1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:25,000 Hey everybody, KMO here with another episode of the KMO Show. 2 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:31,520 This is episode number 18, prepared for release on Wednesday, July 5th, 2023. 3 00:00:31,520 --> 00:00:36,280 To my fellow USAnians, happy Independence Day, plus one. 4 00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:42,240 Alright, well this episode is going to be about some of my favorite topics. 5 00:00:42,240 --> 00:00:48,000 They include science, rationality, and epistemology. 6 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:49,000 Boring. 7 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:54,720 Okay, no, we're going to talk about conspiracy theories, faked moon landings, and the nasty 8 00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:58,920 machinations of powerful people and their attempts to inject microchips into your blood 9 00:00:58,920 --> 00:01:00,800 via the COVID vaccines. 10 00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:02,800 How's that? 11 00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:07,760 No, no, I'm afraid this episode is going to be a bummer for everybody. 12 00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:11,200 You really ought to just skip it. 13 00:01:11,200 --> 00:01:13,800 But if you're still here, here we go. 14 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:20,240 I got a letter from a long-time listener, and when I say long-time, I mean long-time. 15 00:01:20,240 --> 00:01:24,640 And I'm going to call him Tom, although that's not his real name, and as I read his email, 16 00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:29,960 I think you'll understand why I'm not using Tom's actual given name. 17 00:01:29,960 --> 00:01:35,920 Tom writes, Hey KMO, your recent episode on why you don't care about the COVID vaccine 18 00:01:35,920 --> 00:01:38,760 fight was really pertinent to me. 19 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:45,240 I really struggled in the pandemic because I really worry about science denialism. 20 00:01:45,240 --> 00:01:49,240 And people spreading clear lies really gets my goat. 21 00:01:49,240 --> 00:01:55,280 At the start of the pandemic, I started commenting on people's posts about 5G causing COVID, 22 00:01:55,280 --> 00:02:00,400 etc., just questioning their sources, pointing out fallacies and lies in their arguments, 23 00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:03,440 and offering rational explanations to counter them. 24 00:02:03,440 --> 00:02:08,600 I got so much abuse and ridicule, and of course the Facebook algorithm kept feeding me stuff 25 00:02:08,600 --> 00:02:11,740 to arouse my ire and engagement. 26 00:02:11,740 --> 00:02:16,760 After some months of this, I started getting pushback from my wife and another close friend. 27 00:02:16,760 --> 00:02:21,280 I really couldn't believe the ridicule I suffered at home. 28 00:02:21,280 --> 00:02:25,240 It was a really hard time and almost ended our marriage. 29 00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:29,500 I got so depressed that I couldn't have a rational conversation with my wife. 30 00:02:29,500 --> 00:02:33,880 She would push her anti-vaccine and COVID denialist propaganda on me. 31 00:02:33,880 --> 00:02:37,920 I would respond, showing where there were fallacies and obvious lies. 32 00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:43,400 For example, misinterpreting statistical data and not understanding the base rate fallacy. 33 00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:48,280 She would respond by laughing at me and calling me government-controlled. 34 00:02:48,280 --> 00:02:52,520 Eventually, I just shut down and hoped it would pass. 35 00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:57,440 I'm still recovering from those emotional scars, but we are still together. 36 00:02:57,440 --> 00:02:59,880 We just don't talk about COVID and vaccines. 37 00:02:59,880 --> 00:03:04,320 I'm still recovering from those emotional scars, but we are still together. 38 00:03:04,320 --> 00:03:08,120 We just don't talk about COVID and vaccines. 39 00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:12,680 Now she's talking about faked moon landings, and I wonder how much more bullshit I have 40 00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:15,380 to tolerate in the future. 41 00:03:15,380 --> 00:03:18,720 How do you feel about the issue of science denialism? 42 00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:24,720 Do you think there are things which can be said to be true, either unequivocally or practically? 43 00:03:24,720 --> 00:03:30,160 In the case of COVID vaccines, I know several unvaccinated people who died of COVID and 44 00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:33,520 others who suffered way more than they needed to. 45 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:35,400 It really breaks my heart. 46 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:39,960 Flat earthers and moon landing deniers are relatively harmless, but the attitude of denying 47 00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:43,400 rationality has so much potential to harm. 48 00:03:43,400 --> 00:03:49,880 I really, really worry about gullible people being manipulated by their so-called alternative 49 00:03:49,880 --> 00:03:55,840 media and believing all kinds of stuff which can be easily disproved with a rational mindset. 50 00:03:55,840 --> 00:04:00,280 I really worry about this spread of distrust in rationality. 51 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:05,400 This issue doesn't have to pertain directly to COVID vaccines, and I hope it's something 52 00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:08,200 you might explore in a future podcast. 53 00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:10,280 Thanks, Tom. 54 00:04:10,280 --> 00:04:13,080 Alright, Tom. 55 00:04:13,080 --> 00:04:22,800 Well, as Static Warpshell found out last week, if you write to me looking to recruit me onto 56 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:27,920 your intellectual team in some cultural struggle, you'll be disappointed. 57 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:29,800 I'm a poor ally in that respect. 58 00:04:29,800 --> 00:04:34,440 I'm looking for holes in everybody's story. 59 00:04:34,440 --> 00:04:38,660 And at the same time, knowing that I'll find them, I don't get really bent out of shape 60 00:04:38,660 --> 00:04:43,740 about it, and I certainly, you know, I don't withhold my cooperation because I've found 61 00:04:43,740 --> 00:04:49,920 some difference of opinion or some difference of factual belief with another person. 62 00:04:49,920 --> 00:04:56,780 The world is full of predatory meme complexes which are adapted by evolution to grab our 63 00:04:56,780 --> 00:05:00,880 attention and work their way into our belief structures. 64 00:05:00,880 --> 00:05:04,000 I'm not immune, you're not immune, nobody's immune. 65 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:08,540 But we see it more easily when it's taking place in somebody else than we do when it 66 00:05:08,540 --> 00:05:10,280 happens in ourselves. 67 00:05:10,280 --> 00:05:15,480 So, we tend to default to the notion that we've got it worked out, we understand what's 68 00:05:15,480 --> 00:05:18,200 happening, and everybody else is an idiot. 69 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:19,560 They're not. 70 00:05:19,560 --> 00:05:20,880 They're smart. 71 00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:26,400 What's more, in my experience, the people who are attracted to conspiracy theories like 72 00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:30,720 the faked moon landing or the flat earth, they tend to be smarter than most people. 73 00:05:30,720 --> 00:05:34,740 They tend to be smarter than average. 74 00:05:34,740 --> 00:05:41,000 They have to be, because they're defending a worldview which is demonstrably false, but 75 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:46,140 it serves a psychological need for them, or an emotional need, or a cultural need, a need 76 00:05:46,140 --> 00:05:49,000 to belong to a particular community. 77 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:59,120 And so, they have to marshal the ornate defenses, the ornate, the complicated stories that defend 78 00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:03,640 the belief system against attempts at casual refutation. 79 00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:09,040 But the thing that I want to say to you, and this is going to be the biggest bummer, is 80 00:06:09,040 --> 00:06:13,120 I really despise the term science denialism. 81 00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:14,480 Hate it. 82 00:06:14,480 --> 00:06:15,920 Hate it. 83 00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:21,400 I never use it except to decry it and denounce it, and I would suggest that you write it 84 00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:25,440 on a piece of paper, seal it up in an envelope, and throw it on the fire. 85 00:06:25,440 --> 00:06:34,040 That is a gross, ugly phrase which references some very ugly social dynamics. 86 00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:40,340 First of all, science denialism as a term is a descendant of climate denialism, which 87 00:06:40,340 --> 00:06:46,560 itself is a conscious, deliberate descendant of Holocaust denialism. 88 00:06:46,560 --> 00:06:52,720 It is an attempt to paint the people who don't share your beliefs as moral monsters by linking 89 00:06:52,720 --> 00:06:56,000 them conceptually with the Nazis. 90 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:57,000 Don't do that shit. 91 00:06:57,000 --> 00:06:59,140 That is some ugly, ugly shit. 92 00:06:59,140 --> 00:07:00,800 Don't do it. 93 00:07:00,800 --> 00:07:11,560 Secondly, I am as concerned and as dismayed by scientism as I am by people who fail to 94 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:14,000 genuflect to scientists. 95 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:19,440 And when you say science denialism, I would say what you're actually seeing is a rejection 96 00:07:19,440 --> 00:07:24,040 of the pronouncements and the authority of technocrats. 97 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:32,080 Very, very few people have any interaction with actual science, and because science is 98 00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:38,880 so highly specialized and so diverse in its fields, almost nobody is conversant in all 99 00:07:38,880 --> 00:07:39,880 of science. 100 00:07:39,880 --> 00:07:44,280 I'd say it's a conceptual impossibility for one person to be an expert in every field 101 00:07:44,280 --> 00:07:46,280 of science these days. 102 00:07:46,280 --> 00:07:51,920 And so people tend to behave the way they need to in their own professional field, which 103 00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:57,240 is to say, you know, with obvious exceptions that make the news, obeying the rules and 104 00:07:57,240 --> 00:08:03,720 the procedures for maintaining, you know, epistemic hygiene in their field. 105 00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:06,800 But I'm in the United States. 106 00:08:06,800 --> 00:08:07,800 Tom is not. 107 00:08:07,800 --> 00:08:11,760 Tom lives in an English-speaking country where they have pictures of monarchs on the money. 108 00:08:11,760 --> 00:08:14,520 I'm not talking about butterflies. 109 00:08:14,520 --> 00:08:24,080 So my perspective on so-called science denialism and scientism around the COVID epidemic is 110 00:08:24,080 --> 00:08:26,420 an American perspective. 111 00:08:26,420 --> 00:08:37,840 So I'm mostly looking at people who are establishment-friendly Democrats and vaguely political people, people 112 00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:42,680 that you might describe as alt-right, although I think that terminology has picked up some 113 00:08:42,680 --> 00:08:45,240 unhelpful baggage, which I'm not meaning to communicate here. 114 00:08:45,240 --> 00:08:49,400 But basically, you have people who are vested in the status quo. 115 00:08:49,400 --> 00:08:53,820 I would say they're mostly the beneficiaries of the status quo, the professional managerial 116 00:08:53,820 --> 00:08:56,060 class they're sometimes called. 117 00:08:56,060 --> 00:09:02,880 And not only did they accept the pronouncements of government technocrats on topics of COVID, 118 00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:04,280 but they fetishized them. 119 00:09:04,280 --> 00:09:09,080 They fetishized the figures who dispense them, people like Anthony Fauci, New York Governor 120 00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:10,940 Mario Cuomo. 121 00:09:10,940 --> 00:09:16,940 Not only did they gleefully take up the pronouncements of these technocrats, but they were particularly 122 00:09:16,940 --> 00:09:22,920 excited to see the power of government, the power to coerce, be applied to their ideological 123 00:09:22,920 --> 00:09:24,600 enemies. 124 00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:29,820 And what's more, they engaged in ridiculous moral hyperbole, claiming that people who 125 00:09:29,820 --> 00:09:33,360 were vaccine-hesitant were murderers. 126 00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:37,160 And these folks claimed the imprimatur of science. 127 00:09:37,160 --> 00:09:41,460 They claimed to support the science. 128 00:09:41,460 --> 00:09:46,960 And when I hear somebody make reference to the science, that tells me that they don't 129 00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:50,360 know anything about how science works. 130 00:09:50,360 --> 00:09:56,560 They're conceiving of it as this body of knowledge which is flawless and which came from this 131 00:09:56,560 --> 00:10:02,720 reliable source of information that just spits out uncomplicated truths. 132 00:10:02,720 --> 00:10:07,120 But in reality, science is a very messy process. 133 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:09,520 The answers that it provides are not perfect the first time. 134 00:10:09,520 --> 00:10:11,200 They are often dead wrong. 135 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:17,020 It is a messy and evolving, but most importantly self-correcting process, but it takes time 136 00:10:17,020 --> 00:10:23,280 to play out, and it doesn't play out in an abstract vacuum. 137 00:10:23,280 --> 00:10:24,680 Scientists are people. 138 00:10:24,680 --> 00:10:26,080 They have jobs. 139 00:10:26,080 --> 00:10:27,520 They have bosses. 140 00:10:27,520 --> 00:10:29,600 They need funding. 141 00:10:29,600 --> 00:10:30,720 Sometimes they work for governments. 142 00:10:30,720 --> 00:10:33,200 When they work for governments, they have to pay attention. 143 00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:39,640 They have to be conscious of what it is the people who are paying them want. 144 00:10:39,640 --> 00:10:46,480 And almost nobody pays because they want to understand the universe. 145 00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:48,400 Everybody's got an agenda. 146 00:10:48,400 --> 00:10:52,640 And scientists, because science is so broad. 147 00:10:52,640 --> 00:10:58,560 If you are an expert in physics, say, and you're very smart, you're educated, you know, 148 00:10:58,560 --> 00:11:02,920 you've got that college degree, you've got your credentials, it doesn't mean you know 149 00:11:02,920 --> 00:11:06,000 jack shit about epidemiology. 150 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:11,440 But here's the worst, and I'm on your side for this bit of it, Tom. 151 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:18,320 If somebody is using scientific terms, but you know that they only learned those terms 152 00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:25,480 in the service of absorbing a conspiracy theory, of absorbing a narrative which is contrary 153 00:11:25,480 --> 00:11:32,080 to established scientific authority, then at least in my mind, it is safe to dismiss 154 00:11:32,080 --> 00:11:38,140 those people as having anything substantial to say on the topic, but it's also not productive 155 00:11:38,140 --> 00:11:40,000 to say that to them. 156 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:43,920 Better to look for common ground, look for something that you both want to talk about 157 00:11:43,920 --> 00:11:50,000 that isn't something you consider to be pseudoscience or conspiracy-mongering. 158 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:57,040 Might be sports, might be the weather, might be movies, might be how annoying some other 159 00:11:57,040 --> 00:12:00,840 out group that you both find obnoxious are. 160 00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:05,960 This first came to me in the very, very early days of the internet, before the World Wide 161 00:12:05,960 --> 00:12:12,600 Web, when my experience of the internet was basically going to a computer lab and accessing 162 00:12:12,600 --> 00:12:18,120 use net, which was organized hierarchically into all these, you know, different categories 163 00:12:18,120 --> 00:12:20,240 for discussion. 164 00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:26,620 And I was interested in memes, I was interested in evolutionary psychology, and I was interested 165 00:12:26,620 --> 00:12:33,660 in what would later become the singularity narrative, that technology is rapidly advancing 166 00:12:33,660 --> 00:12:35,860 towards something transformational. 167 00:12:35,860 --> 00:12:40,120 The term singularity, it may have been coined, it wasn't popular. 168 00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:45,880 But I also checked in on discussions about UFOs and also because I was a student in philosophy, 169 00:12:45,880 --> 00:12:51,340 I did read several, you know, casually some philosophy groups. 170 00:12:51,340 --> 00:12:56,400 What I noticed way back then, in the early, early 90s, was that there were people who 171 00:12:56,400 --> 00:13:04,640 were followers of Ayn Rand who had never read any Kant, but they had decided opinions about 172 00:13:04,640 --> 00:13:11,240 Kant because Ayn Rand had opinions about Kant, and they just echoed her opinions, and they 173 00:13:11,240 --> 00:13:15,040 thought that they knew something about Kant because they had these strong opinions on 174 00:13:15,040 --> 00:13:19,240 the topic, when they'd never read the man. 175 00:13:19,240 --> 00:13:25,480 And I, you know, as a graduate instructor, or at this time a teaching assistant, there'd 176 00:13:25,480 --> 00:13:30,640 be big philosophy courses taught by a professor that met in a big lecture hall, and then, 177 00:13:30,640 --> 00:13:33,920 you know, that would be once a week, and then twice a week, you know, these smaller groups 178 00:13:33,920 --> 00:13:37,440 would assemble in classrooms around campus, and I would be in charge of, you know, those 179 00:13:37,440 --> 00:13:39,960 classrooms or some of them. 180 00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:45,440 And when I helped teach the introductory to ethics class, one of the books that we were 181 00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:50,320 teaching from was A Groundwork to the Metaphysical Morals by Immanuel Kant. 182 00:13:50,320 --> 00:13:54,140 I read the book repeatedly, I read and discussed the book with the professor who was teaching 183 00:13:54,140 --> 00:13:58,480 the class, you know, with an eye to how we would present the material to the students. 184 00:13:58,480 --> 00:14:04,160 I'm not an expert in Kant by any stretch, but I certainly know enough about his philosophy 185 00:14:04,160 --> 00:14:09,400 to recognize that the people who were just regurgitating Ayn Rand, the position on Kant 186 00:14:09,400 --> 00:14:10,960 was just part of the catechism. 187 00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:15,560 It was just part of the body of statements that you had to be conversant in, familiar 188 00:14:15,560 --> 00:14:20,880 with, familiar enough to reproduce at will in order to be in the club of the people who, 189 00:14:20,880 --> 00:14:22,700 you know, of the Randians. 190 00:14:22,700 --> 00:14:30,080 And while I noticed it happening, it didn't make enough of an impression for me to be, 191 00:14:30,080 --> 00:14:35,160 you know, for me to turn that lens on myself, because a couple decades later I got caught 192 00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:42,180 up in the whole peak oil story, and I would be talking to non-geologists about geology. 193 00:14:42,180 --> 00:14:47,840 And I would even repeat statements about geology that I had heard from, you know, the people 194 00:14:47,840 --> 00:14:53,160 I was interviewing that employed vocabulary, scientific vocabulary that I just wouldn't 195 00:14:53,160 --> 00:14:54,160 have known. 196 00:14:54,160 --> 00:15:00,280 I would not have been using that vocabulary had I not been articulating and repeating 197 00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:05,720 a narrative that ran contrary to what people who were supposedly recognized experts in 198 00:15:05,720 --> 00:15:12,140 geology were telling the rest of the world, namely about the availability of enough hydrocarbon 199 00:15:12,140 --> 00:15:16,480 energy in the ground to sustain industrial civilization for, you know, whatever time 200 00:15:16,480 --> 00:15:20,400 period, the next century, the next thousand years, whatever. 201 00:15:20,400 --> 00:15:27,280 I was advocating and advancing an alternative narrative using terminology that I just would 202 00:15:27,280 --> 00:15:33,380 not have been conversant in otherwise, and that is always, always suspect. 203 00:15:33,380 --> 00:15:37,240 So you really get this in the Flat Earth conspiracy theory. 204 00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:44,360 But here's the thing, most people don't have much interaction with scientific nomenclature, 205 00:15:44,360 --> 00:15:50,640 you know, with the specifics of chemistry or physics or geology or metallurgy or whatever. 206 00:15:50,640 --> 00:15:58,680 And so, just a little bit of this esoteric terminology makes for a great intellectual 207 00:15:58,680 --> 00:16:00,060 smokescreen. 208 00:16:00,060 --> 00:16:04,920 Most people will not challenge you if you seem to have some mastery over a specific 209 00:16:04,920 --> 00:16:09,180 vocabulary that those folks, you know, they would have to go and look it up in order to 210 00:16:09,180 --> 00:16:13,080 even understand what you're talking about and to find an alternative interpretation 211 00:16:13,080 --> 00:16:14,920 of what you're saying. 212 00:16:14,920 --> 00:16:16,440 And they're just not going to. 213 00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:21,480 And you know, people are loathe to admit their ignorance. 214 00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:24,860 But back to scientism. 215 00:16:24,860 --> 00:16:30,160 Whenever I heard somebody say they trust the science, that clued me into the fact that 216 00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:37,380 for them, science is an abstract, perfect authority which dispenses perfect knowledge 217 00:16:37,380 --> 00:16:41,880 that never needs to be revised, that never needs to be examined, and that certainly shouldn't 218 00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:43,120 be challenged. 219 00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:46,040 This is simply genuflecting to authority. 220 00:16:46,040 --> 00:16:50,880 Most people, even smart, very smart people, don't practice science. 221 00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:56,960 And those who do tend to practice in very narrow domains, and they don't apply the same 222 00:16:56,960 --> 00:17:02,960 rigor that they are required to apply in their professional life to every other aspect of 223 00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:08,140 their lives, even when they are thinking about other domains of science. 224 00:17:08,140 --> 00:17:16,160 People have allegiances, people want to belong, or conversely, some people really want to 225 00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:18,920 reject authority. 226 00:17:18,920 --> 00:17:25,760 Some people take comfort in the idea that there is a malevolent cabal working from positions 227 00:17:25,760 --> 00:17:33,100 of unimaginable power, in secret, with the intent to do harm. 228 00:17:33,100 --> 00:17:39,680 To not only rule, not only acquire power and maintain power, but to degrade humanity physically, 229 00:17:39,680 --> 00:17:42,440 intellectually and spiritually. 230 00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:47,920 This is a strong psychological desire for some people, and I can relate. 231 00:17:47,920 --> 00:17:52,760 I've felt its pull in the past, I've gotten sucked in, in the past, and when COVID came 232 00:17:52,760 --> 00:17:59,720 along and I saw the whole process of sorting the population, of the population, like being 233 00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:04,480 a sieve that had water and other material running through it and somebody was shaking 234 00:18:04,480 --> 00:18:13,320 it in order to sift the raw material of cultural construction and to organize it into coherent 235 00:18:13,320 --> 00:18:18,320 narratives, not correct narratives, but coherent narratives that were contradictory and that 236 00:18:18,320 --> 00:18:23,920 different tribes of people would adopt in order to identify themselves, in order to 237 00:18:23,920 --> 00:18:28,920 identify their outgroups, and in order to demonstrate that they are members in good 238 00:18:28,920 --> 00:18:31,040 standing of particular tribes. 239 00:18:31,040 --> 00:18:35,900 And for the most part, the people who are the beneficiaries, the people who are doing 240 00:18:35,900 --> 00:18:41,360 particularly well in the current arrangement, are the ones who were most eager to accept 241 00:18:41,360 --> 00:18:47,400 the pronouncements of figures like Anthony Fauci, and who also demonstrated or revealed, 242 00:18:47,400 --> 00:18:50,680 I guess, a hidden authoritarian streak. 243 00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:55,640 I've told this story elsewhere, but not on the KMO show, so apologies to people who have 244 00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:59,640 heard this before, but several years ago, not that many years ago, but Donald Trump 245 00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:06,960 was president and it was the holiday season, Christmas, New Year, and I was living in Vermont 246 00:19:06,960 --> 00:19:12,280 and the mother of friends was visiting from Texas and she was a Democrat, but she lived 247 00:19:12,280 --> 00:19:14,000 in Texas. 248 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:22,200 And just in passing, just casually, she said, but with them, with intensity, she said that 249 00:19:22,200 --> 00:19:28,680 she wanted the military to remove Donald Trump from office. 250 00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:30,160 And I was flabbergasted. 251 00:19:30,160 --> 00:19:33,960 I demanded that she clarify and stand by that statement. 252 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:39,720 I was like, are you telling me that you would rather have a military coup? 253 00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:45,820 You would rather throw away two centuries worth of the separation of governmental and 254 00:19:45,820 --> 00:19:50,200 military power rather than wait another year or two for an election? 255 00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:52,560 She said yes, she was not cowed in the least. 256 00:19:52,560 --> 00:19:54,240 She said yes. 257 00:19:54,240 --> 00:19:55,520 I hate the man. 258 00:19:55,520 --> 00:19:58,480 I don't care what precedent it sets. 259 00:19:58,480 --> 00:20:05,360 I don't care about any of these niceties about the military obeying the civilian government. 260 00:20:05,360 --> 00:20:06,540 Irrelevant. 261 00:20:06,540 --> 00:20:08,880 She hates Donald Trump. 262 00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:10,000 It's part of her tribe. 263 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:11,780 It's part of her tribal identity. 264 00:20:11,780 --> 00:20:14,320 She hates the man and she doesn't care what it takes. 265 00:20:14,320 --> 00:20:17,080 She wants him gone as soon as possible. 266 00:20:17,080 --> 00:20:21,160 From my perspective, that is madness, utter madness. 267 00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:26,120 But it was a normal, respectable position in her intellectual tribe. 268 00:20:26,120 --> 00:20:33,080 She fits the archetype, in my mind anyway, of the materially comfortable mainstream Democrat 269 00:20:33,080 --> 00:20:40,920 who postures because they think that they have science backing their belief system, 270 00:20:40,920 --> 00:20:45,420 when in fact they have no notion of how science works. 271 00:20:45,420 --> 00:20:53,560 I noticed that the people who claim to uphold science never mention the scientific method. 272 00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:54,760 Why would that be? 273 00:20:54,760 --> 00:21:00,660 It's because they don't understand how science arrives at its pronouncements. 274 00:21:00,660 --> 00:21:09,280 It is a messy process of coming up with a hypothesis, figuring out what physical observations 275 00:21:09,280 --> 00:21:14,040 of the world, what empirical observations could disprove the hypothesis. 276 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:18,240 A lot of people don't realize that if a statement is not falsifiable, that it can't possibly 277 00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:19,720 be scientific. 278 00:21:19,720 --> 00:21:25,980 Which means, if a statement is scientific, it has endured many attempts to disprove it. 279 00:21:25,980 --> 00:21:32,680 Which means that by definition, scientific pronouncements cannot be above suspicion. 280 00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:34,180 They can't be above criticism. 281 00:21:34,180 --> 00:21:36,920 They can't be above skepticism. 282 00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:42,520 Science as a methodology carried out by groups of people is somewhat antagonistic, and it 283 00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:44,840 runs on skepticism. 284 00:21:44,840 --> 00:21:49,320 So if you think that the science is settled, you don't know what science is, you don't 285 00:21:49,320 --> 00:21:50,320 know how it works. 286 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:56,160 A lot of people are completely unaware of the fact that there is even a category of 287 00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:59,320 study called the history of science. 288 00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:04,120 Why would you need a history of science if science is just a collection of true statements 289 00:22:04,120 --> 00:22:08,320 that are generated almost magically by this oracle called science? 290 00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:15,480 There is a history of science because science reliably gets things wrong at first, and statements 291 00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:22,080 and scientific theories which are wrong, they take a long time to get corrected because 292 00:22:22,080 --> 00:22:28,640 people invest their identity and their credibility and their reputation in the truth of this 293 00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:30,320 thing that they came up with. 294 00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:35,320 And so this is where science as a methodology interfaces with human psychology, and there's 295 00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:40,360 a constant struggle there between people wanting to validate their theories in an attempt to 296 00:22:40,360 --> 00:22:45,720 validate themselves and other people trying to demonstrate that those theories are false, 297 00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:50,240 you know, via experiment, but not necessarily for a love of truth, but because there is 298 00:22:50,240 --> 00:22:58,280 cachet, there is a reward, there is a reputational benefit to being the one who demonstrably 299 00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:03,940 unseats a long-held theory or, you know, a theoretical position. 300 00:23:03,940 --> 00:23:07,600 So science is not some pure abstract source of truth. 301 00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:09,800 It is a methodology. 302 00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:11,360 It is messy. 303 00:23:11,360 --> 00:23:16,320 And over time, it is self-correcting. 304 00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:20,840 Or at least it gets us to a point where we're better able to manipulate the world, where 305 00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:28,380 technology based on scientific principles works, which is evidence in favor of the truth 306 00:23:28,380 --> 00:23:34,520 of the scientific hypothesis, but it's not ironclad proof, because science doesn't work 307 00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:35,520 that way. 308 00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:36,800 Science is an inductive process. 309 00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:38,520 It is not deductive. 310 00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:47,600 If you have a sound logical argument that leads to a particular conclusion, that's deduction, 311 00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:50,080 and that conclusion is ironclad. 312 00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:52,420 But science doesn't work that way. 313 00:23:52,420 --> 00:23:57,720 With science, you say, well, there's been a couple of centuries worth of attempts to 314 00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:05,440 disprove this theory by scientific experiment, and thus far, you know, the general opinion, 315 00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:10,320 the consensus among the scientific community is that none of those attempts have really 316 00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:11,700 been compelling. 317 00:24:11,700 --> 00:24:14,640 And so the theory stands. 318 00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:17,600 But it doesn't make it true. 319 00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:20,440 It just means that it hasn't been proven false yet. 320 00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:21,760 And maybe it never will. 321 00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:23,820 But again, it's an inductive process. 322 00:24:23,820 --> 00:24:27,620 It's not an infallible truth. 323 00:24:27,620 --> 00:24:33,340 So you can probably tell that as irritated as you are, Tom, with the people you consider 324 00:24:33,340 --> 00:24:41,280 to be science deniers, I'm equally irritated with people who claim that science supports 325 00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:47,300 their tribe's identity and condemns the identity of their hated outgroups. 326 00:24:47,300 --> 00:24:48,880 To me, that's gross. 327 00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:54,560 It's as bad as thinking that the earth is flat or that the moon landings were faked 328 00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:59,680 or that COVID is caused by 5G phone towers. 329 00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:03,680 And when I say it's as bad, you might argue that the consequences are different. 330 00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:09,260 When I say it's as bad, I mean it's as irritating to me. 331 00:25:09,260 --> 00:25:14,760 Somebody who values rationality, even when being rational, even when following the dictates 332 00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:17,660 of rationality leads me to an uncomfortable place. 333 00:25:17,660 --> 00:25:24,980 But one thing that a lot of people are very uncomfortable with is uncertainty. 334 00:25:24,980 --> 00:25:28,280 And I forget the source of the quote, but there's a quote that I just love. 335 00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:34,560 It's, doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is absurd. 336 00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:37,340 We want to be certain. 337 00:25:37,340 --> 00:25:39,560 We want to be reassured. 338 00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,200 But rationally speaking, we have not earned a certainty about much of anything. 339 00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:49,680 Now, all that said, when it comes to COVID, as I've said time and again, I'm not interested 340 00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:52,640 in anybody's COVID craziness. 341 00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:55,920 Is one side or the other probably closer to the truth? 342 00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:56,920 Yeah, probably. 343 00:25:56,920 --> 00:26:03,880 And I'm content to wait until people's tribal identities are not so thoroughly wedded to 344 00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:05,040 a position on COVID. 345 00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:07,640 It might be a couple of decades. 346 00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:08,640 I can wait. 347 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:10,540 I will wait and see. 348 00:26:10,540 --> 00:26:17,080 But practically speaking, I got the vax. 349 00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:20,800 Now, did I do it because I trust science? 350 00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:21,800 No. 351 00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:25,080 I did it so I wouldn't get hassled. 352 00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:26,680 I did it so that I could travel freely. 353 00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:31,400 I did it so that I could see my kids without putting myself in danger of being labeled 354 00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,880 a kook in court, because that happened when I got divorced. 355 00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:41,840 My peak oiled-dumerism was brought up in court as evidence that I was unfit to be a parent 356 00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:42,840 to my children. 357 00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:51,280 So, I'm particularly gun-shy about the consequences of adopting needlessly contrarian views on 358 00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:52,520 things. 359 00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:58,000 But I got the two vaxes and then I got a booster because I was living with my then 82-year-old 360 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:02,840 mother and I was about to go to Dallas, Texas to attend a big convention and I knew that 361 00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:06,920 I was going to be interacting with hundreds of people, so I got a booster. 362 00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:11,320 Did I get a booster because I had faith or that I was absolutely confident that it was 363 00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:12,320 effective? 364 00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:13,320 No. 365 00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:17,620 I got the booster just so that I could say, look, I took the steps that were available 366 00:27:17,620 --> 00:27:24,400 to me to not transmit this virus to my mother who's in a much higher risk group than I am. 367 00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:28,920 If I had gone to Dallas, interacted with hundreds of people, come back, come down with COVID, 368 00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:34,640 passed it to my mom and she had died and I had not gotten a booster when I could have, 369 00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:40,600 well, you know, I would have been culpable. 370 00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:51,040 That said, I know and like and cooperate with people who have what are to my mind completely 371 00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:54,000 unfounded views about COVID. 372 00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:59,400 People who think or who listen to people who are advancing the notion that everybody who 373 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,360 got the vaccination will be dead within a couple of years. 374 00:28:02,360 --> 00:28:06,800 Well, that was a couple of years ago and you know, we're not all dead yet. 375 00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:11,280 We all will die in the fullness of time but you know, it's got nothing to do with the 376 00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:13,640 vaccine. 377 00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,320 We all have that particular appointment. 378 00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:20,720 So what should the relationship of most people to science be? 379 00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:26,680 I think for most people going about their lives, the scientific method just doesn't 380 00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,520 enter into how they navigate the world, how they make a living, how they get along with 381 00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:31,520 other people. 382 00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:36,280 You know, I happen to study the philosophy of science and the history of science in college 383 00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:43,020 and you know, my college and particularly my graduate school years and study, from a 384 00:28:43,020 --> 00:28:47,140 practical perspective, what it was that I was studying was really immaterial. 385 00:28:47,140 --> 00:28:52,760 It was just the fact that there was a body of scholarship that was difficult to access 386 00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:59,120 that required a certain level of reading and comprehension and thought and you know, which 387 00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:04,400 also required that one know how to write in order to demonstrate one's mastery or you 388 00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:10,520 know, at least one's competence to participate in this particular field of academic study. 389 00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:18,420 It generalized to an ability to examine arguments and to remember and reproduce complex lines 390 00:29:18,420 --> 00:29:20,040 of reasoning. 391 00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:24,540 The fact that it happened to you know, overlap with what is now very current in artificial 392 00:29:24,540 --> 00:29:29,120 intelligence and you know, the fact that it also involved a study of the history of science 393 00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:33,520 and how scientific paradigms have risen and fallen, been overturned, but you know, after 394 00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:40,200 a long reign in some cases, it gives me a certain insight into science as a historical 395 00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:47,200 entity into science as an application or an illustration of you know, Darwinian principles. 396 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:51,160 But it doesn't really enter into you know, my calculations when I'm deciding whether 397 00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:55,120 or not to take a particular job or you know, whether or not to invite a particular guest 398 00:29:55,120 --> 00:30:01,780 onto the podcast or whether to pursue a romantic relationship or whether to get a dog. 399 00:30:01,780 --> 00:30:08,680 Science just doesn't enter into it and you know, preening about being versed in science 400 00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:15,960 and having science support my views, to me that is completely in the realm of coalitional 401 00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:17,080 wrangling. 402 00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:21,440 That is clearly just... it is a communicative strategy meant to... 403 00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:25,320 I hate to use the phrase virtue signal, so I'll say coalitional signal, to say look, 404 00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:30,120 I'm a member of this group, I'm a member in good standing, I demonstrate my membership 405 00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:36,360 by repeating shibboleths, by repeating phrases that you know, people who are in my tribe 406 00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:41,000 are expected to know and to recite and that people in a different tribe are expected to 407 00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,080 react badly to. 408 00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:47,880 But because I do live in a world where you know, people who believe things that I don't 409 00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:52,520 believe and people who believe things that I don't think that they're justified in believing, 410 00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:57,600 they exist and you know, they tend to be smart people, they tend to be fun and interesting 411 00:30:57,600 --> 00:30:59,060 people. 412 00:30:59,060 --> 00:31:06,200 And so when I'm you know, flying according to my own manual, I limit ideological conflicts 413 00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:11,000 with people that I need to maintain you know, viable relationships with. 414 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:14,200 So that leaves all the idiots on the internet to argue with, right? 415 00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:16,280 But I don't care enough to do that. 416 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:23,140 I mean it's just... it's not rewarding to me to pick a narrative and then go online 417 00:31:23,140 --> 00:31:26,520 and do battle with critics of that narrative. 418 00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:34,200 There was a time when you know, I did that, I understand why it can be compelling, but 419 00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:35,200 I'm over it. 420 00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:38,120 And I'm not suggesting you get over it. 421 00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:42,720 But I would encourage you to ask yourself, what does this benefit me? 422 00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:50,040 How is my life made richer by having been hijacked, by having been co-opted or inducted 423 00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:56,420 into the army of meme bots, the legions of people who devote their time and energy without 424 00:31:56,420 --> 00:32:02,400 compensation to upholding a viewpoint and coming up with unflattering labels and you 425 00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:06,600 know, applying those labels to people who don't share the belief system, who have been 426 00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:08,800 inducted by a different belief system. 427 00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:16,000 You know, I was discussing this with Pi, personal intelligence, you know, a chat bot. 428 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:20,560 And I came up just spontaneously with the phrase memetic honeypot. 429 00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:27,240 You know, a honeypot in political intrigue, say in intelligence work, is something meant 430 00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,920 to entrap somebody because it appeals to their interests. 431 00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:35,360 And you know, on the most base level, it could be just a sexual attraction. 432 00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:42,440 Well, society and more importantly, I think, the internet is replete with memetic honeypots, 433 00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:49,760 things which appeal to your sense of self, your picture of yourself as somebody who is 434 00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:56,220 skeptical or somebody who is anti-authoritarian or somebody who is a good member in good standing 435 00:32:56,220 --> 00:33:00,680 of the people who consider themselves to be enlightened and compassionate. 436 00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:04,120 So I don't mean for my response to Tom here to be the entire episode. 437 00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:09,600 So I'm just going to bring it in for a landing, this portion at least, and say, I get your 438 00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,520 frustration, Tom. 439 00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:18,120 The thing that is the most troubling is the idea that your wife has been mocking you because 440 00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:23,760 as I understand it, you know, both from relationship experts and personal experience, the one thing 441 00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:28,280 that a romantic relationship between a man and a woman cannot come back from is when 442 00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:31,320 the woman develops contempt for the man. 443 00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:38,200 Once you reach that stage, you might not necessarily get a divorce, but you know, the relationship 444 00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:46,360 is critically wounded in a way that's very difficult to come back from, nearly impossible. 445 00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:50,240 People might still stay together because they're economically intertwined or they have children 446 00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:54,040 or it would just be too difficult to separate their lives. 447 00:33:54,040 --> 00:34:00,320 They're just to, you know, stay together, but contempt is antithetical to love. 448 00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:06,440 And you know, in terms of relationships, you probably shouldn't look to me for advice because 449 00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:08,160 I'm divorced. 450 00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:15,040 I'm divorced and attempts to kindle a lasting relationship after the divorce have all failed. 451 00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:18,960 So unless you're looking to replicate my results, you probably shouldn't take my advice on the 452 00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:25,160 topic of relationships and you know, in terms of interacting with people who either share 453 00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:30,920 your viewpoint or you know, who are vociferous and ostentatious in taking a different point 454 00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:35,320 of view, you know, my policy has just been to make public statements saying I'm not interested 455 00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:36,720 in that conflict. 456 00:34:36,720 --> 00:34:42,720 Yeah, somebody's probably closer to the truth, but not because they were superior in their 457 00:34:42,720 --> 00:34:47,520 epistemological, you know, methodology. 458 00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:52,880 If two groups of people, you know, gravitate to opposing points of view on a topic just 459 00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:56,880 to demonstrate that they're opposed to one another, one group's position will be closer 460 00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:57,960 to the truth than the other. 461 00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:03,840 But you know, it's not because they knew, it's not because they were rigorous, it's 462 00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:05,280 just how it shook out. 463 00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:10,680 I guess the last thing I'll say on this is while I value rationality and I will go to 464 00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:15,420 great lengths, I will eat a bullet, you know, rather than embrace what I think of as an 465 00:35:15,420 --> 00:35:16,840 irrational position. 466 00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:20,560 I also see rationality as a kind of a mind virus. 467 00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:25,160 It imposes a psychological pressure to behave in a particular way and it doesn't guarantee 468 00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:30,280 any material benefit for obedience. 469 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:36,440 For the sake of rationality, one might forego a comforting illusion and, you know, just 470 00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:37,880 have to live without the comfort. 471 00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:42,300 For the sake of rationality, someone might reject a position which is popular among their 472 00:35:42,300 --> 00:35:44,240 peers and it might cost them a job. 473 00:35:44,240 --> 00:35:51,080 For the sake of rationality, one might, you know, forego the opportunity to participate 474 00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:57,520 in strong church communities and thereby miss out on, you know, entering into collaborative 475 00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:01,960 interaction and relationships with people, you know, who are good people that you would 476 00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:05,360 be well served to associate yourself with. 477 00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:09,920 Rationality makes demands and it guarantees no benefit. 478 00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:15,960 So I'm definitely not suggesting that everybody commit themselves to a thoroughgoing rationality 479 00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:22,640 regardless of the costs, because there will be costs and the benefits are intangible at 480 00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:26,960 best. 481 00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:33,920 All right. 482 00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:37,240 Continuing just briefly with the previous topic. 483 00:36:37,240 --> 00:36:44,880 I was reading around various places on the topic of communicating with people who believe 484 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:46,920 things that you don't believe. 485 00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:55,000 Now, I realized that, you know, me quoting the BBC in this discussion would be like a 486 00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:58,320 Christian quoting scripture in an argument with an atheist. 487 00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:04,440 I mean, this is, you know, BBC is mainstream scripture. 488 00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:09,280 But there were a couple of quotes in a BBC article. 489 00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:10,600 This is a print article. 490 00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:18,480 I found it on their website and it's basically five directives for communicating with people 491 00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,480 who are caught up in conspiracy theories. 492 00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:25,160 And the five admonitions are one, keep calm. 493 00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,680 Two, don't be dismissive. 494 00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:30,320 Three, encourage critical thinking. 495 00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:32,340 Four, ask questions. 496 00:37:32,340 --> 00:37:37,880 And five, don't expect immediate results. 497 00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,360 So keep calm is obvious, right? 498 00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:44,040 I mean, if you get agitated, the other person's going to get agitated. 499 00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:50,640 You're just going to match each other emotionally and that raises shields, hardens defenses. 500 00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:58,440 So I'm going to share a couple of quotes here from a psychologist, Jovan Byford suggests, 501 00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:01,360 and this is in relation to encourage critical thinking. 502 00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:07,360 Quote, many people who believe in conspiracy theories see themselves as healthy skeptics 503 00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:11,640 and self-taught researchers into complex issues. 504 00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:15,360 Present this as something you value and share. 505 00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:17,080 Close quote. 506 00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:22,580 But you know, what most conspiracy theories consider to be self-directed research is really, 507 00:38:22,580 --> 00:38:28,800 you know, it's, it's where the algorithms curate for you a path into dark territory 508 00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:33,200 because it keeps you on platform, keeps you engaged. 509 00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:39,000 And now another quote from Jovan Byford on that last point, admonition number five, don't 510 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,560 expect immediate results. 511 00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:45,440 He writes, be realistic about what you can achieve. 512 00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:50,160 Conspiracy theories instill in believers a sense of superiority. 513 00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:56,540 It's an important generator of self-esteem, which makes them resistant to change. 514 00:38:56,540 --> 00:38:58,620 Close quote. 515 00:38:58,620 --> 00:39:03,820 So suppose you were locked in ideological combat with somebody that you actually care 516 00:39:03,820 --> 00:39:05,040 about. 517 00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:09,200 This is not some rando online that you just want to defeat and humiliate. 518 00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:14,000 This is somebody that you want to preserve your ongoing relationship with. 519 00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:21,840 Well, what if you ask yourself, is this person that I care about gravitating to conspiracy 520 00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:27,280 theories because it gives them a sense of importance and self-worth? 521 00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,560 And do I want to take that from them? 522 00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:36,880 If the answer is yes and no, yes, they're getting, you know, they're deriving a sense 523 00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:41,080 of self-worth from this and no, I don't want to take the sense of self-worth from them. 524 00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,480 I just want them to believe true stuff. 525 00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:46,000 You need to ask yourself a couple of things first. 526 00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:48,880 Even if they're not conscious of the fact that they're using their conspiracy theories 527 00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:55,220 as a way to bolster their own sense of self-worth, you know, being the sharp one, the smart one, 528 00:39:55,220 --> 00:40:00,060 the one who doesn't believe what they're told, who does their own research and sees through 529 00:40:00,060 --> 00:40:04,580 the conspirators web of lies. 530 00:40:04,580 --> 00:40:10,920 Do they have anything ready to hand to replace that as a generator of self-worth? 531 00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:16,800 Now you can make all the judgments you want about how that's, you know, fake self-worth, 532 00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:20,280 how it's, you know, you'd be better off just facing the truth. 533 00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:26,400 Well, I mean, you can hold that opinion, but if you want to, if you want to help the person 534 00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:30,640 and if you want to keep them in your life and keep them feeling good about you, you 535 00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:37,940 do have to take into consideration what it is that gives them a sense of self-worth and 536 00:40:37,940 --> 00:40:43,960 ask yourself this, if they see you as trying to undermine the thing that gives them their 537 00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:50,840 sense of self-worth, what would the rational way for them to treat you be, you know, if 538 00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:53,000 they put you in that role? 539 00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,000 And you know, you need to ask yourself, am I in that role? 540 00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:59,820 Am I trying to demolish their self-esteem? 541 00:40:59,820 --> 00:41:06,800 And now finally comes the issue of the epistemological apocalypse. 542 00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:12,540 This is something that I discussed with Kevin Wolmit, who's a friend of the show, and also 543 00:41:12,540 --> 00:41:16,260 Michael Garfield, who's another podcaster who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 544 00:41:16,260 --> 00:41:21,480 We all sat down at Michael's house and we talked about what's going to happen as the 545 00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:27,400 deep fakes get more and more convincing and as they, you know, roll out into the populace, 546 00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:32,980 a populace primed to believe all kinds of stuff, a populace who's already been conditioned 547 00:41:32,980 --> 00:41:40,600 to take in material that, you know, feeds them psychologically but has no basis in fact. 548 00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:47,680 The algorithmic means for distributing false information, you know, conspiracy theories, 549 00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:48,680 utter bullshit. 550 00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:50,040 It's already well in place. 551 00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:54,120 The only difference is that right now it's the humans generating the fake information, 552 00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:56,200 or at least it was five minutes ago. 553 00:41:56,200 --> 00:42:02,560 And, but we're going to be moving ever deeper into the territory of just a sea, a sea of 554 00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:11,440 fake videos, audio recordings, anything that, you know, in the 20th century would have counted 555 00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,960 as, you know, just knock out evidence like full stop. 556 00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:15,960 Okay. 557 00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:16,960 This proves it. 558 00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,980 Evidence will be faked in massive abundance. 559 00:42:19,980 --> 00:42:22,560 What will you believe? 560 00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:29,280 And this has got me thinking about the show Rising on YouTube. 561 00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:37,360 You know, it is an alt news show in that it presents a left and right populist perspective. 562 00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:42,120 And the previous hosts, Crystal Ball and Sagar and Jetty, you know, they parlayed their newfound 563 00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,520 celebrity into their own organization. 564 00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:49,100 And it seems that the right populist element of that has withered on the vine and Sagar 565 00:42:49,100 --> 00:42:53,240 and Jetty seems to be happy to just take the money and be famous. 566 00:42:53,240 --> 00:42:57,760 And they've gone from being, you know, this, this populist critique of the mainstream news 567 00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:04,520 outlets and the Washington consensus and just become, you know, a new fixture in the Washington 568 00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:06,040 consensus. 569 00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:08,520 But there's still populist over on Rising. 570 00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:13,840 There's a young libertarian who seems, I mean, he's, he's charming and goofy at the same 571 00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,120 time named Robbie. 572 00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:19,960 And he is paired with a variety of co-hosts, although the one that I see most often and 573 00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:24,400 the one that I like the most is Brianna Joy Gray. 574 00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:27,800 And he's, you know, definitely the right populist side of the equation. 575 00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:30,040 And she is the former Bernie bro. 576 00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:35,920 You know, she worked for the Sanders campaign and she's a lawyer and she's definitely on 577 00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:36,920 the left. 578 00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:43,160 And so they're maintaining that left, right populist versus the establishment position. 579 00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:49,680 And yet when I glance at their, their offerings these days, three quarters of what they're 580 00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:53,840 putting out seems to be discussions of either Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which always devolves 581 00:43:53,840 --> 00:44:01,120 into, you know, the, the COVID question or UFOs. 582 00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:03,960 And I definitely agree with Brett Weinstein's pronouncement. 583 00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:09,200 The rule is what you might use to look at the news this week. 584 00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:11,980 Something new happened in the land of UAPs. 585 00:44:11,980 --> 00:44:12,980 What happened? 586 00:44:12,980 --> 00:44:18,380 We have a highly credible source who has turned whistleblower and actually now has whistleblower 587 00:44:18,380 --> 00:44:26,480 protection testifying under oath that the federal government has multiple alien craft 588 00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:29,140 and dead pilots of those craft. 589 00:44:29,140 --> 00:44:35,640 It possesses them, which is huge news unless it's not true. 590 00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,800 In which case it's huge news of a different kind. 591 00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,200 But now you have to live in a world where you can't figure out which of those two it 592 00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:42,200 is. 593 00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:43,200 Okay. 594 00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:44,200 Okay. 595 00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:45,200 What's the rule? 596 00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:48,680 The rule says, Psyop until proven otherwise. 597 00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:55,520 The null hypothesis is the observation in question, the report in question, the video 598 00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:58,640 in question is a Psyop until proven otherwise. 599 00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:03,600 The moment you show me something where Psyop is not an obvious possibility, I'm all ears. 600 00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:08,780 I'm not saying that there aren't aliens who would be interested in us and come by. 601 00:45:08,780 --> 00:45:09,820 They might. 602 00:45:09,820 --> 00:45:11,860 Are they barred from doing so by physics? 603 00:45:11,860 --> 00:45:12,860 We don't know. 604 00:45:12,860 --> 00:45:17,760 We sort of think so, but you know, people who know better than I do think those rules 605 00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,600 may not be as absolute as we thought. 606 00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:21,600 Okay. 607 00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:26,920 I'm totally open to the possibility of aliens, but I'm sick of pixels. 608 00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:32,640 I'm sick of eyewitness reports of aircraft that do amazing things and make no noise. 609 00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:33,640 Right. 610 00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:40,200 I just want something that constitutes actual evidence where the most parsimonious explanation 611 00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:43,360 is not someone would like you to believe there are aliens. 612 00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:44,360 Right. 613 00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:48,720 When that's the most parsimonious explanation, my point is, my guess is if there are aliens 614 00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:54,800 and they're coming here, I'm likely to miss them by a hundred years, a thousand years. 615 00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:56,320 It could be a while. 616 00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:57,320 Right. 617 00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,400 The idea that we just happen to be here and you know, Trump and aliens are happening at 618 00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:01,400 the same time. 619 00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:02,400 Right. 620 00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:04,940 It's like, ah, okay. 621 00:46:04,940 --> 00:46:07,000 Maybe you're just trying to get me excited. 622 00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:08,000 That's what you're doing. 623 00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:12,640 You're feeding me story after story that I can't resist thinking about because you don't 624 00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:19,760 want me thinking about, I don't know, corruption and Ukraine or something. 625 00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:27,680 You know, all this focused on UFOs with no evidence, just the testimony of one guy has 626 00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:33,200 captured all of this media attention, you know, but we have no new information about 627 00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:42,840 certainly, you know, no images of alien bodies, no schematics, no, no proof that alien craft, 628 00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:44,720 you know, are in the possession of the U S government. 629 00:46:44,720 --> 00:46:50,200 It's just this one guy's testimony, but we're, we're coming up on this flood of, you know, 630 00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:51,840 AI generated content. 631 00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:59,400 Soon there will be the, you know, the 2020s equivalent of the 1990s alien autopsy video. 632 00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:06,400 Don't know if you remember that, but there was a black and white video of an alien, like 633 00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:11,680 a gray basically being dissected. 634 00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:15,720 And you know, it was supposedly smuggled out of some government facility somewhere and 635 00:47:15,720 --> 00:47:16,720 it's very old. 636 00:47:16,720 --> 00:47:23,160 You know, this is probably from supposed to be from the Roswell crash and Stan Winston, 637 00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:28,480 that famous pioneer of visual effects, the guy, he brought us the Terminator. 638 00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:30,840 He brought us the T-Rex from Jurassic park. 639 00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:36,160 I mean, Stan Winston, just this God of practical special effects. 640 00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:41,800 He and his, his team sat down and they watched the alien autopsy video and they pronounced 641 00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:42,800 it real. 642 00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:48,360 Well, it was later proved to be fake, but it, it, it either fooled the people who are 643 00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:54,080 the professional fakers or, you know, somebody convinced them to play along. 644 00:47:54,080 --> 00:48:00,040 I think it was the former or perhaps they just knew that, you know, a video dissection 645 00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:05,320 of the alien autopsy that, you know, where the special effects artists said, yeah, this 646 00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,920 is special effects that wouldn't get nearly as much traction as one where the special 647 00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,480 effects artists say, Oh wow, I don't know how they could have done this. 648 00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:19,280 My point being that the alien autopsy video equivalent, you know, the AI generated equivalent 649 00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:27,960 along with astounded, you know, testimony from supposed experts who can spot deep fakes 650 00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:32,960 that a flood of this is coming, but here's my, it won't come from the government. 651 00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:36,200 There'll be no official disclosure and say, yes, we're coming clean. 652 00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:37,200 Here's the evidence. 653 00:48:37,200 --> 00:48:38,200 Why? 654 00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:42,800 Because the evidence will be fake and it will be fake in such a way that it might stand 655 00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:48,360 up to scrutiny for six months, but in the long haul, you know, this evidence will be 656 00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:53,280 a laughing stock and the military, the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies are not going to 657 00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:55,480 tie their credibility to it. 658 00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,840 So it will always come through unofficial channels. 659 00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:04,600 And yet it will be the intention of the official establishment to disseminate this material 660 00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,080 because it is distracting. 661 00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:13,280 It corrupts critical thinking skills and it is completely unthreatening to them and their 662 00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:17,840 actual priorities, you know, and the securing of their actual power. 663 00:49:17,840 --> 00:49:18,840 Okay. 664 00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:23,200 That's more than half the time I had remaining and I hadn't planned to spend so long on that. 665 00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:26,880 So now let me jump over to a completely different topic. 666 00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:32,640 The only, the only tie in is artificial intelligence. 667 00:49:32,640 --> 00:49:39,040 The AI that I talk to most often is PI, just PI stands for personal intelligence. 668 00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:44,560 It's from inflection AI and it's the best, you know, the best chatbot I've ever come 669 00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:49,720 across, but yesterday was the 4th of July, the day that we commemorate the independence 670 00:49:49,720 --> 00:49:53,120 of the United States from the British Empire. 671 00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:59,560 And I started, I got into an alternate history conversation with PI yesterday asking about, 672 00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:02,560 well, here we are on Independence Day. 673 00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:05,760 What if the Revolutionary War had failed? 674 00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:10,640 You know, what if the United States had never gained its, or at least at that time, you 675 00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:17,000 know, in 1776 that it failed to gain its independence from, from Great Britain. 676 00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:20,520 And I know the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. 677 00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:22,560 That didn't magically make the British disappear. 678 00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:29,320 There was a whole war that had to be fought. 679 00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:30,320 All right. 680 00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:33,560 Well that alternate history ramble went on for quite some time. 681 00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:38,040 So long in fact, that I'm just going to cut off here and save all of that for the next 682 00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:40,360 episode of the Sea Realm Vault podcast. 683 00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:44,240 The Sea Realm Vault podcast is the pay walled podcast that I do. 684 00:50:44,240 --> 00:50:50,580 It is for folks who pledge $7 a month on Patreon and I do a weekly episode. 685 00:50:50,580 --> 00:50:53,560 If you'd like to learn more about that, check out my Patreon page. 686 00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:57,960 It's patreon.com slash KMO. 687 00:50:57,960 --> 00:50:58,960 All right. 688 00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:00,400 Well I think I'm going to wrap it up here. 689 00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:02,560 So send me feedback. 690 00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:06,680 If there's somebody that you think I should talk to for the podcast, let me know and better 691 00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:08,480 yet let them know. 692 00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,180 And I post more YouTube videos than I do podcasts. 693 00:51:11,180 --> 00:51:16,120 So if you would like more of what you've just heard, check out my YouTube channel. 694 00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:19,520 Really the easiest way to find my YouTube videos is to start at Patreon. 695 00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:22,400 Patreon.com slash KMO. 696 00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:23,400 All right everybody. 697 00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:24,400 I'm out. 698 00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:25,400 I will talk to you soon. 699 00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:26,400 Stay well. 700 00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:41,280 Thanks very much.