Welcome to the coilette podcast. My name is Claire Layman and I am editor-in-chief of Colette. Colette is
where freethought lives. We are an independent Grassroots, platform for heterodox, ideas and fearless commentary. Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself and Canadian editor. Jonathan Kaye, you can support our podcast by visiting patreon.com forward slash
Colette and becoming a monthly patreon by becoming a monthly patreon. You'll also receive our
Weekly Newsletter.
Welcome to the quill, let podcast, I'm Jonathan Kaye back from a week-long vacation in Hollywood, Florida and ready to start off our spring podcast season with a true podcasting, heavyweight, the one and only Sam Harris. If you're a fan of this podcast you probably also listen to Sam's popular making sense podcast or at least have friends who talked incessantly about it. You might also have read some of his books to like the end of Faith letter to a
Nation lying Free Will and waking up a guide to spirituality without religion as you'll guess from the name of that last book title, which is also the name of his popular meditation app. By the way, Harris is a committed atheist and gained notice years ago and notoriety as well as an especially Fearless critic of militant Islam. In recent years. He's also become a collaborator or in some cases. A debating foil
for many other
well-known.
Known public figures, including Jordan Pederson. Deepak, Chopra Ben, Shapiro, and Ricky Gervais as we'll discuss people care a lot about where Sam Harris. Stands on today's controversies and he's not shy about waiting into extremely contentious issues in recent days. For instance. He devoted a podcast episode to a passionate defense of his friend Joe Rogan in other episodes. He's held forth on another friend or former friend vaccine skeptic Brett.
Weinstein. But in that case, delivering a very different verdict and I should warn you that these are just a few of the many issues we talk about in this episode. For those of you who've come to expect my podcasts to clock in at somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes. You should know that this one goes for about an hour and a half, but I think the time passes quickly as you'll see Sam Harris is a guy with a lot to say
Sam Harris, thank you so much for doing the cool a podcast. Happy to be here, and I hate to do this, but I'm going to start with a complaint, which is that I decided I was going to get into meditation and I thought that your app would be the ideal way to do it. The wouldn't be a lot of sort of touchy-feely religious stuff. And I think I'm just terrible at meditation because whenever I tried to do it as fell asleep, do you get that complained a lot from people?
What I'm s a pretty common hindrance. People's often discover. They're
They're just kind of underslept, and they, you know, the moment you give them the instruction to get comfortable and close their eyes. They take a nap. So, yeah, that's just something that eventually you overcome it. You can, you can start standing up. That's, that's one way to do it,
but you ever get people and I think it may be one of them who just like they never get past. The fact that meditation is boring.
Well, I may be a people bounce off for a variety of reasons. It can be, you can be that there are two Restless, right? So that they just actually are
comfortable and they can't get past that. But all of these states of Mind including boredom can be made the object of meditation. I mean, you can take boredom as its own focus and because it's a feeling State and you can actually become paradoxically, you can become interested in boredom, really? And then it evaporates. The truth is boredom. I mean, this is an objective Claim about the nature of the Mind. Boredom is just a failure to pay attention there.
I think that's intrinsically boring. If you can spend 18 hours a day paying attention to the breath which you can and find it rapturously engaging which you can. Then nothing is intrinsically boring, right? And not even boredom itself. So it is important. When you look at closely, what boredom is? It is a failure to actually Grant attention to anything. You're just, you're just cycling in your thoughts, trying to figure out what to do, what to pay attention to. This isn't doing it. That isn't doing it.
What am I going to do next? What just happened. One something at a change and you're not actually making contact with your experience. But if you, if you are actually making contact with whatever it is, sights sounds and Sensations or even the flow of your own thoughts boredom just is not is not an option.
So I think there's some truth to that because I remember in December. I was driving back from Albany New York. I was a board game.
Mint. And at one point, I'd like driven all the way to the Canadian border. And I'd realized that I'd spent the last three hours thinking about how I lost a game and to an outside Observer. I was just like staring blankly out the window at the blank stretch of highway, but I wasn't meditating. I was, I was fretting.
More importantly would just come from a board game tournament. It mean, if anything, proves that boredom is an artifice. Look at the fact that board games can be interesting. I mean, there you have
Have created in terms of sensory experience, you know, something out of quite literally nothing.
No, but it's representational when I play a military themed game. There is a, there is a kind of narrative that's coming to life. Right? But the whole idea of meditating because I know I have this friend who meditates two hours a day and to me that's a superpower like I couldn't do it for five minutes a day. You know, when you when you watch the Olympics and you see a guy do like five flips on a snowboard to me. That's that's the equivalent of watching. Somebody meditate to ours
day. Yeah. Well you think that but you
You do many things for that amount of time, which are not especially interesting. Right. But that your attention, your experience is not one of overwhelming boredom while doing those things. I mean you manage to locate attention and keep it on something whether it's a, you know, mediocre film or a book or just tasks your errands you're running and it's just not
Not if the question is what is keeping any one of those experiences including the simplest of all experience of just you know, looking at a cloud passed by overhead or feeling the sensation of breathing was keeping any one of those experiences from being something, like, a peak experience. I mean, something like a flow experience where you're no longer waiting for any aspect of life to improve. And the answer to that is and there is an answer to. This is an objective answer.
This is not my answer just for me. This is an answer for you. If you would only Discover it, the answer is at the level of how you're paying attention. The normal case is for people to wait around for something in the world to demand their
attention. Yes, I do that all the time. I do that
constantly such that such that they don't, they don't they recognize that there's no there helplessly granting attention to it because it's an emergency.
Or they're you know, it's a sexual opportunity or it's something it's something that there's on the list of things that, of course, you're going to effortlessly Grant 100% of your being to this moment, right? Because this is, this is the, this is the stuff in life that that you can't, your mind can't Wander from, although even there. If you pay attention, you'll see how much your mind can Wander from even the most thrilling or otherwise captivating experience, but people Grant
Lead to the world as a gating function for their Peak experiences. Whereas the, the peakedness of any experience really isn't is it the level of your attention? Because if you drop, you know, 100 micrograms of acid, which
you, which you did according to your bio, you did that when you were at Stanford.
Yeah, I've done that. I've done that in and out of Stanford. Yes, again. It's, that's just the, the pharmacological proof that the beatific vision is not out there.
Are in the world. It's at the level of your of what your mind is doing right now. And there is there's a psychotic side of the coin here because if you're, if you're seeing the beatific Vision everywhere and and it's the kind of thing that you can't communicate, you know, the reasonableness of to anyone else. Well, then you're crazy right. Or then you're transiently crazy because you're you're on a psychedelic but what meditation allows you to do is just see and understand the mechanics.
Acts of this such that you can when you're, when you're feeling bored or Restless or otherwise mediocre, you can just learn to kind of dial up the amplitude of your attention and discover that. That's the, that's always the necessary piece. Right? I mean there really is nothing else. That is determining the quality of your life, more importantly than that. I mean. Well, you know, leaving aside significant injuries or illness or maybe even their meditation provides a certain kind of antidote to
Ordinary suffering, but leaving that aside when you just look at what it's like to be you in through all your ordinary moments and how those moments don't tend to become, you know, the the best moments in life, right? And and the best moments come at you, you know, rule only rarely and only seem to be only seem to be correlated with extraordinary experiences out in the world, you know, the peak moment on the vacation that you spent a fortune on and waited six months to
Etc. But even there people discover that there are often just subtly looking over the shoulder of the present moment at what's coming next and they're lost in thinking about the thing that they thought was going to be so great. Right. So there's a kind of a mirage like quality even to most Peak experiences. But again, it's always at the level of being able to Grant 100% of your attention to the thing that's before you and people are just deeply habituated to not.
Being able to do that. I mean more. So now than ever with the smart phone in our pocket that is constantly fragmenting our attention it. What would you describe as a an impediment to even starting? Meditation is very common, but it's just, you have to recognize that, it's something you want to get over, because it's with you all the time. I mean, it is the thing that's keeping you on the hamster wheel of seeking novelty again and again, and actually not fully connecting to the thing. You
Time, right. I mean that's that this Mirage like quality to expect to to satisfying desire is something to notice. I mean you just even even the satisfy even getting what you want isn't usually good enough right? Or it's not good enough for a long. I made a really the hedonic cash value of anything that is that you have saw. It really degrades surprisingly quickly
and the pursuit of novelty ironically leads.
As to the commodification of the object of your desire, right? Whether it's sex addiction, or gluttony, instead of novelty. You get this crushing sameness, which I guess is the opposite of everything you're
describing. Yeah, me. You're just left with the the stress and dissatisfaction of the search itself, right? And it so your spent you spending so much time seeking and very little time actually at rest. And what we do crave is effortless.
In the present moment because of the moment itself has such Grace such a center of gravity to it that whereas, like you fall into The Well of being, right, you're no longer busy but coming, right? You're not trying to get somewhere. You're not site. You're not spending a lot of your cycle time. Trying to figure out how to improve the present know that the present is suddenly enough. It's suddenly exactly what you were hoping for, right? So such that you're no longer.
Longer you no longer even remember what you're hoping for. And you're certainly not hoping for anything next. And it's just, those moments are so few and far between for the average person because of, because of the default state of attention and and you know, honestly meditation is the only thing that human beings have ever devised to seize the reins of attention directly and, and, and no longer and decouple, it decouple, its vagaries.
All the other happenstance of life. I mean, everything else. You do to feel good? Is Miss out, is Miss allocating the source of the goodness, to the thing in the world. So if you're surfing, you know, it's all about, you know, having the right surfboard and getting lucky with the weather and getting the get, you know, catching the right waves and okay, if you can do all of that, whatever once a month, right? Well, then that's going to be the good stuff or if you're skiing you're waiting for snow and you were you
got to get on all the gear and you got to travel and you got and it's I mean, I'm not saying surfing and see in skiing aren't great. But and and the irony is that once you know how to meditate you can you can make any experience including surfing and skiing a circumstance of the same kind of profound engagement of attention. I mean, it improves it, improves all of those other moments, but you're not, you know, is no matter how much you surf and ski or run or play music or
Anything else that that people do to feel good, none of that actually teaches you how to improve the quality of your attention. Generically. I mean, it's really only me whatever you call it. That is what that is, what meditation is. And so if you if you if you it should just be the Gateway, really is to become interested in the discomfort / boredom. You experience when you try to start, right? I mean, like it's, you're essentially you're in the position of someone.
In prison who went put in solitary confinement, finds it a torture rhyme, it's literally the worst thing that people experience in prison people. Go insane. Yeah, and, and I mean, that's that should tell you something about how dysfunctional and truly pathological our default State of Mind is because there's nothing about being alone in a room that should pose a problem to
you. No, wait, I'm gonna disagree with that. Human beings are social creatures. It's against our nature to be by
herself. Well, yeah.
There's a lot of things that are against our nature is against our nature. Do most of what we do to maintain civilization, right? And if you just going to if you're going to describe us as social primates, you know, so much of what we do is or have evolved to do is is currently dysfunctional but it you know more importantly it says nothing about what's possible for us, right? And there's nothing about Evolution that tells us that it's possible to spend most of your life contemplating.
The the the beauty of natural law or mathematics or music or
make an observation about you because sometimes I'm listening to on your podcast and now and it's like I feel like you're the product of a thought experiment which is somebody who's going to think and talk as rhapsodic lie as possible about human potential and the Perfection of The Human Condition, including in its most euphoric.
Maybe even somewhat Messianic elements, but without talking in any way about religion and in fact being completely self-aware about your rejection of religion. In other respects, you seem to channel an extremely religious attitude toward projecting materialist conceits some of the Eastern preoccupation with, with being in the moment and not being a slave to your desires and your jealousies and so forth.
I mean, I mean, I realized that this is old hat for you. You've dedicated a lot of your career, with demarcating, the boundary between spirituality and religion and human potential and the idea of the supernatural world. But listening to you, I do get a strong religious vibe in terms of your desire to bring human beings out of the three dimensional prison in which we inhabit and into a kind of Fugue State based on their spiritual meditations.
Yeah, that me there is certainly something about my project that is purpose toward reclaiming or you're saving the baby in the bath water of religion in. Right? So I'm a I do view all of our mainstream religions as perversions of a, an ancient opportunity to discover something, truly, Universal about the nature of human well-being and, and and human suffering, right? So it's all, it's all.
For my point of view. It's all about the question of, you know, why do we suffer? And how can we live truly fulfilling lives and the answers to that question? Personally, haven't changed all that much in thousands of years. I mean, this is why so much of what's in our, you know, contemplatively / philosophical /, religious literature is still so serviceable. I mean, there's even there's still so much wisdom.
In these ancient texts and you and you can feel like you're at your when you read the stoics and when you read Christian contemplatively, sore or Buddhists can tablets or Indian Yogi's for you, who wrote or even thousands of years ago. You can feel like you're in a comparatively modern conversation with with a, you know, a human consciousness that is totally recognizable to you and we have by virtue of when it was appearing in history.
Did not, I obviously, did not encounter any of our modern challenges and distractions. So the question about how to live an examined life, that's truly fulfilling. I think is
Is answerable in most of the ways that always was. And again, it has a lot to do with the nature of human attention and in our default state of being identified with the process of thinking, right. I mean most people feel that they are they're identical to their thoughts, right? The next thought that appears in your mind will sort of come up from behind in a way that you the conscious witness of your experience won't notice, and it will just feel like it's you
You know, it's I mean, so someone listening to me now might be thinking, what the hell is this guy talking about? Well, what I'm talking about is that thought, right is not a self. That's not you. I mean, the fact that it feels like I is what that's what it feels like to be thinking. Without knowing that, you're thinking, what it would be thinking without recognizing thoughts themselves as appearances in Consciousness. And what happens when you're able to recognize thought as a process.
is that the doorway to real spiritual experience for lack of a better world order or contemplative experience or
Religious experience properly construed. That that swings open, right? I mean, that is, you know, that explains a character like Jesus and the effect he had on people when he was to some degree speaking, perennial wisdom to me, perhaps, to some degree, confabulating, within the context of of a Man Iron Age worldview, but, you know, Gathering people to him talking about how to, you know, on the most basic level, how to transcend.
Ordinary human suffering.
There's a prophetic quality, and I, maybe it's unavoidable in this age. I'm friends with Jordan Peterson here in Toronto, and he, he also, I mean intellectually. He's also always been focused on the question of suffering. In the question of evil, like Jordan, you've got millions of followers. We live in a post religious age and even if you're not someone like you, who intellectually is already committed to the projects that you've been discussing, people are looking for
Prophetic voices to follow. I know that here in Toronto, Jordan Pederson. Sometimes people just come up to him on the street. And the way they interact with him is kind of the way Catholics would interact with the Pope. If they met him, they think that there's a sort of transference of a sense of piety and worship from religious to secular figures. Are you sometimes aware that that sometimes people listening to you? They may be falling into that kind
of model. I do think there's a big difference between what Jordan and I are doing.
I like Jordan a lot and we agree about a lot, but where we disagree is on the on this terrain around, what is necessary to believe to get the whole spiritual project off the ground, right? And my view is that you you need believe nearly nothing at all or next to nothing. I mean, really, the only belief you need to take on board is really has the shape of a kind of scientific hypothesis that certain things are worth paying attention to.
Right. So I mean, for instance is look how this conversation started. I suggested to you, that you could become interested in the nature of
boredom. I'm still not convinced with. I find boredom
metabolic right away, or you could become interested in the source of your own discomfort or in the nature of psychological suffering. If you were locked in a room by yourself with no books or Media or anything, to distract you, and you're just alone with your thoughts right now that if that quickly became intolerable to you.
You as as it does to, for most people, you'll suffer you suffer for as long as you would suffer, but eventually, you could become interested in how you're suffering. Right? What's the actual what is meeting out? These blows to you emotionally? If all all you're doing is sitting comfortably image, just give yourself the most comfortable chair and of quite beautiful room, right? Maybe you have a view of a beautiful sky, right? But nothing
Do why is that? Not a purely pleasant experience on my account? There's nothing you need to believe. There's certainly no myth. You need to endorse. You don't have to develop a fondness for any iconography, or any spiritual tradition. You don't have to believe in Jesus. You don't have to think the Bible is a special book. You can get the entire project of becoming just like the Buddha off the ground by paying close attention, right?
That's, that's my thesis and everything. You need need to discover about the nature of the mind to come out of suffering in that. Circumstance, is discoverable from the first person Side by virtue of, just paying closer and closer attention. Whereas Jordan is much more in the project of telling people stories and endorsing their stories. The
two of you in some ways are opposites because he's very externally, prescriptive in some respects and saying,
The following actions will lead to a building of character. Whereas from from what I can tell your project, you start the other way, you you want people to start with nothing except self-awareness and a willingness to probe the vagaries of their own mind and let that be their guide. I simply meant that in the way that both of you have extraordinary followings, including I would submit people who look to you, not just for commentary on issues of the day, but a way to organize their thoughts and Lead their lives there.
Is a pastoral
element to it. And it also just not to make too much of this difference. There are many things that Jordan would recommend to people that I would also recommend, I've written a book on the ethics of wine.
Well, we should talk about that because I heard your episode with Ricky Gervais about that. I found it fascinating.
Yeah, so I mean so I have recommendations like that and you don't lie because it massively complicates your life and your relationships and is really the, the engine that is going to produce a lot of chaos or you there, things like that. I guess the difference I see.
Is that so much of my intellectual project is to identify and dispense with Dogma? Right? May I think Dogma is really at the root of almost everything that ails us. Ethically intellectually politically. I mean, it's just a bit people's inability to think, through their positions, a fresh, and come to New, and come to New Ones based on you know, better evidence.
Evidence better arguments better data, I mean, that is what divides Us in the end. And so let me given that, that's my focus. Yeah, I have very little sympathy for people who want to hold onto ancient dogmas, right? So that's why that's the west where the atheism piece seemed to take up so much of my my bandwidth for so many years because I just saw device of dogmas everywhere. And that's really where Jordan and I tend to disagree because you know, what he is going to call a life-saving.
And absolutely indispensable story or myth. I am, you know more often than not going to identify one or another dogmatic attachment that I think we no longer need, right? And so that's where we wind up, getting wrapped around the axle in our various debates, one man's Timeless. Truth is another man's Dogma. The basic claim here, which is just there for anyone to authenticate for themselves is that you can explore the nature of your own mind.
Mind directly without believing anything. Just believing that this is worth paying attention to and the and see if you can detect how it is. You come to be anything less than perfectly happy, perfectly tranquil in your own company, you know, after five minutes after a mere, five minutes of sitting with your eyes closed and you know, many people are jumping out of their skins that should be or at least could be interesting and it is
Definitely. It's at that point where you're your curiosity, can be repaid by, you know, genuine breakthroughs into the nature of your own. Your own mind.
There was a book, a couple years ago. Ten percent happier.
Dan Harris. Yeah.
Yeah, and I, so, I liked it for a couple of reasons. First of all, he promised me 10% happier. Like you're promising me like 100% happy. I don't I don't trust, he promised me 10% of happier, which seemed reasonable. I like the fact that he was immediately.
A guy fact like he had some kind of Quasi meltdown on air, which is what led him to meditation and mindfulness. But what I really liked is, he told the story about how he was completely skeptical of meditation. Like in the same way. I was like, he's same sort of dismissive wiseass attitude, but then he started doing it and he just broke down in tears and had some kind of cataclysmic emotional experience. And as soon as I read that I was like, okay, that's interesting because you gotta tear
Down before you rebuild it, right? Well,
you know, let me take a look at the book again. You'll see the part where he says that that I'm the one who convinced him to go on his first Meditation, Retreat.
Okay. I think he called himself a jubu. Is that right? Jewish
hospital? Yeah, that mean that didn't originate with him. But that's many people noticed that some of the first American Buddhist or a disproportionate number of the first American Buddhists were Jewish and many many esteemed Buddhist teachers are Jewish.
I so so, anyway, Dan's a friend. And that's a fantastic book and it's a book. I actually recommend to people often before. I would even recommend my own book on the topic waking up, because for the very reasons you site, because Dan came to this so skeptically right? He did not, he, you know, he wasn't he wasn't, he wasn't a wild-eyed hippie or somebody who had taken psychedelics first and then and and therefore knew that it was possible to have fundamentally different.
It's of Consciousness. And so he kind of was dragged Kicking and Screaming to the practice. And so the book is great for people who are considered themselves hard-headed Skeptics who don't want any of the, the outward embarrassing affectations beads and all the stuff
moves and the vegetarian stuff
saffron. So it's a great book and Dan Dan's
great. So the was interesting is that for like a year after I recommended that book to everybody who is having a hard time on life was like read this book.
And make you feel better. But I like, I never actually did anything from the book. Like I just recommend it to other people. Yeah, what a few people actually said a change their
life, you know, Dan went on his first Retreat and that means a silent Meditation. Retreat is often the the necessary Crucible for people to have to be forced long enough and hard enough into the present moment so that they actually have something like a breakthrough and then they were then they recognize. Okay. This is what meditation
is kind of
It's clear. He was at this Retreat. There was a sensory deprivation aspect to it. Right? If he had distractions. He never would have got to that moment of self
discovery. Yeah, and that's all too common. And I would say, psychedelics, also, the other door here for people, where, if you've taken LSD or psilocybin or alternately MDMA, which is not technically a psychedelic, but can certainly open the mind to the positive end of the Continuum of
Of of experience. The one thing that's, that's true of psychedelics that isn't true of meditation. As you, you're guaranteed to have an effect. I mean, there's no one. The way you just spoke about meditation is not a way that any person in human history has ever spoken about 100 micrograms of LSD or you know, 3 grams of mushrooms, right? I mean, this is just, this is, you know,
Whatever. Your experience is possible to have heroin Lee negative experiences to, I mean, that's important to remind people of the bad trips are there as well, but the possibility of being bored, the possibility of not seeing the point possibility of in some says nothing happening. That's just, that's just not in the cards, right? So you're guaranteed to have something quite profound For Better or Worse happen to you at some point.
Writings on schedule in an hour or so if you take any of these drugs and so it's for that reason that they've historically in the last 75 years, or so been such a reliable Gateway, for people to discover the path of meditation because it's the thing that proved too hardheaded Skeptics that. Okay, wait a minute are you know, whatever, whatever I believe to be true about the human mind or
The possibilities of living a good life. I just was shown that Consciousness is not what it has always seemed to be a minute. The spectrum is, is quite wider.
The brain contains multitudes. It's a proof of
concept. Yeah, and and then, and then once then, there's not much thought, it needs to be added to that. To convince you that there is a path Beyond psychedelics because it's just, it's not psychedelics, don't do.
Anything to the brain that the brain is incapable of doing itself. I mean, that would they're mimicking neurotransmitters or they're changing the reuptake rate of neurotransmitters. And then there's, it's just it's all pharmacology in there. And then the question is, what if any of these changes can be governed by different kinds of practices that do not entail repeatedly taking psychedelics. I'm not I'm not especially critical of repeatedly taken.
It's just but it just is not.
It's not the same Endeavor, ultimately is as meditation because it's a bit. What one gives you the, the quite erroneous sense that freedom comes from stringing, lots of peak experiences together, right? That, it's a matter of getting high again and again and again. And that's really just, that's just not true. I mean, the thing to be discovered ultimately is that there's something intrinsic to the nature of even ordinary Consciousness. That is
In fact, free of self sand and therefore free of all the problems that come, you know, strung along on on this sense of self. And so if you keep just taking psychedelics, you can get the misleading sense that it requires the pyrotechnics of the Psychedelic experience to have that insight and it really doesn't. And so that's that's why meditation is ultimately a more important Discovery. I would say,
And now a message from one of our commercial Partners better help online therapy and a reminder that it's never a bad time to talk about taking care of yourself. I'm sure many of the people listening to this podcast, spend a lot of time, taking care of others. But how often do you neglect your own needs, especially when it comes to mental health, fear, anxiety, and depression, aren't things that anyone should have to go through alone and I speak from experience. When I say that, it helps to have a therapist to talk to when things get difficult for those.
Looking for a convenient option. Better help is online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist and you don't have to see anyone on camera. If you don't want to, it's much more affordable than in-person therapy. And you can be matched with the therapist in under 48 hours. Give it a try and see why more than two million. People have used better help online, therapy Colette podcast, listeners, get 10% off their first month. By going to better help.com / quill lat.
It's betterds3 Qi L p.com Q UI WL, e, TT e and now back to our quilt. Let podcast. How did you convince Ricky Gervais to do a podcast with you and not, not just a podcast is one that people pay money for.
Well. We were just headed it actually evolved in the way that it seems to have because that means we framed it as this.
Phone call, and it really started as a phone call,
the one I heard because I'm cheap. So I don't have to pay money to hear the intro one. You guys just started talking about. Hey, what do you prefer cats or dogs? Like? And that's literally how it started and then you got onto the trolley problem, Free Will. And all the stuff at the end,
whose idea do they and he called me to ask some questions of the sort that he asks on the podcast and we were like, you know, a half hour into maybe our second call.
All and I realized what why don't we just recording this, you know, and this is just the the why are we just doing this in private people? People are going to find this enjoyable. And so I just suggested that and so we just started recording precisely, the kinds of calls. We had at that point been having and the obviously once we knew we were going to release his a podcast. Well, then then it just became its own thing. But it is it really just started as a phone call. I'm
curious. Did it change when you said okay, we can do this for a podcast.
Get the sense. You kind of talk the same way. You could be like, ordering groceries. You probably talk the same way. But what did his manner of delivery change? Did he become more
performative? No, I mean that how he talks and he's got this incredible, infectious laugh. I think the only difference is there's certain things that we're going to say to one another in private that we know that one or the other of us will decide. We just don't want to air on a podcast, right? So there's like is in terms of topics. I think there's there's a kind of a so some selection going on.
On and often it's not even conscious. I mean, there's just things were just not raising when we know or this is going to be for broadcast and those things might come up in private. But in terms of the actual feel of the conversation, really nothing changes,
so you got into an extended conversation in the episode. I listened to about lying and about when it's okay to lie. I know you're very Auntie lying, like even for the most part white lying kind of car.
A few Exceptions there, like, when there's a power imbalance, or when it's for self-preservation, those seem to be the two big categories you
car, but just to be clear that I wouldn't say, generically not a, not a power imbalance in general, but just something that truly puts it on the Continuum of violence, right? I mean, if you're in some kind of self defense scenario where you're, you know, you it's like, okay. The person I'm dealing with now is an enemy of some kind and I have to figure out whether I'm going to punch them in.
the face or a lie.
Well, that's the end Frank exactly, right. Like that. The Nazis come to your door and say, hey is Anne Frank in your attic? But there was another example where someone says, hey is my kid ugly and let's say they have an ugly kid. You still say? No, because you're talking about children
can't really imagine someone asking that. It seems improbable. But I mean, just imagine the, imagine the circumstance in which they would ask that. Right? I mean, they're the background, facts are such that I think an
A real conversation.
Well, let's say a guy says, Hey, I want my kid to be a child model. I took him to an addition. All these other kids got the gig, but apparently, my
guess I would I would be, I would be, I would very likely be scrupulously honest in that situation and I would just say, listen, you're wasting your time. Your kid does not look like the kids. You see in the baby in the baby food commercial, right? And it's just not not what your kid looks like you. Have you just have to think about what you would want to know, if you were.
In this person's shoes. I
mean that was the principle that was the principal. You kept going
back. Yeah. I mean, do you want to waste your time pointlessly? Is that really what you do? You want friends who will think you're wasting your time pointlessly, but not tell you, right? I'm is that the other kind of friends you want?
Well, the one that hit home, the example is where you've got the guy who thinks he's an actor or a great writer and he's with banging away at it for a couple years, and he says here, read my novel, and I think you gave an example.
We're real life example where someone did that and it wasn't good and you were very honest with them. I actually know the somebody else in my life who isn't exactly. That's it's the same situation and in journalism, by the way, you're just you're in that situation all the time and I don't think I've ever been that brutally.
Honest. I should point out. I've been on the receiving end of that and it's been incredibly important. I mean, I had I was writing something, you know, when I had dropped out of school and was just kind of writing on my own.
Owned for years. I was writing something that and it's in that form was definitely unpublishable. Right? And I had just didn't know
that what was it. Now? I'm curious,
you know, would have been some nonfiction book on the philosophy of mind and you know, just reading lots of analytic philosophy and also studying meditation and reading about Neuroscience, although his before I before I went and got a PhD in Neuroscience, but this is I had
opt out of college between my what would have been my before would have been my junior year and was too, you know, started I started writing and was literally years into a project, which I was showing to a few friends and many friends gave me nothing but praise as feedback, but one friend who
Am I didn't know him all that. Well, and maybe might have been might have been easier for him to deliver the coup de gras, because he we weren't all that close, but and he was also an academic and it was academic philosopher and he said, listen, this is unpublishable. You're just not, this is not, I don't care how long you work on this project. You're not, you're like building a ladder to the Moon, right? You're just this is doomed. You need to go back to school and
Stop. Reinventing the wheel and given it Corners. You need to get put yourself in dialogue with other smart people because you're functioning like the fucking Unabomber right now, right? You're just urinate your, electrical isolation. And, and this is, you know, this is a complete failure, right? I mean, I mean, I'm not, this isn't verbatim. But this is that, this was the nature of the message. He gave me, and he was right, right. And none of my friends told me.
Me the truth. I mean, you know many of my friends did you know probably didn't warrant didn't have access to that truth. Right? I mean they weren't academics. They weren't philosophers. Maybe they were just impressed by what I had written and that's as far as it went. But you know, it really took someone to deliver the bad news to me to kind of shake me out of my self absorption and, and frustration, and I was somebody who at that point was was, you know, soon to be
Frustrated not being able to, you know, figure out how to make a satisfying connection to the world of publishing because there's no way I was going to publish that book. Right? And I absolutely had to go back to school the uncomfortable, truth, spoken at the right time, really having its intended impact for the good. You know, I've, I've been both the giver and receiver of that and it's so it's, yeah, that's not a situation. Where the white lie.
Is doing anyone, any favors, I mean, the only the favor it is accomplishing is the quite the quite selfish favor of you managing to avoid the awkwardness of saying what you really think to somebody when you know, it's going to be disappointed, right? I mean so you completely sidestep that by saying oh, wow, that was that's amazing, you know, congratulations. And then you move on to the next experience, but you really have to ask yourself. What kind of friend you're being one? Someone
Is asking for guidance and you're not giving it right, you're not telling them, the thing. You would actually want to know if you were in their shoes. Now, if you're not, that sort me, there are other. I should just say, is this as a footnote here, is that there are other people who are actually just not serious about, you know, you know, creatively getting good feedback. They really just want to be told that the thing they did was great and they don't, you know, they don't want to know what you really think. Well.
The truth is, you don't actually want to be talking to those people about their stuff. Right? Like you you in my view, you want to train those people not to ask you your opinion in the future. Right? Like, this is just not the, who are these, these these, that's a childish attitude to have toward any serious Endeavor. If you're asking for feedback, but you don't really want it, right? You're asking for the impression that you made, but you only want to hear good news.
Those people have to learn not to ask those questions, right? I mean because they're not actually in the game seriously and or their children, I mean, that that's the thing, you know, you, you, you're meeting adults who have not grown past the stage of childhood. And so then the question is, do you treat them like children or do you make it clear to them that you're not going to do that? And it's, you know, I've not,
Not found myself repeatedly in these these exchanges with people. I mean the people everyone in my life knows that if they're going to ask for my feedback. They're going to get honest feedback. And and then the, the positive feedback they get
Truly becomes meaningful, right? Like if you've told someone that you don't like something and then they you know, show you the next thing and you love it. Well, then they know you love it, right? And and and and they feel the difference between that experience and all of the other uncertainty. They've encountered elsewhere in their lives. When they're not really sure that they can take the praise. They're getting at face value, right? Because that's and they're not even there.
Really conscious of it, but they just there's just this sense that, you know, they're surrounded by people who are blowing smoke. And, you know, they're just, you know, they're it's not an honest engagement with the thing. They've actually attempted and so it's some everything gets better when you start being honest and and the the stuff that wasn't getting better, magically disappears. And then there's the only other situation you need to think about is, how do you deal with people who are not?
Actually grown ups, right? Likely, they're, they're actually children or they're grown-ups who are compromised, in some way. You know, they are getting Dementia or they're there. So in extremists, in their suffering, you know, they're suffering some kind of clinical depression say and they can't be, they have to be treated or youth or it seems plausible that they have to be treated with something like the paternalism or maternal ISM. You would extend toward a
Old right, like they're just they're not in their right mind in some sense and you need to be you need to walk on eggshells with them and if they're I mean, I think you got you have to judge that indicate on a case-by-case basis, but just be aware that. That's what you're doing there. Right? That's a special circumstance. That's not the ordinary adult relationship with a friend or stranger that, that is where you can default to honesty. So, there's a long, tirade, I just gave you on this, but it's
As far as the single decision a person can make in life. That clarifies almost everything else, and closes the door to the most egregious forms of unnecessary suffering in relationship and then one's career. And in business deciding, not to lie is, is just the master decision. I mean, it's just, it's the, it's really the, there's nothing, even practically nothing in.
Second place. I mean, you know, most of us are not, you know, running around killing people either, right? So if that's your problem, yeah, you can. You can you can stop killing and then you can stop line and those are the two big things on the list.
Will you talk about how some people are not adults their childlike or they're literally children, but, you know, I was listening to some of your podcast you said. Well, I never lie to my kids either. Yeah.
I lie to my kids all the time. What do you lie about? I mean, can you give me an example
by the way? Like they think my podcast is boring. They don't listen to it so I can speak freely.
You know, like if they suck at sports like tennis or something, they're just miserable as tennis players when it was a going concern. I thought, well, maybe they'll develop beforehand. I was like, oh, yeah, good. Do you want you almost hit that ball? Not bad, but in my mind, I'm like this is this is awful. I didn't know. Human being could
be so bad. That's what number that. No, but, you know, encouraging someone is not lying. I'm easygoing you say you almost hit that or you know, good shot or your
that's kind of lie. Also because it's like this sort of manufactured wordplay where I'm sticking to like, you know, sort of
Legalistic sense to just recitation of facts, but recited in upbeat tone, which becomes its own kind of
dishonesty. No idea. I just think you have the wrong folk there. I think of the wrong Focus. I just think what you want to encourage. There is the effort and be agnostic as to how far the effort is going to take them.
Who's really agnostic about that. I mean, everyone says this about effort
but will know that you can even put his but I would say that's not true. It's like your kid is bad at sports. You still want them to be physically healthy and as
A competent as they can be, right. So be like you've closed the in your mind. You've probably accurately close the door to any to sports being the. There are Central focus in life. Right? But this is really just practice in finding the right words and the right Focus because none for me none of that would be an impediment to to being honest. And and it's and in fact honesty would deliver the distinction.
Ian listen, you seem to be much better at this kind of sport then that kind of sport. Right? And and that's just, that's an honest view of their aptitude. It's like but
kids aren't dumb like so it's so happens. I said to my daughter, another daughter, you played a great game and Nets. It feels like you're much better playing goalie than in playing forward and she turned to me and said so what you're saying is I suck at being forward and I kind of was saying that, but she knew that like
Like it wasn't like, I was younger,
right? Yeah, so that's that's the thing that that's why lion comes at such a cost. Right? Because so much of the time the person is actually aware of the truth. Get it so much of the the challenge of telling the truth is finding out what the truth really is. And when, and how to appropriately articulated, in this case for a child. It's not synonymous with just externalizing. Every neurotic thought you have.
Have there's a deeper truth to articulate which is you want one. You want your kids to be happy, you want them to be as fit as they can be. You want them to have some positive experience of sports, what, you know, whatever that sport, whatever those sports are. You don't want them to be delusional, right? And you don't want them to be depressed. You want them to be able to experiment with all kinds of things and find what they like, find what they're good at and cetera. And
And your job is to help them do that. And so, then the question is, do you at any point have to lie to them, to equip them to do that. Right is and and I do not what I found is, the answer is no, but there is, there still is some room for, for tactfully, you know, not commenting on the thing. You saw. Right? Like me, not, not just bloviating everything that you're thinking at every at the moment, you're
Inking. It and letting some things get discovered by them, right, you know, as and also just taking the kind of lowering the stakes, right? Because this is not, you know, this is not Wimbledon, right? It's not the finals of Wimbledon. Is this, this is your, your, your kid just beginning to discover whether or not they have any interest in or aptitude for tennis, and then, then the truth is listen, you know, you've never done this before, right? You're going to be, you're going to be terrible in the beginning, right? This I get this is going to be frustrating. You're going to you.
Ball is not going to go over the net, right? Or it's going to go out of, he's going to go over the fence. Right? And you're going to get better. If you practice, you're going to get better, right? And then put that, and then just see what happens.
I'm having trouble. Picturing Sam Harris playing sports. Do you play
sports? Yeah. Well, I'm a don't currently measure, you know, I played soccer as a through high school. So it was my team sport. I was, I spent a lot of time in the martial arts both as a
Teenager. And then, you know, my midlife crisis, took the form of getting variant in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I am a bad golfer who golf's like once a year now, but technically do play golf.
So you did a really interesting podcast a couple of months ago and it was about disappointing. Your fans, you know, you didn't go into detail, but from what I could tell there were people bugging you this at. Hey, why don't you do something about the case against vaccines, or why don't you do?
Maybe that's more sympathetic to the January 6, capital occupiers. And you gave I thought a very thoughtful discussion of well, look, you know, this isn't open mic night and if people are spouting pseudoscience about vaccines, it's not not going to engage in the debate with them. But I also was like, why are you doing this podcast at all? Why is it necessary to explain this? Hmm to people why I'm not talking about X y&z.
Yeah. Well, because I was
In an uncomfortable spot, because we were you really, with you. One of my master values as a podcaster and as, as a writer and as someone who's engaging consequential ideas in public, is that conversation is the basis of all progress, right? Like, it really is about just continuing the conversation long enough so that we can Converge on shared truths.
Right, whether these are ethical truths or scientific ones or contemplative ones. I mean, anything can be talked about anything as a matter of ultimately forcing them some kind of Interest objective consensus based on shared principles of rationality. And, you know, a sane neurologically intact engagement with our five senses. And and the heuristic here is. Yeah, everything can be talked about and everything is worth giving a fair hearing.
You know, time permitted, if the truth is on your side, you're in fact, not vulnerable to untruths or half-truths. No matter how, you know, seemingly pernicious. You can just keep talking and keep investigating and key. And, you know, in the limit, the truth will win, you know, and if you rub bad ideas up against good ideas, eventually the bad ideas will will crumble and and only the good ideas will remain.
And I do think that's generally true, except there are situations where you just, you have to triage your time and attention. I mean obviously, but you all of life is that situation in some sense. But a global pandemic, you know is a is a special version of that situation and a level of political hyper-partisanship that is threatening to shatter.
Society is a is a special case of that situation. Whereas he had. No, I don't need to talk to Alex Jones about anything now because there's just there's giving him any airtime. Is is a net - I mean, it's just it's spreading toxic waste, informationally, just to then, give yourself the task of cleaning it up. Right? And it's just not it's not worth it. Right? So that so but I it is
It was intention, my unwillingness to entertain certain ideas on my podcast was intention with, with my stated principle of listen, you know, I can talk about anything here and it's going to be fine. And so, and I just had to acknowledge that, because I had gotten so much so many requests. And, and criticisms are all, you know, on this front is just like, you know, why not have bread Weinstein on the podcast, it debate, all of his wing notary around.
The vaccines, it's a waste of time and probably worse, right? It's a waste of time. That is that is liable to confuse a significant percentage of the audience.
So the Brett Weinstein thing is, particularly painful. Because I respected him. I thought he was very brave, the whole Evergreen State University thing, you know, he has an importance in all this which kind of transcends his his stature. I would say in the mainstream.
I'm world of ideas. Like if I went on the street and ask people who Brett Weinstein has, most people wouldn't know. But I guess in the world of podcasting, in the world of punditry whatnot. He looms large because he's this example of a guy who wasn't just in good standing with Centrist classical liberals. I put you in that category, Aquila in that category and then he just went into some sort of lala land and started spouting pseudoscience about vaccines. And it became really awkward because other people whom I respect, ya listeners, right?
Is that such an inventory of respect and sympathy for him that that carried over into a desire to like will at least have them on your show at least let him make his case. Put someone like you or even me in the awkward position of saying. Actually I'm not going to do that because his case is BS, that's a painful thing to do. And by the way, you know, II know you're talk a lot about honesty, the way you talk about Joe Rogan, you did a segment on him, personal commitments. Make a
on the way we talk about people and we're not truth-telling machines. When we talk about other human beings, people who we know, and formally have dealt with this, must be a kind of painful area for you, because I know that telling the truth and being very objective is very important, but everyone has personal
commitments. It's definitely confusing. Ethically. I'm and it's not something that I have a worked out position on. I don't actually know what should swing the balance here. Whether it's being exhaustive.
The honest in detailing ones, concerns about what a person is doing or having some personal loyalty to that, that person who is a friend or colleague. But I'm as you say, it does matter. It having met somebody and having like them and haven't had good times with them. And even you know, in the in certain cases having actually become their friend that does change how you
Engaged that, that person publicly for better and worse, right? I mean, it's I think it's a problem with journalists to get too socially connected to the people in the fields that they cover, right? And we have you journalists in Tech who become social with, you know, Tech CEOs. And then it becomes very difficult to honestly report on what they're up to. I actually don't know how to navigate it, you know in any kind of first principles way. It's you just sort of have to take each case as I
come from a purely.
Consequentialist life-saving point of view, the most ethical thing to do is call bullshit on someone. Even if it's your friend and say this person is spreading misinformation about vaccines and covid to the extent. This person's influential people are going to die. I don't care that he and I had a good time together. Five years ago. Like, this has
got to stop. There are even cases have been someone's timeline. You know, this is someone who dies of covid, they're pushing Brett's podcast on the topic, you know, is one of their last acts on Earth.
We don't know for
Certain that that was the thing that made them into an anti-vaxxer, right? Or we don't even know that vaccine would have saved that
person. No, but when he when he run that experiment in with millions of people your you can be pretty sure. Pretty sure that statistically and I mean the numbers are going to go one way. No, I mean again, I don't know what the ground truth is here. Ethically because on the one hand you can say you can say yeah, you should use the standard. You would use for a stranger here and just, you know, take
Is people's heads off publicly, when you see them spreading misinformation on about vaccines, say and what's happening is you're contaminated by your friendship or by your positive meetings with these people. And that's a kind of ethical failing, but you can also flip it and say, the attitude, you take toward a stranger represents a kind of moral confusion. I mean, like you're actually failing to have the appropriate compassion.
And insight into their circumstance that you would have if they were a friend of yours, you're giving vent to your most gratuitous most, you know, highly charged and divisive criticism of them. And you're part of the problem, you're part of what has made social media. So dysfunctional, right? The lack of empathy, the lack of you're capable of saying stuff about people in ways that they're guaranteed to see. And then
To that you'd never say to their face, even forget about
friendship.
And now a message from another podcast that I think you're going to like. It's called The Lost debate and unlike the quilt podcast, which is mostly just me. This one's got three hosts and they feature a lot of viewpoint diversity. You've got former Obama staffer Ravi Gupta, Cory Bradford, a former political organizer who worked in the Deep South and also became a tick tock, star and Ricky's slot, a gen Z, New York, Post columnist, and Free Speech libertarian. Now, the whole idea of the Lost debate is that it's a non-profit entity.
Prize to get people out of their mainstream, media Echo Chambers without diving into alt media, conspiracy theories twice a week. They cover the latest news and Trends and even though it's a debate. It isn't vicious Cutthroat left versus Right Stuff. These are constructive discussions between real people. And again, those real people are rather Gupta. There are three places in the world that do this kind of research, This gain-of-function research. And one of them is in Wuhan Corey Bradford black and brown communities. They want police reform. They definitely want better.
ER treatment from police but they don't want to eliminate police or defund them and Ricky
schlock as a Libertarian. I think bodily autonomy is a principle. That's really important to me.
Join the conversation today by searching the loss debate on YouTube or any podcast platform and now back to our own corlett podcast.
Rogan made it easy for you because he was humble about it because he apologized and I thought you did a very I thought you a very good was a monologue episode. I didn't have a guest, whereas, Bret Weinstein keeps doubling down.
Yeah, but so, but I mean, Brett, you know, I've hit bread really hard on my podcast, Brett, can't be happy with what I've said about him and his whole project on my podcast and on other people's podcasts. And I just I just have not made any secret of how I view.
What he's been up to?
My coping strategy was just not to really mention his name which is which is a
cop-out. I mean I've done, you know, I've also not mentioned his name and I've not mentioned Joe's name, you know, all the while talking about them in the same sentence as I'm talking about many other people who are been sort of on their side of this public conversation. Again, I don't I don't know which way
Tobias it here because the fact that it matters that, you know, someone personally that can be viewed as a good thing. I mean it is the very essence of a humanizing thing, right? In the fact that you don't know somebody else and you can despise them, you know, based on what in the end is they may just be your your internal imagery of who they are as a person. You can't really be sure that you're even responding.
To the person in the world. They maybe you're just maybe you know, it's it is a kind of hallucination that just has a few touch points with their their Twitter feed or the one interview. You read or the one it's just but then you see this play out online. Well clearly we have way too much of that is analogous to. You know, most people have experienced as road rage, right? Me road, rage is such an unnatural thing. It's like, it's Anna. People who would be terrified to ever get
Get in a fight ever, right? We are essentially a, you know, disposed antagonized, somebody sight unseen. I mean, you can't, you can't even see who is in the Box in front of you and yet you're honking your horn and you're flipping them off and, you know, your one stop light away from discovering that there's, you know, a 250-pound mixed martial artist coming out of the car in front of you. Ready to pull your head, off your shoulders.
And yet you you for whatever reason, it just the circumstance was such that that the fact that you were alone in your steel box. You felt like you could just sound off at this person. Not knowing what you are going to get. It's just, it's completely delusional, right? And there's something like that happening to us on social media. And yeah, I mean, just to hear you describe it. I mean, it does seem to me that, I mean, this is at least one vote in favor of
More restraint, more of the humanizing principle more of the deference to having you know, what it would be like to have a social connection to this person. Even if you don't have one and to be guided more and more by that, it seems to me to be as likely the right answer as being more. Unfiltered in one's quote, honesty. With a are just basically treating everyone like a stranger and just all ideas on their
Even people who don't listen to your podcast, I think just in the last. Oh God. Our, I guess have a state has established that you're a fairly thoughtful and Humane person. Can we talk about how crazy it was that I guess was a few years ago? The Southern Poverty Law Center. I think they identified you as somebody who whose ideology channels people. Yeah. All right. They said you were like, like a gateway drug to evil right-wing people. What
the hell? Yeah. Well, I've been
Were some, I'm sure there's some things that I haven't seen that they might have done, but, and they certainly put several of my friends on lists. I mean, they put Ayaan hirsi Ali on a list of anti-muslim bigots, write a minutes and saying, is that as or maajid Nawaz, who was on that same list, I think. But I think, I think I was on their hatewatch page by virtue of one of the articles that Ezra Klein wrote in, in Vox about my podcast with Charles.
Right. That's, that's how that played out. So, yeah, so, you know, as recline essentially calling me a racist pseudo-scientists, even though he claimed, he wasn't calling me a racist pseudo-scientists. That is in fact what he was communicating that got the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center. And so they kind of summarized it on their hatewatch page.
I want to talk to you a little bit. Before we go about your treatment of Islam, my own perspective on Islam. I'd say has changed in the last decade.
Paid because here in Canada, especially now that the war on terror. We don't talk about it as much. And instead, what you're looking at is a more of a culture war that has led in its radicalized Progressive factions primarily by privileged white people who either have a Christian background or no religious background whatsoever here in Canada. Some of the people who were the staunchest Defenders of things, like free speech there steadfastly against mob culture. A lot of them are immigrants from
Muslim countries and many of them are still practicing and even devout Muslims, which is caused me to sort of reassess. A lot of My Views about Islam. It's it's made me appreciate how some of the authoritarian cultural elements that immigrants to Western societies have fled in many cases, have informed in a very welcome way there. Their appreciation for a lot of the Liberties that maybe native-born Canadians and Americans, they're happy to ignore that or they just they take it for granted.
That'd have your views changed it all in regard to Islam's place in Western
societies. Well, I think what you're talking about. There is more, the generic experience of immigrants. Right? I mean, you know, Islam aside
yes, and no, because such a high percentage of the authoritarian countries in the world. Unfortunately, do happen to be Islamic countries, right? So, I mean, I guess I could say the same about people. I know who came from former communist regimes. Yeah, and he's in Eastern Europe for
instance. Yeah, but I mean there,
You're, you have a selection problem. Right? I mean, these people are the very essence of self selecting. These are people who are leaving those cultures and countries for a reason and because they don't want to live, you know, under a theocracy in the case of Islam or they don't want to live under, you know, authoritarian communist regimes. And so we're getting people who really are valuing. We Western liberalism.
It's the very reason why they came in addition, in many cases to just seeking Economic Opportunity. What I'm talking about Islam, I'm not talking about people as much time talking about the ideas. People can find more or less compelling. And so if you're going to, if you're going to point to a group of Muslims who are mostly Muslim in name, only the most secular version of of Islam on offer. Well then, okay that that's not a counterexample to anything. I
Leave about Islam. Because what, when I, when I'm talking about Islam, I'm talking about what's actually in the contents of the Quran. Right? I mean, it will. And when the biography of Muhammad and the Hadith and the literature to which people will default, when they really have to get down to what the doctrine is, right. And there I may, I just make the point that and say it's a taboo one. Even among atheists that all of our religions are different, right? They're not equally in
An error, they're not equally confused about 21st century science or 21st century moral Norms or political Norms. They're not equally antithetical to modernity and me some of them, you know, give each other a run for the money, right? I mean, it's not, it's not like Islam is categorically worse than Christianity on every Point. Although I would argue that in most countries and most communities even
The West is at a different moment in its history, which is to say that when we're meeting Muslims in many contexts. Where were often meeting Christians from a, from a former Century, the presence of a smartphone in their hands. Notwithstanding any comparison of quote fundamentalist Islam with fundamentalist. Christianity is usually confused in terms of, you know, what, that commits the their adherence to. Um, you take a
On like the Islamic State otherwise known as Isis and you ask yourself. Well how surprising is it that that that thing happened? Right? And may yet happen again? I mean it's to some degree. It's still happening was just so you know, our attention has wandered from it. But you know, it's not like the Islamic state has is completely gone. How surprising is it that that happened under the banner of Islam? And I would say that, if you actually consult the texts, it's not surprising at all.
Item in an interest. In fact, you would expect it to happen. You'd expect it to happen, just like that and I expect it to happen again, right? But if you would ask the question, well, how surprising would that be? If the all those all those people, you know, behaving in precisely. Those ways claim to be Jane or Tibetan Buddhists, right? It would be astonishing ready. We just would not eat it doesn't it wouldn't even compute. I mean there's there's
There's literally no reading of Jainism. They could get you the Islamic State, right? So, it's just these differences matter. And, yeah, I mean, I'm just like everyone else. My attention has wandered from the problem of his of Islamic theocracy because it's just not currently Salient, right? I mean, the Islamic state has been largely bombed into submission, but the moment we start having major acts of Islamic terrorism in the
Peoples of Europe again or in the US, it's going to, you know, if it's going to be very easy to understand the logic of it will know exactly why people are doing what they're doing. What they're doing, will will know what their real beliefs are will know that they really do think they're going to get into Paradise will know what the holy book. Say about all that will know why the communities around these people. Find it very difficult to talk honestly about the phenomenon because
They're all so enamored of the same. Holy books, you know, is a problem. We are not going to outgrow until we outgrow our slavish, respect for these books.
Just to be fair, as we're having this conversation war is Raging in Ukraine. And last time I checked, I think the Orthodox Church in Russia gave its blessing to Vladimir Putin's campaign and Ukraine.
So, of course, maybe that's my point. It's just, it's just not. It's at a different moment in its history could easily. I mean, there are places where Christianity is every bit as
Easy. As it was in Europe in the 14th century. I mean, if you go to sub-Saharan Africa and talk to the Christians right there, you can meet Christians who are hunting witches, you know, and I mean, literally hunting witches.
Well, the Lord's resistance Army, Uganda was some kind of weird off.
So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was amazing.
I'm gonna ask you one more question that I'm going to let you go because I've had you for a long time, completely different gear. You have written that based on your understanding of Neuroscience.
A science Free Will is something of a farce. And in fact, we are our brains are basically biomechanical, puppets. You still believe
that? Yeah. I'm AI. What I believe about Free Will is what most dispassionate, scientists. And philosophers believe about it in there. They're more Lucid
moment. Believe it too, but I don't, I don't want to believe it which is why I don't like talking about it. So it's kind of depressing that you talk about it because it's, it's nice to believe that we have free.
Well, it would know, but I mean what I
What I, additionally, believe, and I believe one extra thing. The common belief is that we experience free. Will we? In some sense know we have it as a matter of experience but it's impossible to make this experience square with what we understand to be true about the nature of physical causality or I mean, it's just there's no there's just no account of physics or biochemistry or or genetics or anything else. There's no cut at what we are is
Logical information processing systems that make sense of this. This internal experience. We have of being the true Upstream, authors of our thoughts and intentions and subsequent actions. You didn't make yourself. You didn't pick your parents. You didn't make your jeans. You didn't put, you didn't create the brain that in his present. State is going to be the proximate cause of everything. You think and do you had you just didn't do any of that, right?
Didn't you didn't create the environment that they did so much of that in concert with your genetics, right? You didn't you didn't pick the the you know, you didn't pick your the language. You learned first. You did it. Just nothing. You weren't control of. Absolutely nothing. And yet everything that happened to you and the neural stub neural substrate upon which it happened, determines the next thing you do, right? So either many philosophers and scientists who try
Not to absorb the implications of that. And they call themselves compatible lists. I've debated my friend Dan Dennett and, you know, people on that topic. But I'm a, I do view that as all an elaborate Dodge of the plain fact that that in you, which is witnessing. Your experience, is not the source of all of the unconscious events that are
Saying every aspect of your experience, including your voluntary behaviors and your most deliberate choices. The one thing I add to this picture, which is novel, is that I don't think we have an experience of Free Will in the first place. There's actually nothing to be mystified about. There's nothing to be surprised about in this account because, you know, on my account, your experience of the present moment is totally compatible.
With free will be in an illusion. In fact, it's I mean, my line for my book free will is that the illusion of Free Will is an illusion and there is no illusion of free will. It's not like there's it's not like there's a powerful experience of Free Will and it turns out not to be the not to be so there. If you actually pay close attention and this is, you know, once again where meditation can come in handy, it can actually cause you to have a a an experience that that is in closer.
Her with what you have, every reason to believe is true scientifically of your brain. If you pay close attention, you'll see that. You have no idea what you're going to think, next. Right? The thought itself, simply arises. You have no idea what you're going to intend to do. Next. You have no idea the next time you intend to do something, but then you decide on second thought, I'm not going to do that, right? You have no idea when that veto is going to emerge. Next, you know, if I asked you to
Think of a famous person. There's just going to be a few names and faces percolating on the margins of Consciousness and then one will promote itself to the one to be the one you actually think about. But at no point, did you pick any of those famous people, right? You couldn't have thought about the ones you don't know, right? I mean, that's, you're not free to, you're not free to think about people whose names and faces. You don't know. And of all the, you know, of the Thousand, you do know, you can't account for why you didn't.
Of Sylvester. Stallone write mu /, you perfectly know who's Sylvester, Stallone is you quote, could have thought of him, but in fact, given the state, your brain was in, you couldn't have thought of him. I'm you couldn't, you could no more have thought of him. Then you could have suddenly started speaking in Chinese. If you don't speak Chinese rhyme, it's like there's it was simply not in the cards. Neurologically speaking. Where is the freedom in that? The
The experience of being a mind, the experience of thinking and intending, and therefore, doing the experience of Desiring things. You didn't pick your desires. And if you change your desires, you didn't pick that moment. Where you suddenly thought differently about them and began to, you know, work against them, right? You didn't. If you're going to make an effort, you didn't pick the fact that you could only make effort to that degree and in that way.
And then and that kind in precisely that way. And that moment, how do you explain the fact that you didn't make 10% more of an effort? How do you explain the fact that you made twice as much effort than you did yesterday? None of this is a circumstance of Freedom. Absolutely. None of it. And as a matter of experience, this is true. And yet, once you have this experience, you experience total freedom from this being a problem.
There's nothing depressing about this. There's no in fact, it is the experience you want that. You don't want the control. You think you want you? What you want is the palpable mystery of being in each moment. You want to, you want an experience of something that is sacred and awe-inspiring and profound, right? And you want to be what's more you want to be able to locate that in the ordinary, right? In the, in just the
Ready to move your hand, right? So like how do you move your hand? You have no idea. We just you move, your move, your hand. It is a complete fucking mystery. It's as mysterious as anything you will ever experience on any drug ever
almost like it. Inspires a belief in the spark of the Divine and the human soul
with. But, but the, yeah, but the, that spark can being can be directly experienced.
In every moment of Consciousness, it does, it just to call it Divine is to add a layer of of kind of propositions and metaphysics. On top of it, that is just, you know, intellectually unwarranted, and just unnecessary. It doesn't, it doesn't. Actually, it does. It certainly doesn't improve the experience where I mean, there's the experience of all and wonder and the brightness of Consciousness, right?
And the groundlessness of it, right? And this is, this is this is what awaits a mind that can feel Beyond this, the cramp of self, right? The cramp of egocentricity, the cramp of I, and this is the basis for the contemplative life and mysticism and spirituality and ultimately religion, right? And it's like, the people who fall into this. Well, come out talking about, you know, often talking within the constraints of their pre-scientific.
Worldview, if you could you go back, you know, a few centuries, you you give you have people who have no notion of even the possibility of running, a scientific experiment or anything else that gives us the kind of intellectual content we have now with, with a rational worldview, but even in the modern context, people have this experience often look for traditional religious language in order to give voice to it, but it doesn't need religious language it.
And it need. This is where this is where I part company company with somebody, like, Deepak Chopra, or, or even Jordan Peterson, right? It's like this is, this is where I we don't get to be religious provincial lists, even when we're on acid or even when we've had a breakthrough in meditation or had a some some some Epiphany forced on us and we we recognize that we're not separate from the cosmos, right?
Experience of non separation.
Is yes, it's every bit as important as religious. People have always said it is but it doesn't demonstrate the truth of any religious dogmatism. Right? It doesn't, it doesn't, you know, if you're a Christian and you have this experience of boundless awareness and you know, he'll even had unconditional love on top of that, right? So it's you have this, this absolute. You're just bowled over by your love for all sentient beings.
And you feel better than you've ever felt in life and you feel so much better. That you don't even feel yourself in the middle of it. Right? If you can, if you have that experience in you're a Christian you're going to tend to interpret it as data in favor of your Christianity. That is a move that is actually not open to you. Write it that is complete bullshit and you we know it because Hindus have the same experiences and Muslims have the same experiences and atheists like me have the same.
Mrs. So we know if we know anything, we know that that the only accurate description of the logic of this kind of experience, and the only way to fit it into a modern world view is to is to forget our religious sectarianism, right? It just get it. We have to find a language that references just Universal truths about the nature of the human mind, right? And weak. And and so to be Hostage, to any one of these.
Traditions is to be an ignoramus, right? And divisive lie. So right, you don't get to say that this most important experience in your life. The thing that, you know, without which you would find your life to be meaning meaningless. You don't get to say that that is Christian or Jewish or Muslim, because it isn't, it manifestly isn't right. And, you know, centuries ago, people could be
Forgiven for being, for not seeing the the bankruptcy of their provincialism and sectarianism. But but in the year 2022, we really can't be. You know, that's where I'm on a different page than many people who would value these same experiences because you know, many people want to move from these experiences and say, okay, it's well, it's all true. Right? All these religions are true. They're all kind of separate paths up the same Mountain. We know, that's not true, because so much of what's in these religions.
I have nothing to do with this project and are are profoundly distracting, right. There's nothing about this. That requires that, you hate homosexuals. Right? And if any and in fact, if you're going to spend a lot of your time hating homosexuals, your you are powerfully distracted by something. That is no good for you or anyone else, right? That's the problem. It's like we have the baby in the bath. Water really has to be saved. But but it really has to be lifted out of that bath water and and very few people are
Are up for that project may vary. Most people, the moment. They get a taste of something spiritual. They want to link it to the so-called truths that they heard. It Mother's knee, you know, in one or another religious tradition. And yeah, I just I'm not at all hopeful that our our world can survive another Century of moral balkanization. I don't see how it ends. Well, if we if our core identities.
Are some subset of humanity in the end tribalism, in general, seems increasingly dysfunctional, but tribalism that takes, as its object things that you even transcend this life, right? The tribalism that gives you some rationale by which you would, you know, celebrate your own death, you know, martyr yourself, or celebrate the death of your children. Even that's, that is the most dysfunctional and dangerous piece of software human beings ever have running.
In on their brains and most people are running it in some form or at least running enough of it. So as to not be able to find a place to stand with which to really criticize the beliefs of people who are running it in Earnest and yeah, I'm at. So I just think we have to be uncompromising on that front intellectually.
So this podcast is almost over. The only thing left is for me to say goodbye to Sam Harris, but that doesn't mean you can't keep listening to Colette podcasts because there's a nuke will let podcast brand called 27 Rouge hosted by my younger australian-based quote. Let colleague Scott Newman. I realized that's an artsy name for a podcast. It sounds more like the name of the Montreal hipster bar. But when you check out his first podcast, he will explain what the name means. Trigger alert. It's a little
Morbid, but an interesting concept, you can find 27 Rouge that sorrow uge, wherever you download your podcasts. And Scott's first guest is a good one, Rolling Stone editor and useful idiots, podcaster. Matt, Taibbi. That's 27 Rouge with Scott Newman. And now back to What's Left of the Cole at podcast?
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist philosopher, New York Times bestselling author, host of The Making Sense, pod cast and creator of the waking up app, which I briefly had on my
phone. Five minutes. All five minutes of it. Yeah.
Thank you so much for being on the
podcast. Sure. Pleasure. Jonathan. If you would like to support quality, please consider becoming a patron head to our patreon page. That's patreon.com forward slash Colette. If you haven't already, follow us on social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram.
Do you like what you're hearing? Perhaps, you would like to read more about the issues in today's discussion head to Colette.com where you'll
find more content.
