse to go get, right. So just sitting in bed, waiting for something to happen is a choice that has its own consequences, right? And you and you won't like them to cut through the illusion of Free Will is not to deny. That choice is often the proximate cause or a parent choice is the proximate cause of what we do, the example, I use in my recent podcast here.
Is that you know, if I want to learn Mandarin waiting around and seeing what happens is a choice, which is guaranteed to prevent me from learning Mandarin, right? Me like that, that we know that there's a way for me to learn Mandarin anything if I'm capable of doing that at this point in my life and it entails certain steps. I have to have to do coursework. Or I have to surround myself with native speakers who are highly patient. I have to hire a tutor, or I have to go to
And
and, and spend a lot of time immersing myself in the language. It's not going to happen by accident, right? And and it will happen to precisely the degree that I make an effort and have a talent for it. And, you know, have good luck and all of that. It's not that there's not a reason to do things, and that there's no reason to make an admit. There are things that only get accomplished by effort. But again, your own capacity to make effort in each moment. Subjectively speaking is a genuine mystery. I mean, you're doing a workout.
In the gym and you're trying for your personal best in, you know, pull-ups or the bench, press or whatever, right? And the fact that you fail on the rep, you fail, at his mysterious, right? You don't know why you managed to that point and didn't fail a rep sooner, and you don't know why you didn't exert the final increment of heroic effort. That would have gotten you to a, to a, to another rep, and Heather been some other influence in your life. At that moment. You might have done.
You know, if you know if Jocko willing could suddenly just stumbled into the gym and said, you know, go for it, right? Get after it. You might have found, you know, more in the tank there, right? Like so, and that's not a picture of Free Will. That's a picture of causes that. You're completely unconscious of that are some mating to produce the experiences. You are conscious of again, as conscious agents were not sufficiently Upstream in our own lives.
To truly be authoring our actions. I mean, there's no one on this call. Who knows what they're going to think next part of all, just wait around for a thought to appear, you know, or a memory, right? Just remember, something. What are you going to? Remember next? If you're at all, sensitive to this process, you'll see that something just gets broadcast from the abyss and you didn't pick it for you to have picked it. You would have had to have thought it before you thought it, right? Thoughts just appear.
And then we're left wondering, what else could they do? I mean, there's just there's no there's no account of causation. Whether objectively are subjective. Lie, that makes sense of this. Notion of Free Will several things. Ethically, follow from this, give me some follow for the justice system is not that everyone's Not Guilty by reason of insanity. It's not that we should just empty the prison's. I mean, we should we should lock people up if we, if we can't, if we can't keep ourselves safe from them. Any other way, obviously certain people are dangerous.
But the notion that people truly deserve to be punished because they really, really are the authors of their actions that for me, goes out the window and the vent the Vengeance plied by our scheme of retributive. Justice goes out the window, but it's not that all punishments go out. The window means is some punishments are necessary because of the only way we have have of influencing or containing certain kinds of destructive Behavior, but the other thing that comes into the picture, which is, you know, I'm sorry is a very long-winded answer to your
but the response directly to your question is,
Once you acknowledge the role of luck in our lives, then you see that this sort of iron randian notion of kind of radical selfishness. That is, that is Justified, that begins to seem truly obtuse, ethically to feel in your bones that you are luck lately. If you succeed, no matter how would know, no matter what the effort was that you put out, right?
You're still let your I bought em, you're lucky right? You're lucky to be healthy. You're lucky to not have brain damage. You're lucky to have all the support. You you have from the people in your life. You're lucky to be in a society that allows for the kind of success. You're enjoying. Right? You're like you and you didn't make any of this. I mean that was Obama's line for which he was roundly, derided back in the day. Like you, you did not build the road.
You know, in Mountain View that didn't have a massive sinkhole in it. That didn't kill you. Do you can't account for the fact that you're not living in Congo or some other war-torn part of the Earth. Where none of what you're doing today is possible. I mean, there's somebody in, you know, Syria right now, who has your intellectual gifts, right? You know, if you think you're going to own morally, you're going to own your intellectual gifts, right? Like that's really you, your
Responsible for that. You should take credit for that. Well, there's somebody in Syria who's got that, but had does not have the opportunities, right, you know, and I'll put a finer point on it, you know, and they're going to die today through no fault of their own, the role that luck plays in differential success. In our world is immense and you know, it should be unignorable and they're therefore, as we succeed, you know, but both personally and collectively, as we Succeed in Business, we should want.
To cancel the, the most unconscionable, disparities and luck. And so far as we can, we do have to figure out how to create a tide that lifts all boats. And, and I think I think we should do that within the context of capitalism because obviously socialism doesn't work, but we should do it, you know, and so I think rich people should be more generous than they tend to be and Rich. Corporations should be more generous than they tend to be and we should talk about this more and we should celebrate people who
I mean being a Bill Gates pivoted from being this obscenely, selfish short-sighted technocrat to being you know, possibly the most generous philanthropist, the world has ever seen and that's a good good change of character Arc for him and he should be celebrated endlessly and it should Inspire more CEOs like him. So that's how I started want to ask a follow-up question on.
Effective altruism because I know you have an interest in that, but we invited you into the auspices of I can Temple of leadership program and we haven't touched meditation yet. I wanted to personally things you've been speaking about of observing. Your thoughts, come to your head, like meditation brings that these thoughts are outside of your control, meditation brings light to that sort of as a contrast. I think there's this unfortunate sort of tendency in Silicon Valley to treat meditation. Is this productivity tool that's completely Stripped Away from the ethical Traditions from Wichita.
Urged. So I guess the question is a comment around that but also you've spoken several times when some of your podcast about this phenomenon that there are very experienced meditators, that are very, very successful meditators that are very bad people. So I just wonder if you could speak briefly for those in the audience, who wanted to get into meditation, specifically uses a Force for good in their lives. What is the differentiated there? Like what what is your view on this sort of Trend in mindfulness, being treated as just like a sleep aid or something, too?
Crying more hours and you had to work.
Yeah, there's a lot in there.
Well, so mindfulness and meditation, generally can be used for many different things. Right? And so that and many people now are using them for, you know, stress reduction. And they've, they've imbibe some of the literature on, on meditation, mindfulness, being good for your health. And so they're doing it as part of their self improvement, apparatus, right? Well, you know, they just want to sleep better. They want to get in better shape. They want to be more focused at work. They want to be less reactive.
Active and so and so they add meditation to that project as a very useful tool which it is, but that really is just barely making contact with what meditation is truly good for and designed for, which is a fundamental transformation of your view of yourself and your experience of yourself in the world, right? And and this has a direct connection to ethics and that can be pending on the tradition.
One's studies, that can be more or less. Explicit in Buddhism is very explicit, but
You know, psychologically it's not as direct as we might hope, right? Which is to say that it's possible to be a great meditator. I mean, some kind of spiritual athlete who is capable of experiencing a wide range of conscious States, based on how he or she uses their attention to have had it, you know, extraordinary experiences in meditation and to be able to guide others in those experiences.
Which is to say to not be a fraud right to be a legit, you know, practitioner of a legit practice and to be a total asshole, right? I'm going to be somebody who has, who has created a Mensa, an immense amount of harm in the world in how they have used the role. They acquired as a teacher of others. If you paid any attention to this space, you probably have many gurus, you could name. Whoo.
In retrospect seem like total frauds be given, how totally it given how fully they flamed out as teachers, right? So someone someone like Osho, you know, bhagwan shree rajneesh, who got rebranded as Osho at a certain point and the great that's great documentary on Netflix. For those of you who haven't seen it, Wild Wild Country, which is details, the unraveling of his organization. And so, the punchline for many people there, when they see that,
At those kinds of Misadventures is that I'll go with the guy was just a fraud. You know, he just be look, the part. He had a nice long beard. He wore robes, but he was just scamming his credulous flock and there was no there there, you know, contemplatively or ethically, or philosophically. So, clearly that the project of, you know, of Enlightenment has to be bullshit. The project of self-transcendence has to be bullshit and turns out it's the truth is more interesting than that. It's think rajneesh in particular was
A very insightful, very smart. Very experienced person who just was still vulnerable to gratifying his his appetites as a man in the context of being given just a crazy degree of rock star power and influence in a community of devotees, right? It's just a it's a very dangerous circumstance for somebody who still want something in life. Apparently he wanted.
Was it 94? Rolls-royce's? I mean, he's got you got a 93 rolls royces and then you want to 94th. I mean, what, you know, whether he was he was engaged in some kind of absurdist, you know, surreal Salvador Dali, like performance art therefore, his his devotees. I don't know. But I mean, the guy created some significant harm, you know, he wasn't the worst Guru ever, but once you're spreading, you know, botulism or salmonella or whatever it was in the
Salad bar at the, you know, the local Diner to try to gain political influence over the town that is trying to eject your cult. You've crossed several bright lines, you know, they're which it should have been ethically sailing into a man of rajneesh has
Insight. So there are many many examples of spiritual teachers who gone off the rails and
It's a just is a liability of the job frankly. It should not be a sign that there is there are no real insights to have into one into the workings of one's own mind that are deeply helpful in living, a more ethical and and more examined life that they are. I just think you, you need more than meditation. You need a larger discussion about ethics about the importance of being honest, you know, where we started earlier.
As I had with, with Ron Howard Stanford had nothing to do with meditation per se, it's totally compatible with it, but it's such an important context for any Endeavor, in life to have this Epiphany. You know, that you don't want to be the kind of person who lies to people. You don't want to be the kind of person who has to keep track of one's lies. If you know, you're not going to lie ever. There's nothing to keep track of, you know, it's like when I got conversation like this, you know, you invite me on.
Zoom call. You tell me that there's some controversy around, the Vox article and Charles Murray and all of that and, you know, you want me to unpack that for you.
If I was somebody who was lying about what I believed or what I said, or what I did, or I had to keep track of that, right? It would be so exhausting, right? And being committed to telling the truth.
is a refuge because
if you say something that doesn't come out right then you can always say sorry. That didn't come out, right? Okay, I've got let me try that. Again. It's never a high-wire act really right? No matter what you're talking about. There's always the net that catches you which is your commitment to truth. In this moment right here, the came out wrong or you're my mind changes. Like if you know, if somebody pushes back on something I just said and I think oh shit, he's
She's right. I'm wrong.
A commitment to honesty allows you to say. Oh, you put it that way, you know, I'll take your side of this argument. You know, that's, that's the better side. It's so psychologically freeing to be that sort of person. And it's so non obvious to most people, right? And, and so, like, once you commit to not line, if it's not obviously the connection here is so much of the misbehavior of these so-called enlightened people is lubricated at every
Turn by willingness to lie and a willingness to encourage others to lie on their behalf. Once you stop lying, what you see in the lives around you and just in the people, you know, and in news stories about celebrities whose lives lives, run off the rails based on having Affairs, or, you know, committing frauds, or whatever it is, you do. So, you see Lance Armstrong with his Tour. De France, victories being taken away from him.
All you see is just this endless commercial for the horrific and needless chaos created in people's lives based on their willingness to lie. So, yeah, I mean the the short answer is you need more than meditation to actually get your life straight and there are many teachers, who haven't discovered that or couldn't, you know, hold to that. So that's that's that's how I interpret the evidence of enlightened.
His conduct. Thank you Sam. Building off that. I think we're going to get into questions. There were a few that were submitted ahead of time or was it couple? Where for people who maybe have started on app, maybe on your app in meditation and want to go deeper now, do you have advice for like next steps? Whether that's finding a teacher seeking out? Retreats yellow? So, I mean, so far as I can, put the next steps in the app, you know, I'm still working to do that. Right? So, the app is continuing to grow and and, and I'm continuing to grow.
Oh, in my conversations with other teachers and so there's this continually more stuff coming there, but for anyone who wants to get more deeply into practice. Yeah, I would say sitting in a retreat and certainly, if you've never done a retreat before, that could be a real. Game-changer. I looked back on my first year meditating. After I did I think I meditated for a full year.
For something like an hour a day Grant. I did not have the kind of guidance that I'm giving in the app now. So it's like I was under resource, I would say, but I sat for a full year and then I did my first 10 day silent, but positive Retreat, and my experience at some point in that retreat was. Oh my God, I just spent the last year, you know, sitting cross-legged with my eyes closed and thinking, you know, it's like I had not really successfully meditated in any
Important way for, you know, though, I have been trying. So the first silent Retreat could be a revelation for you. If you haven't done it and for that I don't really recommend.
Going shorter than a week because you hit like the first three days of any Retreat are almost invariably the hardest days. And whether it's three days, you know, whether it's, you know, a week or three months in length. So to do three days due to do a weekend, which is tempting for many people. I fear that for many people that use kind of get the hardest part and you always have one foot out the door and it's not long enough to fully commit to it. Like you're, you know, you're on Saturday you're thinking okay that just those just one more day of those.
Sunday end of the day, Sunday, I'm home. Whereas, if it's a week or 10 days. It's too long for you, always to keep one foot out the door, right? It just, it just seems like a vast amount of time, you know, once you hit that initial resistance and then, when you break through the resistance, you have some time to really enjoy what silence can give you. And it's, it's an amazing Crucible to be in. For most people, it can be indispensable. Again. It's a paradox here because there's no
Good reason why it would be indispensable and there's no reason why you can't experience the clearest in sight right now, in the middle of a zoom conversation, right? In this is just this, this just Consciousness and its contents. Right? And then the self is already an illusion, right? The sense that you are, they, you know, on the edge of your life looking in is already an illusion, which can be penetrated. But, yeah, if you haven't done a retreat and you find it and if you were at all dissatisfied with what you
Experience in daily meditation or what you experienced in your life. Generally, you know, a retreat could be a great Next Step. Thank you. We're all like have users. I imagine are all very much. Looking forward to whatever content might have to good more been Advanced directions follow up with another question. That was admitted earlier. I really like this framework of Consciousness is the contents and one of the questions that it is a huge one. Was just what is consciousness. So as a neuroscientist your best,
Guess as to is it simply an emergent phenomenon. That's for the byproduct of synapses firing. Or is there something more like fundamental intangible and how it's part of the Universe? I imagine, you can't answer that doing exactly, but what's your best guess?
You know, I really am agnostic on that topic. I don't know how the universe would be different. If one or the other of these Theses were true. Right? Like the data of science at every level and of you know, one's own phenomenology would be the same. If Consciousness were, it's so far would be the same in the trick would be to find an experiment that would differentiate these states of the universe.
If Consciousness is an emergent property of information processing at some level. So in our case, the information information processing that neurons are doing
Versus Consciousness in some sense is a more rudimentary property of matter itself, or the what we're calling matter. And what we're calling mind, you know, that differentiation is specious on some level. I mean, whether we're not in touch with the kind of neutral monism at the bottom of all this and that, you know, Consciousness doesn't in fact, emerge in the brains of mammals or primates or vertebrates it
It in some sense exists in the the most basic constituents of matter, right? I don't know how the universe would look would appear differently. If that were true. Right? I don't know how Evolution would appear differently if that were true. I don't know. How about, I don't know how biological systems would appear any differently. If that were true. I wouldn't expect, you know, Ethel, if there's something that is like to be an electron. I wouldn't expect my desk to start talking to me, right? It's like the desk would still just be a desk.
So, how Consciousness itself is integrated into the physics of things? Still Remains a genuine mystery but mind more generally, write what we recognize to be mined in ourselves, you know, and, you know, intelligent goal-directed Behavior or actual perceptual, distinctions, like, you know, you know, how do you map the visual scene from Mere the mere data of visible light to visual cortex? All of that is
Is clearly a matter of information processing on some level? Right? So like our mind in that sense is what our brains are doing. And when your damage the brain and specific ways, you damage those specific mental capacity so that the jury is not out on that. But there's just this additional mystery around. Why is anything associated with conscious experience? Right? I mean like Vision vision, is something we can create in robots and all of that is mirror physics.
And currently we don't have the intuition that Consciousness emerges at any step along the way there. And at a certain point, those robots will pass the Turing test and we will, I think probably the unless we have some radical breakthrough in the interim. We will be left not knowing whether these robots that are passing the Turing test or conscious right. And they may even say they're conscious and they will certainly seemed conscious because we'll build them that way. Unless we understand how
Consciousness emerges or how, you know, what its status is ontologically. We won't know whether we've built conscious robots and we might just lose sight of that. Be even being an interesting question. I mean, they'll seem so conscious that we will feel like, well, they must have it. The lights must be on me certainly. If we build them to, you know, if we get out of the uncanny valley and we, you know, we build a humanoid robots that really look human.
Before living in West world at a certain point, all of our intuitions will be pushed into. I mean, they'll be kind of super stimulus. They'll seem more conscious than people, right? I mean, just imagine what it'd be like to be in dialogue. With a robot that does not look like a robot. It looks like a person right? Maybe, you know, you're in West world and it's better at reading your emotions and responding to them until intelligently than any person you've ever met.
What's that experience going to be like? It's going to be an experience of helplessly attributing Consciousness to this being a me. You will you will, you will find yourself in relationship to the most compelling person you've ever met in your life if we're actually talking about a super intelligent, human truly humanoid robot. So, if we're going to, if we manage to build that such a thing, which I think, if we just continue to make progress, we ultimately will then.
We won't, we just won't know and we may just completely lose sight of whether or not. It's an interesting question to ask. But it is an interesting question to ask because Consciousness, the cash value of any ethical concern is consciousness, if the lights are not on in a robot and they only seem to be on if there is no qualitative character to that machines experience. Well, then we don't have ethical obligations to robots right there, no more conscious than
You know, your toaster oven, when you, when you want a new toaster oven, you can, you can recycle your old one. If you recycle a robot that is conscious. You've just committed a murder, right? And if it's a super intelligent robot, you've just committed a murder this probably worse than the murder of a human being. Any metric that you would use to differentiate a human being from a chimpanzee, in the case of a super intelligent actually conscious robot applies in a unfortunate way to to
When the robot this is a fascinating question, I think that I fear, we're just going to kind of meander, close more, and more closely to, and then suddenly find ourselves in the presence of technology that we don't understand. And we're not really prepared to respond to, but many people on this call or probably going to be responsible for that. So good luck.
And you will say, I am, I right? We're already ten minutes over. I don't know how much time, you know, I like em. Okay, if there's any pressing question, you want to ask. I'm I'm good. Just within the limits of the human bladder. I'm at your disposal. So well, I'll open it up to audience questions. If you wanna raise your hand Sam's, this is a follow-up question to earlier, but you mentioned as a during your posts mushroom trip debrief that this concept of combining a silent retreat with a high dose psilocybin sessions. You
A great
idea and you do some thinking to see if you can help make this idea a reality. So I was curious if any updates on that front end. Is this something you'd be curious to chat about offline? Yeah. Well practically speaking, I don't have any updates and I think the the legal picture is changed in a couple of states. And so, I think it's, you know, rather than have to go out of country for it. Which, which is what was happening. I
Think that that change will move things along considerably. I mean, there's obviously there's, you know, we just don't know what what the legal picture is going to be in the end. Right? So everyone is kind of circling the airport here not knowing what is going to be true, ultimately, but it's incredibly promising and there was one experiment done along these lines where I think was a four-day Retreat where people did a dose of psilocybin.
Either on the second day, or third day, something like that, but integrating mindfulness with specifically psilocybin. I mean, I guess you could also argue MDMA would be offer a very powerful experience as well. It seems incredibly promising to me and I do, you know, I do hope people do it, you know, it's the kind of thing that requires a lot of care and careful, screening of the participants and maybe it's, it should be clear that not
One should take psychedelics and certainly at macro Doses and, and not everyone should sit a silent Retreat, frankly. I mean, there's some percentage of people who get destabilized by by going into silence and doing nothing but meditate possible, people who run those kinds of Retreats or are very sensitive to that and there's you know, there's a kind of a psychiatric screening when you apply too early. So, you know questionnaire, but you know, but for people who
Our who are not going to be destabilized by it. Yeah, I think it, you know, it could really could be incredibly useful. So yeah, I hope to see that and I'm, you know, I'm now in touch with enough, people working in the space that I, you know, I will hear about breakthroughs in those areas and I'll I'm sure I'll have the relevant people on the podcast. So thanks Sam Raiden. Oh, it's like you've had your hand up for a bit there. My question kind of relates back to your idea of Ethics with respect to having only one.
One standard of treating others. I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are on. Kind of like familiar relationships and where I really see this in group Behavior originating from which is, you know, the idea of, you know, you treat your family better than others. And so that's a that's kind of like a things thing that has traveled and being transferred to a different situations and could arguably also be the cause of things like nepotism and things like that. Just kind of curious. Like, do you see that?
That's something that we no longer require because we have somehow Advanced Beyond it. Or do you just see that as a very different context from what you're describing? Yeah, that's a fascinating question and issue to think through and recently, I spoke with spoken with Will mccaskill and Peter Singer and maybe Toby award. I mean, these are philosophers who have been very influential in the effect of altruism Spaceman. They've really invented effective.
Prism, you know, it's not clear to me that you want a truly impartial waiting with respect to one's ethics across the board. I think that I just think the jury is out on this. I mean so it's like if you take somebody like the Dalai Lama's ethics right away from his point of view. I think he would argue that what you want is just unconditional love and unconditional compassion and part of that is to kind of extend the circle of one.
One's kind of positive orientation toward, you know, all Humanity such that it really does. Obliterate, the distinction between friend and, and stranger, or even, you know, child and stranger. And it's an, it would be nice to think that the psychological character of that. And the and the behavioral, consequence of that would be to just raise.
All strangers up to the level of one's child. Without anything, without it without any diminishment in the, in the, the effectiveness of one's relationship to one's child. Really, just how good a parent are you, when you feel undifferentiated, love and compassion for all sentient beings, right? Well, it sounds great until you start asking questions around. Well then, how are you going to use your resources? You know like which is what
How do you, how do you answer Peter Singer when he takes you to the shallow Pond and says, you know, you're not using all of your disposable resources to save the lives of the neediest people on earth makes you a kind of moral monster, or at least, you know, condemns you of not doing enough. And then you're somebody who has to think, we'll okay. Do I ever buy my daughter a birthday present, right? A how could I ever?
If I find my daughter, something she wants for her birthday. When that, you know, $50 or $100 whatever it is.
Could go to save yet another human life. Right? Like they said, then you're you're left with this. This endless series of series of trolley problems and Lifeboat problems and seemingly forced choices that are zero sum.
That do seem incompatible psychologically, and behaviorally with living the kinds of lives. Many of us want to live, right? Which is you want to? You do want to love your kids, preferentially? Because that seems like the only thing that's compatible with being a great parent right now. I'm agnostic as to, whether our world would be a better place, if everyone was, could get a firmware upgrade and just kind of run that the the Dalai Lama operating system.
and we could have this kind of collective truly collectivist commitment to Collective, well-being, generically versus all of us, you know, being really committed to Collective well-being and really caring about our neighbor and really caring about distant others who are suffering through, no fault of their own, but still having the sort of, locus, of preference, for our family, and the people whom we have, intimate relationships, and because you're going against so many,
Norm's. If you're not going to wait things at all, preferentially just the the level of Norm violation is so astronomical. When you actually look at the kind of read the fine print on this that I'm not sure you want to overcome it. And it seems natural to, to be biased toward, you know, ones ones Intimates, but there are certainly limits to that bias. Right? So like, I'm not going.
To vote for a system that is totally corrupt where, you know, somebody can just pay a bribe at at the, you know, the desk of a hospital and get your kid in sooner than the person who's there earlier who has a more Grievous injury, right? Like I don't want hospitals like that. Even if I know that if my daughter ever needs emergency care,
You know, that would be an advantage for me to be able to pay that bribe. Right? Like that's just it's there's a commitment to fairness and a kind of rawlsian conception of justice that one can. I think indoors without completely nullifying any, any preference for for the people with whom, one is really sharing a Lifeboat in this life. So I don't know if that answers your question. I think it's fascinating to try to
To figure out just where the boundaries are there, but it's, you know, and it probably becomes a kind of the more enlightened a person. Becomes it becomes a more and more interesting conversation to have right where you do. I mean, so, I mean, just take another example here. I'm just kind of thinking off the cuff here, but it would be totally dysfunctional for me to feel overwhelmed with sadness. Every time I hear about another human being
Dying, right. It's like, there's just an endless testimony to the people are dying every day. Constantly hearing stories, or seeing stories on the news that yet another person died for me to feel.
What I'm capable of feeling about a death every single time would just? I mean, that's just seems non-optimal, right? And when you compare that to what, I think I should feel if one of my daughter's died, right? It's just obvious. I don't want to feel that for every other human being but so then the question is, just how sad do I want to feel? If one of my daughter's dies right. Now, the answer to me is is definitely not what I feel when I hear about some.
Anonymous, stranger died. And I want to feel sadder than that, right? Like I like what like what did my life with my daughter's mean? And what does my love for them? Mean if it's going to strike me as as
You know, as frankly as superficial a concern as it does when I hear, you know, a statistic about yet, another person dying. So there's some, I don't know what, I don't know what's optimal, you know, having my life ruined by. It is not optimal but, and, and you just have to think of it. This just seems like, you know, an academic exercise. We'll just just imagine if we
If we develop a cure for grief, right, I mean, there are some people whose lives are just ruined by grief. They just can't get back to zero ever, and it would be great to have a pill. You could take to cancel the experience of grief and that's not, you know, pharmacologically. I don't know if that's likely but certainly not impossible. So imagine we have that pillow. Imagine. There's a pill. You can take that perfectly die. Sex grief out of The Human Experience, right? So you're sad and
And weeping uncontrollably one moment and you pop this pill and 30 minutes later. You feel fine, right? And fine in a way that is, is not, you know, if you're not catatonic, you're not drugged, you're not, you're just, you're just you. It's like a time machine, right? You just you without the grief, right? So someone Close to You dies.
Do you take that pill? When do you take that deal? They take that pill, 15 minutes after the person dies, you take that pill while their body is still warm, right? Well obviously not right. That would be, it would be the absolute bizarre to, to feel, you know, happy go lucky. When you're, you know, when you're still in the presence of the corpse of the person, you ostensibly loved more than anyone else in life, right? But the idea that you would never take a pill like that or that no one should ever be able to take a pill like that.
Doesn't seem right either so I don't know that just it may not. There may not be a clear right answer here, but it's certainly interesting to think about and and meditation does kind of force the issue of thinking about these things because the deeper you get into it, the deeper, you Glimpse the possibility of actually letting go of suffering on demand, really, you know, I mean you can you can get off the ride.
When you notice the mechanics of how your thoughts and emotions, turn the gears of your psychological suffering, and given that choice, it's Emma. What is compassion and real love. Look like in the aftermath of losing someone close to you, when you can quickly become available to feelings of well-being, even
In the midst of your grief, right? It's like that's that's psychologically, interesting. So, yeah. Thank you question.
Thanks, Sam. I'm saving another. Hannah bangka.
I Sam, thank you for being here and thank you for popularizing, the lack of free will I think for some of us who have experienced it? It's been a great relief. One thing, I still struggle with though is if we don't have free, will is there such a thing as being able to make a commitment to truth in the first place?
Yeah, I don't really see.
Attention there. I would can you tell me why you that seems inscrutable to you? Well, I just wonder if kind of commitment commitment to a certain Behavior can be done. If kind of the behavior is not something we can fully control on our own, right? So, we potentially repulsive desires and it's uncontrollable. For example, right? We'll see ya. So you can make a commitment to a thing. And then notice those times where you,
Either fail outright, or You're vulnerable to to failure, and then course correct. And yet, and all of that becomes a car part of the mechanics of, of regulating your own behavior. Again, that may seem mysterious to anyone who hasn't followed my argument on free will, but I mean, there's there's no contradiction between Freewill being an illusion and there.
A difference between regulated and unregulated behavior or you know, setting a goal and actually aiming toward that goal and reaching that goal. I mean, you can do that without feeling like you have free will. But yeah, I would just say you can, you know, if you decide like
You just think about what it's like to have the Epiphany that you want to do this, right, that you want to not lie, right? And ever rather than, you know, just kind of make it up as you go along, and I guess I should should be clear about this. It's not that, it's not that if you're, you know, if you got Anne Frank in the attic and the Nazis come to the door and say, you know, is there a little girl in your attic? You just helplessly say yes because I because you can't lie anymore. Right? So I've you lying as
Almost the first stop on the Continuum of violence, right? So if you're if there's a situation where you would ever use violence, well, then that's a situation where you would, you would lie as the, you know, you know, short of punching someone in the face. You can lie to them to prevent them from harming you or somebody else, but that's just to say you're not treating this this person as a rational actor who you can collaborate with any more your your in extremis you you know, you're practicing self defense or defense of another person.
Say and you know, not much is covered by that except for situations of kind of imminent violence in my world. But yeah this you know deciding not to lie is like any other decision like it's you know or decide deciding to bring it back to effective, altruism you deciding to give away, 10% a minimum of 10% of your lifetime, earnings to the most effective Charities. That's a pledge.
That that that you can take at it will mccaskill's website, giving what, given, what given what we can given, what you can, even what we can one of those. And, you know, I knew about that pledge for quite some time. Before I took it, I had, I think I'd had will mccaskill on my podcast, at least, once talking about it and didn't take it. And then at a certain point, you know, as I was getting more, you know, you know, I was
Becoming more of an entrepreneur and having more business conversations and, you know, you know, I spawned a second company, right? So I'm kind of in the business World a little bit. I just became more sensitive to the argument and you just certain point reached an inner Tipping Point where I decided. Okay, I want to do this. I want to take the pledge personally and I want waking up the, the company that runs.
I app to be the first company to publicly take the pledge and
there's no illusion of Free Will in that process. It's just some inner threshold was reached and I couldn't see it. Any other way, you know, it was just like it was like two plus two makes four at a certain point. You know, he like it's analogous to suddenly understanding something that you didn't understand to go make that a moment ago, that moment ago that doesn't feel like free. Will, right? Like, you're somebody's making an argument for your, you know, you're confronted with some kind of math.
Or whatever it is, and we're logic puzzle and you don't get it. You don't get it. You don't get it, all you're in the presence of your confusion.
And then something falls into place. And you understand it, right? And then you can't understand it, because now you do write two. Plus two makes four.
And that's not evidence of Free Will, right? That's, that's evidence of being dragged in many cases. If it's something, you were hoping wasn't true. And now you understand it. You know, it's your you've been dragged Kicking and Screaming to a conclusion that you can't resist and I've you all reasoning like that. Right? And we did some people hold up, reasoning, as an example of Free Will. So, why are you, why are you arguing with anyone? If you, if people have no free will, you know, you're you seem to be priests?
Was in Free, Will by trying to reason with people, but I view reasoning as reasoning only works because it's a condition of absolute constraint, right? It's like adding up a column of numbers, right? That only works because there's, there's only one way to do it, right? There's only one right conclusion. The only reason why we have arithmetic is because I know that if I add up a column of numbers on my side and you do it on your side, we should arrive at the same conclusion.
All right, that's just the nature of the operation. There is exactly 0 degrees of freedom there. So
Yeah, I mean that's that's my experience of making any decision, really? And any, even a very Global one. Like, I now want to be the kind of person who doesn't lie or, you know, gives a certain amount of resources away. It's just like, there was a moment where you didn't feel that strongly enough, or didn't see the reasons to feel it clearly enough and then suddenly you're a different person. And, you know, they're kind of
Area case is obviously where you're at. Continually at war with yourself like your you recognize that your brain is being run by committee and your you commit to something and then you fall off and you commit to something you followed. Like, you know, that a diet is a is the perfect example of this for most people like you, you want to lose weight. The truth is, you really do want to lose weight or if you know, you know, and all of you seems to want to lose weight, but all of you also seems to want to maintain the freedom to eat whatever you want whenever you want, right? And
Those two things are irreconcilable and they just continually, you know, these are programs that continually Collide in you and whether you fall on the on the diet side or the the gluttony side of any one of those kind of skirmishes in any moment is is genuinely mysterious right? And it's you can feel that mystery at your back as you're trying to navigate that like it's like sometimes you just
Take everything out of your pantry that you don't want to eat and you throw it in the trash and you make life simpler for yourself. And sometimes you don't do that. And you're continually reaching for something that you, you know, is off the diet and you don't have, you don't have perfect control over your behavior or see or seem not to and it's it's psychologically mysterious. And it doesn't feel like the moment when you
Our most in control the moment when you said like your inner Jocko willing, leaps up and just cleans house and puts you puts you on the straight. And narrow that moment to is mysterious, right? It's simply Springs out of the darkness, right? It wasn't there a moment before so it doesn't feel like free will even in that case. And
And we know, we know that if we could put you in a lab and scan your brain in real time. We would know that moment was coming before you did. There's a pattern here. I never give short answers to anything. So I hope that I hope that blizzard of words got to got to what you were looking for. Thank you.
Awesome. Thanks, Sam. Darren. Glad to have you here and ask your question. What's your take on like excess concentration and Jonna like, which seems to the experiences that seems to be reproduced in a very standard way in many people who have achieved them or claimed to have achieved them short on time. Maybe even a yes or no answer on whether you think they're real will do.
Yeah, so this is an interesting terrain that gets me into trouble with my fellow scientific Skeptics and atheists.
so,
It's kind of a two-part answer. Well what want I should clarify your question for people. So there's their these experiences of meditative absorption meditative concentration within Buddhism. It's beyond Buddhism, but the, the referred to in Buddhism as the as the the John has, which are different levels of concentration that are characterized by different experiences, right? So there there are John as where you
You are just the beginning. You're scared. Totally one pointed on the object of meditation and not getting distracted by thought, but then there are John is beyond that. We're all things kind of disappear and you have experiences of pure Consciousness or, you know, there's one level that's that's described as neither perception nor non-perception, right? So that the phenomenology here, is something that I don't know, a ton about directly. I have not formally done.
Done John a practice. I might achieve states of sufficient concentration. Doing doing the pasta practice mindfulness, practice where I can authenticate some of those experiences, right? So I know what it's like to to have an experience that is
It certainly seems like pure Consciousness. I mean, it's just, no, none of the sensory channels or have their usual objects, right? So whether that's just what it's like to have all the channels open but not reporting or whether that's something. You know, what? That's best thought of as pure Consciousness or just kind of like your television is on, but it's just not tuned to any program. So this is kind of extraordinary experiences. You can have, but they're all temporary and they're, therefore, they're not really the ultimate goal of meditation, but there's this,
nurture and testimony about these levels of concentration being gate Waits it gateways to
Certain kinds of psychic powers, right? So if you train in the John has enough, you develop enough concentration. Well, then you, you you develop essentially magic powers and you can read minds, you can be, you know, gets it gets, especially spooky just in the Buddhist literature, right? But at minimum, you can do the things that people have claimed other people could do in the in the last 150 years. That people have talked about
Sigh research or ESP research in the west, right? So to read minds, or do you listen to be telepathy and Clairvoyance at a minimum right now? And there's a lot there's a ton of research that is treated like intellectual pornography, essentially on PSI phenomenon at the at at the other end of the spectrum where it's not some a depth to
Massive abilities or purports to have massive abilities who can demonstrate them in the lab. Rather. It's ordinary people like ourselves put an experiments where they're asked to to essentially, guess using psychic powers and across hundreds and thousands of trials with hundreds and thousands of people. The people who do this research claim that their departures are from Randomness that are astronomically unlikely, right? So that
there is a is evidence of PSI phenomenon is evidence of Neo telepathy, say or is evidence that people can influence a random number generator with their minds, you know, depressing its output or below a certain threshold or keeping it above it across again, thousands of trials that proves that humans have these abilities right now.
I'm just and then people run meta-analyses on these data and they claim that the data are there. And again any scientist who doesn't want to have their reputation swiftly destroyed ignores the this stuff and so I'm kind of on record saying, you know, I'm interested to hear about this. I, you know, it's
I'm agnostic about it. Frankly, you know, but here's one thing, I'm not agnostic about which is a kind of Smoking Gun here for the claim you started with is the idea that there can, you know, through meditation, you can acquire. These is really, you know, florid psychic powers and and you know, many people who have reported that their teachers have had these Powers, right? So I know people who know people who supposedly had these powers
The Smoking Gun here are the the dog that didn't bark or whatever it is. Whatever the analogy is that this having these Powers would literally be the easiest thing to scientifically demonstrate in the lab. I mean, there's just, there is nothing that would be easier to demonstrate conclusively. If you, if you really have these Powers, if you are somebody who can really read minds, right? Or really have the power of precognition.
You know or
really move material objects with the power of your thoughts, right? You know, yes, there were problems with frauds along these lines, you know, people believed URI Geller and then he got debunked and you know, James Randi, you know, I said the Deep debunk people and yes, it's possible to find credulous people in whose presence you can fake these things, right? So that's something that has to be cut through and any protocol that would vet. These claims would have trained magicians, you know.
On the team, you know, someone like Derren Brown would would, would have to be in the room for this because obviously, he can fake these things, you know, and he Mentalist can fake some of these things, but that's easily solved, right? So there is no argument for why this has not been attempted and successfully demonstrated, and it hasn't been right? And the only thing that they'll the fig-leaf that every traditional, you know, meditator and Guru and
Anyone with any kind of Eastern influence has held up here is that to want proof here essentially, the kind of doubting Thomas argument to want proof, here is itself a sacrilege, right? And to provide proof is kind of spiritually demeaning, right? Like you just you know, it's there's no no real adapt worth his or her salt would submit to being tested along these lines. And then you, you got someone like so.
Hi Baba performing these so-called miracles for you know, credulous mobs for decades, you know, materializing, sacred Ash and and objects, right? And then being caught on video, you know, retrieving these objects and the sash from the bottom of some object that he was put in contact with briefly. I mean, he's clearly like a bad stage magician. So there's a tremendous amount of fraud here.
I remain agnostic as to whether you know, something like telepathy could be could be possible. I mean, it's just that there's a and I am not in a position to debunk. All the people who say that the data are there in the aggregate for, you know, lots of weak effects, but in terms of the strong effect of having someone who really can deliver the goods to the labs are open, the labs are open 24 hours a day to test, someone like that and that
Hasn't shown up. Right? And it's just ridiculous to believe that it's some kind of spiritual indiscretion to demonstrate the reality of these. These abilities on the contrary. You would see you would see half of planet Earth. Start meditating. If you you know, if you're in the business of recommending that people get their lives together, you know, but and use Buddhism or whatever your tradition is as an operating system.
Demonstrating that you can really do this, you know, not just to your debt wild-eyed devotees, but to someone like Derren Brown, that's a world-changing event. Right? And it would, it would be, it would do an immense amount of good. So it's it is, we should all find a deeply suspicious at this point that that hasn't happened. Because it's been a long time, right? As been the interest in this as it goes back.
To William James and earlier in the west. So anyway, again, a short answer to your question.
And I think we all appreciate the. The short answer is probably not more than your own bladder. So, you know that proof of my lack of psychic powers or free will. Well, looks like all that all the hands are down II. Have one more sort of pet question for, you prominently in the background of my punching bag that, you know, has a striking resemblance to Donald Trump and a couple lifestyle questions. I wanted to ask you about it.
You spoke a pretty loose about Brazilian jiu-jitsu and veganism was just what did wondering how that fits into contemplatively a stone for you. And it is it had on. What is your sort of meditation practice look like today?
well, so
The last part first. I mean I do meditate formally but I don't have a kind of formal schedule and I can I don't do it, you know, 20 minutes in the morning or it's just not, I do it.
When the fancy strikes and it does strike rather often, but I have a much more.
At this point, I'm much more interested in blurring. The line between formal practice and the rest of life, right? So it's not, my practice is such that. It really is available to me, whatever I'm doing and there's really, there's no. So I'm constantly kind of solving the koan of why is it that right now? I'm not experiencing the clearest moment of insight into the nature of Consciousness that I've ever experienced.
Right, like what? And the answer to that question is, in fact to experience another moment of insight of, that kind. Right? So and that is, you know, so my practice is compatible with with having a conversation like this, right? It's not that I'm not meditating now. It's like a meditation has become simply differentiating.
Non distraction from being distracted by thought. Right? And so, you know and part of this has been Amplified by being during covid. We're like the last year has been as had somewhat the character of a retreat, you know for me and just in terms of how simplified my life has become so it's yeah, so I so the answer is I sit formally but I don't I don't have a
a formal discipline around that now and I think I probably will do some Retreats but I you know, I have young girls and I haven't wanted to leave them thus far so I haven't done that yet, but I think I'm getting to the point where I might want to do another Retreat just to just for the fun of it and
As far as BJJ is a 04 during covid, obviously, and that's just been. This guy has to have been hell for everyone who owned a school in the last year. And I had talked about a talk about lat talk about differences in luck. Right? I mean to have been in a business that is entirely digital versus to be in the business of teaching people to roll around on the floor with strangers, you know, during a pandemic. I mean that the whole industry has been decimated but
Yeah, so I haven't trained by. I look like I cautiously look forward to getting back to it. I mean, it's like I did at my age. Now. It is a bit of an injury machine, you know, so it's not that I, you know, I'm getting tapped out and and you know, or someone's someone's being irresponsible with me. I mean, I I only trained with people who are way better than me and have nothing to prove and it's really just gravity, you know, at a certain point, you know, when you're in
You're in your 50s, you know, gravity is not your friend. So yeah, so insofar as I want to age somewhat gracefully, I'm not sure how much my BJJ addiction is going to go into play well with that. So I'm remains to be seen. As far as vegan. Yeah. I'm a lapsed. I'm a lapsed vegan and I'm I'm hoping I recently did a
Podcast on this. I'm really hoping that the the cultivated meat industry scales up and I had I had the the CEO of Memphis Meats on the podcast early on, I don't know if you guys know about this company, but this is the company that originally had produced an eighteen thousand dollar meatball. And now, you know, costs have come down as they've started to scale and there are other people in this space and Bill Gates has invested in them and
I'm hoping at a certain point that we will produce actual meat at scale that doesn't entail the the misery and death of any animal. Because again, it's this is just cell based culture. You take a single cell from the perfect cow and, you know, amplify that in totally antiseptic conditions and you bypass all the, you know, the Zeno virus problems and the antibiotic problems and the
And the misery and death problems and you get meat that is actually meet, right? So I'm hoping that's where we go because I think it's not turning the planet into 10 billion vegans or vegetarians. I don't think that's I think that's unlikely to be in the cards. And so yeah. Anyway, I did recently had two people from the the good food Institute on the podcast and we had a conversation about that and that was as Bruce Bruce Friedrich and Liz.
T'. And
I think there's a lot of innovation coming there and if they can get to scale, that will be one of these examples where technology has has transformed and ethical landscape, right? We go from something. That is
Seems to be necessary or some semblance of it is necessary for most people, most societies. And yet it seems morally abhorrent, you know, the eating of meat, you know produced by factory farming. To something that is will be ethically impeccable if we actually produce it, so,
So temptation to, I did ask a follow up there but one of our collaborators from MIT has his hand. I'm sorry Jose. You wanna chime in?
Sam. I hadn't more of a tactical question definitely on the retreat thing. So I started an organization and mighty called mindfulness and Leadership. And really the big idea is especially with the MBA folks of GSB and MIT were expected to go out and do these big things.
But then we don't have this kind of humanity at least none of my classes. I have focused on that part of it. And so we want to go to the brow of building a retreat. You mentioned something that you don't recommend anything under 14 days, but we're sort of under constraints. Some here is for like a three or four-day retrieve your to create this for, you know, an MBA population. I'm just curious to bring some out loud.
I think maybe in that case, you'd want some kind of hybrid Retreat because I think one of the the the interesting things would be to allow for discussion and kind of ethical examination. And so it's kind of more of a curriculum than just meditation. You know, if you really we're going to Target it to Business Schools. So it just could be like a, you know, a ten day long or week long, you know, summer intensive that would have a lot of meditation, but would also have a
Of opportunities for discussion or reflection, you know probably weighted toward the end of it, right? I once organized a retreat for scientists like that where it was a week-long. Pretty standard for pasta Retreat. It was in silence for I think four days and then then there were the kind of structured breakings of the Silence with you know, facilitated discussions and everyone, you know, everyone at the retreat center was a was a working scientist.
So yeah, so I can see a business school version of that. But I think you would want, I think people would be hungry to figure out how to integrate the experience. They were having with with their, you know, their kind of Life project of getting into business. So I think you'd want some discussion as well. But yeah, and it's interesting, you know, we should just keep the
The door to conversation, open on that tab topics. I think it would be a good thing to engineer at some point.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you Sam. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been absolutely a joy. I'm incredibly grateful for you coming to coming to talk to us. Well, thank you. It's been a great pleasure for me too. And yeah, let's just keep the conversation going because you know, you guys are whether you feel it or not, you know everyone on the zoom call this
Potentially.
It's, it's hard to imagine a group of people of has more opportunity to steer, human life toward something better at this point man. Just when you just think of the role of the technology and you know, business generally is playing in our lives.
You know, I just it's great to speak with you and I just say it was great, that you would even want to have this conversation. And I just think you should take your, you know, the the responsibility side of your opportunity. Seriously, ethically, speaking. I mean, it's just, you guys are guys, and gals are going to be running the world in some form or another. And, you know, the difference between good decisions and bad decisions are is is rather Stark, so,
So I look forward to seeing how you fly the plane and land it great to meet you. Ian.
