stand up when we dive into the evidence. Today,
we'll discuss why many facts used to support
progressive views are radically misleading. Why
these myths have become so popular. The dangers
of these myths in media and academia. How we
can spot and avoid these myths. Why academia
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Well, thanks for coming on, Humor. We're here
to talk about your new book, Progressive Myths.
We got two copies of it flying around. It's very
salient right now, given the recent election
results. I first just want to ask you, what is
a progressive myth? How do you define it? Where
does the basis of the book start? Yeah, well,
so it's a... It's an empirical factual claim
which appears to strongly support progressive
ideology, but which is objectively false or highly
misleading. There's a bunch of these things.
The gender pay gap, that women are paid less
than men for the same work, or something like
that. Sometimes people include for the same work,
and sometimes they don't mention that. The claim
that they get paid less for the same work is
just factually false. The claim that they get
paid less than men is true, but it's for different
work, so that's just highly misleading. Is there
some incentive behind these progressive myths?
I mean, you might say, well, there's the incentive
that people generally have to convert people
to their ideology. People are just animated by
an ideology and they want to convince other people.
Do you find that the progressive ideology is
somewhat like... consistent coherent or are there
different kind of factions and and who i guess
i'm also curious on who you think the progressives
are because are they the administrators at these
college campuses are they the professors are
they activists online posting on instagram yeah
i mean so it's been mostly professors who were
like you know historically have been driving
this sort of like whatever extreme leftward turn
of the academy but it appears that recently like
the most insane woke voices are students right
okay but now you know with the qualification
like most students are not extremists but it's
just that there's this particular minority who
are particularly loud and annoying right okay
so then you know okay and then like there are
these administrators who just will not stand
up to them and the administrators will are either
woke or will just pretend to be woke because
they just don't want any trouble and so then
they'll just give in So why are these administrators
not wanting to stand up? What's going on there?
Yeah, it's puzzling, right? It's puzzling to
me because these people don't have any power.
The woke people have no power except through
people thinking that they have power. So you
get these protesters or whatever and they tweet
at you on Twitter. and all you have to do is
ignore them you know they exit you out on x and
all you have to do is ignore them and then they'll
go away because they don't have any like you
know they're not writing the paychecks to the
administrators or whatever i don't know but i
think like there's a bunch of people who are
just um cowardly or whatever like they're just
like they they're just like afraid of social
pressure or something they haven't they haven't
understood that twitter isn't the real world
and like if if 10 000 people tweet at you on
twitter that doesn't matter And it makes you
feel like there's this huge groundswell of opposition.
Because, oh my God, 10 ,000 people. Because if
10 ,000 people in real life were bothering you,
then that would mean that you had done something.
Yeah, you're being attacked by a mob, right?
Yeah. I mean, do you find there also could be
a financial motivation for some of these colleges
and universities, maybe for the president? You
don't want a Twitter lynch mob coming after you
or a professor who's maybe researching a connection
between race and... intelligence. You might lose
your job, you might lose your tenure. It just
brings controversy, and controversy might lose
you money. It might get you money, but it might
lose you money too. If you're a professor, it's
true that you have a self -interested motive
to avoid controversial topics. If you're an administrator,
then what? What's the problem? You're going to
get fewer students? That seems pretty unlikely.
It kind of seems more unlikely that you would
get fewer students if there's stories about how
you silence dissent at your school. Will you
get fewer donations? I don't know. It kind of
seems the other way. Donors are often rich people
who are often conservative. The donor class is
usually older, wealthier people, and they're
a lot less likely to be woke. I think there's
this kind of selection process. The way you get
to be an administrator and to stay in that position
for a long time is not by taking courageous stands
on things. It might be that when the woke mob
shows up, taking a stand against them wouldn't
in fact cost you anything, but it's just like
the sort of person you have to be to become an
administrator is the person who does not stir
up controversy, whatever the context. You're
a person who mostly has just gone with the flow
to move up the ladder, pleasing whoever you need
to, and not taking any controversy that would...
damage your move up to another position yeah
you know like administrators talk a lot like
politicians you know if you if you ever like
whatever read memos or emails from administrators
this is like this sort of like um vague platitudinous
verbiage that's similar to how politicians talk
right except with a more more of a left -wing
slant you know we need we need to Develop a strategic
plan to promote inclusive excellence. That's
true. I guess I'm wondering, just to read, just
to circle back real quick, if you could put in
like a sentence or two, what is like the progressive
ideology that's occupying the movement? I mean,
you know, like the position of the left has changed
over time a lot, right? And so I don't know what
was progressive in the last centuries. Not necessarily
because it's they. And it's a vague term. So
I'm including like the woke ideology and all
the stuff about how America is filled with racism
and sexism. But, you know, I didn't call it woke
myth because I also want to include stuff about
economics, like the ideology about how society
is unfair to the poor and, you know. there's
not enough upward mobility and whatever capitalism
is unjust and stuff and then i want to include
stuff about global warming like you know it's
a threat to humanity or whatever which is not
exactly woke but is is progressive okay so like
most concepts the the the real explanation of
what progressivism refers to is just to give
examples of it like usually if somebody like
somebody wants you to define something usually
you can't define it precisely Precisely. Usually
the best explanation is just like you give examples.
What do you think about the idea of where we're
taking progressivism as this a little bit of
a boogeyman? It's like the scary woke mob who's
sitting there and they're trying to take our
jobs and take away our free speech. Yeah. And
then that further just entrenching further right
people into. just believing more and more irrational
beliefs because clearly everything on that side
is wrong. So I'm going to believe that the election
is fake. I'm going to believe that the COVID
-19 was fake. I'm going to believe that everything
that anyone tells me on that side is fake and
they're becoming more and more irrational. Like,
what do you think of that? Am I worried about
that? So that's a possible dynamic. That's a
thing that can happen. Hopefully that wouldn't
happen. That wouldn't happen when you were reading
my book because. Like I don't do that. Right.
So like I talk about global warming, for example,
but I don't take either extreme position. So
like if you're a right wing person, then right
wing people would be likely to pick up this book.
OK, so the right wing person is reading and they're
like reading about the global warming and then
they will hear what is bullshit. But like they
won't they won't see me saying that the whole
thing is a hoax. Right. Because it's not. Or,
you know, the stuff about COVID -19 like. They
won't hear me saying that vaccines are a plot
to put chips inside all of us. I wish we had
that kind of technology. Anyway, I do say that
the mask mandates were ineffective at best, possibly
harmful, but I don't think that about the vaccines.
No, the vaccines actually greatly reduce your
risk. The masks don't, though. And you also give
a somewhat, I would say, progressive view of
the transgender question or that kind of gender
philosophy thing, at least compared to what a
conservative might be thinking about that topic.
Yeah, very commonly the correct rational view
is not either of the extremes. One extreme view
about transgenderism is the whole thing is just
a fake. It's just like all... They're just dudes
pretending to be girls. And then the other extreme
view is... Anybody is whatever they say they
are. It could be this very masculine dude with
a beard and all you have to do is say, I'm a
woman, then boom, you're a woman. Neither of
those is correct. So how do you think about progressive
myths and how they were influencing this most
recent election where we saw the Democrats just
take a massive hit? that was unexpected some
would say given the the other candidate was a
whole lot of issues yeah i mean like yeah if
you're a democrat you should be feeling pretty
bad like you're not not just unhappy but you
should be feeling inadequate and like wondering
what the hell you did wrong because like how
could you lose to one of the most unpopular candidates
in history right in a way he's popular but he's
also unpopular right yeah like one of the most
hated people like i don't know like First candidate
to have felony convictions while he was running
and to be found liable for sexual assault during
the campaign. Also kind of tried to overthrow
the government. All these things. How are you
losing to that guy? I guess part of the story
is that people were sick of the bullshit coming
from the left. And it's not most of the people
on the left, but it's extremists on the left,
and the moderates are unwilling to stand up to
them. So like, oh, there are these people like
the whatever, transgender extremists, who are
just saying, yeah, self -ID, you're whatever
you say you are. And like, you know, dudes can
go into women's locker rooms if they just say
that they're girls. Okay. So, yeah, and like
just mainstream Democrats were not. taking a
stand against them they were not reigning in
their own extremists so that could be part of
why they lost i like to think that that's like
why they lost it seems like at least on in my
view that the democrats seem to take this stance
of if you don't agree with the whole thing then
you're banned from the the group versus the right
seems to be like oh you kind of agree with us
welcome on in Like, what do you think's going
on there? Why are they not as entrenched in this
tribalism where if you disagree with a single
portion of the extremist view, you're gone? Yeah,
although, I mean, sort of like in recent times
in the Republican Party, well, if you don't support
Trump specifically, that specific individual,
then you could be kicked out and whatever. But
it's not so ideological. It's not like if you
disagree about a particular ideological point,
you get kicked out. Yeah, why is that happening?
I don't know. I mean, it could be that the people
on the left have more cultural power, or they
feel like they have more power. When you feel
like you have more power, then you feel like
you can afford to start kicking people out. And
then people on the right feel like they're underdogs.
You could question whether they are correct to
feel that, but anyway, if you feel like you're
an underdog, then you feel like you have to accept
people. we can also move on to a very interesting
part of the book was, I think it was part one
is where you just talk about a couple of individuals
who kind of, you know, borderline the mainstream
media kind of lied about what took place with
these individuals. And I guess, why would you
start with these cases? And maybe we can talk
about, I don't know, someone like Kyle Rittenhouse
or Trayvon Martin, those cases. I guess, what,
what drove you to start with individual cases
where these people are kind of being, I don't
know. Yeah. They were swept up in a media narrative
or something. In the beginning, there's the Trayvon
Martin story, there's the Michael Brown story,
and a few others. I kind of thought, well, it's
easiest to see the distortions. It's really pretty
clear -cut. In these cases, you can just... You
can just get the evidence like, OK, so like in
the Michael Brown case. Well, there's a report
made by the Justice Department and like it reviews
the forensic evidence. And it's just like really
pretty well established what happened. And OK,
so then and then you can see how the media just
like totally distorted. Right. And like people
are just saying total bullshit about these cases.
And then, you know, you should take that and
let that inform how. how you receive media reports
from more difficult things, right? Cause like,
you know, whatever generalizations about society
are harder to conclusively verify. Oh, so yeah.
So you're saying it was like, these cases are
so obvious, the distortion or like the dishonesty.
And there are simple cases that it calls into
question when they're reporting on anything more
complex than like whether or not Kyle Rittenhouse
shot someone in self -defense. Right. The other
thing was, I kind of thought it would be more
entertaining, you know, so you get. you get a
story about something that happened to a person.
So you can imagine this happening and it's dramatic.
What do you think, like, what is, what are the
motivations here? Are they financial? Are they
attention based where they're playing into? Cause
yeah, I guess you have like a Trayvon Martin
or a Michael Brown case where it's, it's clear
they're trying to push a narrative of like an
unjust shooting of like a black person. Right.
And so, yeah, what's, yeah. Is it, is it financial?
Is it for the attention? I guess. Yeah. What
do you, well, I mean, I don't, I don't generally
believe these financial motivation stories. or
you know whatever the conspiracy by somebody
to make money i think it's more ideological now
um i mean what happened in the trayvon martin
case was it was sort of like the i i think nothing
was going to happen but the family of trayvon
martin started this right like they couldn't
accept that their son so they presumably they
loved their son so they were distraught at his
death and they did not want to accept that it
was in any way his fault and so then they started
up this narrative And like, it wasn't that they
had something to gain. It was that they were
upset that their son was dead. And so, and they
won and they wanted to blame the person and they
wanted to bring down retribution for the person
who killed him. And so they started this media
narrative that, you know, he was killed due to
racism and they hired this lawyer. I don't know
if they hired him or if he volunteered, but anyway,
they got this lawyer, Benjamin Crump, to help
them before the story. And then like, you know,
they get the, they would just like pressure the
city. to arrest this guy, Zimmerman. Okay, so
then you could wonder, okay, but why did the
media go along with this? Well, you know, the
media's business model is based upon attracting
attention. So, like, their business model isn't
based upon being informative and making sure
that people have correct beliefs or, like, making
sure that democracy runs well and society runs
well or whatever. It's based upon just... Whatever
attracts attention. And then we can divert the
attention to advertisers and we make money. Which
is true for mainstream media and equally true
for alternative media, I would say. And I feel
like people don't really acknowledge the same
incentives exist for alternative media. And you
saw that with the Kyle Rittenhouse stuff where
if you look at any like left -wing pundit on
like YouTube and they were just saying crazy
stuff about like Kyle Rittenhouse went there
to like he shot people just to defend property
or something like that. And some people even
thought that, like, the BLM protesters were black,
but I think they were all white, right? The people
who were shot were all white. Yeah. Yep, they
were all white. There was one black guy that
Rittenhouse shot at but missed. Okay. But it
would be very strange to say, oh, it was only
because of his race. Sure. You know, rather than
because the guy was attacking him. So when we
take a look at one of these cases. I mean, it
seems like for you it was pretty easy to find
the evidence that it wasn't the way the media
portrayed it. So then why is it not common knowledge
to a lot of people that it's not the case, that
this is the story? Well, you know, it requires
some effort. And there's no incentive, right?
There's no self -interested incentive to put
in even a small amount of effort to find out
what happened. Yeah, so a lot of these things,
a lot of the myths, like... It's really not that
hard to find out that they're false. Okay, there's
a Kyle Rittenhouse case. So there was a trial,
and you could watch video clips from the trial.
You could see some of the evidence that was presented.
Like the Michael Brown case, there's this government
report from the Justice Department. You could
read the report. But that would require effort
and time, and what's your incentive? What are
you going to get from it? They might argue that
clearly the institution is biased. If you watch
the court case, like they're only going to bring
evidence that supports that he's not racist and
all the other evidence they're hiding. I mean,
there's two sides in a trial, right? So yes,
each side is biased. But, you know, so the prosecution
did their best to get this guy convicted and
they couldn't. And like there's this jury. who
had to sit there for many hours listening to
all the evidence that both sides could come up
with. And if you didn't listen to the evidence,
you should probably defer to the people who did.
You know, like the Michael Brown case, you know,
like this. OK, so this report is produced under
Eric Holder, who was the first black attorney
general, I think. And so, you know, Eric Holder
and Obama both stood by it. Okay. So the first
black president, the first black attorney general
posted by this report. So it's probably not racist.
Yeah. I guess the, the hard part with sometimes
the progressive ideology says something like,
even if all the agents or actors in the system
are like acting innocently, it's somehow the
system itself is systemically racist or institutionally
racist or something like that. I'm not sure usually
how to take that, but I guess it, I don't know.
but that's usually what they say. And it's, and
that's such a broad myth. It's, it's hard to
combat, but. Yeah. Well, yeah. So, you know,
hard to falsify that, right? How do you test
the vague claim that the system is racist? There
have to be some specific details about how, you
know, what do you mean by the system? What about
the system? How is it racist or whatever? Sometimes
you get, okay. So like the, I think the most
common example I've heard of how of systemic
racism is, oh, the drug laws are racist. And
the most common example of that is, oh, well,
crack cocaine is punished more harshly than powder
cocaine. And then sometimes you hear people quote,
oh, actually, it's like punished 100 times harder,
which is obviously false. So I think it's punished
about 1 .3 times harsher. But anyway, they say,
oh, it's due to racism because black people,
like crack is more popular with black drug addicts
and powder cocaine is more popular with the white
drug addicts. Is that the reason? uh that's part
of the reason but it's actually not racism in
the traditional sense right because they're well
the reason why they introduced harsher sentencing
for crack cocaine was that crack cocaine was
devastating black communities and so people who
were trying to help black communities proposed
a crackdown right and so you know like and you
could see because like most black legislators
voted for ramping up the drug war and um most
democrats voted for it and actually i think maybe
it might have had stronger support among democrats
than republicans so like the people who were
concerned about helping the minorities were more
like they were in favor of the drug war because
like oddly enough the drug war was supposed to
help things it wasn't supposed to just cause
harm it was supposed to stop drug use yeah so
it's like this post uh like after it happens
you look at it retroactively and you create the
narrative because clearly it caused damage to
the black communities that must have been the
intent yeah but you know like well actually it's
not uncommon for government policies to produce
the opposite of their intended effect or to just
fail to do what they're supposed to do and to
have some other negative consequences that's
actually really common so actually if the government
is hurting the black community it's actually
quite likely that they're trying to help. Very
often their help is more harmful. Yeah, and if
they were trying to hurt them, they might inadvertently
help them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, maybe we
should elect more racists. You know, incompetent
racists. So I guess, yeah, this comes to a larger
point that you talk about in the book, which
is all around the systemic racism. And you talk
about, the racist police shootings, the drugs,
the implicit bias, and the stereotype threat.
And the racist police shootings, you bring up
a bunch of data about how cops maybe aren't actually
as racist as we think. What is that about? Yeah.
Well, okay, so what people say is black people
are only about an eighth of the population of
America, and they're about a quarter of the police
shooting victims or just police killing victims.
Okay, so... they're disproportionately likely
to be killed by police. Oh, it must be racism.
Okay. Here's another really even more shocking
disproportion, which is that men are about half
of the population, but they're about 95 .5 %
of the police homicide victims. So, oh my God,
the police are like incredibly sexist. So, you
know, like you heard that, well, if you're black,
you're like twice as likely to be shot as a member
of the general population. But if you're a male,
you're like, 21 times more likely to be shot
or something like that as a member of the general
population so it's just an insane level of sexism
or it could be that more males engage in aggressive
behavior towards the police and like they're
more likely to attack the police or something
like that how could we verify this well okay
it turns out that something like 90 percent of
murders are committed by men So like that's some
evidence that men are more aggressive than like
almost all cop killers are men. Okay. So now,
so if you buy that, so that shows that it's,
I don't know, it's probably not, or it's not
necessarily sexism. I can't prove that there
isn't sexism, but there's no reason to say that.
Okay. So then by the same token, well, what if
we look at the homicides, it's a six by race.
Okay. Well, Black people commit something like
40 % of the homicides and 43 % of the homicides
of police officers. It's like 43 % of the cop
killers are black. So it could be that there's
more aggressive behavior. That's why there's
a higher rate of police shootings. I know the,
I can imagine the progressive sitting here being
like, hearing you give the comparison of the
male. crime rate or whatever um and saying something
like let's do the patriarchy humor it's the patriarchy
um you know it's somehow it's the way the males
have set up society has actually hurt men and
makes them more violent or something like this
and yeah the way that the social norms and all
this affects everything that yeah they're going
to end up being disproportionately affected male
are going to they suffer under the patriarchy
and in the same way because of systemic racism
yeah and all the races in the past, black people
are going to suffer. I guess you're going to
hear something like that in response. Yeah. I
mean, you know, notice how, okay, so if women
are disadvantaged relative to men, that's obviously
the patriarchy. But then when men are disadvantaged,
that's still the patriarchy. Okay. But anyway,
okay, well, is it that society has taught men
to be aggressive? I don't know. I mean, like
the original question was just like whether the
police are biased, okay? So whatever the reason
is for the greater male aggression, It's not
that the police are biased. It's not their fault.
But anyway, okay. But is it that society is teaching
men to be aggressive? Is there any evidence of
that? Like, you know, so, okay, if you had kids,
like sometimes the kids fight with each other.
Does any parent say, like, good job, Billy? You
know, punch your brother more. More aggression.
So, you know, you have to say, oh, well, it's
just like some subtle thing. Like, you know,
like they see. war movies or something they see
people fighting and that makes it violent video
games and that has more effect than the parents
telling them not to fight or something okay but
anyway um what's the evidence for it being that
rather than biology like i'll tell you the evidence
that is biological number one it's cross -cultural
number two it's cross species right so like among
other animal species like sometimes the animals
will fight with con specifics, and it's almost
always males fighting other males. And then,
you know, and in America and worldwide, it's
something like 80 % of murder victims are men
and 90 % of the killers are men. So it's murder
is mostly men killing other men. If there's a
pattern among humans that looks like what's happening
among other animal species, it's just crazy to
say that it's a completely different explanation
for us, right? You know, except that like, oh,
we just don't want to admit that we're animals.
And we have some of the same instincts that our
evolutionary ancestors had. The next one you
talked about was implicit bias, which I didn't
know anything about the IAT test. Can you talk
to me about the IAT test that was developed?
Yeah, it's this thing that I guess psychologists
love called the implicit association test. It's
supposed to detect implicit attitudes by detecting
how difficult... it is for you to form certain
associations so it's like um you're going to
be shown something on a screen and then you're
going to have to press you know one of two buttons
okay and like you're supposed to press a button
for example you're going to be shown something
and you're supposed to press a particular button
if the thing relates to either white people or
goodness and then a different button if it relates
to either black people or badness And then they
time your reactions to see how quickly you can
do this, which tests how easy it is for you to
form the association between white people and
goodness. And then there's another condition
where you're supposed to associate white people
with badness. So press the button for white people
related or bad related. And then it turns out
that most people find it easier to form the white
good association than the white bad association.
So then that's supposed to show that most people
are racist. So that is an explanation. That's
like an intuitively plausible explanation for
the reaction time differences. The reaction time
differences are on the order of 200 milliseconds,
0 .2 seconds. So that's like, I think, so that's
too small of a difference for it to be conscious.
So it's an unconscious difference. So that suggests
you just have this unconscious bias. It also
happens even among a lot of people who... have
explicitly egalitarian beliefs. So the people
will tell you explicitly they think whites and
blacks are equal, but they still show a reaction
time difference. So that's why they think it's
implicit or unconscious. You can do this test
for different things. You can just detect different
associations. And so it turns out that people
associate women with home and the family and
men more with work. stuff like that so just like
stereotypes will be will get confirmed by that
you know i mean confirming that we have the stereotypes
so then do we all have implicit bias are we all
secretly racist and sexist yeah well you know
it's hard to say maybe um but um i mean they've
had a hard time finding tangible consequences
of this right so like okay well does it does
it actually predict Well, it's really hard to
detect discriminatory behavior correlated with
your IAT scores. You know, one of the interesting
things is, okay, so, you know, you hear that
people have generally positive associations with
white and generally negative associations with
black or more negative. Okay. The same test shows
that people have more positive associations with
women and negative associations with men. So,
in other words, They have longer reaction times
when you're supposed to click for male or good
than when you're supposed to do female or good.
But you don't hear that reported. It is plausible.
I know the explanation is intuitively plausible
that it's because we have unconscious attitudes,
positive or negative associations. But whether
that causes any tangible effects, we don't know.
You can change your IAT score. So as a matter
of fact, If you give somebody the test and then
you give the same person the test again, there's
not that strong of a correlation between their
scores. So there's something like a 0 .5 correlation,
which is extremely low considering that it's
the same test. Usually you give somebody a test
and you give them the same test, the same person,
the same test. Usually there's a really strong
correlation, like 0 .9 or something like that,
if it's a good test. So, okay, so it suggests
that it doesn't measure a stable psychological
trait. But also, like, you can train people to
change their scores. So, like, you could do things
like show people, prime people with examples
of, like, admired black people, right? And then,
like, that will improve their IET scores and,
like, make it easier for them to form the association
between black people and goodness. But so what?
There's no evidence that that causes any tangible
benefit. You just change your reaction times
by 200 milliseconds, but there's no evidence
that there's a change in actual discriminatory
behavior. We have the gender pay gap, which you
kind of covered. What is that about? Why is it
not how people think it is? It used to be said,
this was decades ago, it was said that women
earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned.
This was, I think, in the 1960s or something.
And then the number has gone up from there, you
know, like 70 cents or 74 cents. The latest is
it's gone up to 82 cents. And then you're supposed
to think, I take it, that this is because male
employers are just like assholes who don't like
women. You just underpay the women. And now if
you know any economics, you should be at least
a little bit suspicious because if there were
some employers who were doing that and then there
are other employers who pay people fairly, The
second group would out -compete the first in
the marketplace. Or they don't have to pay people
fairly. There's this employer who's paying 82
cents for work that's actually worth a dollar.
Another employer could come in and pay 92 cents.
And then they could hire away the female employees.
They would have lower costs. Leaving the sexist
employers, they wind up just employing a bunch
of men for a dollar. And then the less sexist
employers wind up employing a bunch of women
for 92 cents and getting the same. work for less
money so like if you think in economic terms
it doesn't make sense that this would be happening
on the systematically but anyway like the evidence
is just like well if you control for a bunch
of pay relevant characteristics then the pay
gap goes away right so like the reason for the
gap like the 18 cent gap is that when men and
women are doing different work with different
conditions so if you control for um experience
hours worked occupation and you know obviously
relevant characteristics then the gap um virtually
disappears then it goes to 99 cents on the dollar
or something like that yeah so and like different
sources give what whatever 97 cents 99 cents
or something like that yeah and at that point
the difference is small enough where it's like
is is this really racism yeah or sexism yeah
i mean you know if you're if you're at a one
cent difference that could just be random um
the other thing is it could be other pay -relevant
characteristics that you didn't control for.
Because who's to say how many things there are?
There are many things that could be relevant
to your pay. And then you brought up just a few
more factors. I think you also brought up in
the book things like being able to work overtime,
moving for your job. I guess things like that,
things that men are just more likely to do more
often than not. Because women don't necessarily
want to do it. They might want to start a family
or they may not be interested necessarily in
grinding a 60 -hour work week necessarily. They
might want a better work -life balance, right?
Yeah. So the main reason for the pay gap is probably
that men prioritize monetary income more than
women do. And I phrase it that way intentionally
because there are different values in life. then
money is not the only thing that matters and
maximizing your money income is not necessarily
the way to maximize your well -being all right
so like men have a higher priority for money
as compared with other values so like um where
you want to live right so like a man is more
likely to move for the company company wants
you to move somewhere he's okay and it's a less
desirable place to live but they'd be like okay
because they're going to pay me more all right
and now uh and that does not mean that men are
overall better off Like they're better off with
respect to money, but that means they're worse
off with respect to these other things. Yep.
And even if taken like an evolutionary psychology
lens on why are men doing this, it's like historically
in dating for men, having more resources has
always been more beneficial. So they're willing
to make more sacrifice so that they have a more
successful life of relationships. Yeah. So, you
know, part of it might be they're trying to impress
women, basically. Yeah. They might be explicitly.
thinking that actually or they might just not
really be thinking that explicitly but that might
be part of the explanation of why they feel like
they like money so much yeah they don't know
why they like it but they just feel like they
want more money yeah like i get more money and
it seems that some stuff goes better yeah you
know these evolutionary explanations i feel like
we have to tell this for people who don't think
about evolutionary psychology like the evolutionary
explanations are Like they don't presuppose that
people are thinking about what will maximize
their reproductive success. Usually it's that
you have certain feelings and you don't know
why you have those feelings, but you act on them
anyway. That happens to all of us. And the reason
you have those feelings is that in the past,
people who had feelings like that tended to reproduce
more. So people who are like really... um really
like climbing the social status hierarchy tended
to reproduce more in our evolutionary past and
so now you just feel like doing the things that
are going to increase your social status and
you don't know why but yeah and there seems to
be this sense of admitting the the game behind
the game actually detracts from you winning the
game like if there's if you're trying to gain
status and you tell everyone you're trying to
gain status you're not going to gain any status
you're actually going to go down yeah same thing
with like uh the with reproductive success right
it's like oh i'm doing this so i can get more
dates like that's essentially going to lower
you in the hierarchy yeah if you tell right yeah
you put on your dating profile i'm trying to
maximize my reproductive yeah it's like there's
a an incentive for the human brain to put these
away and ignore the fact that we have these motivations
because they would in fact be detrimental to
our success and therefore You're going to hide
them away, abstract them away behind more pure
motivations. And by the way, just in case people
are wondering, oh, well, why would this be for
men more than for women? Don't women want to
claim the status hierarchy also? Well, okay,
so this is just like an empirical fact. We have
more female ancestors than male ancestors, like
a lot more, which means in our evolutionary past,
most women reproduced and most men did not reproduce
at all. They were genetic dead ends, which means
there's more competition. Like the way this is
possible is that most societies have practiced
polygyny. So like a man could have multiple wives.
And that means that there had to be a bunch of
men who got no wives at all. And so that means
that you have to climb the status hierarchy because
it's the high status people who get to have the
multiple wives and the low status people who
get to have zero. But the same logic doesn't
apply to women. Women would get to reproduce
regardless. right because like whatever you know
the high status men would be happy to reproduce
with a low status woman it's just like yeah yeah
one of my favorite things in regards to this
is there's a lot of maybe younger men online
who have this idea that oh the past was way better
i should just go back to when men were men and
then it's like if you were actually existed back
then In the state that you exist now, you'd be
at the bottom of the status hierarchy. You would
have a way worse time than if you existed right
now as you do right now. Yeah, I mean, in fact,
like, well, you'd have a much better chance of
being dead because, you know, it was very common
for primitive tribes to fight with each other.
And, you know, like the men of one tribe would
get together and go and attack another tribe
just because it's another tribe. And they would
go and attempt to kill the men. in that tribe
so then they could kidnap the women and take
them back to their tribe which is horrible but
you know don't get mad at me for saying that
i'm not doing it i'm not advocating it i'm just
like reporting the facts anyway that's what happened
and so that's why the past was horrible right
and you know this was not fun for the women because
the women would be like coerced brides but it's
less fun for the men because like the you know
going back many years like i didn't understand
why war was so common in human history because
it seems irrational because like you go to war
you have a high chance of dying you know okay
maybe you can capture some territory but like
so many of your people die and so many of the
other people die like why are they fighting um
and uh this is the explanation right in evolutionary
terms right so say so first of all most men would
have uh zero offspring in the ordinary course
of events which means in evolutionary terms you
have nothing to lose so and if you go and attack
a neighboring tribe if you get killed say there's
a 50 chance you get killed your reproductive
success is zero but it was already zero and if
there's a 50 chance that you go and you capture
two wives then your reproductive success um goes
up yeah yeah so it's worth it yeah or even if
you come back as a war hero yeah reproductive
success probably goes up as well yeah yeah yeah
and so you know like uh it's the the ugly truth
about uh human society and nature. Moving on
to more possibly ugly things. You also talked
about another shocking myth about the, like the
sexual assault rates on college campuses and
how they're kind of misleading and like vastly
kind of maybe over -reported. Can you talk to
us more about that one? Because I found it kind
of shocking just because when you go to a college
campus, like the first thing you do is you go
through like a, like a sexual assault training
course or whatever, like an alcohol. being safe
with alcohol kind of thing. And you're often
told these sort of statistics. Yeah, well, it's
common to hear that a quarter of women get raped
in college. If you go to college, you have a
quarter probability of being raped. And if you
believe that, you should not send your kids to
college. And if you are sending your daughter
to college, you either don't believe that...
or you're a terrible parent. Because this implies
that American college campuses are 10 times more
dangerous than Detroit, which is the most crime
-ridden city in America. Okay, but also, that's
pretty unbelievable. You should at least be on
its face suspicious of that statistic. Yeah,
so what happened? You know, there are a bunch
of things that they did that just sort of like
to get the statistics up. And they're like, okay,
there's a slight calculation error where they
calculate 24 % and it should have been 22%. And
then there's a thing where like, okay, so they
surveyed people on like how many of them had
been sexually assaulted in some time period.
And then it was like 6 .9 months. And then they
multiplied it to try to get how many would be
assaulted within. a complete college career.
And they assume the college career was five years,
which makes the number go up. Actually, on average,
a college career is 4 .33 years. So if you use
4 .33, then the number goes down. And then there's,
oh, well, they counted the summer months, but
you're generally not in class then. It doesn't
seem like you should count that. So if you subtract
the summer months, it goes down again. Frequently,
so they kind of lumped together attempted rape
with actual rape. And if you distinguish those,
like the actual rape is a lot lower, or, you
know, something like half. Okay. And then there's
this thing where like, you know, they do these
surveys and they ask you, they ask questions
about things that could have happened to you.
And then like the questioner decides whether
you were raped. But also they ask, would you
say that you were raped? And like half of the
people that the survey authors said were raped.
said that they were not right. Half the time
the survey respondent thinks you were right,
but you think you weren't. Okay, so like, okay,
we take that out, then the number goes down again.
And so it turns out that when you make a bunch
of corrections, you know, it's probably like
5 % or something like that, rather than 25%.
Which I don't know, is that, would that be out
of the ordinary, or would that be kind of expected?
You know, like that, well, out of the ordinary
compared to what, like, is it? Anywhere else
other than a college campus. Yeah, I guess a
normal city. Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay, so, yeah,
I don't know what the overall rape rates are.
So that's probably, yeah, it sounds like that's
high, like compared to not being a college student.
Now, you know, you might think, well, so that's
weird. Maybe that's not even true. Oh, another
thing is, like, different surveys get different
results so like the people who did the study
that gave the you know that that the 25 statistic
is based on they also did a survey with a different
methodology that got estimates in order of magnitude
lower and so um okay okay so it's not really
clear what's going on um but okay but so could
it be that college campuses are more dangerous
uh it could be because like maybe there's like
more drinking And there's more like maybe there's
more horny guys because they're sort of young
and they've just gotten they've just gotten freedom
and whatever. Yeah, I guess I was curious while
you were researching this topic or kind of looking
over if there was any information on like where
the assaults took place, if it was more likely
than not, like a fraternity household or like
a social gathering of some kind with alcohol.
And I would imagine that. I mean, yeah, we were
kind of in Greek life a little bit, but I would
imagine the. grief it'd like it'd be pretty bad
at greek life maybe yeah you know so i don't
know um see i'm not sure whether that is reported
or not but if it was i i don't know yeah yeah
sure but even regardless of whether it's the
statistics are correct i think a lot of people
ascribe oh if it's one in four women that are
raped then it must be one in four men that are
rapists right and at least what we've seen from
david bust and his research with why men behave
badly. It's like the offenders are the ones that
are very likely to be repeat offenders. Yes.
And there's very few minority that actually commit
most of the rapes versus it being just one man
for every woman. Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah.
So in fact, this is why they recognize even by,
you know, progressive people or like, you know,
the progressive people who are giving education
about sexual assault. I think they widely know
this. It's mostly that there's a small number
of repeat offenders rather than a large number
of offenders. Sometimes you hear people say,
or I've heard people say, oh, there's all these
women who've been sexually harassed or sexually
assaulted, but there's all these men who say
that they don't know any harassers or assaulters.
Actually, that's not that strange because there
aren't that many. It's just that they're repeat
offending. Plus, of course, the ones who are
doing it are not telling other people about it.
Is it also true that you're more likely to be
assaulted by someone you know, or is that not
actually something that had been told? I'm not
sure, but that does sound plausible. Okay, because
now I'm trying to imagine putting that together
with what you guys were talking about. It's also
usually a repeat offender. Yeah, and I think
with this whole narrative, there also goes an
idea that that you have like this incel movement
you have all these people who are very antisocial
or or just don't really talk to people interact
with people and they're the rapists but we also
see that the people most likely to be rapists
are people who are generally very charismatic
around a lot of people are probably attractive
and actually generally have a lot of success
in dating and then they also go ahead and take
more than is consented to and so yeah so yeah
like just as a side point like the People who
are socially awkward are not the people you should
be most worried about. The incels are usually
awkward people who don't know how to interact
with women or people in general. And the people
you should be worried about are psychopaths and
people with antisocial personality traits in
general. And those people are usually actually
charming. They appear charming at first before
you know what they're actually like. Ted Bundy
is a very charming man. It's disturbing how he's
very good looking and he just comes across very
well if you watch an interview with him. Part
of the effect of this is you have a lot of shy
men who are getting more and more scared of getting
sexual assault accusations so they're unwilling
to go outside and go talk to a woman. You all
have on the other side women being like, oh,
why does nobody talk to me anymore? Why am I
not getting approached? And the people who need
the message of don't assault women are the ones
who are least likely to take that message and
run with it. And the people who are least likely
to assault women are the ones who are like, okay,
I'm going to back away all the way and not do
anything that would ever offend a woman. No,
that's probably right. I suspect it's partly
rationalization. The people who are having a
hard time talking to women in the first place,
then they hear bad things that could happen and
they just sort of blow it out of proportion.
Because it's really not likely that you're going
to be accused of sexual harassment if you're
just a normal person. If you're talking in a
normal way or even in an awkward way. That's
not what they call harassment. But it's probably
like, well, these guys are over -perceiving the
risk. because that's just like a psychological
trait that people have. Yeah, they pay a lot
of attention to what everyone thinks about them,
and that might be why they're all so awkward.
Yeah, they over -perceive, right? Just for the
awkward people out there. If you're worried about
what other people are thinking about you, they're
probably not. They're not thinking about you.
If you said something embarrassing and you're
thinking about it, probably nobody else is thinking
about it. They might have slightly noticed it
and then they forgot about it in five minutes.
Okay. So anyway, that's just as a side point,
side beneficial point for Bruce. The next point
that you talked about was that women don't lie,
which you had a lot of quotes in there at the
beginning. I found one of them quite humorous,
which was Joe Biden at the Kavanaugh hearing.
And he's saying, oh, yeah. I've been saying,
believe all women if they come up and have a
claim. And then it's him at his own accusation.
He's like, I've always said that you should take
it seriously, but you should verify it. You should
look into it. And he's like switching his stance
around, which I thought was funny. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it was a, you know, so the left -wing people
faced a dilemma when Joe Biden was running for
office because... was this Tara Reid, I think,
came forward with a sexual assault accusation
against him. And, okay, and like the Democrats
have been saying, you should believe women, you
should believe all women, whatever. But now they're
favorite candidates. So now what are they going
to do? And like, and some of them were just like,
yeah, no, believe all women. Joe Biden is an
asshole. But then some of them were like, well.
We didn't mean literally believe all. We just
meant take it seriously. Don't automatically
disbelieve them. Okay. So, okay. But anyway,
I don't know what happened. I don't know what
happened with Joe Biden. I don't know what happened
with Brett Kavanaugh. Never. But you can't decide
whom to believe. Like there's a disagreement
or like, you know, one person says X happened,
another person denies it. you can't figure out
what happened just by looking at the genders
of the two people. There is not a gender that
always tells the truth or that always lies. And
the possibility of somebody lying about rape
or sexual assault or something like that, it's
not that outlandish. It's not obviously more
outlandish than the possibility of somebody committing
those crimes. Both of those are deviant behavior.
It's highly deviant behavior to attack a woman,
but it's also highly deviant behavior to report
that you were attacked when you weren't. It's
not obvious that one of those is more deviant
and therefore would be less likely to happen.
Yeah, and if there were a progressive right here,
I would imagine they would say that, well, why
would a woman put themselves through all the
pain and toil of having to... deal with telling
their story and getting all this media attention
and just, like, the perceptions of the people
around them? Why would they even go through that
and lie about it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so,
well, it happens that we know some things about
this because we know of some cases of false rape
accusations, okay? So there's a study by Eugene
Kanin, which the progressives don't like, but
he found, like, a rate of something like 40 %
false rape accusations. Right, so... Most of
the studies find lower numbers than that. But
anyway, and that paper includes descriptions
of some of the cases. So here is a fairly typical
example. There was a woman who was cheating on
her husband while her husband was away overseas.
She became concerned that she had become pregnant
from her lover, and therefore she made up a story
that she had been raped. in order to cover up
the infidelity because what are you going to
say right and so if and if you're surprised that
that would happen then you haven't met that many
human beings that's how human beings are and
so okay uh you know there's another story so
you know there's like covering up infidelity
that's that's one explanation just like getting
out of trouble with other people another explanation
is revenge right so there is a there was a young
woman who was living in her mother's house and
there was a boarder who was renting a room in
the house and then she was having an affair with
a boarder when the mother found out about this
the mother kicked the boarder out okay and while
he was packing the young woman goes to him and
says okay just wait for me for an hour and i'll
join you and then he says something like who
the hell wants you and so then so he's an asshole
and so then she gets revenge on him by accusing
him of rape okay and then you know okay and then
like you know there's a third story of um so
a third type of case is trying to get sympathy.
There's a case of a woman who made up a story
about being raped by a stranger in a park or
something in order to just like to tell her friends.
She wasn't trying to report this to the police,
okay? She was just like trying to get sympathy
or something from her friends. But then they
decided they had to report it to the police.
And so now what is she going to say? No, I was
just lying. No, just wanted to say that. So she
has to like give the police report, right? Yeah,
and there might even be this idea behind what
you're talking about gaining sympathy is if all
the people you know are coming out about a rape
case, you might just add your own as a way to
fit into the in -group. It reminds me of, I don't
know if you've ever read The Status Game by Will
Storr, but he talks about... this woman who was
about to give birth to a child and she's kind
of lost about how to be a mother and she finds
this online facebook group which is anti -vaccines
and part of the the status game in that group
was you would just make more and more radical
claims that weren't necessarily true to gain
either sympathy or to gain status points within
the group and so they would sometimes there'd
be lies about They're kids having problems because
of vaccines or, oh, my cousin, this happened
to him because of the vaccine. And it was just
this continuous cycle of adding to the fire in
order to gain standing within the group. Yeah.
You know, this is a this is a flaw in the human
psyche, the desire to fit in with the group and
just like whatever, whatever people in the group
are talking about, you'd like to try to join
in. Could you also speak to I think you mentioned
in the book how not only the idea we might have
a lot more. false reports, but also there's a
lot of cases where women who are assaulted do
not go forward. Is that also somewhat, is that
true? No, yeah, that's definitely true. So there's,
like the Justice Department does a survey, the
National Crime Victimization Survey. Okay, and
so like they have estimates of the frequency
of rape. And then most of the people in the survey
who report having been raped. also say that they
did not report it to the police. And so, like,
it's both over -reported and under -reported.
Over -reported in the sense that people sometimes
report being raped when they weren't, and it's
under -reported in the sense that usually if
you were raped, you don't report it. And so,
like, that makes, well, that unfortunately makes
the frequency of true reports lower. And then,
okay, well, why would that be? Why would you
not report it? Usually people report crimes,
I guess. and well you can kind of understand
because like if you report it then you have to
relive this incident in front of strangers repeatedly
so you have to tell the police but the police
are going to interview you more than once to
make sure that your story is the same both times
and then you're going to be interviewed by the
defendant's lawyer who is going to try to impugn
your credibility and then you're going so you're
going to have to do depositions but then you're
going to have to repeat it in open court and
like and this is like the most unpleasant thing
in your life so It's like it's really not in
your interest. So we talked about the racism
issue, the sexism issue. Then you talked a little
bit about the gender issue, which honestly, when
I read this portion of your book, I didn't find
it super controversial or non -progressive. Could
you go over the thoughts in those two chapters?
Yeah, what's going on with gender? What is gender?
I keep hearing that people have genders. What
is a woman? Yeah, what is a woman? Nobody knows.
Well, apparently, per Matt Walsh, progressives
can't answer that question. It's super hard for
trans activists to answer what is a woman. I
don't think it's that hard. I hadn't thought
about that much. Okay. But like, well, the progressive
view is there's a distinction between sex and
gender. There could be, maybe there are different
uses of the word woman. So maybe in one of them
you have to be an adult human being with the
female biological sex. That could be one use,
but it could also be, you just have to be an
adult human being with the feminine gender. So
that would be like what they would say was, was
a woman. Okay. Sure. And you're like, okay, but
yeah, but what is the feminine gender? And actually,
well, like, most of the progressives don't have
a very good answer to this because previously,
before the fad of transgenderism, progressives
were saying gender is a social construct. Unfortunately,
that does not fit with the trans activist ideology
because, like, if it's a social construct, that
means your gender is determined by society. so
that means if you say you're a woman but society
says you're a man then you're a man okay but
actually luckily for them they were wrong when
they said that gender was a social construct
right and like there's really strong evidence
for this from well like the phenomenon of transgenderism
okay so like there are these people in some cases
there will be people like there'll be kids like
four years old who start saying that they're
the other gender like they're biologically male
but they start saying they think that they're
girls they try to wear dresses and like they
just show more girl typical behavior from the
very beginning of the time when there's sex differentiated
behavior in children like at least in some cases
okay so um and then you're like and like it wasn't
like society didn't tell them to do that so it
doesn't appear to be a social construct it appears
that there's something inside of them So it appears
to be biological. So here's the theory. Well,
males and females differ for biological reasons
in many ways, like all over the body. When you
take out an organ of a body, a male body or a
female body, there will be at least some slight
differences in most organs, perhaps including
the brain. It would be weird if the brain was
the only thing where there were no male -female
differences. And actually considering how important
the brain is for human behavior and how important
it is for your reproductive success and also
how different the strategies are for male and
female reproductive success, it would be totally
bizarre if there weren't differences in the brain.
And of course there are differences in the brain
that are well known among brain scientists. So
the thought is... Well, it could actually happen.
Maybe sometimes it happens that you get a male
-typical brain in a female body, like the rest
of the body is female -typical, or vice versa.
Maybe that happens. So some of the differences
in the brain are going to be adaptations to produce
psychological... characteristics that are adaptive
for you know promoting reproductive reproductive
success for a particular biological sex so those
psychological traits are what constitute your
gender okay so like periodically sometime and
i don't know like physiologically why this happens
but sometimes like maybe the rest of the body
develops male but the brain develops in the female
way and then that person is going to wind up
having more female typical psychological characteristics
so then they're going to feel like they're female
Sure. Yeah. I, and then you have like a lot of
conservatives are very, they find this very hairy
and they're afraid. Cause I guess you gave the
example of the four year old and I guess you've,
we've seen a lot of like Republican States, they
try to ban gender affirming care for, for minors
and stuff like that. I guess I'm not sure what
your view would be on that on. Yeah. Whether
they'd like kids that would have access to that
healthcare or like what, or what I guess, yeah.
Your thoughts on that discourse in general. Well,
yes, I don't. i don't know exactly what you should
do but um let's just say you should be very careful
about um you know giving cross -sex hormones
or puberty blockers or any of these things or
especially surgeries for minors right and the
reason is well okay look at the dsm right which
is the standard reference work for psychiatrists
and so the last edition was in 2013 um i'm you
know i'm I'm worried that if they were to do
another edition today, it would be, like, you
know, politically biased. A bunch of people would
lobby them to change what it says about gender
dysphoria. But anyway. Okay, and, you know, so
it reports that stuff that I was saying, but
also mentions that most cases of gender dysphoria
will resolve on their own. So, like, the person
will come to accept their birth gender. So knowing
that that's the case, should you try to switch
the kid? probably not this is like you could
easily be ruining their life yeah i mean my my
take on it was always that it doesn't really
make sense to take a minor who is still going
through a lot of changes psychologically physically
mentally all these different kinds of ways and
and do something so drastic that is pretty difficult
to reverse which is if someone is of age they
most likely have the mental capacity to To know
what they're doing, but a minor doesn't really.
Yeah, so for adults, well, I'm a libertarian,
people own themselves, or at least mentally competent
adults own themselves. They can do whatever they
want with their body. So even if they're wrong,
even if they're harming themselves, they can
do what they want with their body, but minors
have to be protected by the adults. Yeah, does
the libertarian viewpoint suggest that it should
be a conversation between parents, kids, and
doctors, or should the government step in? Yeah,
I'm not sure. At minimum, you should have to
have consent from your parents. But, I mean,
it might be that they shouldn't be allowed to
do it even with that. Sort of like, well, the
government has to kind of decide, like, well,
do they think they're... It's like weigh the
costs and benefits, right? Because if parents
can consent, there could be a lot of cases where
their parents are just doing the wrong thing.
You're not allowed to do anything you want to
your kids, right? And if the government knows
that the thing that you want to do with your
kids or consent to be done with your kids is
harmful, they should stop you from doing it.
Yeah, it would be as if the parent consented
to the kid smoking cigarettes, and the kid wanted
to, and the parents were okay with it, the doctor
was okay with it. We should probably still step
in and say this could have caused irreversible
damage to their lives. We should probably wait
until they're of consenting age for themselves.
Or, you know, like, I don't know, to make it
clearer, your kid wants to try crack. And the
parent thinks that's great. You know, well, that
will be considered child abuse. You can't do
that. So, and the reason why I'm not totally
sure is like, well, I'm, I don't really know.
I'm not sure. Like, maybe there are some cases
where it's just so clear that the person really
is the other gender that you should switch them.
And even when people transition, there is some
rate of people who detransition. And I feel like
I hear it misreported or I hear people having
conversations about that and going back and forth.
What did you find to be like the rate or how
often people detransition? So I don't know the
rate of detransition. OK, so, you know, there's
desistance and detransitioning. So desistance
is where you say you have gender dysphoria, but
you later come to accept your gender, you know,
apparent. You're a parent to the rest of the
world. Okay. And then there's detransitioning
is where not only did you say that you felt like
you were the other gender, but also you actually
transitioned to living as the other gender. And
then you later transitioned back. Okay. So that
is much rarer. I don't know how common, but the
desistance is perhaps something like 80%. And
I'm hesitant about that because there's a wide
range. different estimates reported in the literature.
But I think 80 % is around the most common. I
think the reason that there's a wide range is
that, well, it's a politically controversial
issue. And so there's a bunch of, I think there's
a bunch of left -wing people who want the number
to be lower. And so that's why there's not a
consensus on it. You talk about the economy.
You talked about generational wealth, the tax
burden, and regulation. yeah yeah what's going
on with generational wealth is everyone who's
rich just yeah someone who inherited it and it's
yeah no the legacy yeah so like you know the
explanation of um the explanation of rich people
that is comfortable for progressives is oh they
inherited it somebody a long time ago got lucky
and got some money and then they just keep passing
it on and like if your parents have money then
you just get to be rich without having to do
anything okay and then like the poor people are
just unlucky they just didn't get to have a wealthy
um yeah yeah uh and okay and so like i'm under
the impression that many left -wing people believe
that but they have no basis for it they're just
assuming that that's the case and they've never
looked at the empirical evidence and in the empirical
evidence well like most millionaires have received
no inheritance So it was something like 79 %
of millionaires in the survey had received zero
inheritance. And they reported that the way they
became millionaires was by regular saving over
many years. Just take something from your paycheck,
put it into the retirement account every month,
and do that over and over, and then eventually
it grows to over a million. What about regulation?
We need to regulate the economy more. All of
these companies are taking... advantage of us
and just maximizing profits and not caring about
the consumer at all. Well, that's kind of true,
right? Although, by the way, when people are
complaining about how greedy these companies
are, most of the people who are complaining are
also very greedy. Do you ever turn down a raise?
And you have two companies that you could work
for and one of them is paying more money. Do
you ever say, yeah, but this one is less ethical,
so I'm not going to take the money? But anyway,
okay. So true, you could have negative consequences
for society if there's something that makes money,
but it also imposes a cost on other people that
they don't consent to. So the clearest example
of that is pollution. Okay, you're making a product,
you're selling it to consumers, and the consumers
are like, they're enjoying the product. And then
there's, like, pollution that's going out to
other people regardless of whether they paid
for your product, so they didn't choose whether
to get the pollution or not. Okay. But so, like,
that is an appropriate time for regulation. I
mean, like, you know, I think in that case what
you should really do is try to price it. That
is, you should try to figure out how much harm
the pollution is costing and then have a tax
that's proportional to that. And rather than
saying, oh, you just can't do it at all, right,
or having the government decide how much you're
allowed to do. The reason being that, well, that
creates the incentive for the company to figure
out what is the most efficient amount of pollution
to make. The amount where it's worth it for the
benefit that it's providing. But, okay, but the
thing is, like, if you think that companies are
greedy and selfish, like, well, why would you
think that government employees are not selfish?
Like okay, so there might be reason to think
that businesses are more greedy or like people
are running businesses are more greedy than the
average person Because like the reason why they're
running the business is that they want to make
a lot of money Okay, right. So and then like
the people who are in government agencies are
maybe less greedy on average Because they're
not in such a lucrative profession Okay, but
also they're probably like more power hungry
than average because like that's what the government
does exerts power over people okay, but also
Maybe a little known fact, I don't know, commonly
known but not by leftists. They're a lot of the
same people, actually. So like government regulatory
agencies will frequently be staffed by people
who used to work in the industry that the agency
is regulating or are going to work in the industry
after they get done with this stint in the government.
If that's surprising, well, it shouldn't be too
surprising because actually those people are
the experts on the industry. So you have to get
people who understand this industry. That's like
the superficially public -spirited rationale,
but also that can create a conflict of interest.
So then you should think, given human selfishness
and given the greed of the corporations, you
should think that the corporations are going
to try to turn the regulatory agencies to their
own economic benefit. uh do you think they're
doing that of course they are like of course
they're doing that and who is stopping them well
like okay and then now what is the plan like
well we're going to have the consumers going
in like individual consumers are going to go
and lobby the agencies no why are they going
to do that how many times have you done that
how many times have you gone and like written
to a government agency and like tried to lobby
how many lobbyists have you hired in your life
right and There's a reason why well, it's just
not in your interest to do that. It's not worth
it Because like okay, you know say there's a
regulation that is costing one dollar You know
for each of a million people and then it gives
that dollar to one person Okay for the million
people who are losing a dollar. It's not worth
it to them to do anything Anything they can do
to try to stop the regulation, it's not worth
it. Because you write a letter to your congressman.
Well, would I spend time writing a letter to
a congressman for a dollar? No. But for the one
person who's going to receive the million dollars,
it is worth it to them to do something to try
to make this law happen. So that's why there
are a bunch of laws that are serving the interests
of big players in the industry. And the main
way that they do this is by disadvantaging their
potential competitors. So if you're a big company,
there will be certain regulations that will disadvantage
small companies more than they disadvantage big
companies. And if you're having a hard time competing
with the small companies because maybe your company
is less efficient, which might even be because
it's so large, maybe the best way of competing
is getting the government to pass some of these
regulations that are going to be harder on the
smaller competitors. So then how do we stop these
businesses from... continuing to be greedy and
do things that are most likely unethical, while
also knowing that regulation is largely inefficient
on these companies. I mean, we should probably
have a lot less regulation, you know, and maybe
the laws should be passed by the elected officials
and not by bureaucrats. So, I mean, what happens
is the elected officials will pass a law. that
creates an agency and authorizes the agency to
sort of, like, fill in the details. Like, it
tells the agency what they're supposed to do,
but the agency gets to fill in the details of
how to do this. And, like, maybe we shouldn't
have that. It wasn't part of the Constitution,
right? That there would be regulators who were
not elected. And so, you know, so, like, I'm
leaving Rome for there being times when you have
to have a law to stop some bad behavior. What
do you think of this whole DOGE department, which
supposedly is trying to regulate the government,
and they're businessmen who can't be as easily
bought, so a lot of people are seeing a lot of
hope for cracking down on government spending.
What are your thoughts on that? The Department
of Government Efficiency. I don't know what's
going to happen. So we could hope that it's going
to make the government more efficient. There
are probably... They're probably wasting a lot
of money. The government is wasting a lot of
money. There's probably a bunch of people who
are on a government salary who just don't need
to be doing their jobs at all. Their position
doesn't need to exist. But does that mean that
Elon Musk will actually get rid of them? I mean,
he was good at getting rid of people at Twitter,
but I'm not sure it works the same in the government.
I'm not sure it's going to be as easy. And also,
I'm not sure that it's going to last. Because
maybe... As soon as he leaves, as soon as Trump
leaves office, maybe it'll just go back to the
way it was, even if they do anything. So I guess
that, you know, I mean, like, okay, well, I'm
not that worried about, I guess like that, you
know, the risk that you'd be worrying about if
you're a progressive is, oh, they're going to
get rid of too many regulations and they're going
to get rid of government employees who are doing
something good. I'm not too worried about that.
Yeah. I mean, I've also heard from progressives.
seem to be really afraid of lobbying in the context
of like congress and just yeah i guess politicians
being bought by corporations and passing legislature
or having these agencies just do the bidding
of a corporation is that like is that a legitimate
opinion from these progressives yeah that's a
thing to worry about but now i don't i don't
think that what happens is like the stereotype
or i don't think that what usually so i think
there are a bunch of laws that support big corporations
like serve their financial interests at the expense
of consumers and smaller corporations, but I
don't think that it's mainly because somebody
bought the politicians. I think it's more like
somebody donates, like if you own a large business,
you could donate to the campaign of the person
who you think will serve your interests more.
If you actually have a quid pro quo where you
beat with a person and say... you have to vote
for this and I will give you money. That is illegal.
And so that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen,
but it's kind of stupid to do that because you
could go to jail for that when you could just
donate to somebody and then you could leave it
implicit. He can figure out. The politician is
going to, he can figure out that he's going to
stop getting donations if you don't like the
way that he voted. Okay. But, you know, I think
that what usually happens is, well, you just
pick a politician who you think is already ideologically
on your side. Like this person, this politician
already thinks that the coal industry is really
great. And they might sincerely think that, by
the way. It is not out of the question that people
sincerely have beliefs like that. I guess I'm
also wondering, because when you hear this sort
of money in politics take from progressives,
it's usually accompanied with some idea that
the will of the people is being overcome by the
money in a negative way and there's harms being
done. Because you talked about the inefficiencies
of the corporations, that maybe regulations are
letting them be too big and they can stomp out
competition and stuff. Is there any harm to the
people themselves? Is their will being accurately
represented? I mean, there's the example of,
I think it's 87 % of Americans agree with having
more maternal leave and having paternal leave,
but somehow we're not getting those outcomes
from the politicians that are voting for the
issues. So, yeah, I mean, there are times when...
unpopular laws get passed, although it's relatively
unusual. So if a big majority wants something,
it usually happens. There are some exceptions,
okay? So like I remember during the 2008 to 2009
financial crisis, the bank bailout was super
unpopular on both the left and the right. But
actually it was particularly unpopular on the
right, I think. So like Republicans were less
likely to vote for it in Congress than the Democrats.
But okay, but it passed even though it was unpopular
with the public. Okay, where was I going with
that? But usually the unpopular thing doesn't
pass. But the thing is, my concern isn't really
that unpopular things happen or popular things
fail to happen, because I think the average voters
do not know what they're talking about. They
have no idea. So they don't know what the costs
and benefits are of things because it's not in
their interest to do any research to find out.
So they just have an emotional reaction to some
policy. So do we want things to match what the
average voter wants more closely? Not especially.
That's not really my concern. There are a lot
of things that are against the interests of most
voters that most voters still support. Okay,
so like farm subsidies, why do those keep happening?
It's basically just like taking a bunch of money
from everyone and giving it to farm corporations.
Which, by the way, most of the money goes to
big farm corporations, not like small mom and
pop farmers or whatever. Not that we should be
giving money to anyone. Why don't they get money
the same way everyone else does? They sell their
product. Why don't they just get the amount that
they get from their sales? There's no reason
why this industry is different from every other's.
It's true that food is important, but like...
There's a lot of important things. That doesn't
mean that you get even more money than what the
consumers are willing to pay, right? But that's
popular. The reason it keeps happening is that
a bunch of people think, yeah, we should give
money to farmers because I like farmers. Even
though it's like costing money for all the taxpayers.
Yeah, and it inherently causes more food waste
as well. Yeah. Yeah, I guess because, David,
you brought up the maternity thing, which I haven't
heard about. But you also hear people bring up
just health care generally about how apparently
most Americans want some kind of government -provided
health care on some level. Or you hear a lot
of Americans are usually anti -war and they don't
want to be giving money to Israel or Ukraine
or something like this. But then the government
seems to be doing that. I guess you see moments
like that and I guess we also see a surge in
populism and people don't feel like the government
is. Representing the people in some fashion.
What are the politicians doing? Sometimes when
they're diverging from public opinion, it's because
they're trying to do what's good for the country.
Maybe they know what public opinion is, but they
think the public is wrong. What should you do?
What happened in the financial crisis, I think
that what... genuinely legitimately happened
was they knew that it was unpopular to bail out
the banks but they also believed that if they
didn't do it there would be like a depression
and then the people would be really mad they
would blame those politicians even though the
politicians did what the people wanted yeah and
so okay so and you're like support for ukraine
i don't know what the level of support is for
ukraine and israel among the public so i don't
know how unpopular it is but but probably the
most of the politicians are thinking Yeah, but
it's just like really bad if Ukraine loses this
war or if Israel loses this war. I don't know.
There's not really a risk that Israel would lose
the war. But yeah, they're just trying. They're
actually trying to do the right thing, which
they're going to be attacked for. Yeah, and therefore
we should vote for better people if we disagree
with their decision making. Yeah, well, yeah.
I mean, maybe we should be better people, right?
You know, like, OK, well, I'm not like a huge
politician lover, but politicians are on average
smarter and more educated than voters. which
is part of the reason why we have representative
democracy instead of direct democracy. And so
like sometimes when there's a divergence between
what the leaders want and what the public wants,
it's because the public doesn't know what the
hell is going on. And so like maybe rather than
voting them out, we should like, you know, just
be smarter ourselves. Yeah. One last question
here, just because I'm curious, because you're
a libertarian. And yeah, we've seen like, populism
slash i would call it like an anti -establishment
kind of bush in recent years like trump got re
-elected trump's kind of a right -wing populist
guy people love bernie sanders he's kind of a
left -wing populist guy yeah um and like i think
populism is kind of like this anti -establishment
very skeptical of like what the government's
going to do for you skeptical of um politicians
generally i guess how do you how do you feel
about that and and like that movement as a libertarian
is it a good thing or is it is it hasn't been
harmful because i also found that there's a lot
of maybe irrationality in the populist beliefs
it seems like yeah um i mean like there's a sense
in which i'm anti -establishment like i like
i've written this book talking about how anarchism
is a good idea okay but but i i don't want like
knee -jerk anti -establishmentarianism or whatever
um but it's like you know it's not that we should
just like destroy institutions That's not correct.
Like, well, what we should do is change our institutions
to make them better. Okay. But while doing so,
and like I mentioned anarchism, like ultimately
at some time in the future, I hope we will no
longer need government. Okay. But that doesn't
mean that we should just like blow it up right
now. Okay. All right. So anyway, you know, while
you're trying to, because, you know, there are
flaws. whatever the current system the current
leaders and the current institutions and while
we're trying to fix them we should still attend
to what's good about the system and you know
this actually this society that we're living
in is actually vastly better than most societies
throughout human history and even today and so
you know like if just like totally dumb and foolish
to want to just blow stuff up randomly right
like part of part of what you heard when Trump
was elected, you know, the first time was like,
yeah, just like, he's just going to cause a lot.
He's just going to disrupt things. Let's send
somebody to just like disrupt things. Like that's
just like a total failure to appreciate what
we have. Like this, this system actually is the
best thing that human beings have created. And
like what we have in America, like a system where,
well, the institutions generally. kind of do
what they're supposed to do like okay like when
there's an election uh the person with the most
votes kind of takes office like that's doesn't
sound like that big of a uh big of an ask but
actually that has not happened throughout most
of human history and so okay and you know and
just like you have a trial like generally the
outcome is determined by what the evidence actually
supports and like whatever you know you don't
have to keep bribing people you don't have to
like bribe the cops to take a police report or
whatever all of this stuff okay it's a society
that's generally working okay and just you know
both on both the left and the right there's just
like this idea of attacking our institutions
which is just totally stupid Like, you know,
not that our institutions are perfect, right?
They're flawed. But just like a general attack
on them is foolish. Right. Oh, no, go ahead.
Yeah, well, there's this availability bias of
we have access to more information than ever
before. And that also means we have access to
information about all the bad things more than
ever before. And those are the things that get
attention. So then when we ask someone. how bad
is the state of our government right now? It's
like, oh, well, I saw on the news that everyone
is racist, everyone is sexist, the court systems
don't work, companies are evil, millionaires
are not paying any money. And so it's like, obviously,
if this is the information you're receiving,
you're going to say, well, we're in a worse time
than ever before. I've never had this information
before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, like
when stuff is working, that's not news. You know,
so somebody reports like, okay, so there was
not a civil war today. Nobody deposed the president
by force today. Okay, so that's not news. But
there would be society in which that would happen.
There was not a mass pogrom where millions of
people were killed. Well, we could report how
that does happen in other countries, but actually
Americans don't care that much about other countries.
So those news reports are not going to be popular,
so that's not what the media will report. So,
okay, well, they're just going to report when
bad things happen in America. So then you have
the feeling that America is doing badly, even
though it's actually doing great. When something
gets worse, like you can have a news report that
says, oh, this statistic got worse, but when
it gets better, they don't report that. So like
the homicide rate has been going down for decades.
You see any news reports on that? No. They might
report particular cases of homicides. If some
horrible crime occurs, that will be on the news,
but they won't report that actually crime is
way down. I guess one of my other questions would
have been between the left and the right, because,
yeah, we have these progressive myths that you
talk about how they kind of strike at the heart
of the American ethos and kind of undermine it
in the same way the macro Republicans and Trump
and January 6th and everything that happened
there is a pretty big undermining of our democracy.
And I guess my question to you is, Which one
do you think is worse or is a greater threat
that we should be considering? Yeah, I mean,
so basically, like, well, Donald Trump specifically
is a greater threat in the near term. Okay, and
I put it that way because, like, well, after
Trump leaves or if he dies, the threat is over.
That is, I don't think that Republicans in general
are going to do the same stuff. But I am worried
about Trump himself personally undermining norms.
And in the near term, that's a greater threat.
But in the long term, the left is a greater threat
because these are the people who have control
of our institutions and our education system
in particular. And they're raising all these
generations of people through the high schools
and through the colleges, teaching them to hate
the country and to hate the system that they
live in. I guess I would push back a little bit
on the Trump thing just because if he is violating
norms, isn't just the mere violation have like
downstream consequences for someone who's more
competent and smarter than Trump but is as charismatic
to maybe be successful in 50 years maybe and
see Trump as a model? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I
mean like the concern is, well, maybe Trump's
behavior will be a precedent. So, well, we have
to wait to see who succeeds him. I don't think
he's going to bring down the government. Okay,
but what has happened is like, well, he basically
attempted a coup. He attempted to literally not
leave office. Like he actually had a plan to
stay in office despite having been voted out.
Okay, and then he was rewarded for that. He suffered
no punishment and actually we reelected him after
he did that. So the danger is that someone else
who is like, is going to see that and go, oh,
okay. So that's how it works. So you don't have
to follow the democratic process. And then, okay,
so we have to see where that happens. But if
a few decades go by and that doesn't happen,
then the norms will probably return to the way
they were. What about science? Global warming
crisis. Is the global warming crisis real? What's
going on with that? It's highly plausible that
there actually is warming. I mean, I say it's
highly plausible because, well, like a bunch
of scientists think that the Earth has warmed
by about one degree or 1 .1 degrees since the
start of the Industrial Revolution. And it's
very plausible to me that scientists would be
able to know that. Like, that doesn't seem like
whatever inaccessible information. I mean, you
know, it's more complicated than it sounds, but
still, they could probably figure it out, so
I believe them. And it's plausible that human
beings have played some role in that. Like, okay,
well, we dumped a whole bunch of CO2 into the
atmosphere. The scientists say that that has
a tendency to warm the atmosphere. It's plausible
that they would know that. That's true. Like,
how much of the warming is caused by human activity?
I don't know. Okay, but also, like, okay, now,
is this like a major crisis? Not really. I mean,
it's gone up by one degree since the start of
the Industrial Revolution. That is a potential
problem. There will be negative consequences
from that. It is not going to kill everyone.
It is not going to end our civilization. It will
not end life on Earth or any of those things,
which hysterical activists are saying. And the
hysterical activists are like, oh, listen to
the science, listen to the science. But they
have not listened to the science. Because, like,
virtually no scientist says that. So why are
they saying that that's the case? Like, where
are they getting it from? So, I mean, okay, so,
like, back in 2018, the IPCC published a report
about what we would have to do to limit global
warming to under 1 .5 degrees C relative to pre
-industrial times, and bearing in mind that we
were already at 1 degree. So they were talking
about how we could stop another half degree of
warming. And then they said, oh, we had to take
drastic action by 2030. And then, I guess, some
people took that to mean that if we don't take
drastic action within 12 years, we're going to
start the end of civilization. So Greta Thunberg
said something like this. Within 12 years, we're
going to set off a chain reaction that will likely
lead to the end of our civilization. Why she
thought that, I don't know. But like, well, she's
not a scientist and she probably didn't read
the report. And so, you know, like the real question
is like, well, why did a bunch of people listen
to her? Because like, well, a bunch of other
people didn't want to read the report. And so
because her book is a lot more entertaining than
the IPCC report. OK. And then AOC says something
like, you know, the world is going to end in
12 years if we don't do something about climate
change. And your biggest problem is how are we
going to pay for it? Okay, and where did she
get it? Well, she got it from Greta Thunberg
or from other climate activists, and she didn't
want to read the scientist's report either. Part
of what happens is, well, it's just not really
in your interest to spend time reading these
boring things. It's more fun to just, like, whatever.
Yeah, it's more fun to just, like, start stirring
up, oh, my God, the sky's falling, whatever.
And apparently... Most people haven't figured
out that there's a lot of false information.
They haven't figured out that if your side says
something sensational, that does not mean that
it's true. Yeah, I think talking about other
sides, and maybe even my point will tie into
the mask thing as well, but I guess I'm wondering,
do you think that sometimes the discussion around
climate change and mask science is... It feels
like it's totally destroyed by what I would consider
to be, like, really crazy right -wing beliefs.
And they kind of enter the discourse and just,
like, they stop any meaningful discussion from
taking place. And it lets the radicals on the
left just, like, run away from reality even further.
Because, like, you'll have people on the right
who will fully deny any sort of climate change.
There's no climate change masks are fake. You'll
have Jordan Peterson just saying... outrageous
things yeah well while not admitting whether
he's a theist or not yeah well so like probably
the extremists from both the left and the right
are feeding off each other yeah like the reason
why you can get people to go along with right
-wing extremist views is that they i guess they
think the alternative is the extreme leftist
and vice versa um yeah about yeah about global
warming so the extreme views are um extreme left
view It's the end of the world. We're all literally
all going to die. And then the extreme right
view is no, nothing whatsoever is happening.
There's no warming. It's just all a hoax, right?
Or, you know, a little bit less extreme. There's
some warming, but we had nothing to do with it.
And then, you know, like about, I don't know,
about the COVID -19, there was like the extreme
view. It was like everybody has to wear a mask
all the time. Or two or three masks at once.
One on the eyes, one on the mouth. And then obviously
everyone has to get vaccinated and then they
have to get the booster and the booster rooster
or whatever. And then the extreme right -wing
view is don't do anything. Don't do a mask, don't
do a vaccine. COVID -19 doesn't happen. It's
minor, it's just like the flu, whatever. Okay,
now... You know, a moderate position, moderate
position about global warming is, well, yeah,
we are probably having something to do with it.
And there are going to be costs. They're going
to be like non -trivial costs. But it's not like
a total disaster. And actually, there are many
global problems that are equal or more serious.
OK, and then, you know, about the COVID -19,
like, well, actually, like not everything works,
but it's not that nothing works. Like, I don't
think masks work. I don't think they're effective.
But I do think vaccines are effective. And I
don't think vaccines have microchips in them.
And they don't make you autistic. So, you know,
like, can we have something, you know, in the
middle? Something that sounds reasonable. How
is it that it makes sense in all these other
like societal viewpoints that myths come into
play because it's harder to prove certain things.
But with science, like we have global warming,
we have mass, like it should be. pretty clear
-cut whether something is true or not. Like,
how are these myths even coming about in a scientific
view where it's like, we should be able to look
up the facts. Well, I mean, like, science is
actually a lot more difficult and less straightforward
than maybe the popular imagination has it, right?
So, okay, well, are people causing global warming?
It's not really that straightforward. Like, there's
a whole bunch of things going on at once. And,
you know, the climate is highly chaotic and whatever.
In the book, I wanted to tackle myths that are
kind of demonstrably false or something like
that, or demonstrably misleading. So the myth
isn't, it's not going to be something like human
beings are contributing to climate change. It's
going to be something like the scientific consensus
says X. Because that's a definite matter of fact.
And you're like, oh, okay, the scientists have
agreed that global warming is an existential
risk. Okay, as a matter of fact, that's false.
I know that's false. Okay, but, you know, I mean,
I mentioned that science is not so straightforward
because, like, frequently there are published
scientific studies which turn out, the results
of them turn out to be false. Like, they say
that there's a connection between two variables
and then somebody redoes the study and they can't
find the connection. Yeah. Right. And okay. And
actually that, that is true of most studies in
social science and medicine. Like it appears
that most of the results are false. Coming into
the, the end of the book, what is your, your
main takeaway that we didn't talk about for young
people reading this who are maybe attending university
or growing up under this progressive myth landscape?
What's that take away? I guess the lesson is
be skeptical. If you hear some alleged fact that
strongly supports a particular ideological viewpoint,
that alleged fact is usually, maybe almost always,
either false or misleading. So your initial assumption
should be, I bet that's not true. Or I bet that's
dropping some crucial context. And by highly
misleading, I mean it's technically true, but
if you knew the rest of the facts surrounding
it, you would draw the opposite conclusion from
the one the person is trying to make you draw.
So you should just be aware that that's true
in general, and so then you should not be so
easily taken in. And the other thing that I want
people to realize is actually this society is
great. And there's a... part in one of these
chapters where I talk about how the United States
is successful. And, you know, like, for example,
something around 400, there's, you know, 800
and something Nobel Prizes that have ever been
given, and something over 400 of them were won
by Americans. And it's not just that. There are
multiple things that you would want to look at.
If you look at athletics, there's a whole bunch
of great American athletes just totally disproportionate
to our proportion of the world population. The
influential companies, the influential authors,
the influential musical artists. There's just
this huge disproportion of Americans. And you
should, like, appreciate that. Like, that shows
how this country is just working better. It,
like, lets people succeed, right? It doesn't
give you success, but it lets you compete for
success. And, you know, just like, okay, like,
you know, we're rich, we're relatively happy,
free, et cetera. Just like, if you look at the
way the rest of the world has been throughout
history, you should be very happy. to be here
and and then appreciating that you should be
like suspicious of people who are like attacking
america or attacking our system right you know
and like and so like i i don't want to be closed
to criticisms of stuff that we're doing because
we're doing some things that are bad and need
to be improved but also you know like we should
just have people appreciate what we're doing
right one more question going along like the
skepticism thing say we have a undergrad and
he's He took your advice, he's now skeptical,
but now he wants to maybe know something. He
wants to learn what's actually going on in the
world. What would be good, rational, critical
thinking practices for him when he's trying to
navigate the media. A lot of these things are
not that hard to find out. You just have to try.
You hear something that supports one side of
a debate. Just try to find out what the other
side says. You just do a search and look for...
some some source that appears to be conservative
if it was a liberal idea or vice versa right
and and then like very frequently then you'll
find out what was wrong with it with the original
claim um another thing um you know what are reliable
sources of information uh frequently like academic
papers so there is a left -wing bias in the academy
so like we have to acknowledge that but also
like When we write academic papers, like we professors,
we're usually more careful, like a lot more careful
than when we just talk to the public. There's
this process where it's going to go to these
reviewers, and then the reviewers are going to
try to tear it apart and whatever. Sometimes
there's government statistics. You hear this
stuff about how, oh, black people are disproportionately
likely to be killed by police. You can look up
the statistics on that. If there's a controversy
about a specific case, like a specific event
in the news, like the Trayvon Martin case or
something, you can usually get court documents.
And they're pretty good because what's going
to happen is both sides in the trial are going
to attempt to bring the best arguments that they
can. And they're going to be professionals. So
primary sources, court documents, try to get
the closest information you can, be able to argue
both sides. Yeah, probably most important is
getting more than one perspective. I have a part
where I talk about the differences between reliable
and unreliable sources. Like you're reading something
and you're trying to figure out if they're reliable.
You're reading this web page or something. If
it's really emotional, it's probably unreliable.
And I say that even though it might be appropriate
to be emotional, depending on what the issue
is. It might be totally appropriate. But that
still... the emotional reaction can still interfere
with your objectivity, even though it's appropriate.
A person makes a lot of absolute statements and
doesn't use a lot of qualifications. So people
who are reliable, they will just sort of feel
cautious. So I think reliable people will be
hesitant to say that something is always true.
They'll just say, usually. Or probably or something
like that. And then reliable people usually acknowledge
reasons on both sides. So if you're reading something
and it appears from this thing that you're reading
that there's no arguments against policy X, all
of the reasons are in favor of it. You can't
find this guy's acknowledgement of any reason
why you wouldn't want this policy. That person
is probably unreliable. And you've been working
at an institution that's progressive. What's
been your experience working in a progressive
institution? Why are you able to talk about these
things? So I do have tenure, so officially they
can't fire me for being politically incorrect.
The philosophy, philosophy as a field in particular,
is better than most of the humanities. So philosophers
in particular like to hear arguments. It's like
if you're giving logical arguments, then that's
kind of okay. And if they don't agree with you,
philosophers' response is usually, oh, I better
come up with a counter -argument, which I think
is unlike many of the woke people. Their response
is, oh, I need to shut you down. I need to make
sure that nobody can hear you talk. And there
must be woke philosophers as well, too, right?
Yeah, yeah. Have you interacted with them at
all? No. I'm not sure why, although I do have
a thing that, you know, Okay, so I'm not, I don't
tweet. And I am on Facebook, and I have a blog,
and people could interact with me. But if I see
insulting comments, I delete them. And if I see
multiple insulting comments or sufficiently insulting
comments, then I block the person. So I will
not, like, after your first totally unfair interaction
with me, you may not get to talk to me again.
And I just find that that makes life better.
Talking about counter -arguments and rational
thinking, everything you've just told us in your
book about progressive myths, what do you think
is the strongest counter -argument to everything,
to your whole thesis? I don't know. Well, so,
I mean, the myths that I list, like, I don't
think there's really much doubt. Um, I think
it's, it's the stuff that I'm saying is pretty
much objective fact. I guess one way you could
maybe rephrase it is like, cause we have the
progressive project that you kind of trace back
from the 70s or 60s. Yeah. And now it's been
going on for, you know, I don't know, 40, 50
years or whatever. Yeah. Is there any value to
take from like the progressive project and like,
yeah, that we could like, that person could be
like, you know what, they, they got this right.
Or they, this was valuable that what they did
here was good. Yeah. Right. Well, yeah. So. I
mean, in fact, like the way this whole thing
started was that actually we had a lot of racism.
We had a lot of prejudice and a lot of injustice.
And so like in the 1960s, people were protesting.
They were protesting real injustices and real
prejudice. And actually they won. And like that's
why we have a lot less. I mean, there's kind
of an irony in that like, well, I would say like
the civil rights protesters from 1960s did a
great job. and like the irony is like apparently
if you're woke today you have to say no they
fail like so they didn't do such a good job because
like we still have racism like it's still just
as bad as it was apparently or something um but
yeah okay so like am i against progressive ideas
in general no i guess like uh believing in gay
marriage is a progressive idea i guess i guess
being against racism is progressive i don't know
well that's kind of i mean that's mainstream
by now I guess it was originally progressive.
Well, you have to be anti -racist now, I think,
is probably what they would say. You can't just
be. Yeah, yeah. So unfortunately, what they call
anti -racist is really racist. What people are
calling the anti -racist position is really racism
against white people, or at least that's how
it looks to me. That's why I wouldn't like to
call myself an anti -racist. But I'm against
racism. Yeah, sure. There seems to be a large
vein. and everything we've talked about, about
emotional attachments to different political
issues. And behind those is some idea of morality,
moral facts. But it also seems that what people
believe has to do a lot with the emotional framing
of the issue. And so how much of what we believe
is actually just our emotional reaction to the
framing of an issue, as opposed to an actual
belief in moral facts. Well, I guess, yeah, I
mean, it seems like a lot of people's political
beliefs, well, first of all, they're not that
serious as beliefs. They don't believe it that
much. To a large extent, people are just kind
of, I don't know, saying what they think they're
supposed to say, or they're saying what their
side says, and they don't really know what's
true. And I'm saying, well, it's not that much
of a belief. The stuff that people will say about
politics, it's not that much of a belief. It's
not that they totally don't believe it. They're
not totally lying, but they don't believe it
that much because they don't care that much about
whether it's true. They're not trying that hard
to find out whether it's true before they say
it, and they know they didn't try very hard.
There's this problem that most people know. that
they don't have a personal stake in whether their
beliefs are correct, in the sense that nothing
bad happens to them if they are mistaken about
politics. Bad things do happen to you if you're
mistaken about things in your personal life.
So if I don't know where the supermarket is,
I could wind up going to the wrong place when
I'm trying to get food, so I suffer the cost.
But if I'm wrong about the benefits of immigration,
I do not suffer the cost of that false belief
because there is almost zero probability that
I'm going to actually change government policy
about immigration. So then people don't try very
hard to get the correct political beliefs. And
so, okay, so then it's sort of like they know
that they can afford to indulge their emotions.
So if there's a particular belief that makes
you feel good, then you could adopt that belief
without bothering to look at the evidence. And
yeah, I think that's very common. As a philosopher,
do you find often that philosophy is a compelling
reason to change your mind and then act out in
the world in that way? Because it seems that
this is a large philosophical analysis on progressivism.
Do you find those reasons to usually be compelling
for yourself? Well, like there's not that much
for me to do because I don't have any political
power. If I did, then I guess I would change
government policies. The only thing for me to
do is talk. So I change my beliefs and then I
express them. And so that's true. That happens.
What about in like a more general sense of philosophizing
in general? Oh. Yeah. Yeah. See, does philosophy
help me to live? I don't know. I try to be more
rational. Let's see. So I became a vegetarian
for philosophical reasons, you could say. I mean,
it's like really straightforward philosophical
reasons. But like, I think pain and suffering
are bad. I think you shouldn't inflict enormous
pain and suffering for trivial reasons. So I'm
not going to do it. Yeah, there's that. You know,
any other things? I'm not sure. Right. And, you
know, like there's a there's a bunch of things
that you could sort of describe as philosophical,
but people wouldn't really think of it that way.
Like, why do I not steal? Because stealing is
wrong. So you could say that that's a philosophical
belief of mine. But it's like such a common belief
that it's like it's not that impressive. I guess
no one's handing you some laurels for not stealing.
Yeah. So like it's not that big of a selling
point for philosophy. Right. Because like everybody
believes that stealing is wrong or most people
believe that. So what is the value of philosophy
in this landscape that we're now in? I mean,
to me, the main thing is that it helps you to
think more clearly. So I like to use this analogy
that you know how when you're asleep and you're
dreaming, there's stuff that's happening that
doesn't make any sense, and you don't notice
that it doesn't make any sense? So you're in
a confused state. It's only when you wake up
that you realize that that stuff made no sense.
Well, that's kind of like how it is when you
get philosophical training. If you haven't studied
philosophy, then you might have thoughts about
philosophical questions, but they'll be totally
confused, and you won't notice that they don't
make any sense. And then after you've been studying
philosophy for a few years, you'll notice that
those things don't make any sense. So it's sort
of like waking up. Is that good? Well, I just
sort of think having a clearer state of mind
is intrinsically better, like not being confused.
Philosophy will not necessarily tell you the
answers. You will not necessarily figure out
the answers to philosophical questions, but you
will probably not be confused. You may just not
know. Maybe you will not know whether you have
free will or not, but you won't have some confused,
incoherent view about it. Yeah, you'll understand
what... the possibilities are for pro for actually
having free will what are the reasons for that
not having free will what are the reasons for
that what is free will you'll be able to define
everything quite well and clearly yeah well you
may not be able to define free will either yeah
because that's a controversy but you'll know
what the arguments are but you probably won't
you probably won't endorse an indefensible definition
That's the progress. You'll have a somewhat reasonable
view of free will. Yeah, yeah. Right? Because,
you know, like there's this thing in epistemology
where we try to define knowledge, right? And
like, okay, well, famously, like people define
knowledge as justified true belief or something.
And then like, okay, Edmund Gettier showed that
that was not true. And then there's just like
this huge explosion of people trying to find
the correct definition. And they never agreed
on the definition of knowledge. But we don't
believe that false definition anymore. That's
the problem. We've rejected some false definitions.
I guess if someone was to start in philosophy,
where should they start? Besides reading knowledge,
reality, and value, of course. Yeah, of course.
Obviously, read all of my books and my blog.
They're endorsed by Karl Marx. Yeah, well, Karl
Marx endorsed progressive myths because he said,
if only I had listened to my humor, millions
might not have had to die in the 20th century.
Now, I can't prove that he said that. It wasn't
in writing. I just heard him saying that in my
mind, so he transcribed that. Yeah, I don't know.
What are other good introductions to philosophy?
Like Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy
is really good. you know, sort of an introduction
to what people were thinking about in the early
20th century. But they're fairly universal questions.
What else? I don't know. People usually say Plato's
dialogues, but would you not? Yeah, well, are
they a good introduction? I mean, yeah, they're
sort of like a good, easy introduction because
it's like fun to read the dialogues between two
people. Now, my problem is that I don't think
that the arguments are any good. I think Plato
or Socrates, under the control of Plato as the
writer, is just constantly not giving good arguments.
People in the dialogue give you a good argument.
Sometimes Socrates just doesn't know the answer,
but sometimes he's giving arguments that are
just bad. But it is good to get people to think
about things. Sometimes they do succeed in pointing
out bad arguments. That could be useful. And
as a modelist. The Socratic method is probably
a pretty good model for philosophy, just talking
with someone maybe. Well, yeah, you know, like
some things about this are good. So like what
happens in the dialogues is that somebody tries
to, Socrates, or at least... Plato would disguise
to Socrates. Particularly later in the later
dialogues, like Socrates is trying to put forward
an argument and he does it by asking questions
and then getting these answers. And then you
can get his conclusion from these answers. But
that does not work in real life. Because in real
life, you don't have control of the answers that
other people give in the way that Plato has control
of the answers that people give in the dialogue.
So in real life, they almost never answer your
question in the way you intended. And even though
you think that there's one answer to this question
that is obvious, the person somehow manages to
not say it. If they don't want to directly contradict
the obvious answer, they'll just answer a different
question. And you have to wrangle with them to
get them. So it usually doesn't work. Usually,
if you have an argument, you should just state
the argument. But I guess if you're unsure if
you have an argument, I guess just the exploration
of a philosophical topic. between multiple people.
Do you think Socratic method is decent enough
for that job? Yeah, well, yeah, a good thing
is, you know, just like trying to reach a mutual
understanding. Like, you know, because the other
thing that usually doesn't happen in real life
is that you wind up with an agreement at the
end. That doesn't happen. And then that doesn't
really happen very often in Plato's dialogues
either, right? Well, I think like later, later
dialogues, like so in the Republic. Okay. Yep.
Okay, we found the best society. We all agree.
It's the rule by philosopher kings. That's the
best kind of society. But okay, so in real life,
you're probably not going to reach an agreement,
but a realistic goal would be coming to understand
each other's positions better and where you disagree.
Just like, yeah, questioning the person on their
views until you understand why they're disagreeing
with you. And like, usually you can find some,
there's some like philosophical issue that you're
seeing in different ways and you can kind of
see how they would see it that way, even though
that's not the way you see it. And when you reach
that point, it's like, okay, good. We understand
each other. We accomplished what we could reasonably
expect to accomplish. Yeah. Which is not agree,
but have a clear understanding of each other.
Yeah. Yeah. There seems to be a thread about,
with the progressive myths or even in politics
in general, where there's a lot of fear of tribalism
and fear of saying the wrong thing or getting
pushed out of the wrong group. And I think, yeah,
the value of courage has just been dispelled
a lot from young people and society in general.
And so on this podcast, we always like to ask
the guests to participate in a carrots and sticks
challenge, which is a... A way of living courageously,
it's usually a one to two week challenge where
the guest challenges themselves in a way that
they could live more courageously. And the stick
is their self -chosen punishment if they fail
to live more courageously. So I would pose you
the question. Wait, what's the question? So the
question is, well, first, do you want to participate?
Probably not. That's fair. And you're like, what
would I do to be more courageous? I mean, another
way of putting that is, hey, Mike, take some
more risks. Why should I do that? What if it
goes badly? And I'm already taking the risks
that I think are warranted. Should I take more
that I don't initially think are warranted? Probably
not. What about one that you think is warranted?
Are you taking all the risks you think are warranted?
I don't know. I'd have to think for a while.
Generally, yeah. Risky behavior is usually not
that wise. I guess people would say that publishing
this book was risky. I don't think it's that
risky, though. We're not living in the Middle
Ages where you would get executed if the church
disagrees with you. If we were, then I wouldn't
publish it. Or maybe I would publish that, but
I wouldn't publish criticisms of the church.
I guess the proposal would be a small thing like
what you did there. Because I guess there's some
value in you. Because you talk about in the book
about how so many academics are just cowardly
and very agreeable and afraid maybe to rock the
boat a little bit. I don't know. Maybe it would
be cool if the philosopher professor Michael
Humer could. demonstrate some more courage or
encourage his professors in some way or something
i don't know it's like well it's like okay yeah
i talk about well you shouldn't take unwarranted
risks but like other people disagreeing with
you and like tweeting at you is not a danger
so okay like i've said these uh i've said some
things that are unpopular like progressives would
hate They don't really think of that as risky
per se. I bet there's a bunch of people on Twitter
right now who hate me. For most people, there
would be a perceived fear there, even if it's
in itself not risky. If they were actually going
to physically attack me, then that would be dangerous.
Maybe I'll just block them. Sometimes the mob
is effective and they get people dismissed from
their positions. There's some possibility of
that risk happening with the publishing of this
book. But I guess you feel safe enough with tenure.
I don't know. Tenure officially means that you
couldn't be fired except for a fairly small list
of serious things. It doesn't literally mean...
that you can't be fired for your political views.
It just makes it hard. It just means that if
I am fired for my political views, I'm going
to have a great lawsuit. Yeah, sure. And I'll
probably win a bunch of money from the university.
Yeah. So either way, you win. Yeah. Well, I don't
know. The money would probably not be worth it.
Because if you get fired for political reasons,
it's really hard to get hired anywhere. Cool.
Well, thanks for coming on, Mike. Thanks for
having me. This has been great. I know. And where
can people find you if they're looking for you?
So I have a blog on Substack called Fake News.
F -A -K -E -N -O -U -S. And I have a bunch of
books on Amazon. Buy my books. Cool. Awesome.
All right.