WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 All right. I want you to picture a dinner party. 00:00:03.759 --> 00:00:05.799 It's a hypothetical dinner party, but the guest 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:10.039 list is very real. Okay. I'm with you. Sounds 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:12.220 intriguing. At the head of the table, you have 00:00:12.220 --> 00:00:15.480 a neuroscientist, and I mean a serious one. He's 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:18.640 got a PhD from UCLA. He spent years studying 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:21.359 belief in the brain using fMRI machines. Right. 00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:24.679 So very rigorous, very scientific, hard data. 00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:27.760 The hardest. but sitting right next to him is 00:00:27.760 --> 00:00:29.820 a meditation teacher you know the kind of guy 00:00:29.820 --> 00:00:31.760 who dropped out of college to spend 11 years 00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:34.520 in silence mostly in the himalayas okay someone 00:00:34.520 --> 00:00:36.979 who talks about things like unconditional love 00:00:36.979 --> 00:00:40.179 and the illusion of the self a little contrasting 00:00:40.179 --> 00:00:43.219 to say the least but i can see it you know science 00:00:43.219 --> 00:00:46.140 and spirituality they can sometimes mix they 00:00:46.140 --> 00:00:49.189 can but wait Then across from them is a guy who 00:00:49.189 --> 00:00:51.369 is absolutely scorching the earth on the topic 00:00:51.369 --> 00:00:54.770 of Islam. He's arguing that we need to stop being 00:00:54.770 --> 00:00:57.429 so polite about religious dogmas that, in his 00:00:57.429 --> 00:00:59.670 view, get people killed. He's making a case for 00:00:59.670 --> 00:01:01.969 profiling. He's even arguing that torture might 00:01:01.969 --> 00:01:04.930 be rational in very specific ticking time bomb 00:01:04.930 --> 00:01:09.230 scenarios. Wow. OK, that that definitely changes 00:01:09.230 --> 00:01:11.799 the vibe of the party. Significantly. And next 00:01:11.799 --> 00:01:14.599 to him is a registered Democrat who says he hates 00:01:14.599 --> 00:01:17.620 Donald Trump, has voted for every Democrat from 00:01:17.620 --> 00:01:20.159 Obama to Kamala Harris, but is being shouted 00:01:20.159 --> 00:01:23.659 down by his own party. For what? For owning guns 00:01:23.659 --> 00:01:27.939 and for criticizing what he calls wokeness. And 00:01:27.939 --> 00:01:31.219 let me guess. The punchline here is that every 00:01:31.219 --> 00:01:34.269 single. person at this table is the same man 00:01:34.269 --> 00:01:36.890 every single chair is occupied by the same man 00:01:36.890 --> 00:01:39.530 that is exactly it today we are talking about 00:01:39.530 --> 00:01:42.670 sam harris and i have to say preparing for this 00:01:42.670 --> 00:01:46.019 deep dive was Kind of exhausting. I believe it. 00:01:46.060 --> 00:01:47.659 It really feels like we're trying to analyze 00:01:47.659 --> 00:01:50.140 four completely different people who just happen 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:52.099 to inhabit the same body. You know, it's funny 00:01:52.099 --> 00:01:54.200 you say that because that feeling of confusion 00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:56.340 is actually central to understanding him. Pass 00:01:56.340 --> 00:01:58.540 off. Well, Harris is arguably one of the most 00:01:58.540 --> 00:02:00.760 difficult public intellectuals to categorize 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:03.180 in the 21st century. I mean, depending on your 00:02:03.180 --> 00:02:05.579 Twitter algorithm, he is either a hero of reason 00:02:05.579 --> 00:02:07.560 who speaks the uncomfortable truths nobody else 00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:10.840 will touch, or he's a gateway drug to the alt 00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:13.479 -right. And a pseudoscientist. He's been called 00:02:13.479 --> 00:02:16.659 a champion of reason and also accused of peddling 00:02:16.659 --> 00:02:19.800 junk science or just outright bigotry. The pendulum 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:22.400 swing on public opinion of him is just wild. 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:24.860 I mean, you have Ben Affleck on HBO literally 00:02:24.860 --> 00:02:28.020 screaming that Harris's views are gross and racist. 00:02:28.280 --> 00:02:30.360 I remember that clip vividly. And then on the 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:33.400 other hand, you have millions of people, literally 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:36.620 millions, using his app, waking up to find inner 00:02:36.620 --> 00:02:39.180 peace and compassion. How do we square that circle? 00:02:39.419 --> 00:02:42.069 And that is our mission today. We are not here 00:02:42.069 --> 00:02:44.870 to decide if Sam Harris is good or bad. We're 00:02:44.870 --> 00:02:46.849 not trying to cancel him or canonize him. No, 00:02:46.909 --> 00:02:48.770 not at all. We are here to look at the architecture 00:02:48.770 --> 00:02:51.509 of his mind. We have a massive stack of sources 00:02:51.509 --> 00:02:53.810 in front of us. His books like The End of Faith, 00:02:53.949 --> 00:02:57.409 Waking Up, The Moral Landscape, Free Will. We've 00:02:57.409 --> 00:02:59.889 got hours and hours of his podcast, Making Sense, 00:03:00.090 --> 00:03:01.870 and of course, the transcripts of his biggest 00:03:01.870 --> 00:03:04.030 public controversies. So the goal is to figure 00:03:04.030 --> 00:03:06.530 out how he gets from meditation is the path to 00:03:06.530 --> 00:03:09.229 happiness all the way over to free will is a 00:03:09.229 --> 00:03:11.960 total lie. And how he manages to make almost 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:14.680 everyone, from the religious right to the progressive 00:03:14.680 --> 00:03:18.340 left, absolutely furious in the process. It's 00:03:18.340 --> 00:03:20.379 a journey into what he calls the middle way. 00:03:20.680 --> 00:03:24.020 It is. But I should warn you, it's not a comfortable 00:03:24.020 --> 00:03:26.800 path. It really requires checking your tribal 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:29.699 allegiances at the door before we begin. I think 00:03:29.699 --> 00:03:31.819 that's fair. So let's start where it all began, 00:03:32.080 --> 00:03:35.110 the origin story. Because if you only know him 00:03:35.110 --> 00:03:38.750 as this, you know, horseman of atheism, you probably 00:03:38.750 --> 00:03:42.349 expect a certain kind of background. Right. You'd 00:03:42.349 --> 00:03:45.009 probably guess either a cold clinical scientific 00:03:45.009 --> 00:03:48.210 upbringing or maybe a really traumatic religious 00:03:48.210 --> 00:03:50.349 one that he's now rebelling against. And you 00:03:50.349 --> 00:03:52.550 would be wrong on both counts. Completely wrong. 00:03:52.650 --> 00:03:55.930 Let's go back to 1967. Sam Harris is born in 00:03:55.930 --> 00:03:58.169 Los Angeles, and this is probably my favorite 00:03:58.169 --> 00:04:00.469 random fact about him, and I refuse to just gloss 00:04:00.469 --> 00:04:02.210 over it. I think I know where you're going with 00:04:02.210 --> 00:04:05.150 this. His mother is Susan Harris. The legendary 00:04:05.150 --> 00:04:08.030 TV creator. Not just any TV creator. She created 00:04:08.030 --> 00:04:10.909 the Golden Girls. It's a fantastic detail that 00:04:10.909 --> 00:04:13.159 I think most people completely miss. It's just 00:04:13.159 --> 00:04:15.500 a perfect piece of trivia. Right. So the man 00:04:15.500 --> 00:04:17.680 who writes about the end of religion and the 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:20.839 apocalypse of artificial intelligence is the 00:04:20.839 --> 00:04:23.560 son of the woman who gave us Rose, Blanche, Dorothy 00:04:23.560 --> 00:04:27.160 and Sophia. It's amazing. And his dad, Berkeley 00:04:27.160 --> 00:04:29.620 Harris, he was an actor. He came from a Quaker 00:04:29.620 --> 00:04:32.300 background and his mother's background was Jewish. 00:04:32.519 --> 00:04:35.310 But here's the crucial part. Harris wasn't raised 00:04:35.310 --> 00:04:38.449 in some militant atheist household. That's not 00:04:38.449 --> 00:04:40.870 the story at all. No, and that's a really important 00:04:40.870 --> 00:04:42.569 distinction he makes all the time. He's spoken 00:04:42.569 --> 00:04:45.029 about this extensively. It wasn't that his parents 00:04:45.029 --> 00:04:47.509 sat him down and said, there is no God, religion 00:04:47.509 --> 00:04:49.910 is stupid. It's just nothing. It was just irrelevant. 00:04:50.170 --> 00:04:52.569 It wasn't a topic of conversation. He was raised 00:04:52.569 --> 00:04:54.990 entirely secular. He's even said he didn't really 00:04:54.990 --> 00:04:57.250 realize he was Jewish in terms of ancestry until 00:04:57.250 --> 00:04:59.709 much, much later. He was just a kid growing up 00:04:59.709 --> 00:05:02.300 in L .A. So, OK, he's this kid in L .A. He heads 00:05:02.300 --> 00:05:04.240 off to Stanford University, starts out as an 00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:06.220 English major, seems like a pretty standard path 00:05:06.220 --> 00:05:09.480 for a bright kid. But then something happens. 00:05:10.100 --> 00:05:13.480 The catalyst. And it's not a book. It's not a 00:05:13.480 --> 00:05:17.220 lecture he attended. It's MDMA. He takes ecstasy. 00:05:17.839 --> 00:05:20.850 Now. Usually when we hear stories about college 00:05:20.850 --> 00:05:24.110 kids taking ecstasy, the story ends with a rave 00:05:24.110 --> 00:05:27.310 or maybe a really bad hangover. But for Harris, 00:05:27.529 --> 00:05:29.930 this was something else entirely. Yeah. And we 00:05:29.930 --> 00:05:32.310 have to be really careful here because Harris 00:05:32.310 --> 00:05:35.649 is very specific about how he frames this experience. 00:05:35.850 --> 00:05:38.129 He isn't out there telling his audience, hey, 00:05:38.290 --> 00:05:41.310 go do drugs. Of course not. But he describes 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:44.839 this moment as. An epistemological shock. Epistemological. 00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:47.199 Okay, so break that down. It changed how he knew 00:05:47.199 --> 00:05:49.839 what he knew. Exactly that. Before the MDMA, 00:05:50.019 --> 00:05:52.379 Harris lived in what most of us consider normal 00:05:52.379 --> 00:05:54.870 reality. You know, you wake up, you're anxious 00:05:54.870 --> 00:05:56.610 about your grades, you're annoyed by the weather, 00:05:56.709 --> 00:05:58.209 you're thinking about what to have for lunch. 00:05:58.329 --> 00:06:01.709 The constant internal monologue. Yes. You assume 00:06:01.709 --> 00:06:04.649 that this low -level hum of neurosis, that voice 00:06:04.649 --> 00:06:06.569 in your head that is constantly chattering away, 00:06:06.829 --> 00:06:09.189 you just assume that's what being a human is. 00:06:09.329 --> 00:06:11.189 It's the default setting. It's like the water 00:06:11.189 --> 00:06:13.269 we're all swimming in. And then the chemical 00:06:13.269 --> 00:06:16.069 hits his brain. And suddenly that self, that 00:06:16.069 --> 00:06:18.170 anxious neurotic knot that feels like it's in 00:06:18.170 --> 00:06:21.189 the center of his chest, it just unspools. It 00:06:21.189 --> 00:06:24.310 dissolves. It dissolves. He describes feeling 00:06:24.310 --> 00:06:27.589 this boundless sense of love for a friend he 00:06:27.589 --> 00:06:30.189 was sitting with. But it wasn't just feeling 00:06:30.189 --> 00:06:33.750 good. The crucial part was the realization that 00:06:33.750 --> 00:06:38.089 his capacity for well -being was much, much deeper 00:06:38.089 --> 00:06:41.000 than he had ever thought possible. That's a great 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:43.160 analogy I heard you use once. It's like discovering 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:45.279 your car has a sixth gear you never even knew 00:06:45.279 --> 00:06:47.060 about. That's it, exactly. You've been driving 00:06:47.060 --> 00:06:49.000 in third gear your whole life thinking that was 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:51.040 the top speed, and then suddenly you realize 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:53.819 the machine can do so much more. A perfect analogy. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.519 He realized that the ceiling of human consciousness 00:06:56.519 --> 00:06:59.920 was miles higher than where he had been living 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:02.740 day to day. But here's the kicker, and this is 00:07:02.740 --> 00:07:05.000 the quintessentially Sam Harris part of the story. 00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:07.199 He didn't want to just keep taking the drug. 00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:09.620 Right, because the drug wears off. And, you know, 00:07:09.639 --> 00:07:12.040 presumably you can't be high on MDMA while you're 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:13.519 trying to write an English paper or navigate 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:16.139 rush hour traffic. Precisely. The drug wears 00:07:16.139 --> 00:07:19.220 off. It has physiological costs. And it's not 00:07:19.220 --> 00:07:21.620 a sustainable way to live. So the question that 00:07:21.620 --> 00:07:25.100 seized him was, is this state of mind real? Or 00:07:25.100 --> 00:07:27.100 is it just a chemical trick, an illusion? And 00:07:27.100 --> 00:07:29.639 if it is real? Can I get back to that mountaintop 00:07:29.639 --> 00:07:32.839 without needing the helicopter? Can I train my 00:07:32.839 --> 00:07:36.420 mind? Sober. to inhabit that space of well -being. 00:07:36.620 --> 00:07:39.779 And that one question, can I train my brain to 00:07:39.779 --> 00:07:42.839 be this happy sober, is what made him drop out 00:07:42.839 --> 00:07:45.040 of Stanford. He literally walked away. He left 00:07:45.040 --> 00:07:47.720 Stanford in his second year. And this is the 00:07:47.720 --> 00:07:50.579 part that's hard to fathom. He spent the next 00:07:50.579 --> 00:07:54.560 11 years, over a decade, primarily in India and 00:07:54.560 --> 00:07:57.819 Nepal. 11 years. Can you imagine telling your 00:07:57.819 --> 00:08:00.899 parents, hey, so that whole English major thing 00:08:00.899 --> 00:08:02.579 at Stanford isn't working out. I'm going to go 00:08:02.579 --> 00:08:04.800 sit in silence in the Himalayas for about a decade. 00:08:04.959 --> 00:08:07.600 I am sure that was a difficult conversation to 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:10.019 have, but we need to dispel this idea that this 00:08:10.019 --> 00:08:12.100 was some kind of vacation. He wasn't just drifting 00:08:12.100 --> 00:08:14.720 or finding himself in some vague eat, pray, love 00:08:14.720 --> 00:08:17.139 kind of sense. He was training. What does that 00:08:17.139 --> 00:08:19.000 training actually look like? What was he doing 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:22.149 for 11 years? It looks like silence. A lot of 00:08:22.149 --> 00:08:23.930 silence. He did silent retreats that would last 00:08:23.930 --> 00:08:25.889 for months at a time. I mean, just try to imagine 00:08:25.889 --> 00:08:28.769 that. No talking, no reading, no writing. Nothing. 00:08:28.829 --> 00:08:32.289 Just sitting for 12 to 18 hours a day, staring 00:08:32.289 --> 00:08:35.009 at the back of your own eyelids, trying to dissect 00:08:35.009 --> 00:08:37.610 your own mind piece by piece. I can barely sit 00:08:37.610 --> 00:08:39.509 still for 15 minutes without wanting to check 00:08:39.509 --> 00:08:42.029 my phone. 11 years of that kind of mental rigor 00:08:42.029 --> 00:08:45.299 is... It's just hard to fathom. It really shows 00:08:45.299 --> 00:08:47.539 the level of obsession he had with that question. 00:08:47.759 --> 00:08:49.779 And he studied with some real heavy hitters, 00:08:49.779 --> 00:08:53.279 too. People like Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who 00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:55.960 was a master of a Tibetan practice called Dzogchen. 00:08:56.120 --> 00:08:58.340 And this is crucial for you, the listener, to 00:08:58.340 --> 00:09:01.090 understand. Harris wasn't looking for God. He 00:09:01.090 --> 00:09:02.990 wasn't praying for a miracle or trying to find 00:09:02.990 --> 00:09:04.889 a new religion. No, he was treating meditation 00:09:04.889 --> 00:09:07.809 as a technology. A technology. Explain that. 00:09:07.889 --> 00:09:10.190 He viewed these ancient contemplative traditions 00:09:10.190 --> 00:09:14.929 not as religions full of dogma, but as user manuals 00:09:14.929 --> 00:09:17.629 for the human brain. He wanted to strip away 00:09:17.629 --> 00:09:19.549 all the cultural baggage, you know, the chants, 00:09:19.590 --> 00:09:22.009 the robes, the incense, and just find the source 00:09:22.009 --> 00:09:23.850 code. He wanted to understand the mechanics of 00:09:23.850 --> 00:09:26.379 how to stop suffering. That's it. It was an engineering 00:09:26.379 --> 00:09:29.080 problem for him. And there's one detail from 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:31.240 this period that I just found absolutely wild. 00:09:31.519 --> 00:09:34.580 In the early 90s, he actually served as a volunteer 00:09:34.580 --> 00:09:36.960 guard for the Dalai Lama. It's such a striking 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:39.480 image, isn't it? It really is. Sam Harris, the 00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:42.840 future scourge of all religious dogma, wearing 00:09:42.840 --> 00:09:45.720 a suit and an earpiece or whatever, the security 00:09:45.720 --> 00:09:48.279 detail war standing guard for the leader of Tibetan 00:09:48.279 --> 00:09:50.740 Buddhism. But it actually makes perfect sense 00:09:50.740 --> 00:09:53.190 when you look at his later work. He was seeing 00:09:53.190 --> 00:09:56.470 religion up close, but he was viewing it through 00:09:56.470 --> 00:09:59.409 that specific lens of practice rather than dogma. 00:09:59.490 --> 00:10:02.350 He saw the Dalai Lama not as a divine being, 00:10:02.490 --> 00:10:05.529 but as a master practitioner of the mind, an 00:10:05.529 --> 00:10:08.590 Olympian of consciousness. So after 11 years 00:10:08.590 --> 00:10:10.710 of seeking this middle path, he finally returns 00:10:10.710 --> 00:10:13.269 to the West. He goes back to Stanford, finishes 00:10:13.269 --> 00:10:15.350 up, gets his philosophy degree in the year 2000. 00:10:15.549 --> 00:10:18.230 He seems ready to be a quiet philosopher or maybe 00:10:18.230 --> 00:10:21.460 a meditation teacher. And then... The world changes. 00:10:21.639 --> 00:10:24.279 September 11, 2001. This is the trigger. This 00:10:24.279 --> 00:10:26.940 is the moment everything pivots again. The attacks 00:10:26.940 --> 00:10:29.399 on the World Trade Center radicalized him, not 00:10:29.399 --> 00:10:31.019 in a violent way, of course, but intellectually. 00:10:31.700 --> 00:10:33.840 He looked at what happened, and he saw it not 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:36.480 just as a political event or purely as a reaction 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:39.240 to U .S. foreign policy. He saw it as a direct 00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:42.259 and horrifying consequence of belief. Of ideas 00:10:42.259 --> 00:10:45.399 in people's heads. Yes. He saw 19 highly educated 00:10:45.399 --> 00:10:48.509 men. engineers and so on, who flew planes into 00:10:48.509 --> 00:10:51.450 buildings because they genuinely believed they 00:10:51.450 --> 00:10:53.330 would be rewarded with paradise for doing so. 00:10:53.669 --> 00:10:56.210 And that connection between belief and action 00:10:56.210 --> 00:10:59.029 became his obsession. So he started writing The 00:10:59.029 --> 00:11:01.570 End of Faith almost immediately after the attacks. 00:11:01.889 --> 00:11:04.129 He did. And while he was writing it, he realized 00:11:04.129 --> 00:11:06.129 he needed more scientific ammunition for his 00:11:06.129 --> 00:11:08.649 arguments. So he didn't just write. He went back 00:11:08.649 --> 00:11:10.870 to school again, this time to get a Ph .D. in 00:11:10.870 --> 00:11:13.830 cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, which he finished 00:11:13.830 --> 00:11:17.350 in 2009. Using fMRI to study belief in the brain. 00:11:17.590 --> 00:11:21.070 Exactly. His PhD thesis was actually titled The 00:11:21.070 --> 00:11:24.049 Moral Landscape, How Science Could Determine 00:11:24.049 --> 00:11:26.470 Human Values, which later became one of his most 00:11:26.470 --> 00:11:30.049 famous books. So by the late 2000s, the figure 00:11:30.049 --> 00:11:33.490 we know today is fully formed. He has the philosophical 00:11:33.490 --> 00:11:36.269 training, he has the deep spiritual and meditative 00:11:36.269 --> 00:11:38.789 background, and he has the hard neuroscience 00:11:38.789 --> 00:11:41.669 credentials. And he is ready to enter the public 00:11:41.669 --> 00:11:45.259 arena. And enter it he did. Which brings us, 00:11:45.259 --> 00:11:48.019 of course, to The Four Horsemen. A very dramatic 00:11:48.019 --> 00:11:50.200 title for a very dramatic shift in the culture 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:52.220 at the time. I mean, it really was a moment. 00:11:52.259 --> 00:11:54.620 You had Harris, Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher 00:11:54.620 --> 00:11:56.879 Hitchens, and the philosopher Daniel Dennett. 00:11:56.960 --> 00:11:59.379 They were like the Avengers of atheism. Or maybe 00:11:59.379 --> 00:12:01.299 the Legion of Doom, depending on who you ask. 00:12:01.399 --> 00:12:04.259 Right. And this new atheism was distinct from 00:12:04.259 --> 00:12:06.139 the kind of atheism that came before, wasn't 00:12:06.139 --> 00:12:08.580 it? Old school atheism was often polite. It was 00:12:08.580 --> 00:12:12.320 a private disbelief. It was quiet. The new atheists, 00:12:12.340 --> 00:12:15.080 led by these four, argued that faith wasn't just 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:19.279 wrong. It was actively dangerous. Harris's core 00:12:19.279 --> 00:12:21.399 argument, which he repeated over and over, was 00:12:21.399 --> 00:12:24.080 that pretending to know things one doesn't know 00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:27.059 is a betrayal of science. But Harris differs 00:12:27.059 --> 00:12:29.580 from someone like Dawkins, doesn't he? Dawkins 00:12:29.580 --> 00:12:32.259 seems to view all religion as a kind of virus 00:12:32.259 --> 00:12:35.840 of the mind, all equally silly. Harris gets much 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:37.879 more specific and I think much more controversial. 00:12:38.120 --> 00:12:40.559 He does. And this is really where he gets into 00:12:40.559 --> 00:12:43.679 the most trouble. Harris argues very forcefully 00:12:43.679 --> 00:12:46.279 that the specific content of the religious doctrine 00:12:46.279 --> 00:12:49.129 matters. He says, it matters what you believe. 00:12:49.450 --> 00:12:52.129 And to prove this, he constantly uses this one 00:12:52.129 --> 00:12:55.429 comparison. Joanism versus Islam. Jainism versus 00:12:55.429 --> 00:12:57.690 Islam. It's his go -to example. So for anyone 00:12:57.690 --> 00:12:59.629 who doesn't know, tell us about the Jains. This 00:12:59.629 --> 00:13:02.429 is his model of a religion of peace, right? It 00:13:02.429 --> 00:13:06.429 is. Jainism is an ancient Indian religion. Its 00:13:06.429 --> 00:13:09.289 core, fundamental, non -negotiable doctrine is 00:13:09.289 --> 00:13:13.340 nonviolence, or ahimsa. The most extreme fundamentalist 00:13:13.340 --> 00:13:16.139 Jains are so committed to nonviolence that they 00:13:16.139 --> 00:13:18.200 wear masks over their mouth so they don't accidentally 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:20.419 inhale a gnat and kill it. They sweep the ground 00:13:20.419 --> 00:13:22.360 in front of them as they walk. Exactly. So they 00:13:22.360 --> 00:13:24.779 don't step on an ant. This is what a Jain extremist 00:13:24.779 --> 00:13:26.940 looks like. They are pathologically committed 00:13:26.940 --> 00:13:29.120 to pacifism. OK, I see where he's going with 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:31.279 this. If you have a Jain extremist, the worst 00:13:31.279 --> 00:13:34.019 you get is a guy who is terrified of hurting 00:13:34.019 --> 00:13:37.559 a fly. Precisely. Harris then contrasts this 00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:40.860 with his view on Islam. He argued, and this was 00:13:40.860 --> 00:13:43.679 way back in 2006, remember, that Islam is all 00:13:43.679 --> 00:13:46.799 fringe and no center. He called it, in a now 00:13:46.799 --> 00:13:49.879 infamous phrase, a motherload of bad ideas. Wow. 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:52.340 And his point was that if you have a doctrine 00:13:52.340 --> 00:13:55.220 that, in his reading, glorifies martyrdom and 00:13:55.220 --> 00:13:58.360 jihad and promises specific rewards in the afterlife 00:13:58.360 --> 00:14:02.279 for dying in battle for the faith, then a fundamentalist 00:14:02.279 --> 00:14:04.259 of that religion is going to behave very, very 00:14:04.259 --> 00:14:06.860 differently than a fundamentalist Jain. So his 00:14:06.860 --> 00:14:09.539 argument is really this. Beliefs are the software 00:14:09.539 --> 00:14:12.299 running in the human brain. If you run the Jainism 00:14:12.299 --> 00:14:14.899 software, you get pacifism as the output. If 00:14:14.899 --> 00:14:16.799 you run what he calls the jihadist software, 00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:19.240 you get violence. And therefore, we can't just 00:14:19.240 --> 00:14:21.659 treat all religions as equally harmless. Correct. 00:14:21.740 --> 00:14:24.159 He completely rejects the idea that all religions 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:25.919 are just different paths up the same mountain. 00:14:26.179 --> 00:14:28.340 He thinks some of those paths lead directly off 00:14:28.340 --> 00:14:31.720 a cliff. Now, this obviously led to the intense 00:14:31.720 --> 00:14:34.450 accusations of Islamophobia. But before we get 00:14:34.450 --> 00:14:35.889 there, we should be clear that he wasn't just 00:14:35.889 --> 00:14:39.029 attacking Islam. He went after Christianity just 00:14:39.029 --> 00:14:42.090 as hard. Oh, absolutely. He was scorching on 00:14:42.090 --> 00:14:44.289 Christianity. He attacked the Christian right 00:14:44.289 --> 00:14:47.649 relentlessly for focusing on what he called pseudo 00:14:47.649 --> 00:14:50.049 problems. What's a pseudo problem in his view? 00:14:50.350 --> 00:14:53.409 Gay marriage is his classic example. He argued 00:14:53.409 --> 00:14:55.629 it was morally absurd that people were organizing 00:14:55.629 --> 00:14:58.330 their entire political lives around stopping 00:14:58.330 --> 00:15:00.789 two men from getting married. while ignoring 00:15:00.789 --> 00:15:04.210 what he saw as actual immense suffering in the 00:15:04.210 --> 00:15:07.350 world, like poverty or preventable disease. And 00:15:07.350 --> 00:15:09.070 he also went after the Catholic Church with a 00:15:09.070 --> 00:15:11.169 sledgehammer, particularly regarding the child 00:15:11.169 --> 00:15:14.110 abuse scandals. He did. He often made this comparison 00:15:14.110 --> 00:15:16.889 between their focus on contraception and their 00:15:16.889 --> 00:15:19.110 handling of the abuse. Right. What was the argument 00:15:19.110 --> 00:15:21.789 there? He said it was morally grotesque that 00:15:21.789 --> 00:15:23.929 the church spent so much energy and resources 00:15:23.929 --> 00:15:27.470 preventing contraception. which he argued prevents 00:15:27.470 --> 00:15:31.230 zero actual suffering, while simultaneously covering 00:15:31.230 --> 00:15:34.429 up the systematic rape of children by priests. 00:15:34.909 --> 00:15:37.470 He even called for ending the Vatican's diplomatic 00:15:37.470 --> 00:15:40.190 immunity. He wanted the Pope and the bishops 00:15:40.190 --> 00:15:42.710 to be held legally liable in secular courts. 00:15:42.970 --> 00:15:45.009 That is pretty hardcore. But what I find really 00:15:45.009 --> 00:15:46.809 interesting is that he also attacked liberal 00:15:46.809 --> 00:15:49.649 Christians. Why go after the moderates? They're 00:15:49.649 --> 00:15:51.950 not the ones causing the problems. Because in 00:15:51.950 --> 00:15:54.889 his view, they provide rhetorical cover. for 00:15:54.889 --> 00:15:57.049 the fundamentalists. How does that work? He argues 00:15:57.049 --> 00:15:59.330 that by demanding respect for faith as a valid 00:15:59.330 --> 00:16:02.009 way of knowing, moderate Christians make it impossible 00:16:02.009 --> 00:16:05.710 to effectively criticize the extremists. If we 00:16:05.710 --> 00:16:08.049 all agree that faith is a legitimate reason to 00:16:08.049 --> 00:16:09.789 believe something without sufficient evidence, 00:16:10.090 --> 00:16:12.870 then we have no tools left to tell the fundamentalists 00:16:12.870 --> 00:16:15.490 that he's wrong about his 72 virgins. So he wants 00:16:15.490 --> 00:16:18.210 to destroy the very prestige of faith as a concept. 00:16:18.450 --> 00:16:20.649 The entire concept. He wants it to be seen as 00:16:20.649 --> 00:16:23.850 intellectually disreputable. But the Islam critique. 00:16:24.589 --> 00:16:26.850 That's what really exploded in the public sphere. 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:29.230 And we have to talk about the Ben Affleck incident. 00:16:29.470 --> 00:16:31.169 It's probably the single most famous moment of 00:16:31.169 --> 00:16:32.990 his career, at least in the mainstream media. 00:16:33.070 --> 00:16:36.210 This was in 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill 00:16:36.210 --> 00:16:38.929 Maher. I remember watching this clip go viral. 00:16:39.110 --> 00:16:41.750 It's just electric. You have Bill Maher who agrees 00:16:41.750 --> 00:16:43.690 with Harris and Sam Harris. And then you have 00:16:43.690 --> 00:16:46.309 Ben Affleck who looks like he's about to physically 00:16:46.309 --> 00:16:50.289 explode with rage. He's vibrating. He is. Harris 00:16:50.289 --> 00:16:53.429 starts trying to explain his critique of Islam, 00:16:53.590 --> 00:16:56.549 distinguishing between the ideology of Islamism 00:16:56.549 --> 00:16:59.090 and the people who are Muslims. And Affleck just 00:16:59.090 --> 00:17:01.269 loses it. He interrupts him and calls it gross 00:17:01.269 --> 00:17:04.789 and racist. And that one moment perfectly encapsulated 00:17:04.789 --> 00:17:07.779 the entire cultural divide. on this issue. Harris 00:17:07.779 --> 00:17:09.579 was trying to make a very precise philosophical 00:17:09.579 --> 00:17:12.880 point. I am criticizing a set of ideas, not a 00:17:12.880 --> 00:17:15.779 race of people. Islam is not a race. But Affleck 00:17:15.779 --> 00:17:18.779 wasn't hearing that. No. Affleck was reacting 00:17:18.779 --> 00:17:21.460 from a different place. He was reacting to the 00:17:21.460 --> 00:17:24.440 vibe, to the feeling that Harris was demonizing 00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:26.880 a marginalized group that was already facing 00:17:26.880 --> 00:17:29.680 a lot of discrimination in the post -911 West. 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:33.299 It was a clash of logic versus emotion, or ideas 00:17:33.299 --> 00:17:36.339 versus people. And it wasn't just Affleck. I 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:38.740 mean, Noam Chomsky, the titan of the left, called 00:17:38.740 --> 00:17:41.700 Harris's charges hysterical and slanderous. Yeah, 00:17:41.759 --> 00:17:43.720 their exchange was legendary in its own right. 00:17:43.799 --> 00:17:46.500 Others like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, they 00:17:46.500 --> 00:17:49.339 all essentially labeled him a bigot. So what 00:17:49.339 --> 00:17:51.960 has Harris's defense been over the years? It 00:17:51.960 --> 00:17:54.119 has been remarkably consistent. He rejects the 00:17:54.119 --> 00:17:57.460 term Islamophobia entirely. He calls it a pernicious 00:17:57.460 --> 00:18:00.099 meme that was specifically designed to silence 00:18:00.099 --> 00:18:03.700 legitimate criticism of dangerous ideas. He argues 00:18:03.700 --> 00:18:05.819 that if you can't criticize bad ideas just because 00:18:05.819 --> 00:18:08.319 they are considered religious, that you are abandoning 00:18:08.319 --> 00:18:10.359 the most important tool we have, which is reason. 00:18:10.460 --> 00:18:12.839 And he tried to bridge this gap, right? He co 00:18:12.839 --> 00:18:16.039 -wrote a book with Majid Nawaz. He did. The book 00:18:16.039 --> 00:18:18.680 is called Islam and the Future of Tolerance. 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:21.640 And Majid Nawaz is a fascinating figure. He's 00:18:21.640 --> 00:18:24.859 a former Islamist radical. someone who was actively 00:18:24.859 --> 00:18:27.500 recruiting for a global caliphate, who then had 00:18:27.500 --> 00:18:29.539 a change of heart and became a secular reformer. 00:18:29.559 --> 00:18:31.960 So Harris wanted to show, look, I'm not against 00:18:31.960 --> 00:18:34.039 Muslims. I can have a productive conversation 00:18:34.039 --> 00:18:37.220 with a Muslim. In fact, I am supporting the reformers 00:18:37.220 --> 00:18:39.440 against the fundamentalists. That was the goal, 00:18:39.539 --> 00:18:42.519 to show it was a battle of ideas, not of people. 00:18:42.680 --> 00:18:46.059 So that's the new atheist Sam Harris, the polemicist. 00:18:46.220 --> 00:18:48.400 But then you close that book and you open his 00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:52.019 app, waking up. And suddenly he's gently guiding 00:18:52.019 --> 00:18:54.420 you through a loving kindness meditation. It 00:18:54.420 --> 00:18:57.079 feels like a total 180 degree turn. It really 00:18:57.079 --> 00:18:59.900 does. But Harris insists it's all perfectly consistent. 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:01.799 Yeah. And this brings us to what we could call 00:19:01.799 --> 00:19:04.460 section three of his thought. Spirituality without 00:19:04.460 --> 00:19:07.140 religion. Right. He totally rejects the binary. 00:19:07.220 --> 00:19:09.500 He says you don't have to choose between being 00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:12.059 a hard nosed scientific materialist on one hand 00:19:12.059 --> 00:19:14.779 and having deep profound spiritual experiences 00:19:14.779 --> 00:19:17.059 on the other. And he has this quote that I think 00:19:17.059 --> 00:19:19.990 sums it up perfectly. He says. Everything of 00:19:19.990 --> 00:19:22.410 value that people get from religion can be had 00:19:22.410 --> 00:19:25.450 more honestly without presuming anything on insufficient 00:19:25.450 --> 00:19:28.470 evidence. That is his core thesis for this part 00:19:28.470 --> 00:19:31.430 of his life's work. It is. He is trying to reclaim 00:19:31.430 --> 00:19:34.690 words like spirituality and mysticism from the 00:19:34.690 --> 00:19:37.509 grip of religion. He believes these are fundamental 00:19:37.509 --> 00:19:40.569 human experiences related to the nature of consciousness, 00:19:40.769 --> 00:19:43.509 not supernatural ones. But what is he actually 00:19:43.509 --> 00:19:46.329 teaching in this app and in his book, Waking 00:19:46.329 --> 00:19:49.289 Up? It's not just... relax and breathe deeply 00:19:49.289 --> 00:19:51.589 right it's more than that oh it's much more rigorous 00:19:51.589 --> 00:19:54.130 it goes right back to his 11 years in the himalayas 00:19:54.130 --> 00:19:56.450 he's teaching practices from tibetan zogchen 00:19:56.450 --> 00:19:59.630 and from vipassana meditation and the central 00:19:59.630 --> 00:20:01.990 insight the one thing he's trying to drive home 00:20:01.990 --> 00:20:04.109 in every single session is the illusion of the 00:20:04.109 --> 00:20:07.029 self okay this is the heavy stuff the self is 00:20:07.029 --> 00:20:10.069 an illusion What does that actually mean? Because 00:20:10.069 --> 00:20:12.230 right now, I feel like I'm here. I feel like 00:20:12.230 --> 00:20:13.990 I'm a passenger sitting behind my eyes driving 00:20:13.990 --> 00:20:16.890 this body. I am the thinker of my thoughts. That 00:20:16.890 --> 00:20:19.430 feels very real. And Harris would say that that 00:20:19.430 --> 00:20:21.750 feeling, that very sensation of being a passenger, 00:20:21.869 --> 00:20:24.950 a little homunculus in your head, is a persistent 00:20:24.950 --> 00:20:28.289 and convincing trick of the mind. He argues that 00:20:28.289 --> 00:20:30.509 if you look closely enough in meditation, you 00:20:30.509 --> 00:20:33.750 can't actually find the thinker. But wait, if 00:20:33.750 --> 00:20:35.809 I can't find the thinker, who is doing the looking? 00:20:35.950 --> 00:20:38.450 Exactly. That is the question he wants you to 00:20:38.450 --> 00:20:40.950 ask. He argues there is just consciousness. There 00:20:40.950 --> 00:20:43.430 is just the raw experience of seeing, of hearing, 00:20:43.549 --> 00:20:46.329 of thinking. There isn't a little you that is 00:20:46.329 --> 00:20:48.349 separate from the experience itself. Can you 00:20:48.349 --> 00:20:51.130 give me an analogy? Sure. He sometimes uses the 00:20:51.130 --> 00:20:53.250 analogy of a movie screen. The screen doesn't 00:20:53.250 --> 00:20:55.750 watch the movie that's projected onto it. The 00:20:55.750 --> 00:20:57.470 screen is the place where the movie is happening. 00:20:57.849 --> 00:20:59.710 He's saying your consciousness is the screen, 00:20:59.890 --> 00:21:02.289 not the guy in the audience eating popcorn. That 00:21:02.289 --> 00:21:05.490 sounds honestly a little terrifying, the idea 00:21:05.490 --> 00:21:08.470 of losing yourself. He argues it's the most liberating 00:21:08.470 --> 00:21:11.170 experience a person can have. If there is no 00:21:11.170 --> 00:21:13.650 self to protect, there is no reason to be defensive 00:21:13.650 --> 00:21:16.910 or insecure. If someone insults you and there's 00:21:16.910 --> 00:21:20.150 no solid ego there to receive the insult, the 00:21:20.150 --> 00:21:23.160 words just pass through you like the wind. He 00:21:23.160 --> 00:21:26.000 believes this insight is the only key to actual 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:28.460 sustainable happiness. And he put all of this 00:21:28.460 --> 00:21:31.160 into practice with the Waking Up app. And speaking 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:33.180 of putting things into practice, he also put 00:21:33.180 --> 00:21:35.980 his money where his mouth is. He signed the Giving 00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:38.700 What We Can pledge. That's right. He was actually 00:21:38.700 --> 00:21:40.940 the first company to sign this pledge, which 00:21:40.940 --> 00:21:43.079 commits him to donating at least 10 % of the 00:21:43.079 --> 00:21:45.599 app's profits to the world's most effective charities. 00:21:45.779 --> 00:21:48.000 And he even did it retroactively back to the 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:50.019 app's launch. And this connects to his belief 00:21:50.019 --> 00:21:53.279 in effective altruism. It does. Using reason 00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:55.460 and data to maximize the good you can do in the 00:21:55.460 --> 00:21:57.759 world, it all flows from the same rationalist 00:21:57.759 --> 00:22:00.059 worldview. Which segues perfectly into his views 00:22:00.059 --> 00:22:02.380 on morality. Because this is the classic question. 00:22:02.619 --> 00:22:05.299 If there is no God who says what is good and 00:22:05.299 --> 00:22:07.700 what is bad, why is donating to charity good? 00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:10.279 Why isn't it just survival of the fittest? This 00:22:10.279 --> 00:22:12.279 is the entire subject of his book, The Moral 00:22:12.279 --> 00:22:16.210 Landscape. And in it... Harris makes a very bold, 00:22:16.450 --> 00:22:19.490 very controversial claim. Science can determine 00:22:19.490 --> 00:22:22.029 human values. Okay, now most philosophers would 00:22:22.029 --> 00:22:24.529 hear that and say, whoa, stop right there. You 00:22:24.529 --> 00:22:26.730 know, the famous is -ought problem from David 00:22:26.730 --> 00:22:29.890 Hume. You can't get an ought from an is. Right. 00:22:29.950 --> 00:22:32.230 The traditional view is that science can tell 00:22:32.230 --> 00:22:35.549 us facts about what is. But religion or philosophy 00:22:35.549 --> 00:22:38.009 has to tell us about values, about what we ought 00:22:38.009 --> 00:22:40.390 to do. And Harris thinks that whole distinction 00:22:40.390 --> 00:22:42.930 is nonsense. He thinks it's a philosophical mistake. 00:22:43.400 --> 00:22:45.880 He proposes this metaphor he calls the moral 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:50.119 landscape. So I want you to imagine a vast landscape 00:22:50.119 --> 00:22:54.079 with many peaks and many valleys. The peaks represent 00:22:54.079 --> 00:22:56.539 the greatest possible well -being for conscious 00:22:56.539 --> 00:23:00.240 creatures. The valleys represent the worst possible 00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:03.039 suffering. Think of it as... Hell of the worst 00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:05.740 imaginable torture and misery for everyone. Okay, 00:23:05.759 --> 00:23:07.619 so obviously we want to be on the peaks, not 00:23:07.619 --> 00:23:09.720 in the valleys. Right. And Harris argues that 00:23:09.720 --> 00:23:12.059 moving from the valleys up toward the peaks is 00:23:12.059 --> 00:23:14.420 an objective navigation problem. He says it's 00:23:14.420 --> 00:23:16.200 just like medicine. How is it like medicine? 00:23:16.319 --> 00:23:18.180 I don't see the connection. Well, think about 00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:22.000 it. Medicine is a science. Its goal is health. 00:23:22.559 --> 00:23:25.980 Now, health is a value judgment. We all agree 00:23:25.980 --> 00:23:28.559 that living is preferable to dying, that not 00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:31.190 being in pain is better than being in pain. But 00:23:31.190 --> 00:23:33.509 once we agree that health is the goal, there 00:23:33.509 --> 00:23:36.210 are objective scientific facts about how to get 00:23:36.210 --> 00:23:39.170 there. Like drinking bleach is objectively bad 00:23:39.170 --> 00:23:41.710 for your health. Exactly. And eating vegetables 00:23:41.710 --> 00:23:44.029 is objectively good for your health. Those aren't 00:23:44.029 --> 00:23:46.470 opinions. They are facts based on biology and 00:23:46.470 --> 00:23:48.849 chemistry. So he's saying morality is just the 00:23:48.849 --> 00:23:51.569 medicine of human flourishing. That's it. Exactly. 00:23:51.710 --> 00:23:54.150 He says a statement like forcing women to wear 00:23:54.150 --> 00:23:56.230 bags over their heads and denying them an education 00:23:56.230 --> 00:23:58.650 is bad for their well -being isn't a cultural 00:23:58.650 --> 00:24:01.599 opinion. He argues that is a scientific fact 00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:03.740 about the human brain and societal flourishing. 00:24:03.819 --> 00:24:06.799 So he rejects moral relativism entirely. He doesn't 00:24:06.799 --> 00:24:09.819 care if it's their culture. Not one bit. If a 00:24:09.819 --> 00:24:12.180 practice demonstrably harms the well -being of 00:24:12.180 --> 00:24:14.559 conscious creatures, he says it is objectively, 00:24:14.779 --> 00:24:17.380 morally wrong. It's a very confident worldview. 00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:19.559 It really cuts through a lot of that who are 00:24:19.559 --> 00:24:22.900 we to judge hesitancy that you see in modern 00:24:22.900 --> 00:24:27.869 liberalism. But then... Just as you're on board 00:24:27.869 --> 00:24:30.529 with this hyper -national project, he takes another 00:24:30.529 --> 00:24:32.650 step that seems to undermine everything we just 00:24:32.650 --> 00:24:34.390 talked about. You're talking about free will. 00:24:34.529 --> 00:24:38.349 The book Free Will, published in 2012. This is, 00:24:38.369 --> 00:24:41.009 for me, perhaps his most provocative and brain 00:24:41.009 --> 00:24:44.130 -bending philosophical stance. He argues that 00:24:44.130 --> 00:24:47.049 free will is a complete and total illusion. He 00:24:47.049 --> 00:24:50.200 calls us the biochemical puppet. Yes. And he 00:24:50.200 --> 00:24:51.960 has this great line. He says, you can do what 00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:54.039 you decide to do, but you cannot decide what 00:24:54.039 --> 00:24:56.119 you will decide to do. Let's break that down 00:24:56.119 --> 00:24:57.779 because it does break your brain the first few 00:24:57.779 --> 00:25:00.740 times you hear it. Please. So I chose to have 00:25:00.740 --> 00:25:03.119 coffee this morning. I stood in the cafe. I thought 00:25:03.119 --> 00:25:05.339 about maybe getting tea. And then I consciously 00:25:05.339 --> 00:25:07.640 said, I'll have a coffee. That felt like a free 00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:10.579 choice. Okay. But did you choose to want coffee 00:25:10.579 --> 00:25:13.420 in that moment? I guess not. The desire for coffee 00:25:13.420 --> 00:25:16.299 just appeared. Just appeared. And why did you 00:25:16.299 --> 00:25:18.119 want it? Maybe you were tired. Did you choose 00:25:18.119 --> 00:25:20.619 to be tired? No, my kid kept me up half the night. 00:25:20.839 --> 00:25:23.680 Right. And did you choose to have the specific 00:25:23.680 --> 00:25:25.779 genes that make you like the taste of coffee? 00:25:25.980 --> 00:25:28.480 Did you choose to be born into a culture that 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:31.319 sells coffee on every corner? Did you choose 00:25:31.319 --> 00:25:34.180 the specific pattern of neurons firing in your 00:25:34.180 --> 00:25:37.279 brain a millisecond before the thought of coffee 00:25:37.279 --> 00:25:40.440 even surfaced in your consciousness? No. No to 00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:43.069 all of that. Harris's argument is that if you 00:25:43.069 --> 00:25:45.369 look closely enough at any choice, you'll see 00:25:45.369 --> 00:25:48.609 it's just the final domino falling in an unimaginably 00:25:48.609 --> 00:25:51.410 long chain of prior causes that goes all the 00:25:51.410 --> 00:25:53.869 way back to the Big Bang. Your genes, your upbringing, 00:25:54.130 --> 00:25:56.250 your environment, the state of your nervous system, 00:25:56.269 --> 00:25:58.670 you didn't author any of that. Thoughts simply 00:25:58.670 --> 00:26:00.869 arise in consciousness. You don't create them, 00:26:00.970 --> 00:26:03.299 you witness them. So if we could have rewound 00:26:03.299 --> 00:26:05.380 the universe by five minutes this morning with 00:26:05.380 --> 00:26:08.059 every atom in the exact same position, I would 00:26:08.059 --> 00:26:10.380 have ordered the coffee again. 100 % of the time. 00:26:10.460 --> 00:26:13.240 You are a biological machine processing inputs 00:26:13.240 --> 00:26:15.839 and producing an output. There's no ghost in 00:26:15.839 --> 00:26:18.519 the machine making a free choice. Wow. Okay, 00:26:18.579 --> 00:26:21.619 if that's true, that changes everything. Especially 00:26:21.619 --> 00:26:24.019 something like criminal justice. If a murderer 00:26:24.019 --> 00:26:26.140 is just a broken machine, how can we possibly 00:26:26.140 --> 00:26:29.880 blame him? We can't. And Harris fully embraces 00:26:29.880 --> 00:26:32.849 that radical conclusion. He argues that hating 00:26:32.849 --> 00:26:35.250 a murderer makes no logical sense. That seems 00:26:35.250 --> 00:26:37.490 impossible. I mean, it's a basic human instinct. 00:26:37.609 --> 00:26:39.170 If someone hurts your family, you're going to 00:26:39.170 --> 00:26:41.630 hate them. But think about it this way. Would 00:26:41.630 --> 00:26:43.470 you hate a hurricane that destroyed your house? 00:26:43.910 --> 00:26:46.049 Would you hate a bear that attacked you while 00:26:46.049 --> 00:26:48.670 you were hiking? I'd be angry and terrified, 00:26:48.910 --> 00:26:51.450 but I wouldn't think the bear was evil. It's 00:26:51.450 --> 00:26:54.009 just a bear doing what bears do. Harris says 00:26:54.009 --> 00:26:57.230 that human beings are just very, very complicated 00:26:57.230 --> 00:27:00.430 bears. If a man has a brain tumor that presses 00:27:00.430 --> 00:27:02.549 on his amygdala and makes him uncontrollably 00:27:02.549 --> 00:27:04.890 violent, which has actually happened in real 00:27:04.890 --> 00:27:08.049 court cases, we don't say he is evil. We say 00:27:08.049 --> 00:27:10.869 he is sick. Harris's point is that everyone is 00:27:10.869 --> 00:27:12.650 just a product of their tumors, their genes, 00:27:12.730 --> 00:27:14.710 and their bad wiring. So does that mean we shouldn't 00:27:14.710 --> 00:27:17.710 punish people? We just let them go? No, of course 00:27:17.710 --> 00:27:20.170 not. We should absolutely restrain them. You 00:27:20.170 --> 00:27:22.210 lock up the bear so it doesn't hurt anyone else, 00:27:22.329 --> 00:27:25.950 but you don't torture the bear for revenge. You 00:27:25.950 --> 00:27:27.730 don't punish it because you think it deserves 00:27:27.730 --> 00:27:31.730 to suffer. He believes that realizing free will 00:27:31.730 --> 00:27:35.029 is an illusion should lead to a profound sense 00:27:35.029 --> 00:27:39.130 of compassion. No one chooses to be broken. No 00:27:39.130 --> 00:27:41.779 one chooses their worst impulses. It's such a 00:27:41.779 --> 00:27:44.240 wild combination of ideas. On the one hand, he's 00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:47.880 judging ideologies like Islamism incredibly harshly. 00:27:47.940 --> 00:27:50.119 But on the other hand, he's saying the individual 00:27:50.119 --> 00:27:52.380 people who hold those views are just biological 00:27:52.380 --> 00:27:54.440 robots who couldn't have turned out any other 00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:56.460 way. And that's the tension at the heart of his 00:27:56.460 --> 00:27:59.359 worldview. It's a kind of deterministic humanism 00:27:59.359 --> 00:28:02.259 that is deeply concerned with bettering the code 00:28:02.259 --> 00:28:04.599 that we are all running, even if we can't choose 00:28:04.599 --> 00:28:07.019 it. Which brings us inevitably to the messy, 00:28:07.119 --> 00:28:09.259 messy world of politics. Because if you thought 00:28:09.259 --> 00:28:11.900 his views on religion and free will were polarizing, 00:28:12.059 --> 00:28:14.339 just wait until we get to his politics. Yeah, 00:28:14.380 --> 00:28:16.220 this is where a lot of people get confused. He 00:28:16.220 --> 00:28:18.400 describes himself as a liberal. He's a registered 00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:20.500 Democrat. Let's check the receipts on that. He 00:28:20.500 --> 00:28:23.339 supported Obama in 2008. He supported Hillary 00:28:23.339 --> 00:28:26.700 Clinton in 2016. He supported Andrew Yang in 00:28:26.700 --> 00:28:29.339 the 2020 primary. And then Joe Biden in the general. 00:28:29.640 --> 00:28:32.220 He's on record supporting Kamala Harris for 2024. 00:28:32.680 --> 00:28:36.710 And he is famously. profoundly anti -Trump. He 00:28:36.710 --> 00:28:39.170 has called Trump's assault on truth unprecedented. 00:28:39.789 --> 00:28:42.970 For him, Trump isn't just a bad politician with 00:28:42.970 --> 00:28:46.640 bad policies. He views him as a kind of moral 00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:49.079 and intellectual black hole that threatens the 00:28:49.079 --> 00:28:51.720 very foundations of a reality based society. 00:28:52.019 --> 00:28:55.099 But this is a huge but for many on the left. 00:28:55.220 --> 00:28:57.779 He also owns guns. And this is where his liberal 00:28:57.779 --> 00:29:00.119 allies get off the bus. He does. And this really 00:29:00.119 --> 00:29:02.299 confuses people. But again, if you look at it 00:29:02.299 --> 00:29:04.700 through his rationality first framework, it makes 00:29:04.700 --> 00:29:06.400 a certain kind of sense. Explain his logic there. 00:29:06.500 --> 00:29:08.660 He argues that the police cannot always be there 00:29:08.660 --> 00:29:10.579 in time. That's just a fact. If someone breaks 00:29:10.579 --> 00:29:12.849 into your house, you are on your own for. Five, 00:29:12.890 --> 00:29:15.230 10, maybe 15 minutes. Yeah. Therefore, from a 00:29:15.230 --> 00:29:16.990 purely rational standpoint, self -defense is 00:29:16.990 --> 00:29:18.250 a problem you may need to solve for yourself. 00:29:18.470 --> 00:29:20.569 So he treats it like a math problem, not a culture 00:29:20.569 --> 00:29:23.670 war issue. Exactly. He's on record opposing assault 00:29:23.670 --> 00:29:26.210 weapons bans, not for some ideological reason, 00:29:26.289 --> 00:29:28.589 but because he looked at the FBI crime statistics 00:29:28.589 --> 00:29:31.049 and sees that handguns are used to commit the 00:29:31.049 --> 00:29:33.930 vast majority of gun crimes. He supports universal 00:29:33.930 --> 00:29:36.589 background checks and rigorous training, but 00:29:36.589 --> 00:29:39.230 he refuses to treat guns as a totem of evil. 00:29:39.549 --> 00:29:41.950 He just sees them as tools and he makes a rational 00:29:41.950 --> 00:29:44.450 case for owning them for self -defense. And then 00:29:44.450 --> 00:29:46.430 there's the whole intellectual dark web chapter, 00:29:46.630 --> 00:29:49.470 the IDW. This is a huge cultural moment around 00:29:49.470 --> 00:29:53.430 2018. IDW, yes. The journalist Bari Weiss wrote 00:29:53.430 --> 00:29:55.430 that famous article in The New York Times and 00:29:55.430 --> 00:29:57.710 she grouped Harris with people like Jordan Peterson, 00:29:57.950 --> 00:30:01.549 Joe Rogan, Brett Weinstein and Ben Shapiro. They 00:30:01.549 --> 00:30:03.930 were the renegades. The Avengers of free speech. 00:30:04.559 --> 00:30:06.799 The critics of cancel culture. They were united 00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:08.799 by a willingness to discuss topics that were 00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:11.359 considered taboo by the mainstream media and 00:30:11.359 --> 00:30:14.500 academia. And Harris was, for a while, seen as 00:30:14.500 --> 00:30:16.380 a central figure in that group. It didn't last. 00:30:16.619 --> 00:30:19.420 Harris very famously and publicly handed in his 00:30:19.420 --> 00:30:22.099 imaginary membership card. He did. He walked 00:30:22.099 --> 00:30:24.559 away from the whole thing. Why? Why did he leave? 00:30:24.619 --> 00:30:26.579 It seemed like he was the star of that particular 00:30:26.579 --> 00:30:30.079 show. The wedge issues were Donald Trump. and 00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:33.599 later, COVID -19, Harris has a very, very low 00:30:33.599 --> 00:30:36.099 tolerance for what he sees as conspiracy thinking. 00:30:36.319 --> 00:30:38.500 So he couldn't stand the stuff about the 2020 00:30:38.500 --> 00:30:41.599 election being stolen. Exactly. When people in 00:30:41.599 --> 00:30:44.299 that circle, like Brett Weinstein, started promoting 00:30:44.299 --> 00:30:46.420 ivermectin and questioning the safety of vaccines, 00:30:46.660 --> 00:30:49.420 or when Majid Nawaz, his former co -author on 00:30:49.420 --> 00:30:51.500 the book about Islam, went down the election 00:30:51.500 --> 00:30:54.420 fraud rabbit hole, Harris cut ties. He criticized 00:30:54.420 --> 00:30:57.430 something he called audience capture. What is 00:30:57.430 --> 00:31:00.269 that? Audience capture is his term for when a 00:31:00.269 --> 00:31:02.170 public figure starts saying what their audience 00:31:02.170 --> 00:31:04.210 wants to hear rather than what they believe is 00:31:04.210 --> 00:31:06.750 true in order to keep the clicks, the downloads, 00:31:06.930 --> 00:31:10.049 and the money flowing. He saw the IDW sliding 00:31:10.049 --> 00:31:12.769 into what he called Trumpism just to please their 00:31:12.769 --> 00:31:15.009 right -leaning followers. So he basically said, 00:31:15.150 --> 00:31:17.589 I don't care if we agree on criticizing wokeness. 00:31:17.710 --> 00:31:20.349 If you are pushing anti -vaccine nonsense or 00:31:20.349 --> 00:31:22.430 saying the election was stolen, you are fundamentally 00:31:22.430 --> 00:31:25.069 damaging the epistemological health of our society, 00:31:25.170 --> 00:31:28.099 and I'm out. That's a perfect summary. You really 00:31:28.099 --> 00:31:30.319 burned some bridges there. And speaking of burning 00:31:30.319 --> 00:31:32.240 bridges, we have to talk about the Hunter Biden 00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:34.799 comment. This is the one thing that the right 00:31:34.799 --> 00:31:39.200 still hammers him for years later. Oh, man. The 00:31:39.200 --> 00:31:41.440 corpses of children comment. Even just saying 00:31:41.440 --> 00:31:43.680 it out loud sounds completely insane. He was 00:31:43.680 --> 00:31:46.539 on a podcast after the 2020 election. He was 00:31:46.539 --> 00:31:49.240 trying to explain why he didn't care about the 00:31:49.240 --> 00:31:51.259 Hunter Biden laptop story, which was being suppressed 00:31:51.259 --> 00:31:54.140 by the media and Twitter at the time. And in 00:31:54.140 --> 00:31:56.859 a moment of extreme hyperbole, he said that even 00:31:56.859 --> 00:31:59.240 if Hunter Biden had corpses of children in his 00:31:59.240 --> 00:32:01.779 basement, he wouldn't have cared. Which on its 00:32:01.779 --> 00:32:06.960 face sounds deranged. It sounds morally monstrous. 00:32:07.039 --> 00:32:09.000 Taken literally, yes, it's a terrible thing to 00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:11.619 say. But his point was meant to be a utilitarian 00:32:11.619 --> 00:32:14.700 calculation. He viewed Donald Trump as an existential 00:32:14.700 --> 00:32:17.579 threat to democracy like an asteroid headed for 00:32:17.579 --> 00:32:20.470 Earth. The Hunter Biden laptop story, in his 00:32:20.470 --> 00:32:22.950 view, was just standard political sleaze. So 00:32:22.950 --> 00:32:25.450 he was arguing that you don't worry about the 00:32:25.450 --> 00:32:27.769 petty thief in your house, Hunter, when the asteroid 00:32:27.769 --> 00:32:29.950 that will wipe out all life, Trump, is about 00:32:29.950 --> 00:32:32.789 to hit. That was the intended logic. He was saying, 00:32:32.910 --> 00:32:35.069 I would accept a deeply corrupt administration 00:32:35.069 --> 00:32:38.130 to stop a democracy ending one. But the clip 00:32:38.130 --> 00:32:40.710 went viral completely out of context. And it 00:32:40.710 --> 00:32:42.970 cemented the idea on the right that Harris suffers 00:32:42.970 --> 00:32:45.509 from a terminal case of Trump derangement syndrome. 00:32:45.900 --> 00:32:47.900 And speaking of existential threats, we have 00:32:47.900 --> 00:32:50.299 to talk about his other great obsession, artificial 00:32:50.299 --> 00:32:54.960 intelligence. Yes, AI. Long before Chad GPT made 00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:57.420 it a dinner table conversation, Harris was one 00:32:57.420 --> 00:33:00.160 of the loudest voices sounding the alarm about 00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:02.819 the potential risks. What is his specific fear? 00:33:02.920 --> 00:33:05.420 Is it, you know, Terminator robots with glowing 00:33:05.420 --> 00:33:07.559 red eyes? It's actually much simpler and more 00:33:07.559 --> 00:33:10.180 logical than that. He uses a simple syllogism. 00:33:10.380 --> 00:33:13.220 One, intelligence is just information processing 00:33:13.220 --> 00:33:16.160 in a physical system. Two, we will continue to 00:33:16.160 --> 00:33:17.859 improve our machines and make them more intelligent. 00:33:18.140 --> 00:33:20.599 Three, we are nowhere near the peak of possible 00:33:20.599 --> 00:33:22.980 intelligence. Wait, four. Therefore, it is almost 00:33:22.980 --> 00:33:24.740 inevitable that we will eventually create machines 00:33:24.740 --> 00:33:26.720 that are far, far more intelligent than we are. 00:33:26.819 --> 00:33:29.539 And when they surpass us, what happens then? 00:33:29.880 --> 00:33:32.480 Then we are in the position of ants trying to 00:33:32.480 --> 00:33:34.839 negotiate with human construction workers. The 00:33:34.839 --> 00:33:36.980 humans don't hate the ants. They're not evil. 00:33:37.200 --> 00:33:39.200 But if the humans want to build a new highway 00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:41.720 right where the ant hill is... It's very bad 00:33:41.720 --> 00:33:44.240 news for the ants. So his fear is that we are 00:33:44.240 --> 00:33:46.400 building a god that might not share our values 00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:48.960 and we have absolutely no safety features in 00:33:48.960 --> 00:33:51.339 place to control it. That is his nightmare scenario. 00:33:51.559 --> 00:33:54.000 He calls it the alignment problem. How do you 00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:55.960 make sure his super intelligence is aligned with 00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:59.380 human well -being? And his answer is, we have 00:33:59.380 --> 00:34:01.619 no idea and we are not taking the risk seriously 00:34:01.619 --> 00:34:03.539 enough. Okay, let's move into the really recent 00:34:03.539 --> 00:34:07.029 history. The last few years, from 2020 to 2026 00:34:07.029 --> 00:34:09.730 in our timeline, have been particularly intense 00:34:09.730 --> 00:34:12.010 for his public reputation. To say the least, 00:34:12.010 --> 00:34:14.010 it's been a whirlwind. So we mentioned COVID. 00:34:14.130 --> 00:34:16.449 He was a hardliner on vaccines and very critical 00:34:16.449 --> 00:34:19.309 of the skeptics. He said in 2023 that if COVID 00:34:19.309 --> 00:34:20.949 had killed more children, there would have been 00:34:20.949 --> 00:34:24.469 no patience for all the skepticism. But he was 00:34:24.469 --> 00:34:26.250 also open to the lab leak theory, wasn't he? 00:34:26.329 --> 00:34:28.989 He was. He hosted scientists like Matt Ridley 00:34:28.989 --> 00:34:31.389 and Alina Chan on his podcast to discuss it. 00:34:31.710 --> 00:34:34.440 This is a key part of his mindset. He was willing 00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:36.539 to follow the scientific evidence wherever it 00:34:36.539 --> 00:34:39.139 led, even if it led to an unpopular conclusion 00:34:39.139 --> 00:34:42.519 like the lab leak. But he had zero tolerance 00:34:42.519 --> 00:34:45.059 for the plandemic -style conspiracy theories. 00:34:45.760 --> 00:34:48.699 He still fundamentally trusts scientific institutions, 00:34:49.019 --> 00:34:50.940 which puts him very at odds with the current 00:34:50.940 --> 00:34:54.940 populist moment. Then came October 7, 2023, the 00:34:54.940 --> 00:34:57.500 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war. 00:34:57.699 --> 00:34:59.500 And this put Harris right back in the center 00:34:59.500 --> 00:35:01.880 of the debate on religion, ideology, and violence. 00:35:02.409 --> 00:35:05.050 He has a nuanced but very firm stance here. So 00:35:05.050 --> 00:35:07.369 on the one hand, he opposes all religious claims 00:35:07.369 --> 00:35:09.610 to land. He doesn't think God gave real estate 00:35:09.610 --> 00:35:12.190 to anyone. Right. But on the other hand, he supports 00:35:12.190 --> 00:35:14.750 Israel's existence as a necessary haven for Jewish 00:35:14.750 --> 00:35:17.510 people, given the long and brutal history of 00:35:17.510 --> 00:35:20.050 global anti -Semitism. After the attacks, he 00:35:20.050 --> 00:35:22.150 came out swinging against what he called moral 00:35:22.150 --> 00:35:25.150 equivalence. He did. He argued that there is 00:35:25.150 --> 00:35:27.510 a fundamental moral difference between a terrorist 00:35:27.510 --> 00:35:30.320 group that intentionally targets civilians and 00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:33.460 uses its own people as human shields, which is 00:35:33.460 --> 00:35:36.340 Hamas, and a state army that he says accidentally 00:35:36.340 --> 00:35:38.800 kills civilians while trying to target those 00:35:38.800 --> 00:35:41.159 terrorists, which is the IDF. And he took a lot 00:35:41.159 --> 00:35:43.199 of heat for that from the left. A huge amount. 00:35:43.260 --> 00:35:45.579 From people who looked at the staggering civilian 00:35:45.579 --> 00:35:49.539 death toll in Gaza and said, a dead child is 00:35:49.539 --> 00:35:52.400 a dead child. The intent doesn't matter. But 00:35:52.400 --> 00:35:54.860 at the same time, he's not a blank check supporter 00:35:54.860 --> 00:35:56.960 of the Israeli government. He's not a Netanyahu 00:35:56.960 --> 00:36:00.139 fanboy. And not at all. By July of 2025, according 00:36:00.139 --> 00:36:02.280 to the Our Timeline, he was expressing deep reservations 00:36:02.280 --> 00:36:05.300 about his support, specifically citing Netanyahu's 00:36:05.300 --> 00:36:07.420 corruption charges and the presence of religious 00:36:07.420 --> 00:36:10.260 extremists in the Israeli cabinet. He makes a 00:36:10.260 --> 00:36:11.880 sharp distinction between the defense of the 00:36:11.880 --> 00:36:14.000 state of Israel and the actions of its specific 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:16.179 government. And looking at our timeline here, 00:36:16.340 --> 00:36:19.480 June 2025, there's an entry called Operation 00:36:19.480 --> 00:36:23.150 Midnight Hammer. Yes. This refers to a moment 00:36:23.150 --> 00:36:25.530 during the escalation of the Iran -Israel war. 00:36:25.829 --> 00:36:29.190 And Harris publicly supported this specific Israeli 00:36:29.190 --> 00:36:31.949 military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. 00:36:32.130 --> 00:36:33.809 And that's consistent with his view from the 00:36:33.809 --> 00:36:37.090 end of faith 20 years prior. Chillingly consistent. 00:36:37.309 --> 00:36:41.070 His view has always been that a messianic, apocalyptic 00:36:41.070 --> 00:36:44.250 Islamist regime, like the one in Iran, armed 00:36:44.250 --> 00:36:47.070 with nuclear weapons, represents a unique danger 00:36:47.070 --> 00:36:50.019 to civilization. Why unique? Because the Cold 00:36:50.019 --> 00:36:53.000 War logic of mutually assured destruction, or 00:36:53.000 --> 00:36:55.559 mad eye, might not work on them. Because if you 00:36:55.559 --> 00:36:58.199 truly believe that dying as a martyr in a holy 00:36:58.199 --> 00:37:00.719 war will send you to paradise, you might not 00:37:00.719 --> 00:37:03.199 be afraid of nuclear annihilation. Exactly. If 00:37:03.199 --> 00:37:05.440 you love death more than you love life, as some 00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:08.300 extremists claim, then nuclear deterrence fails. 00:37:08.920 --> 00:37:11.440 And Harris argued we simply could not let the 00:37:11.440 --> 00:37:14.579 mullahs get the bomb. Before we wrap up the controversies, 00:37:14.579 --> 00:37:16.280 we have to touch on the Charles Murray incident. 00:37:16.380 --> 00:37:18.260 This is the one that really got him labeled a 00:37:18.260 --> 00:37:21.260 peddler of junk science by places like Vox. This 00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:23.460 was a pivotal and very damaging moment for his 00:37:23.460 --> 00:37:27.219 reputation on the left. In 2017, he hosted Charles 00:37:27.219 --> 00:37:29.519 Murray, the co -author of the infamous book The 00:37:29.519 --> 00:37:32.400 Bell Curve. on his podcast. The bell curve being 00:37:32.400 --> 00:37:34.340 the book that discusses statistical differences 00:37:34.340 --> 00:37:37.219 in IQ scores between racial groups. Right. It's 00:37:37.219 --> 00:37:39.500 radioactive material. Now, Harris claimed he 00:37:39.500 --> 00:37:41.559 didn't care about the data on race and IQ one 00:37:41.559 --> 00:37:43.639 way or the other. He said he invited Murray on 00:37:43.639 --> 00:37:46.139 his show because Murray had been violently protested 00:37:46.139 --> 00:37:48.960 and shut down at Middlebury College. For Harris, 00:37:49.059 --> 00:37:51.179 it was a free speech issue. He wanted to protest 00:37:51.179 --> 00:37:53.239 the mob. But by hosting him to talk about the 00:37:53.239 --> 00:37:55.219 book, he walked right into the minefield of race 00:37:55.219 --> 00:37:58.280 science. He jumped in with both feet. Ezra Klein 00:37:58.280 --> 00:38:00.820 at Vox, along with a number of scientists, wrote 00:38:00.820 --> 00:38:03.800 scathing critiques, accusing him of naively promoting 00:38:03.800 --> 00:38:07.980 racialist speculation and junk science. Harris 00:38:07.980 --> 00:38:11.139 viewed this as a defamatory moral panic. He argued 00:38:11.139 --> 00:38:12.900 that as scientists, we have to be able to follow 00:38:12.900 --> 00:38:15.630 data wherever it leads without fear. But his 00:38:15.630 --> 00:38:18.369 critics argue that he was promoting data that 00:38:18.369 --> 00:38:21.030 has a century -long history of being used to 00:38:21.030 --> 00:38:24.409 justify racism, and he was doing it without understanding 00:38:24.409 --> 00:38:27.050 the historical context or the scientific critiques 00:38:27.050 --> 00:38:29.949 of the work itself. It was a complete mess, and 00:38:29.949 --> 00:38:32.289 it really solidified his reputation on the progressive 00:38:32.289 --> 00:38:36.130 left as someone who was anti -woke first and 00:38:36.130 --> 00:38:40.130 liberal second. So we've covered the man, the 00:38:40.130 --> 00:38:43.010 monk, the atheist, the neuroscientist, and the 00:38:43.010 --> 00:38:46.030 political polemicist. That is a lot of hats for 00:38:46.030 --> 00:38:48.150 one head. It is a very crowded head, I imagine. 00:38:48.349 --> 00:38:50.949 So if we try to synthesize all of this, if we 00:38:50.949 --> 00:38:53.849 try to step back and sum up Sam Harris. What 00:38:53.849 --> 00:38:56.190 is he? You know, I've come to view Sam Harris 00:38:56.190 --> 00:38:58.449 as a kind of stress test for modern discourse. 00:38:58.949 --> 00:39:01.389 He forces you to confront the contradictions 00:39:01.389 --> 00:39:03.789 and the uncomfortable gray areas in your own 00:39:03.789 --> 00:39:06.170 worldview. I mean, well, think about it. If you 00:39:06.170 --> 00:39:08.349 were a religious conservative, he agrees with 00:39:08.349 --> 00:39:10.909 you that Islamism is a profound threat. But then 00:39:10.909 --> 00:39:12.989 he turns around and tells you that your own belief 00:39:12.989 --> 00:39:15.559 in God is a dangerous fairy tale. If you are 00:39:15.559 --> 00:39:18.099 a secular liberal, he agrees with you on gay 00:39:18.099 --> 00:39:20.719 rights and abortion and taxing the rich, but 00:39:20.719 --> 00:39:22.579 then he tells you that your identity politics 00:39:22.579 --> 00:39:25.960 are toxic, your cultural relativism is cowardice, 00:39:25.960 --> 00:39:28.320 and you should probably own a gun. He fits nowhere. 00:39:28.679 --> 00:39:33.010 He is politically and tribally homeless. He combines 00:39:33.010 --> 00:39:36.789 this rigid, almost robotic adherence to scientific 00:39:36.789 --> 00:39:40.989 materialism with a deep, almost poetic appreciation 00:39:40.989 --> 00:39:44.769 for the subjective first person experience of 00:39:44.769 --> 00:39:47.909 consciousness. He is a liberal who hates the 00:39:47.909 --> 00:39:51.230 left's current iteration. He is an atheist who 00:39:51.230 --> 00:39:53.070 thinks the most important thing you can possibly 00:39:53.070 --> 00:39:55.389 do is close your eyes and find the sacred in 00:39:55.389 --> 00:39:57.409 your own mind. This bundle of contradictions. 00:39:57.530 --> 00:39:59.949 And that brings us to the final provocative thought, 00:40:00.110 --> 00:40:02.500 the paradox that. honestly keeps me up at night 00:40:02.500 --> 00:40:04.360 when I read his work. I think I know what it 00:40:04.360 --> 00:40:07.800 is. The free will paradox. Exactly. Here is a 00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:10.320 man who has convinced himself, through logic 00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:13.059 and introspection, that we are all biochemical 00:40:13.059 --> 00:40:15.619 puppets. He believes our thoughts are just neurons 00:40:15.619 --> 00:40:18.099 firing, determined by the laws of physics stretching 00:40:18.099 --> 00:40:20.840 back to the dawn of time. We have no choice. 00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:22.960 We are not the authors of our actions. Right, 00:40:23.000 --> 00:40:26.340 that's the core of his argument. And yet... He 00:40:26.340 --> 00:40:29.280 spends his entire life writing books, recording 00:40:29.280 --> 00:40:32.539 podcasts, giving lectures, debating people, arguing, 00:40:32.840 --> 00:40:35.539 trying to persuade us. It is the ultimate irony, 00:40:35.679 --> 00:40:38.139 isn't it? If we are just puppets, what is the 00:40:38.139 --> 00:40:41.239 point of the podcast? Why try to change a puppet's 00:40:41.239 --> 00:40:44.179 mind if the puppet has no actual mind to change? 00:40:44.460 --> 00:40:46.559 Why write a book called The Moral Landscape if 00:40:46.559 --> 00:40:48.739 we can't freely choose to climb toward the peaks 00:40:48.739 --> 00:40:50.760 of well -being? I think Harris would have an 00:40:50.760 --> 00:40:52.710 answer for that. He would say that the argument 00:40:52.710 --> 00:40:54.929 itself is just another input into the biological 00:40:54.929 --> 00:40:58.030 machine. My words entering your ear are a physical 00:40:58.030 --> 00:41:00.170 cause that will change the physical state of 00:41:00.170 --> 00:41:03.500 your brain. He is simply providing a new set 00:41:03.500 --> 00:41:05.960 of causes into the system that will hopefully 00:41:05.960 --> 00:41:08.480 have a new and better effect. He sees himself 00:41:08.480 --> 00:41:10.840 as reprogramming the robots. Essentially, yes. 00:41:10.980 --> 00:41:13.760 But you're right to point out the tension. There's 00:41:13.760 --> 00:41:16.460 a deep emotional contradiction between viewing 00:41:16.460 --> 00:41:19.320 human beings as wet robots on one hand and viewing 00:41:19.320 --> 00:41:21.260 them as rational agents who can be persuaded 00:41:21.260 --> 00:41:22.780 to save the world through reasoned conversation 00:41:22.780 --> 00:41:26.480 on the other. Is the rationality that he prizes 00:41:26.480 --> 00:41:29.539 so highly just another biological program playing 00:41:29.539 --> 00:41:32.260 itself out? Is his lifelong commitment to reason 00:41:32.260 --> 00:41:34.820 just another flavor of instinct that he himself 00:41:34.820 --> 00:41:37.480 did not choose? That is the question. And I don't 00:41:37.480 --> 00:41:40.619 think even Sam Harris is fully or satisfactorily. 00:41:41.099 --> 00:41:43.059 answered it well we are going to leave you with 00:41:43.059 --> 00:41:45.539 that particular philosophical headache if you 00:41:45.539 --> 00:41:47.280 want to dive deeper into this yourself check 00:41:47.280 --> 00:41:49.659 out his book the end of faith to meet the firebrand 00:41:49.659 --> 00:41:52.219 harris or his book waking up to meet the guru 00:41:52.219 --> 00:41:55.019 harris or you can download the app and see if 00:41:55.019 --> 00:41:57.320 you can find your own illusion of the self just 00:41:57.320 --> 00:41:59.840 uh don't blame us if you disappear in the process 00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:01.820 exactly thanks for listening to the deep dive 00:42:01.820 --> 00:42:02.739 we'll see you next time