Alex O'Connor challenges the notion that empathy is altruistic, arguing it is a selfish evolutionary byproduct while debating the ethics of incest and bestiality. The group dissects utilitarianism through trolley problem variations, revealing inconsistencies between rational calculation and emotional intuition regarding personal identity and split-brain scenarios. Discussions on psychedelics highlight how subjective experiences like seeing Jesus or aging reveal the brain's interpretive nature rather than literal truths, ultimately suggesting that over-analyzing ethics restricts authentic human connection and enjoyment of life. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Empathy Is Self-Serving00:14:16
You gotta help Alex figure out his moral position through a series of questions to figure out if he's a piece of shit.
I think I'm the most empathetic out of the four.
There's no way.
Out of the four.
Four of us.
This guy's a fucking crazy person.
He's the most sensitive.
I have a switch.
He's never met before.
I have a switch.
Yeah, but like, if they're if they're not.
That's not real.
That's not real empathy.
No, I love everybody.
I love everybody.
You start good.
It's so crazy.
You start good, and then you got to fuck it up.
Everybody starts bad for you.
But they have to.
You're a Hare Krishna.
That's the, you know what I mean?
Like, I'm trying too hard.
The people playing the bongos.
You're saying you're Hindu.
No, Hare Krishna are not Hindu.
What are they?
Fucking frauds.
They worship Krishna.
Yeah, frauds, dude.
I tried reading one of the leader's books, and this is what I immediately tapped out.
The guy interviewing him goes, you preach not having a material leading a materialistic life, but you'll accept gold gifts from people and whatever.
And the guy goes, well, if you're giving me the gift, it's like giving it to God.
And I was like, all right, fuck this guy, dude.
Fuck this guy, although I like him now.
That's why I'm sure.
It's a mean thing not to accept the gift.
They went over to you.
How do you think you have the most empathy?
I just hear the way you guys talk sometimes, and you guys are feeling.
What are you performing for?
It's not real.
Really?
People you don't know.
I honestly feel that way.
You think that we lack empathy for whom, though?
No, I don't think you lack empathy.
I think I have the most empathy for you.
You're the most sensitive.
Yes.
Okay, let me.
Okay, right now.
But listen to me.
No, that's starting to pop.
I'm just going to do a test.
Can you just speak in an Indian accent?
And let's just see how much empathy you have.
No, but that's love.
He knows I'm not laughing at him.
Now you are.
He used to make the jokes and it would hurt my feelings more the way you laughed because I was like, oh, he really feels that way.
You think they sound funny?
If I knew him, they sound funny.
Do you think they sound funny?
Yes, we all think they sound funny.
So that was good.
I was going to say that.
So they think Chinese people sound funny.
You think the accents are funny?
A three-syllable word an Indian says better than you.
Say perspiration.
I'm not saying they don't.
That's a thing.
I just think that would be the word you would ask.
Listen, we're going to get to the bottom of it today by the end of this podcast.
I promise you.
Alex, you didn't know this is why you were going to be brought here, right?
You thought we were going to talk about the Gnostic Gospels.
Yeah, man.
I got to speak to that management, man.
But reality is we're going to talk about Alex's media and his lack of empathy.
And there's nothing more annoying than someone who has no empathy that thinks they have the most.
I honestly think I have the most empathy.
Like, maybe Mark comes close.
Can you help us?
Can you figure that out?
No, like, Mark.
What are you talking about?
Mark, just start having feelings when you're a kid.
He's told us about this.
I know.
He could do no wrong.
He doesn't want to, like, hurt anybody.
That didn't make you a good person.
He's afraid of going to hell.
Everything he does is selfish.
I don't care what's the reasoning.
There's no selfless deeds.
I don't care what's the reasoning, but he doesn't do anything wrong.
You make enemies when no one has done shit to you.
But it could be justice.
It could be justice.
That's crazy.
I never do that.
I see people.
And I see you.
You lack empathy.
I see you, dog.
We agree to discuss.
I see you.
Guys, today, our guest is an Oxford-educated philosopher whose debates have amassed hundreds of millions of views.
He argues that incest is fine.
Okay.
Alex, this is on your Wikipedia.
I just want to point that you can kill people if you have a brain tumor and that democracy is immoral.
We have Alex O'Connor on the pop.
I'm very excited about this.
This is trusting.
This is true.
This is a broad.
I mean, the first one hit me hard.
This is a real, this is a real, this is on your Wikipedia.
I just snacked this from your Wikipedia.
No big deal.
Yeah.
The pleasure is yours.
I think something might have got lost in translation there.
But perhaps we can go through them.
Yes, I didn't say you believe it.
You seem to bring it up.
You started with what?
Incest?
It's because I've been watching White Lotus, man.
You're asking for a mate.
I do have a brother.
I do have a brother, Alex.
It's just like.
I have a brother, but I could do better.
I have a brother, but I could do better.
No, this is obviously some of the debates that you've had where you are arguing intellectually if these things have like what negative repercussions in society.
What is the idea?
Why even entertain this?
You're not a comedian like us.
This is all we argue all the time.
That's right.
That's the funny thing, and not funny in your sense, is that I'm not actually making an opinion here.
What I'm basically doing is throwing out views and ideas.
If you think there's something up with it, then that's going to help you work out what you think about the world.
It doesn't matter whether you're right or wrong.
The thing that matters is if you think incest is wrong, I'm going to ask why you think that and try to get to the bottom of what's actually motivating your ethics.
And most of the time, people are more confused about that.
That's fine wrong because one could argue that it would probably fit the most perfect.
That's right.
You use that argument.
I haven't actually.
I saw a great comment that you look like the kid from adolescence grown up.
And now that you're here.
And now that you're here, I can't see it.
Why'd you say that next?
I'm going to say that it worked out for him.
A little bullying turned him into a real proper intellectual.
You know what I mean?
Like, this is.
It's the best case scenario.
It really is.
That is what bullying at school does.
It turns you into someone like me.
But you were never bullied.
You're a tall, handsome kid.
You're smart.
Did you go through any bullying?
Well, I am now.
Yeah, most of it was from the teachers, though, unfortunately, because you are a pain in the ass.
Yeah, but then people really celebrate this.
You know, when people try to really self-indulgently say, like, you know, I was the kid who was always debating the teachers and giving it back.
And it's like, that doesn't make you clever.
That just makes you a pedant.
It just makes you like this annoying ADHD kid that's holding up the rest of the class.
In America, we have a way of getting them out of here.
Medicine.
School shooting.
Yeah, we can talk about the ethics of that too.
Have you ever thought about defending that in some way?
I haven't thought about the ethics of defending school shooters.
However, I have thought about the concept of children as child soldiers.
See, I do a series called Philosophical Hot Takes, where I get people to submit their philosophical hot takes, and I rank them on a scale that goes from mild, spicy.
And I was at an Indian restaurant once, and one of the options was Indian spicy.
So that's the top option.
And the opposite of spicy.
Ow.
Ow.
He's a monster.
He is a monster.
You're legitimately awesome.
What are you talking about?
You're the most empathetic.
Empathy is a lot of fun.
That's completely self-serving, though.
This is the thing.
If you're the most empathetic, it means that you're the most selfish.
What is empathy?
We knew it.
We've been saying this for a decade.
He is the most selfish.
So you are saying I'm the most empathetic.
Let's see.
Yeah.
That's why I didn't say that.
Why is empathy making the most selfish?
What is empathy?
What do you think empathy is?
Caring about other people.
Yeah, we just call it gay.
It's that, and that definitely is self-serving to some degree.
Caring about other people, like caring.
It's essentially taking suffering in other people's suffering.
It's like if I have empathy for you, it means that when you suffer, I kind of suffer for it, right?
I don't want you to suffer.
I don't believe I suffer for it.
Not me.
I understand what you're going through, and that must be hard.
I can understand what you're going through and think that's great.
Like, awesome.
I'm really happy that you're.
Sociopathy.
So the only thing that makes you empathetic is when you understand what someone else is going through and you feel bad for it.
You get upset about it.
Look at like when we get heroes, like imagine somebody like the firefighter who runs into the burning building.
Al just fixed his posture, looks at the design, and he's like, I don't even know where I am, right?
No, I'm saying a selfish thing.
I'm like, it's kind of selfish because it makes me feel good.
But I'm caring for others.
No, but what he's saying is that you are taking on their struggle, so you actually feel bad for them.
It's about your feelings.
If the firefighter runs into the burning building and they come out and someone says, oh, you're such a hero, and the guy says, I just, I couldn't not.
I had to.
You know, like when I saw someone in there, I just had to do it.
I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.
It's like what you're saying, man.
You did it for yourself.
You did it for your own.
So that you can sleep at night.
Empathy is essentially self-serving.
This is the thing.
But is that necessarily bad?
No, no.
It's a good reward.
There is no good and bad.
I think that morality is all of...
What I mean good and bad is like, is it beneficial for society that I get rewarded for doing a quote-unquote benevolent thing?
Oh, yeah, but that's why we think it's good, because it's beneficial for society.
The idea of morality and good and bad, in my view, is all just a smokescreen.
It's a fiery, as they say.
Seriously, is it just like people talk about ethics as if it's objective, right?
So for example.
Can you define ethics?
No.
Usually yes, but just not beef.
No, no, but this work for everybody watching.
What exactly is ethics study?
It's broadly the idea of like right and wrong, like good and bad.
And depending on who you ask, it might be like human flourishing.
So like what gives you the good life?
What is that all about?
So for a Christian, it might be living in accordance with God's will.
Or for an atheist, it might be what's beneficial to society, right?
If you're a moral objectivist and you believe that ethics is like a real thing, it means you think that there are actually just good and bad things in the world.
There's right and there's wrong.
I don't believe that.
Most people's intuition say that there is such a thing.
In my view, it's essentially an evolutionary byproduct.
For example, is it just a coincidence that, generally speaking, we think that you have a duty to care for your children, right?
You also have a duty to care for your cousin.
Yeah.
But you probably have less of a duty to care for your cousin than your child.
Like if your child is starving and your cousin is starving, you're going to help the child or the cousin, right?
And we think that that is like the right thing to do in that circumstance.
Is it just a coincidence that you happen to share proportionally exactly the same amount of genes with the child versus the cousin?
You share more genes with your child than with your cousin.
You share more genes with your cousin than with a distant cousin or a stranger.
Or then again, even someone in a different country.
So taking care of your child.
It just so happens that how much like genetic sharing, how much genetic similarity we have with these people just happens to line up with how much we think we have a moral duty to care about them.
Isn't that a strange coincidence?
Yeah.
No, I saw a starving kid and my cousin, who's 23, couldn't eat.
I'd tell my cousin to get a job and I'd give the kid food.
I didn't be related to them.
Am I crazy?
You might be right.
I forgot.
I might be right about that.
God's got a lack of empathy.
That was crazy.
I feel more American.
No, no.
No, no, I think it's a good idea.
The reason about ethics to an American is that if you give some kind of thought experiment about drowning child or someone who's like in poverty or something, he's like, well, just get a job, man.
Yeah, yeah.
Just get a job.
Bring yourself up by the booster.
Invest in the S ⁇ P and just like, you wait like 20 years and you'll be able to buy yourself some lunch.
Yes.
It doesn't matter.
Yes.
I think the problem with that.
That's the idea.
The problem with thought experiments is that people often pick up on like totally the wrong thing.
My least favorite thing that people do.
I don't want to move on from the thing you just brought up.
I thought it was really interesting.
Yeah, we'll keep going on that.
Specifically, like, okay, let's say humans are bound.
He's like, back to incest.
I just really need to know.
Please help me out here, man.
What the motivation for a behavior is doesn't really matter as long as it pushes society forward.
Now, what is pushing society forward?
I mean, just like propagating the world with more of our DNA?
Is that the idea?
Well, unless you think that having children is immoral.
This is the thing.
I don't think it's immoral.
But is it a bad thing?
You can just say, like, oh, well, you know, what's good is like what benefits society.
And it's like, well, you have to tell me what benefiting society is.
And we have to define society.
Exactly.
There are people in this world who think that the best thing we could do for the planet would just be to destroy all human beings.
Yeah.
And so for them, better for society means whatever is the most self-deleterious behavior that you can possibly do.
How much of when you're doing these debates is it like defining vocabulary?
All the time.
Most conversations that people have is just a matter of definition.
Yeah.
It really is.
Like, so it's.
You think you're arguing, but you're actually not.
Like, put it this way, right?
If I said a sentence, and I and I sincerely meant it, if you understood every single word that I was saying in the same way as I did, like you defined it with this in the same way with the same connotations, I think by definition, you would just agree with me.
Yeah.
I think there can be no disagreement if you're just saying the same thing.
Yeah.
So most of the time, it's a linguistic dispute.
Yeah.
Yeah.
An emotional reaction to certain words, a perception of what those words mean.
And so a lot of the time, what we're actually doing is defining terms.
So when we're like, oh, is this thing right?
Did you do that before?
Like, let's say you're going to have a big public debate.
We're going to be like, hey, let's just decide what these different things mean so we don't get bogged down.
You have to to some degree, but most of the time, the debate will sort of focus on what a word means.
So if we're debating whether something's good or bad, it is.
But you're trying to work out what good actually means.
Because you say that incest is great.
I say that incest is terrible.
Why are you putting that part of me?
Because it could have been anything, right?
It's a hypothetical.
It's a weird way that you position it.
What does that happen?
What are the ethics in that?
Now you know how it feels.
I'm going to put it on your Wikipedia page, right?
I know Wikipedia.
We have to start the episode off with a banger.
I had to introduce everybody out there.
My whole task now, my whole task now.
Literally, I want to box you into an ethical corner where you have to admit that according to your worldview, incest is okay, just so I can then go and put it on your Wikipedia page.
Well, let's define what okay is.
Can we define okay?
Depends what you mean by okay.
I mean, yes, does anybody get harmed?
I think I've actually heard the incest argument before, and I think that like do you think that incest is wrong?
Yeah, I think I have like a knee-jerk reaction to say it's wrong 100%.
But if the idea of wrong is like, does it hurt anybody, as long as you're not making a retarded kid, I guess it doesn't hurt anybody.
And if both parties are consenting, then it's fine.
Well, this is, but this is part of the problem.
Like, is gay incest wrong?
Yeah, really.
People often say, like, well, you know, same-sex incest.
And I'm like, why do you specify same-sex incest?
No, like, because, well, otherwise, there's the risk of having a child and the child will be disabled.
And I'm like, what's wrong with having a disabled child?
Well, we know.
Tour Bookers Get Shit Together00:02:02
Hold on.
Suddenly, is that just like, is that just like immoral?
Do you have to make him a tag?
That's a lot of work.
That's a lot of work.
Did you guys watch what I posted?
I'm sorry.
Did you watch what I posted on Instagram the other day about the guy?
It's got to be a TV show or something.
Oh, the specials.
Is that from the specials?
Yeah, where they go to the team.
They go to Thailand and he doesn't believe in ladyboys, his retarded or his special needs or whatever.
A brother doesn't believe in ladyboys.
He goes, Listen, they have Willys.
And he goes, No, they don't.
And he goes, I'm not going to do the accent, but you can imagine it.
He goes, exactly.
He goes, no, they don't.
He goes, they have Willys.
And then they take him to a Ladyboy show, and he's got like a beer in his hand and he is having the time of his life.
And at the end of the show, this theatrical experience, part of it is the ladyboy exposes her true self, takes off all her makeup, takes off the wig, and then he stands out there on stage, ta-da, and the audience is going crazy.
They're like, what a performance.
And they just pants to this kid and he's just sitting there going, well, we've all been there, haven't we?
Guys, tour dates this weekend.
I'm going to be in Cincinnati, Ohio, Liberty Township specifically.
I'm going to be there Thursday through Friday at the funny bone.
Then September 11th through the 13th, I'm going to be in Dania Beach, Florida.
That is far from any who wants to blow up Florida.
What kind of person would do such a thing?
So it's a safe show to come through, be there.
September 25th and 27th, I'm rounding out my Ohio tour in Cleveland.
October 5th, Dubai.
Hurry up and buy those tickets.
They're selling out.
We might have to move to a bigger venue or figure something out.
But right now, we're about to sell out.
And then all those dates and more, AkashSing.com.
We got big things getting announced soon, guys.
Big things.
Also, Mark has tour dates.
You can suck his dick in Montreal, Toronto, or Detroit.
Those dates respectively are August 22nd, August 23rd, and December 6th.
Why is there such a big gap?
Strange Sexual Behavior Opportunistic00:05:56
I don't know.
Tour bookers, get your shit together.
Comedy clubs, get your shit together.
This guy got three open months.
What is that?
September, October, November.
Book the man.
MarkGadnonLive.com.
Can we do some thought experiments, some ethical dilemmas to test everyone's internal moral code?
I love this.
Yeah, of course we can.
I mean, firstly, when we do a thought experiment, it's worth pointing out that people often get really picky with it.
So if I say, you've heard of the trolley problem, right?
Yes.
Like someone's tied to a track or whatever.
And people will always say like, well, why can't I just untie them?
Or try and come up with shit outside of it.
This is not that show.
My least favorite thing that people do is when, like, you know, if you're watching Star Wars and there's like a plot hole and you say, well, that doesn't make sense.
You know, why does he kiss his own sister or something?
Well, this is too fortunate.
Right now, we're too fortunate.
I'm getting a bit of a reputation.
Do you have siblings?
I do.
I have a brother.
We tend not to talk too publicly about that.
Can we just FaceTime him and see what he's wearing?
He's probably handsome.
He must be handsome.
I mean, if he's my brother.
Actually, I had a friend once who is a homosexual, and he on two separate occasions.
He's like, I need to point out it only happened one time.
He told me on two separate occasions.
On one occasion, he says, you know, Alex, you really look like your brother.
And on a separate occasion, without thinking about it, he said, you know, Alex, your brother's quite hot, you know.
Like, I think I...
I knew it.
And I was thinking...
That's where this comes from.
You noticed it.
So what do you think it is that he's not into you?
Personality?
I was starting to read between the lines and think that maybe he was sort of...
Oh.
Your brother and this guy?
No, no, no, no, not that.
I just think, you know, if you sort of independently say that you look like your brother and then on another occasion say like, you know, I kind of fancy your brother, you're thinking.
Oh, here's the thing.
You think that gay men care about looks.
They just care about holes.
So as long as there was one available, they're men.
We haven't all been there, but I'm...
You what?
I guess you know from experience.
What, what, homosexual acts?
Yeah, no, now, if you want to talk about immorality, that's where it really gets off the ground.
You know, incest is fine, but homosexuality.
Oh, why is that such a big deal?
But this is the thing, right?
Seriously.
We were going to give a thought experiment and then we derailed.
Seriously, though.
When you say that when you say, like, oh, like, like, okay, incest, yeah, like, I can't think of a reason that's wrong.
I've just got this knee-jerk emotional reaction.
A lot of people feel that way about homosexuals, man.
I don't.
And so you feel you open the door to condemning basically anything that you're doing.
Actually, I think that that, yeah, that makes sense.
Which is the problem, right?
But anyway.
No, no, that's not a problem.
I actually think that there's probably something biologically wired in to fill that.
Because when I see like two dudes making it out, and somebody said, maybe it was a Bill Burpett, but like one of them's got a beard.
You're just like, whoa.
Yeah, like obviously you're going to be wired to find it kind of gross.
I also feel that way about ugly people doing it.
So maybe it's a thing.
But is it immoral?
Is it wrong?
I don't know if you can see it.
If the answer is no, then I never said there's anything about morality.
I just said I had this knee-jerk reaction.
You put morality into it.
Yeah, you don't think homosexual people should procreate.
I don't think you're going to have much problems.
I don't think they can have much of a problem getting that.
No, I think that they should off the ground.
I mean, how do we get more of them?
They're sneaking some coming somebody.
That's actually a really interesting evolutionary question.
Where do they come from?
Clearly, God wanted them here if he keeps making them, but they can't make more of them.
That might be true.
They're like gremlins.
They're made to become priests.
Say again?
God needs priests.
God needs priests.
We're so close.
Some say swallowing.
Especially in Catholicism where you're not allowed to get married.
What do you do if you are a devout Catholic who realizes you're a homosexual and so has to commit to celibacy as a point of morality?
What is your only option?
Well, you have to pick something which turns that celibacy into a virtue, and that is the priesthood.
Wow.
Hence, ending up with loads of gay priests.
Wow.
Do you think that's the reason?
Mark's mom has a different conspiratorial reason.
The two Catholic priests get pulled over by the police.
The police walk up to the car and say, I'm so sorry to disturb you, gentlemen.
We're out here.
We're out here looking for two child molesters.
And the priests go, we'll do it.
Do they do it in England too?
Do the priests get after the kids in England as well?
It has been known to happen, but a lot of my Catholic friends inform me that sort of pederastry is just as much of a problem in other Christian denominations too.
And so recently, our Church of England, the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was involved in a scandal.
Not him doing anything himself, but not responding properly to a scandal involving sexual abuse.
And my Catholic friend texted me and was like, Finally.
Thank goodness somebody else wants.
It happens everywhere.
The Catholic priests have more of a reputation for it, I think, because of the institutional nature of it, but also because these priests are forced to be celibate.
They're not allowed to marry.
It's like, okay, yeah, let's just get a bunch of like horny, sexless, like, essentially involuntarily celibate, except for the sense that they're voluntarily priests, put them all into a room together and put loads of children under their care and see what happens.
What a great idea that is.
Just because you're gay doesn't mean you're pedophiles.
Yeah, exactly.
Just because you're not fucking doesn't mean you want to fuck kids.
No, that's a real jump.
No, you made a big jump.
No, because they're gay.
They're not having any sex.
Yeah, but not having sex doesn't make you want to fuck kids.
Perhaps not.
We got them.
But it does mean.
Now, I will be honest.
If I want to be honest, if I'm going to be honest with you.
Yes.
I once didn't have sex for 16 years.
And then I had sex with a 16-year-old.
Whoa.
Instincts Versus Rational Reasons00:09:44
So you might be on a sickness.
You might be on a second.
That's a great point.
You might be on a subject.
Yeah.
When was that?
From zero to 16.
We got to clear that up.
We got to clear that up a minute list.
But yeah, there is a little bit of a leap there.
This idea if you don't have sex for a long period of time and then all of a sudden you're attracted to children.
You would hope that that's not the reality.
But the thing is, I think that a lot of strange sexual behavior is opportunistic, let's say.
So this is the thing.
There's an important distinction to be made here between there's a great essay that was written by an old tutor of mine called Amir Srinivasan called What Does Fluffy Think?
And it's about bestiality.
And she carefully distinguishes between zoophilia and bestiality.
Because zoophilia is sexual attraction to animals.
Bestiality is just having sex with an animal.
And they're different things.
You can be specifically sexually attracted to something and have sex with it for that reason.
Or you could be sexually attracted to anything and everything, but you just have sex with this because it's like the opportunity.
Have you seen the guys fucking the donkeys before?
I've not seen that, actually.
That's.
I don't think that's a casual thing.
There's this vice documentary back in the day before vice became what vice is now.
They would into like edgy, almost like kind of like British punk culture, I think a lot of it was derived from.
You're familiar with vice?
Yeah.
And he went to like Columbia and he was just like, you know, videotaping dudes who would like get behind donkeys and fuck the shit out of them.
Yeah.
Why is bestiality immoral?
That's a great question.
Because the beast can't consent.
Riddle me this.
If it's okay to eat animals, why is it not okay?
I say that too.
I say that too.
He's like, yeah, we're doing something crazier.
Seriously, I was a vegan for a number of years, and I think factory farming is like the greatest moral emergency that we're currently facing.
It's absolutely unbelievable what we're doing to animals.
But the interesting thing is, people have such a hard line against bestiality.
It's like, okay, I can take a pig, I can raise it in a cage, and if it's too sick to be profitable, I can take it by the hind legs and cave in its skull against the bars of the cage that its mother is being held in.
I can force that pig into a gas chamber, choking to death on carbon dioxide.
But the moment I take my dick out, suddenly.
Yeah, it's suddenly.
It's like this horrible.
So what is that?
Well, I think it goes to show that people aren't thinking about ethics in the way that they think they are.
Because they'll say, like, oh, well, because it harms an animal or the animal can't consent.
And it's like, well, okay, but you're okay with eating animals.
Okay, real quick.
And suddenly the ethical position shifts.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
If we're discussing it in like a thought experiment.
Yeah.
Sympathetically, if we were having sex with animals.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
I guess what I mean, like, there's this like impulse, this like knee-jerk reaction thing I was talking about earlier.
Yeah, sure.
And, okay, I guess base level is how much do we think that is like learned or taught?
And is there any of it that just exists within us?
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing.
There's got to be like an internal biological sense.
And is it not dissimilar from like the reaction to like being close to fire?
We're like, oh, that burns.
Do we have that reaction to having sex with an animal?
And is that baked into us so we don't waste our come on animals?
Is that how you feel when you're near homosexual?
You said it about me.
It starts to get hot and sweaty.
And they just like, they're so handsome.
Yeah, you know, it's like, they are.
And we have so much in common.
We could just talk about things.
Yeah.
Starnage get a bit hot under the collar when you.
Sex is only 15 minutes a day.
What are we going to do with the rest of the day?
I think that there is definitely an evolutionary instinct.
But the thing is, what ethics probably is, broadly speaking, you ask for a definition.
And I think a good definition of ethics is the continual process of trying to overcome our base animalistic material drives to act in accordance with what we sort of rationally think is the right thing to do.
And why would something rational be better than what our base instinct is?
Because our base instincts evolved in a totally different kind of organizational structure.
We evolved like running around in tribes on the savannah, right?
So for example, tribes.
You don't have to look at Al for that.
That was fucked up.
You look at that market.
He's so much more head.
He's like, you know, some of us are more involved than others.
Mark's going to walk out of here on his knuckles.
Okay, you're exactly.
You notice that I've been looking at you every time I said homosexual.
It's the mustache.
The thing about evolving in that situation is that you're going to be suspicious of anybody from a different tribe, right?
And that makes sense.
It makes sense to be suspicious of anyone who doesn't look like you because there's no reason to trust them.
You're not doing like trade with them.
That doesn't exist.
Sure, sure.
You're just fighting each other.
And so you just evolve this knee-jerk reaction to be distrusting of people who don't look like you.
Then like, you know, agricultural revolution, boom, all of that kind of stuff.
And now we live in a society and everybody is like mingling all together.
And we think racism is just awful and terrible and really, really bad.
So how do we overcome some of these knee-jerk instincts?
Because of the change of our circumstances, we've developed this thing which like every single, all of the proud moments of like human history are characterized by like overcoming animalistic baselessness.
You know what I mean?
Like that's always the case.
So you call it animalistic baselessness or animal baseline or whatever that is.
But let's just use that as like, you know, bare minimum.
Now, some of those still apply and are probably good.
The ones that don't fit in modern society are the ones, I'm attracted to a beautiful woman.
We get along.
The feeling is great.
I want to mate with her and create a family.
I want to protect my kids because I have more DNA in those kids than I do my cousin.
Have rational reasons to think those things.
Yeah, sure.
So there are still, like, it's not like sometimes you are just listening to your base instincts.
You still are like rationalizing.
It's just that sometimes that rationalizing, it links up with what your base desires are.
And like, thank goodness, this will be an easy one.
But sometimes it doesn't.
And we're constantly just trying to act normally.
Right, right, but that's what we rationalize.
Yeah, I'm not against the rationalization of it, but like sometimes we are putting that rationalization on posthumously.
Is that the term?
After the fact.
But it doesn't mean that that knee-jerk instinct is still useful in society.
Yeah, there are certain things that work.
Yeah, like it will still be useful when you've rationalized something and think that this is actually the right thing to do and you happen to still have a knee-jerk reaction to do it.
That's really helpful.
That's got it.
But the problem is that we've got knee-jerk reactions to all kinds of things.
It wasn't that long ago that homosexuality was criminal.
Yeah.
And you could be thrown in jail for doing so.
And then what do you get to do?
It's kind of like a gift.
I know.
What a punishment with these guys that work out all day.
And they're locked in a room with me.
What if it was benevolent?
What if that punishment was like, hey, yeah.
Now, you're kind of talking that shit, right?
Putting them in the jail is much better than like lighting them on a fire or throwing them off a building or something.
That's really true because some people do that as well.
But even the very way that we punish people has evolved.
If you commit suicide a few hundred years ago, there are places where you would have your body dragged through the street.
Your inheritance would not go to your family.
You could not be buried in a grave because it was thought immoral because we have a knee-jerk reaction to stay alive.
Of course we do.
I don't know if that's the reason why they would punish it.
It makes perfect evolutionary sense for us to think that whatever is going to cause our own death will be a bad thing.
So why do you think that they put that punishment on top of it?
To discourage people from committing suicide.
But why?
What is like the downstream effect of that?
Well, because self-preservation is like an evolutionary important thing, right?
I think maybe it's the numbers of the tribe.
You need to protect the tribe.
Or like your family is now the burden of the tribe and now they disproportionately have to take it.
All of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, there are rational reasons that they put even back in the day.
But of course, it's not like we've just worked out in the past 50 years all of these rational reasons.
They've always been there.
It's just they've sort of come up against this moral feeling that people have had.
So is that why, is that like the justification at the university level for looking into ethics?
You're like, we've done so much rationalization of our behavior throughout history.
We should continue to do it.
And then we will continue to...
We're not going to evolve at the same rate as society, but we can create behaviors that would be more harmonious with society.
No, the reason for doing it at an academic level is because there's like no way to make money with a philosophy degree except for teaching people philosophy.
That's it.
They just invent stuff like this.
So you think it's self-defense?
It was probably a philosopher who first tied the man to the tracks to essentially keep him in a job, I think.
Yeah, like I think a lot of it is just as I like to call it.
Well, people are just sort of arguing for the sake of arguing.
Philosophical mass debating, you might want to call it.
And it is essentially just this self-indulgent thinking.
And a lot of the time it's kind of useless.
There's this whole video, I think, of someone on a plane and they're like, I don't know if they're choking or they're having some medical issue and they're like, is there a doctor on board?
And a guy gets up and he's like, yeah, I'm a doctor of philosophy.
And he sort of walks over and they're like, what should we do?
And he's like, well, according to utilitarianism, we should use the resources.
Yeah, but deontology says that we can't take the property without the and the guy just dies.
Yeah.
Because like on a real level, like this, this doesn't make a difference to a lot of people in terms of the way they actually live their lives.
Not even the immediate moment.
Yeah, it's just, it's just a point for a lot of people, it's just a point of like, you're already living how you're living.
You already think what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong.
We're not going to change that.
We're just trying to work out like as a point of interest, what's the like foundation for that?
The philosophy goes in two ways.
It either digs downwards, which is what we do when we try to figure out what good means and we do these experiments and it's like, well, let's dig downwards and see what's like in there.
What's at the basis?
America First Roasting Controversy00:02:46
Yeah.
There is the philosophy that works upwards too.
It's like, well, what should we do?
That's the constructive stuff.
That's like, well, here's what I think is good and here's how it should change your life.
But it's not always constructive.
Because as you said, sometimes it's self-indulgent.
And that's when I'm actually...
When I get frustrated is when it gets, and I understand the reason for it, but when it gets, well, how do you define this?
How do you define that?
It's like, I think we all have a fairly standard definition of empathy or whatever the word is.
Then it feels less productive to me.
Yeah.
And you just sort of sat around like arguing about trolleys on tracks for like, for like no reason.
But it is useful to work out to do the other thing, to go the other way and work out what you think to then build up.
C.S. Lewis said that the purpose of philosophy is not to cut down forests, but to irrigate deserts.
You know, we're supposed to be actually building something up.
That's why I like doing the trolley problem memes because they help people work out what they actually think.
And then you've got some more clarity on that.
So then go and take that and build a philosophy out of it.
You know, you've got to actually use it to then go and do something.
So let's do one.
What's an example?
All right, guys.
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Let's get back to the show.
Okay, so the classic trolley problem is that a trolley is running down a track and there are five people either tied to the track or they're workers and they don't know the trolley.
Jewish.
Run them over.
No, no, no.
Go.
Five people are tied to the track.
You've got one on the other side.
You've got one on another track.
Because the track splits, I presume.
Very clever.
Gotcha.
Thank you.
And they've got a lever that's kind of next to you and you can pull the lever.
And if you pull the lever, five people are saved and the trolley runs over one person.
Yep.
And the question is simply, would you pull the lever?
I don't know.
Would you pull the lever?
I don't think you pull it.
No?
I don't think so.
Because now you're responsible for death.
Yeah, because then you are letting five people die rather than making one person die.
And I think letting versus actively doing changes it.
Can we ask a question?
I pull the lever.
Okay, go.
Go.
What about you, Alan?
I don't pull the lever.
Same reason.
Are we allowed to ask questions about the people or does that destroy the whole thing?
You can.
Like age, for example, might be important.
In this circumstance, you don't know, right?
Will you assume that they're all like 25?
Got it.
What you can then do once you work out whether you pull the lever or not is then start changing these variables.
Okay.
Give me the toughest.
Did you pull the lever?
That really helps.
Yeah, would you pull the lever?
No.
What is it?
It's going to hit five?
It's going to hit five and would you pull it?
If you don't pull the lever, it hits five.
If you pull the lever, it hits one, but you pull the lever.
Will they all follow me on Instagram?
Yeah, I don't think that I could be responsible for it.
Okay, so then here's the thing, right?
So one way you could adapt this is say, because at least the three of you think that you wouldn't pull the lever.
What if it was 100 people on that track?
What if it was 1,000 people on that track?
Yeah, eventually you get to that.
What if it's like a city?
Or what if it was like your own mother?
You know, like, surely there is some circumstance in which you would kind of be okay with.
I feel this way about abortion.
Right?
Like, you know, one or two or four is fine, but like a thousand.
Yeah, what would we put?
You got to pull the lever on that girl, right?
Like if one person had a thousand.
Yeah, like eventually there's a lever where you're like, all right, sew it up or something.
Yeah, but okay.
I joke.
I'm being hyperbolic, but at the same time, you're like, wait, what is going on?
You can work this out.
Like, you can figure out what you think about abortion.
So take a one-year-old child and take like a thousand fertilized zygotes and put them on the other side of the track and ask what someone would do.
Which would they run over?
Child.
And I think it's...
Well, some people actually would say that.
And that's fine.
It helps you to work out what you actually believe.
Because a lot of people will look at that and be like, if I'm being honest with myself, what I would probably do is I would probably run over those zygotes.
You can't even see them.
They're like dust on the floor.
And that's probably what I would do.
So you adapt it in such a way as to, and you could apply it to specifics.
And that doesn't mean that you don't think it's wrong.
Those people might think it's really wrong, but it just helps you figure out what's it.
So here, what we've just pulled out is the difference between doing and allowing, which is like a really important ethical distinction.
Is there a difference between doing and allowing?
And it doesn't mean that allowing people to die is always right.
It just means that it's less bad than proactively killing people, right?
So then, okay, so take an example where one of my favorites is the trolley is going down a track and there's one person tied up.
And there's another track where there's also just one person tied up.
But you think you'll already get a kick out of killing someone.
You think it's going to be like great fun.
Is it wrong to pull the lever?
Yes.
Yeah.
Why?
Because wanting to kill people for fun is bad.
I assume this is an impulse that once you once you break that seal, it's quite possible you break it.
But suppose we just know that this person is a perfectly well-integrated member of society who recognizes that this kind of like kick they get out of the thought of killing someone is totally immoral and they never act in accordance with it.
Look, I've got this opportunity.
So this is to me doing is worse than allowing.
To enact a better personality.
What's interesting with the first one is this is Dexter.
And be like guilt-free.
Are you familiar with the show?
I haven't seen it.
He's a serial killer that finds a way to kill just.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's not even that they're bad people.
It's not like, oh, they deserve this.
It's literally like somebody's got to die.
Somebody's got to die here.
I get to scratch my itch.
Exactly.
And here's an interesting consideration: have you ever heard of utilitarianism?
Yeah.
So the view.
The greatest good for the greatest number of people, right?
And that's usually cashed out in terms of maximizing pleasure or minimizing suffering.
This is what morality is about.
That's what it is for the utilitarian.
And pleasure is defined very broadly there.
It doesn't just mean.
Yeah, it's not a brothel.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like anything which is well-being, exactly.
Food, shelter.
And so here's the thing, right?
If you're a utilitarian, then suppose it's not you, suppose someone else is going to pull that lever and you know for a fact that they will get some pleasure out of pulling that lever and killing that person.
It might not just be that it's permissible for them to pull the lever.
If you're a utilitarian, it might be a duty.
They might have to, because that will maximize pleasure.
Same number of people die, except one extra person is now going to get a lot of people.
You actually got an obligation to kill.
So if we have these people, let's say we have these serial killers, right?
Yeah.
And we are utilitarian in our philosophy.
I think you know where I'm going.
Do we make them be the people that flip the switch for the electric chair?
There you go, man.
Right, exactly.
We can give them jobs.
Exactly.
And is that what abortion doctors are?
No, no, no.
Now we're getting too crazy.
I do know.
I'm teasing, obviously, but I do think these ethical dilemmas present themselves in even vaccinating your kid, right?
And again, I'm not going to talk about whether vaccines work or don't work or plus or negative for society.
But the fear is a parent when you have a brand new baby you love more than anything.
It's so amazing.
And you watch one video where you're like, this could cause harm to you.
It makes sense to be terrified.
Because now you have the lever, right?
You go, do I want to be the person who takes responsibility for causing the harm?
Oh, shit.
Or do I not pull it?
And then, God forbid, they get measles or mumps or whatever that shit is.
And now not my fault.
But this is the thing.
Is that parents trying to not be the responsible person?
Exactly.
But a lot of people look at that.
A lot of people look at that and they say, but that's bad parenting.
And if that's bad parenting, then maybe there's something more going on.
It's not just as simple as like, well, doing is bad, but allowing is kind of fine.
It's like, no, there's something more complicated going on.
So how would you handle that?
Like, what are the, what are the, what are all the different ways to think about that?
I think something important there is like the probability because there's no certainty involved.
The trolley problem, you have certainty.
Right, right.
And so you need a version where you're uncertain.
So say, for example, there is a track that's got one person on it, and there's another track that's got a big sort of box that you can't see, and it's got a 99% chance of having nobody in it, but a 1% chance of having 100 people in it.
Oof!
Same expected value, right?
Exactly the same expected value.
Because you've got a 1% chance of 100, expected value is 1.
You've got a 100% chance of 1, expected value is 1.
So would you take that chance?
I might be inclined to pull it.
I would probably pull it though.
What does that tap into?
There's got to be positive thinking.
If most people say that they would pull the lever, it tells us that expected value doesn't actually work properly.
Because you should, if you're being rational, you should say, well, I have no preference whatsoever.
I bet a poker player would have a preference to do.
But the rest of us who aren't doing these calculations may be more difficult.
I think what it shows is that expected value is a bad way of thinking about stuff.
Because this is how you work something out.
If you've got a gamble, you sort of do the expected value and work out which is higher.
But that's not actually how people think.
You know the game Deal on O'Deal?
Yeah.
My friend Phil Halper pointed this out to me that like if you're playing deal on no deal and you've got a box, say one of the boxes is like zero and one of the boxes is like $500,000, right?
If somebody if you're then offered $150,000 like are you taking that?
Fuck no, give me that $500,000.
The thing is, it probably depends on who you are, right?
If you've got a lot of money and that's not life-changing to you, you're going to think, oh, expected value, so I've got like nothing, you're taking that one.
You are taking a perfectly rational to take $100,000.
I have a different answer than all these guys on everything.
Even though expected value says that you should obviously take the risk for the $500,000 because the expected value is $250,000.
Yep.
And you've only been offered $150,000.
Wait, can I selfishly, because I'm the only person that answered the trolley thing that way, I don't look at it as doing and letting.
Well, I guess I look at it as doing, but I'd be saving five people.
That's the way my brain goes.
So that's your due.
You're doing.
What I'm doing is I'm saving five people and one person had to die for me to save five people.
And I think if I was that one person on the track, I think I would understand.
I wouldn't be like, hey, let them go.
I'm not some fucking saint.
What about the Fat Man variation?
Real quick before the Fat Man, just on that.
Like, I think there are these.
Hey, that's no way to speak about your friends.
I'm just trying to get.
I forget the type of hedge fund it is, but essentially what they do is they buy up businesses, they restructure them, they lay off, you know, 10,000 people, but there's still 40,000 people that work there.
And I think Mitt Romney was one of the guys who owned Bane Capital, and this is one of the things they did.
And he was like a devout religious dude.
I think he was Mormon.
He is Mormon.
He was Mormon.
And I think someone asked him, is like, how do you deal with that?
Like, how do you handle the fact that you're letting 10,000 people go?
And his answer was, Akasha's answer is like, I save 40,000 people's jobs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's literally just a case of how you think about it.
Yeah.
And I don't know if what he's done is immoral at all.
I think if you're focusing on those 10,000, but he pulled a lever to save 40,000.
In my view, it depends how you feel.
Like, I feel like outside of outside of the thought experiment.
Like, what is your, what did you say, like basic instinct?
Yeah.
What is yours about what?
Oh, about like the lever?
Yeah.
Like, I think pulling the lever feels right, right?
It feels like that's a good thing to do.
Just to save more people.
Save the five to kill one.
But like, it's, it's uncertain, right?
And the point is it's supposed to be difficult.
But the real utility in the trolley problem is whatever you say, you then adapt it.
So you said you wouldn't pull the lever because, you know, you don't want to kill someone versus five.
And then you just up the ante and make it 100,000 people.
And suddenly, I didn't actually ask.
Would you pull the lever then if it were 100,000?
I would pull the lever then.
It's like the whole city of New York, you know?
So at least in your case, it does change the scenario.
You said that you would pull the lever.
You would kill one person to save five because you're saving five even though you have to kill one.
So as you point out, a famous sort of next variation of this is like the trolley is going towards five people.
You're stood on a bridge and there's a fat man on the bridge.
And if you push the fat man off the bridge, he'll crash into the train and the train will stop and he'll kill the fat man, but it will stop it from running over the five people who are tied to the track.
Would you push that fat man off the bridge?
You would.
Yeah.
Good.
That means you seem to be thinking very rational about being inconsistent.
You would actually push a fat guy.
I don't know if I'm struggling because I can't really lift much weight.
I don't get the physics.
If you push him off the bridge.
Yeah, because the train's going under the bridge.
Oh, the train's going under the bridge.
I'm like, I thought the train's going over.
I need diagrams.
The train was going over the bridge.
I thought the train is like one of the Western movies where the people are running.
You've never seen Stand By Me?
Yeah, right.
Yeah, no, that's odd thing.
One of the guys is fat.
I'm like, okay, that's not why I stop the train.
Blankly.
I'm still saving five people.
It's the same thing.
But you would kill someone you're with as completely.
Pulling the lever is killing.
So I've made that decision.
Now I'm just shoving instead of pulling the lever.
You would just shove this guy off the bridge.
I mean, again, I'm not strong, but I would try.
But he's on the edge and it's your friend and he's looking at the, he's like, oh my God, these people are going to die.
My friend is different.
The friend is different.
Because then I am inconsistent.
No, then I am inconsistent.
If my mom is on the bridge or five strangers, I'm not pulling the lever.
I'm not shoving my mom.
That is, now if it's my dad, keep hope.
But yeah, my inconsistency will stop at my wife, my kids, my mom, my best friends, sure.
But in general, if I'm saving five people and they're all strangers, I'm saving five people.
And I'm not utilitarianism to the absolute.
That's crazy at a certain point.
But like, I do largely have that idea.
Like, it's saving more people.
What are we doing?
So here's something funny.
They put people in an MRI scanner and asked them about the trolley problem.
And the people who said that they would pull the lever, but they wouldn't push the fat man, which is most people, by the way, I think.
That's weird.
People who would pull the lever but wouldn't push the fat man in the MRI scanner, the part of their brain that deals with emotion was lighting up.
Whereas the people who said that they would pull the lever and push the fat man, the part of their brain that deals with rational thinking was lighting up.
And so it's your logic.
It was an indication that a lot of people just think emotively about this and don't realize.
They think that they're considering an ethical consideration, but really they're just like feeling it out.
And so it's interesting.
So people like you seem to be thinking rationally about it and you're trying to sort of put it in like very sort of non-emotive terms.
But then you said like you'd be inconsistent when it comes to like your family.
And the question is like, why?
Or is it inconsistent?
Or do you just have an ethical worldview which says that it's okay to prioritize your own family?
I have a love for those people that's overwhelming to the point that ethics is not a concern of mine.
Morality is not a concern.
Maybe that's just what ethics is.
Maybe ethics is about like love.
And maybe ethics just permits you to care more about your family.
Yeah, sure.
You know what I mean?
But again, this is where I'm not saying it's to dismiss what you do.
This is where my brain jumps to like, well, yeah, whatever it is, I'm fine with it.
I understand there is inconsistency and I'm okay with that level of inconsistency.
And that's another thing when I was saying about like the philosophical masturbating, most people, they have their ideas, but like if you're if you're like, oh, I think torture is always wrong and I think that you know, we should minimize suffering and harvest organs in this circumstance.
But if someone like holds a gun to your daughter's head, that just goes out the window.
Like nobody is sad, like nobody, except maybe like Peter Singer.
He's probably the kind of person that would actually sit there and like do a calculation on his little cheat paper.
But nobody's thinking in this way.
That's not how you're doing.
Have you read that Jonathan Haidt book, The Righteous Mind?
I haven't actually read it.
But you're familiar with that we're like emotional beings and then we drift at this logic afterwards.
Yeah.
So that's probably what we're getting to about all this.
But maybe his emotion is to protect as many people as possible and our emotion is more selfish.
Yeah.
Like maybe you have more altruistic emotions.
Like you're like, everybody's a stranger.
I'll protect those five strangers over that one.
And the rest of us are like, I don't want to be a killer.
The guilt of letting five people die to me would be overwhelming.
Guilt Of Letting Five Die00:07:31
Okay, so if, so say there's a track, this time the track is like a circle, and there's a person tied on that end, and you'll sit here with the lever and the trolley's going around and the lever only changes the direction of the trolley.
So you can just sort of make it go back and forth.
How many times do you pull that lever before you let it run over the guy?
Oh, I would like to think in a vacuum, infinite, but if everybody in the train is saying XYZ to me, who knows at a certain point?
Oh, you know, you just stood there and you can just, you're pulling this lever back and forth.
I mean, the guy's going to die.
He's just tied to a track.
He's just going to die anyway.
I wait for him to die and then I go.
Once he dies of starvation.
You would stand there for like a week.
Yeah.
Like staying awake, pulling that lever.
If my body gives out my body.
To watch him slowly die.
You got to do it a little bit.
You've got to do it at least five, ten times.
You can't just let it go and then explain to him.
Five times?
This is what you would do.
No, no.
Why not, man?
No, no, you would go back and forth, right?
I actually understand your logic.
I know now that you're saying.
I don't know.
It's euthanasia, basically.
Because this guy will allow this guy.
Do you just terrify him?
Oh, he's going to die to me.
I guess he's just dying.
Maybe the ethical thing is just letting him.
Like, how long are you going to?
I think you've got to start explaining that to me.
How long are you going to die in their mind?
Said that you want to watch him like starve to death, which is like a horrible.
I'd rather be hit by a train.
He didn't say he wants to watch him starve to death.
Well, that's what that would happen.
But that's how he wants.
That is what you want to do in that circumstance.
He wants to not be responsible for his death.
Him starting.
Then don't pull the lever at all.
Because, like, remember a moment ago, we were talking about pulling the lever and all that.
A moment ago, you said, Well, if I pull the lever, then I'm involving myself.
It's like, well, then don't you?
Who invented this lever thing?
This is great.
What did you guys do before?
So before trains, what did you have to talk about?
Atlantis and shit.
Yeah, what is it?
The green tablets of oath.
They're running trains on children.
That's what they want to say.
I mean, the inventor philosophers.
But the invention of the train really changed your guys' whole life.
Yeah, that's right.
Like, what would you talk about before?
You're like, should we be communists?
People need to eat.
People are hungry.
People would debate.
The fucking train was eventually like, yeah, this is good.
People would debate weird and wacky stuff.
Like, famously, Plato defined a human being as a featherless biped.
That's his definition of what a human being is.
And then I think it was a biped.
Biped.
Walk on two.
So two.
So an animal's got two feet and doesn't have any feathers.
So then I think it was Diogenes who took a chicken and plucked all of its feathers and ran into the room where Plato was teaching and held it up and went, Behold, Plato's man.
And so they would just debate shit like that all the time.
And it was just essentially definitional.
And why was this supported?
Like, who was funding this back in the day?
Are you.
Education, I suppose, used to be just a privilege of people who could afford it.
But this could be a job.
Like, back in the day, there were people that were just waxing poetic on philosophy, and the king was like, Yeah, keep doing that shit.
I don't know about like back in ancient times.
I don't really know how they were making their money.
You'd have students as well, wouldn't they?
Yeah, they'd have like students.
But then I think some philosophers would probably have students that didn't pay.
They just had a school of people, the Jesus of Nazareth style.
But yeah, like you'd have students.
I mean, famously, Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great.
You know, like there are some pretty high clientele that want some philosophical wisdom.
And so they're probably making money through that.
Do we have another thought experiment?
There are endless.
Or even a hot take.
How were they viewed societally, real quick?
Like, how would Aristotle be viewed society at the time?
Depends on what kind of philosopher they were.
Like Socrates was a nuisance.
People didn't like him.
Yeah.
Is there some revisionist history on these people as we look back?
How do you mean?
Like, do we look at them as almost deities, right?
They're genius.
Oh, yeah.
Like, but yeah, at the time.
A lot of these philosophers, if you like, read their biographies, they're like depressed, miserable people who couldn't get laid.
Like it's seriously.
It's like Van Gogh.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's the same kind of thing where you wouldn't want to be these guys.
Like, why do you think Immanuel Kant had the time to sit around writing the longest treatise on objective ethics that the world's ever seen?
Because he's a loser, you know?
Nothing else going on.
Like, Seriously, you know, like what are you gonna do?
Like, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote an essay about women where he just like talks about how women are just inferior to men, and he just goes on and on and on about how to do it.
And you read it, and you're sort of like this sort of hyper-rational guy, and you're like, but this is clearly just because, like, he can't get laid.
He can't get apparently he was like a bit of a womanizer, but I think he might have like had some trouble.
Like, people like rejected his proposals and stuff.
And so, actually, I was speaking to a friend earlier who said that any idea that anybody has, anytime, like I say, like a policy is come up with by a politician or anything of that sort, they should have to undergo like a psychological analysis to find out how much of that is due to the fact that they're like, dad didn't care about them as a kid or something.
Like, you've got to make sure that there's none of that going on.
Don't they just with detectives?
They're like, you're too close to this case.
You knew one of the people that were hurt.
You're going to be too emotional.
We take you off of it.
This is what they would hope.
But we should probably do that with like politicians too.
It's like, you know, you shouldn't essentially just be using your rage to write about this kind of stuff.
And I think that's clearly what's happening with Schopenhauer writing about women, for example.
How many other philosophers do you think this is happening to?
Like, are there people that you're reading?
You're like, oh, you actually have some deep issues that you are emotionally reacting to and then just retrofitting your brilliance onto it.
That might be true of most philosophers.
Most people have motivations that aren't always immediately obvious.
I've heard this about Charles Darwin.
What about him?
That his brother died of some type of malignant cancer or something to that effect.
And he was told that he was going to go to hell.
And so he took it upon himself to scientifically prove that God doesn't exist or something.
I think Darwin's child died.
Maybe that's what it is.
Darwin's, I think his youngest child might have died.
And it does seem to sort of have an effect.
I'm not sure if that motivates the biology of the origin of species, but it will motivate his religious views.
Darwin, actually, interestingly, at the end of The Origin of Species, there's a beautiful little epilogue where he says there is grandeur in this view of life.
It's a famous piece where he talks about from so humble and simple a beginnings, endless life, and endless forms, most beautiful, have been and are being evolved.
And that's how it ends.
It's this beautiful thing.
And he talks about how life having originally been breathed into a few forms or into one.
And there was such a backlash from the religious that in the second edition of The Origin of Species, there is an addition that's breathed by the Creator into few forms or into one.
Because he felt the need to add in this reference to God, and it's probably due to the backlash, but it may also just reflect his own flip-flopping on religion.
Because by the third edition, it was gone again.
And this happens quite a lot, like people defacing their books.
Like Peter Singer recently did this for Animal Liberation, the father of the animal rights movement, who wrote in 1975 the greatest defense of animal ethics that has probably ever been written.
I mean, it's just phenomenal and very confronting.
And he was using all of these arguments that in the most recent updated edition, he felt the need to take out because they were not politically correct anymore.
Voting Systems Are Never Perfect00:04:28
Even though they were really useful philosophical arguments, he freaks them out.
So for example, when he talks about giving animals rights, a lot of people say, well, we can't give animals the same rights as humans.
We're not going to give them the right to vote and stuff like that.
And Peter's Singer is like, well, to give people equal consideration doesn't mean you literally give them the same rights.
For example, you wouldn't give men abortion rights.
And that's not an inequality thing.
You give them the same consideration, but it doesn't mean you give them literally the same rights.
It just means that you give them the same consideration.
So you wouldn't give men abortion rights.
You wouldn't give animals voting rights, but you give them the same consideration.
Special needs people vote.
They literally can, yeah.
They are allowed to vote.
Oh, yeah, I mean, I assume so.
I don't know if there are.
Is that a crazy thing to ask?
No, but it's not.
I'm asking based on the same, you know, it's the same hypothetical.
Like, if We deem an adult 18 years old and they have the mental capacity of an 18-year-old.
I guess we don't do that with IQ.
There's voting on that.
It's totally arbitrary because voting is like the justification for voting is always like, well, it will lead to a better society.
But really, people feel like they have a right to vote.
It's not so voting isn't supposed to be like, this is obviously the best way to always get to the right answer.
It's like, no, it's just a point of principle that if you're going to tax me, I have a say.
Even if I tax.
And if they have the wherewithal to register to vote, then they should be able to.
But it is completely arbitrary.
Like the age limit on voting is completely arbitrary.
I feel it's way too loose.
We let too many people vote.
Yeah.
A lot of people feel that way, man.
And like Aristotle thought the same.
John Stuart Mill thought that different people should have different numbers of votes.
So people out of university education should get more votes than someone who didn't and stuff like this.
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Now let's get back to the show.
Voting systems are never perfect because people have an idea that you just sort of vote and whoever gets the most votes wins.
And that's what democracy is.
But it's never quite like that.
I mean, like in the United Kingdom, there's a big debate over whether we should keep our so-called first-past-the-post system of voting.
What does that mean?
It means that if you get like a majority of votes, if you sort of, it's the first person to reach a certain number of votes, why they call it first past the post.
First person to get that wins, right?
And so if you've got like five different parties and say like 50% of people like vote for vote for one of those parties, they're going to like win the election, but the rest of the voter base is spread across all these different parties.
And so they all just like lose.
And there's no like proportional representation of the different amount of votes the different parties got.
It's just like if you get the most, then you win.
And because people often like split their votes from different parties, like if you don't want to vote for the Conservative Party, maybe you'd vote for Labour or maybe you'd vote for Green or maybe vote for this.
Like you end up sometimes with a party winning who most people actually didn't vote for.
And had they done it in stages where you sort of knock out the lowest contender and then vote again, they wouldn't have won the election because all the people who voted green, now they're out, would have gone and voted Labor.
So Labour would have won the election.
But what's the cost of that?
Well, the cost of that, so people say we should, so you get the smaller parties in the UK saying we should have proportional representation because you have like millions and millions of votes, but you get like no seats or two seats in the House of Commons.
And so they say we should have it proportional.
The problem with that is that nothing gets done because you've just got like 15 different parties, all different ideas, and absolutely nothing gets done.
But if your view is like, well, okay, sure, it'd be more democratic to have more parties in government, but nothing actually gets done.
But it's not functional.
Why bother with the democracy thing at all?
So this is a part of it.
Nothing Gets Done In Democracy00:08:17
Is there like a principle in philosophy where you just reach a limit where you go, we got to get shit done.
So you stop before you extrapolate it to the end of the trolley problem.
Yeah, it's called authoritarianism.
No, no, no.
I'm not saying in government.
I'm just saying like in philosophy, like do you get to a point where you're like, okay, we all kind of agree on this.
Yes, there are some holes in it, but this is 70% or this is 80% that everybody kinds of agree on.
Let's just use this as a model for society, but we can have these thought experiments.
Yeah, yeah, so you could be like a pragmatist.
Is that what that's called?
Well, in utilitarianism, there's a particular sort of version of this called rule utilitarianism.
So utilitarianism says that you should, any action, you should basically do a calculus and figure out whether it's going to have more or less suffering and pleasure for people.
But the problem is that doing that every time is itself not maximizing pleasure.
So now you're not being utilitarian.
Yeah, like being utilitarian is not utilitarian.
So you sort of undermine yourself.
So they come up with this thing called rule utilitarianism, which broadly is attributed to John Stuart Mill.
And he's like, look, okay, we'll come up with these rules.
Broadly speaking, murdering people minimizes pleasure.
And sure, there will be circumstances where it doesn't.
But like, for the sake of being practical, we'll just call that a rule and we'll abide by that.
And so it's still justified by the minimization of suffering.
But in practice, we'll just follow these broad rules.
And that sounds really great, right?
Until you realize that sometimes there will be obvious counterexamples.
Like if you don't murder this person, New York City is going to get decimated.
You might still think you shouldn't murder the person, but the utilitarian definitely thinks you should kill that person, save New York City, right?
And so there are obvious cases where they would go, okay, I'm going to go.
I let New York go.
That's one safety.
Actually, yeah, yeah.
Maybe we should change it up.
This is like the bombing the Yemeni wedding.
Yeah, or there's one terrorist in the Yemeni wedding.
Like, do we bomb it and then we save America from a possible terror attack?
Yeah, and if the circumstance is obvious enough, then even the rule utilitarian has to look at it and be like, yeah, okay, in this case, I'll break my rule.
But then you've got this problem of like, in every circumstance, you've then got to figure out whether it's an obvious enough example to apply the rule or not.
And then you're just back to like, to just looking at every single individual circumstance.
Would like Luigi Mangioni kind of be an example of that or not?
Yeah, so I mean, you might kind of think that generally speaking, it's bad to murder people, but people are like, oh, but in this case, it's like an exception.
Like, maybe some people would think that.
That seems like the cultural response.
The cultural response is we got more pleasure, not we, but people got more pleasure.
And because they got more pleasure, does it justify the purpose of that?
Why did they get pleasure out of it?
Because they think these healthier companies are evil and all the people involved are complicit.
And I think if you do it or not, maybe they'll.
But specifically, evil, evil, why?
Like, what is it that they're doing?
They're undermining pleasure for the most people.
So it's kind of this sort of underlying assumption of a utilitarian principle for these people that like, well, okay, it's bad to kill somebody, but if they're going to cause more people to suffer and die, is this a utilitarian gas?
This is a justification for war, I imagine.
Yeah, I mean, sure.
Yeah, war is, well, at least ostensibly, it'll be like, this will be, this is what's good.
But war tends to have a more sort of, like the family thing.
It's not just, because if you were utilitarian and like a country declares war on you and you're like, what's their population?
Is it bigger than ours?
Okay, let them have it, right?
That's not what you do.
It's more like the family thing.
You're like, to hell with that.
I'm going to defend my own principles.
Okay, so Brexit, for example.
Yeah.
Good?
No, this idea that there are people that feel like they're losing their cultural identity.
And we don't have to argue whether it's right or wrong, but I'm just saying that idea, if we're taking a utilitarian principle and we're just plastering on top of that, do they feel less pleasure as culture becomes more diverse and then their specific culture becomes, in their perception, diluted.
For sure, yeah.
I mean, that seems to be the motivation behind Brexit.
It was essentially an immigration boat, in my view.
A lot of people seem to feel like.
Like, yeah, okay, but a lot of people were talking about the economy and sort of they're getting up on their talk shows and they're like, well, you know, like in Brexit and the GDP and 4.8.
It's like, no one can.
Yeah, yeah.
Some people care, but you know what I mean?
That's not what it was about.
And yeah, like, but the thing is, I mean, I've been talking about utilitarianism.
Like, I'm not a utilitarian.
Most people aren't utilitarians.
Think they are until they come across an example, like where they've got to tie their own child to a trap or something, and they're like to hell with that.
And it's like, okay, well, then you're not actually utilitarian like you thought you were.
Instead, you're something else.
And in my view, people are just emoting.
I'm what's called an emotivist about ethics.
I think that all ethical statements are just expressions of emotion.
I think that's what I think is going on.
And so, in this instance, like if you're a utilitarian, you could say, well, it's complicated because, yeah, more people get pleasure if they can immigrate into a country, but then the amount of suffering that comes with like losing a sense of identity that might balance it out.
Or you just be like, you're just sort of vibing, man.
You're just trying to feel it out.
I think that there's an emotional reaction to that too.
I mean, they are emotivists.
Is that what you said?
Yeah.
It makes them feel better to have a technical justification for their emotional response.
And so they're calling it utilitarian, but it's really not that.
They're just like, I'm heard.
People want to stick a label on there.
That's what a lot of philosophy is.
It is essentially hyper-rationalizing of your emotive feelings.
That's why you have all of these clever people who agree with each other.
It's also why I could say, like, name some of the most famous philosophers in the world, like Nietzsche or Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill.
And a lot of people get this idea that because they're great philosophers, if I just pick one at random and sit down and start reading it, I'll be like, wow, this guy's amazing.
But if you try that, go into a philosophy department, pick up like John Paul Sartre and just read it, and you'll be like, what is this?
Because the great philosophers are people who you kind of already know that you're like on the same wavelength as them.
And you read it and they just put it into words.
And you're like, yes, that's what it is.
That's the feeling of thinking someone's smart is sort of looking at it and going like, yeah, they put that into.
But because they've just rationalized what you're already thinking.
Education, I think that the Greek word that that comes from, I can't remember what the word actually is, like, you know, edukratos or something like this, means to draw out.
Education is not like the so-called bucket theory of the mind, which is like you're just a bucket and a teacher comes and just chucks stuff in there.
It's a more like two-way relationship.
And to educate someone is to draw out of them because there's something already inside them that you are like pulling out.
Education has to be something which, I don't mean like as a moral thing.
This is how we should be educating our kids.
I mean, this is literally what happens in many people's view.
It's like a two-way relationship.
You have to, the person who's learning has to sort of take a guess at the world and then like test ideas against the guess that they're making.
And then the teacher sort of helps them with that.
So it's a drawing out, you know?
That's what philosophers do.
So you're reading a text and it's not just like you're getting information.
Somebody is systematizing the way that you feel.
Like when you read Schopenhauer's essay about women, you'll probably have this experience of thinking like, yeah, yeah, that's it.
He gets it.
He gets it.
He's fucking guy.
But on a serious level, if you read that essay, most people read that and they're sort of like, what the hell is he going on?
Yeah, they might think he's a maniac.
And it's like, and it's, it's so, that's a great example to show that like what you're doing is you're bringing your, if you are like a genuine sexist and you read this, you'll be like, yeah, man, oh, he's so smart.
And your assessment of how like intelligent he is has to do with how much you agree with him.
Well, just be basically like how much you sort of already agree with him, you know?
Yeah.
And to what level he sort of resonates with you.
Sometimes there will be people who come along and change your mind.
So you don't already agree with him.
You're like, oh, that's really smart.
That changes my mind.
But it's because you've already got some kind of surface level agreement on something and they've taken that assumption and said, well, that should lead you here rather than there.
Yeah, I wonder if changing your mind has to do with this feeling of like guilt or shame.
Like a lot of times, I'm sure you've heard like Shapiro go on and on about like facts don't care about your feelings or whatever.
We've spoken a lot about like we say it all the time.
They don't care about your facts at the fuck all.
So I wonder if sometimes you're presented with facts and they make you feel this guilt or shame that you believe this thing that was wrong and now you feel stupid.
Now you feel silly.
You feel misled.
And it's that personal feeling.
You're not going, oh, I will follow the facts now.
You're like, I don't want to be an idiot.
I don't want people to think that I'm an idiot.
I've changed my philosophy.
Two Consciousnesses Battling Constantly00:14:13
Yeah, I think a lot of thinking is just feeling.
Like when you become convinced by something, like, for example, what is at the basis of our epistemology, how we know things?
Like, I can see a sort of water bottle here, and I think this water bottle exists.
That doesn't seem like an emotion.
It feels like a rational thing that I believe.
It's like something that's true or false, right?
But why do I believe that this water bottle exists?
Because I can see it.
But why do I believe that because I can see it, it's really there?
Or because I think that my sense data is accurate, you know, and I'm not like a brain in a vat somewhere.
It's like, well, why do I think that?
Because if I didn't, I would just be in this skeptical hellhole and I wouldn't know anything.
Like, so?
Yeah.
So what?
At root, you just have these what we call intuitions, which is the philosopher's fancy word for like the way you feel, man.
It's like, well, I have a very strong intuition that the external world exists.
But you just feel that way.
That brings us comfort to trust our senses.
Yes.
You just can't help but feel.
Have you ever met somebody with schizophrenia?
I don't think so.
It's really interesting because the things that they're seeing or hearing do not exist.
Yeah, right.
And they hold up an important mirror to our own philosophies.
It's the same thing with like a lot of people like to talk about how, you know, the person, if someone who was acting rationally would never like indulge in this behavior, like pulling the lever, that's bad, and everyone knows it's bad.
It's like, well, psychopaths exist.
And they're people who just don't care, right?
And you have to deal with the fact that not everyone's brain works in the same way that yours does.
And they're really interesting test cases.
I mean, like, people who have some kind of mental disorder can be really interesting, like, philosophically.
Have you ever heard of split brain patients?
You know, the brain's in two hemispheres.
You've got left and the right brain.
Ian McGilprice writes about this in the Master and his Emissary.
It's phenomenal.
And they are famously responsible for different things.
So like the right side of the brain moves your left arm and the left side of your brain moves your right arm broadly speaking.
And this has an effect on behavior.
Like the eye that animals choose to look at their prey will be determined by which hemisphere that they're sort of using.
People who have damage to the left-hand side of their brain will often have uncontrollable movements in their right arm.
And likewise with the right and the left arm.
But people who have damage in the right brain, the right brain, broadly speaking, is supposed to be like the creative one.
I thought that's left.
No, the left brain is the sort of kind of brain.
Oh, that's why they say the left-handed people tend to be more creative because it's right side of the brain is more developed.
They say that.
It's unclear whether there's actually a connection there, but that's the kind of thing that people, that's why they say that, right?
And people who have the damage to the right-hand side of their brain, if they have uncontrollable left-hand movements, they tend to be like feeling movements.
They'll sort of feel things without being able to control it.
Whereas if they've got damage to the left-hand side of the brain, their right hand will grab things because the left-hand side of the brain is more numerical and it's more like precise and practical, so it's more grabby, right?
And so the two hemispheres are connected by something called the corpus callosum, which is the connective tissue.
And the tissue actually seems to do more to inhibit communication between them than to facilitate it.
As if there's some evolutionary benefit to kind of having two brains.
But some people have what's called a corpus carosotomy, which is where they sever the connection.
This used to be a treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy.
It was one of the only ways you could treat it.
And in these patients, there is this strange phenomenon, which has been observed, called alien hand syndrome.
It was first reported when a woman in like the 1800s, her left hand just started attacking her, started trying to choke her to death.
And she had to fight off her hand with the rest of her body.
And there are people who like, they'll pour a cup of coffee and then their other hand will just pour it out again.
People who will get dressed, they'll put their trousers on and then the other hand will take it off again.
And Mr. Bean's thing.
And the most common place where this has cropped up is in cases of people who've had a corpus callisostomy.
And so it seems to suggest that you might literally have sort of two consciousnesses that are like battling it out constantly.
So a lot of our decision-making, and this might be where freedom of the will comes in, is like your brain is sort of battling against itself to figure out which one's going to win out or something.
You're a determinist, right?
I don't believe in free will, if that's what you mean.
But the thing that terrifies me is to think like, okay, so say you've got this left hand that's trying to kill you.
If there is some kind of consciousness attached to it, that's not the consciousness that's attached to your like your awareness, your eyes, your mouth, your ears and stuff, because otherwise it would say something.
And so if there is a separate consciousness that's somewhere trapped inside you with no mouth, no eyes, no ears, the only way it has to communicate is by like controlling the arm.
What if it's like trapped in there trying to tell you something?
Maybe that's why it's trying to kill you because it wants this.
It's freaking awful.
It wants to kill you.
Who knows?
Who knows what's in there?
You've got to gain the consciousness inside of you.
Grandma dick all the time.
Yeah, maybe that's what the joking is about.
It's terrifying to think, though, right?
Is it possible there's not just like a subconscious feed that's getting put into your muscles that then is giving an electrical impression?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's possible, but it just seems like a strange coincidence, doesn't it?
That like when you split the two hemispheres of the brain, you increase the probability of like people's limbs acting of their own accord.
It seems to be connected.
And we don't know exactly, but people who undergo these experiences are really interesting examples of how our philosophy can just completely shift or change based on the way people behave.
I mean, your idea about theory of mind and what mind is and whether it's attached to the brain or whatever can be altered by the existence of split brain patients.
Because what if there are two people?
Like in the philosophy of mind, a really important question is it's called personal identity.
Like what makes you the same person you were five minutes ago?
What is the actual connection?
Like what's going on there?
And one important question people ask is like, if I cut your brain in half and I take the two parts of the brain and I put them into new individual bodies and wake them up, like which one is you?
And some people say neither of them, in which case you've just died.
That seems a little bit weird.
Some people say, well, they're both you.
But if they're both you now, then five minutes ago, they must have both been you as well, but like in one person.
So it's like for your whole life, you were two people living together.
That doesn't seem quite right either.
Have you seen the show Severance?
No, but I've heard about it.
I started watching the first.
You're familiar with the premise of the show?
No, I'm actually not really.
So no spoilers.
You know, no, I'm not going to give away.
But the idea is that you could sever the brain in a way where when you go to work and you enter this space at work, you don't remember or something.
Yeah, you are you, essentially, but you have limited knowledge of things in the outside world.
You speak, you know, fluently.
I think you have like some words you don't know.
You don't understand like what Bermuda is or whatever, but like you are you.
You kind of have the similar personality, but you have no connection to who you are in the outside world.
So the idea is you could just go to work and then clock out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it sounds good on paper.
You know, a lot of people have shitty jobs.
You're like, I'd like to, you know, for eight hours, not even think about how horrible my fucking job is.
And then you leave.
And the show is this interesting experiment because it's like, well, how much autonomy and agency do those people have at work?
And then once they find out that there's a life outside of work that might be better and they don't have control of existing outside of it, do they fall in love?
And what if that person decides to quit their job?
They're dead if they quit their job.
And yeah, I'm curious how much rights you think those people would have.
It still is you, but now they're a completely autonomous human being.
The important question to me is whether that is the same person.
And that's when you have to ask what makes you the same person.
I don't want to give away anything from the show, but let's continue asking.
Like, what literally what makes you the same person that you were when you were a child?
Like, again, it's not a collection of memories because your twin might have the exact same experiences as well.
Yeah, and also you could have false memories.
I could take your memories and implant them in someone else, and they wouldn't become you.
It can't even be the physical matter that you're made out of because, like, the atoms in your body are constantly replenishing and changing.
And after enough time, it's like no physical part of you.
So, suppose, for example, that's true.
Your skin isn't you because your skin replaces itself.
Exactly, man.
So, like, they say that every seven years, every atom in your body replaces itself.
I don't know if that's actually entirely true.
But let's assume.
But, but, yeah, I mean, because so, so, say, somehow I took after seven years, I took all of the atoms, I managed to find all of the atoms that had been part of you but floated off or changed, and I put them all together again.
And made another version.
I made another version of you.
Like, which one is you in the sense of being continuous with yourself like 10 minutes ago?
I mean, it kind of has to be you now because you've got this continuous.
But then, this is the same atoms.
This is like the same being.
And it's actually kind of an impossible question to answer.
No.
You know, which one is you?
And which one would you rather be?
So, say, for example, that like in 10 years from now, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to take the atoms that make up you right now, the atoms that are in your body right now.
I'm going to collect them in a jar.
And in 10 years from now, I'm going to reconstruct them next to wherever you are in 10 years.
And then I'm going to torture one of them.
Which one do you want me to torture?
Which one do you choose?
That's severance.
Yeah.
Literally.
I mean, not exactly, but which one would you want to do?
That motherfucker.
Torture him.
The atoms in a jar?
Yeah.
That's you right now.
I know.
So you make that decision.
I know.
And then, like, click my fingers.
Yeah.
Suddenly, you're like next to your future self, and you're like, wait, I've messed up here.
No, it wouldn't be my future self because it didn't go through the experiences that I went through, right?
Which made me who I am.
You help me wake up with all the memories you've got now.
Oh, you're saying in this.
Because look, because all the atoms that make up you right now include your brain, include your memories and stuff, right?
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to.
Oh, you recreate them at the exact same time and then let them live their own life.
I'm just taking whatever atoms you have in your body right now.
Yeah.
I'm just going to put them back together again in 10 years.
Like exactly.
But then they haven't went through what I went through over the 10 years.
That's right.
But it will, for the experience will feel as if you're talking to me right now and suddenly click, you're now 10 years into the future.
Yeah.
Because I'm just taking all of the atoms that you've got right now, as you are right now, and I'm just putting them back together again in 10 years.
But they would be devoid of the experiences I had over the last decade.
That's right.
From the experience of that person that I create, they would remember five seconds ago being sat here talking to me.
This is severance, right?
To a certain extent.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the thing, right?
It just feels like you're just suddenly.
The reason why I would feel more agency is because, hey, I've had these last 10 years of memories, right?
So I believe I should have more agency than you.
I've lived my life.
But, but, but, but.
What if you had a debilitating neurological disorder that stripped you of your ability to create new memories?
Dementia, Alzheimer's.
Now you're not creating new memories.
Now you don't have these experiences.
So I can't say I have more agency than that body because we have the same amount of new memories.
Yeah.
Well, say, for example, like I put more work in, bro.
Suppose that, like, suppose that you're going to like take all of your memories and I'm going to swap it with the guy over there.
It's called Joe.
And tomorrow you're going to wake up and you're going to have all of Joe's memories.
Joe's going to wake up and he's going to have all of your memories.
So you're going to wake up tomorrow.
You're going to wake up tomorrow and you are literally going to remember being Joe.
Yep.
Going to sleep, waking up and being like, what the flip?
I've got this game stash.
I've got this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're talking about my mustache.
I'm going to think you're flirting.
I am not your brother.
You keep talking.
You do not talk about me like going.
Keep going.
So who?
No, but it's more than just who are you?
It's, again, because I'm a bit of a sadist here.
I'm going to torture one of these guys tomorrow.
Yeah.
After you wake up.
Yeah, which one do you want me to torture?
Which one has a bigger dick?
Are you subjectively still now working with your own body and perceptions, but with Joe's memories?
That's right.
So you would wake up and, like, literally, like, the physical being that you are, you're going to wake up and you're just going to remember being Joe.
Likewise, Joe is going to wake up and he's going to remember, sat here having this conversation with me.
That's what he's going to remember.
Because intuitively, to me, I'm like, well, I want Joe to be tortured tomorrow.
Right.
Because I'm still mean, even if I've got all of his memories.
Absolutely.
But there's this weird feeling that, okay, so I say, okay, I'm going to torture Joe.
Then tomorrow, Joe wakes up and he remembers last night making the decision that he was going to be tortured.
Do you know what I mean?
Because he's got all of my memories.
So he wakes up and he's like, crap, like I look a lot like Joe now.
And last night, what did I do?
Oh, I told them to torture Joe, and now I'm Joe.
And you'd feel like you totally messed up.
But you would remember why you said that, though.
Yeah, but you would probably feel like you wanted to reverse that decision, then, wouldn't you?
Afterwards.
You'd be like, hold on.
Yeah, before, no, but afterwards, absolutely.
And I'd rather experience the remnants of torture than experience torture.
But if you know that you're about to regret a decision, doesn't that tell you the decision's wrong?
If you're making a decision and you know for a fact that in one day's time, you're going to go, damn, I wish I chose the other one.
Have you not been to a bachelor party?
I don't know if you would regret it.
I don't know if you would regret the like because you don't have the memory being experienced.
Yeah, you don't have the memory of the torture.
Yeah, but from your experience, this is the way it would feel: you sat here having this conversation, going, let's torch Joe tomorrow, closing your eyes, waking up as Joe, and being like, crap, why did I tell him to torture me?
Oh, I see.
You know what I mean?
But I think having the memory of the torture is better than it's actually Joe that wakes up with your memories.
So you wake up with Joe's memories, but the continuity of experience goes from you sat on this chair to waking up as Joe about to be tortured.
And you remember, you're like, five minutes ago, I was Alex, and I told them to torture me now.
Why the hell did I do that?
You know, and you probably want to reverse that decision.
Yeah.
It's just like a bit of a bit of a weird one.
Okay, guys, I'm going to take a break real quick because we got to talk about these.
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Now, let's get back to the show.
What makes you happy?
This?
Yeah.
What makes me happy?
Yeah.
What was the happiest moment you had in the last 12 months?
I enjoy discussing theology with people.
It brings you joy.
I like debates and discussions about philosophy and theology.
My happiest moments are spent sort of sparring with somebody in a way that a boxer might spar with an opponent, knowing that they're not really trying to kill each other, but that they're essentially doing a kind of sport which does have an undertone of genuine like have you ever boxed before?
No, only in a sparring is not enjoyable.
It's scary.
It hurts.
So why do it?
Because you want to get better at something and it gives you confidence knowing that the things you practice, you can actually execute.
Yeah, so that's that's true of philosophy too.
But the act thereof, especially if you're losing, and a lot of times when we're sparring against like better guys, it's costly.
Certainly some boxers like sparring.
Yeah, there must be people who enjoy it.
And it's not so the guy whose Floyd is fighting is not like this is the best thing I've ever done in my entire life.
It's not like you enjoy it, like you don't like enjoy getting punched in the face, but you enjoy the thrill of being the thrill of what you're doing.
And it's a similar kind of thing with debate and discussion.
Yeah, it's great.
So I enjoy debates.
I enjoy discussions.
I do think debates are a bit sort of useless.
They're kind of just theater.
They are just, I always compare them to boxing matches where a boxing match will tell you.
People who never box often do that.
Comedians do that all the time.
They're like, it's just like boxing.
But what I mean specifically is that a boxing match tells you who's the better boxer, but it doesn't tell you the better fighter.
How so?
Because like.
Oh, do you find fighting is like, I could grab a tool and I can't.
Exactly, right?
So it's like you could outbox somebody because you're a professional boxer, but if you meet them in a bar and they just want, you just want to kill them.
It's a different scenario.
You might have slightly better predictive odds if they're better at boxing, but you don't know that for sure.
And it's kind of the same thing with debate.
It's like if you have a debate with someone, you're going to find out who's the better debater.
Like Ben Shapiro can crush.
But like, is there actually any substance there?
It doesn't mean he's a great thinker.
Maybe.
I guess it depends on what he's talking about.
Yeah.
And so there's not an obvious link.
So for me, a debate is essentially like theater.
So you enjoy this showcase of debate and you get it to use the skills that you've worked with.
It's like stand-up, to be honest, more boxing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're probably right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because stand-up is really fun.
Yeah.
When it's going well and when it's not going well yet.
What's the worst experience you had?
I've had so many.
Infinite.
Getting better.
Part of me getting better is just bombing over and over again.
His learning curve was actually shorter than anyone else's I've ever seen.
Mine was not.
You ever done like therapy, like rejection therapy sort of thing where you like bomb on purpose just to like toughen yourself up for a second?
I did that subconsciously.
Yeah, yeah.
Very smart.
The reason I ask, the reason I ask is because like it so much focus on, I don't think you're focusing on specifically yourself, but like breaking down like what is life, what is existence, what are the reasons for our behavior.
What did they say?
I think it was Chris Rock was like, you know, if ignorance is bliss, I'm the opposite of that.
I'm constantly aware and acutely aware of everything I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
And like, that's tough.
And I imagine, like, as you go through these thought experiments, you're definitely reflecting on your own life.
And I wonder if there's a moment where, like, you just go get drunk and you're like, I'm not even going to worry about why I'm.
This is true.
It's like, I don't have an interesting answer to your question because I'm the same as anybody else.
I enjoy spending time with my friends and my family and the people I care about.
I enjoy listening to music.
I enjoy watching TV.
I listen to a lot of like sad boy indie music.
It's not working out.
Yeah.
No, but like, can you separate?
Is there like, is there something turn it off?
Yeah, not even like, yeah, yeah, maybe that is.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the thing.
Can you just like, let's say, um, and I'm sure you're able to do this, but like when you're watching a movie, like if we're watching comedy, it's probably harder for us to turn it off, right?
We're like more analyzing it, et cetera.
And I imagine you're doing that with like life, human interaction, and decision making.
How do you like?
Let's say you're talking to a girl at a bar and she starts talking about astrology.
Like, can you indulge her as any guy would just meeting a new girl?
Or do you have to be like, this girl's retarded?
Like, there's nothing about Mercury in retrograde.
And this is a thing that it doesn't make it any more difficult, like having done philosophy.
If you think astrology is bullshit, you think it's bullshit, right?
And the reason why I probably wouldn't like entertain it isn't because I'm a philosopher and I care about what's truth, but just because I don't like lying in the sense of like, if I know I'm not going to get on with you in two weeks because we're going to have this different way of viewing the world, then I better just be upfront and be like, actually, I don't believe in any of that.
So that's a deal.
Good luck to you.
That's a deal breaker.
Yeah, but it depends how they react to it, right?
Like if also how they look a little bit, that's also quite important.
It's real for a bit.
If they're going to say, oh, I'm really into astrology, and like, well, I think that's bullshit.
And they're like, oh, cool.
Yeah.
I know a lot of people think that way, but like, here's why I think it's true.
Then cool, great, we're off to the races.
Yeah.
But if it's obviously like a sort of like, oh, you know, is there a moment where like you find yourself specifically turning it off because it inhibits your joy for that, yeah, for that like bachelor party or that birthday or whatever?
Yeah, yeah.
Or are you analyzing like, well, it's funny, I don't tend to get invited to many, so I don't know.
I'm not trying to get anything compared to Michael Jordan, but he, there was an interview with him at 50 where he's like, I God gave me this gift, which was competitiveness, and I can't turn it off.
Now I'm competing in fucking Sudoku or whatever.
Like whatever thing he picks up, he is obsessively competitive and he's not that happy about it.
He's like, this was awesome, but now I don't need it and I can't turn it off.
Can you do that at a birthday party?
Can you turn off that part of you that's like, what is a birthday even or whatever?
You know what I mean?
Like, not exactly, but in practice, yeah.
Like, I'm.
What is this scenario?
Like, is there a concert?
Like, what makes you just cry?
And you're like, I'm not going to analyze why I'm emotional right now.
I'm just going to let this happen and have this genuine human experience without thinking about it.
I try very hard to allow experiences to be what they are.
And I think more than most people who are interested in philosophy, I do kind of see through it a bit.
Like, I think that a lot of the syllogistic reasoning and premise this and premise that.
What's syllogistic reason?
A syllogism is like a form of argument that goes premise, premise, conclusion.
And like trying to formalize everything into those terms is just not how people actually interact with the world.
Right.
Like, and philosophy is not how people actually make big life decisions.
I used to have this bit where I'd talk about a guy who's about to throw himself off a bridge.
He's about to kill himself.
And someone comes up to him and he's like, What are you doing, man?
Like, gosh, like, do you have a family?
And the guy's like, oh, yeah, no, I suppose I do have a family actually.
And they care about you, right?
It's like, yeah, you know, my wife, she doesn't even know him.
It's like, oh, goodness.
And so he's like, you know, I've been in that situation, start sharing his experience and all of this kind of stuff.
And then he's like, you've got a cross on your neck.
Are you a Christian?
He's like, yeah.
He's like, well, you know, Jesus loves you, and I'm a follower of Christ too.
Talking him around, and he really like emotionally finally decides, like, okay, fine, I think I can.
And he starts climbing back over the bridge.
And then he suddenly remembers that, like, the 14th premise of the modal ontological argument fails because of some philosophical, like, logical fallacy.
And so he throws himself off the bridge.
How do you stop yourself from that?
It's just like, it's just, but it's, you don't have to, because that's not how people operate or anybody else.
But the moment is actually emotional enough like that.
I mean, it can be interesting.
Like, if you, if you've had a music concert and you're like getting goosebumps and instantly thinking like, whoa, and you do think, like, isn't that an interesting evolutionary trait?
Like, why do we get goosebumps or whatever?
But you're still feeling the goosebumps, man.
Like, it's not going to.
And you kind of don't want to switch it off because you find it quite fun.
Like, you're comedians, right?
Yeah.
So I'm told.
And you, you, you presumably, if I ask you something about like your love and your profession, like, do you ever turn off being funny?
It's like, well, yeah, I mean, kind of, but like, not, not, it's not like I'm, I like get home and like, okay, I'm going to intentionally now turn off being funny.
Right.
It's just that sometimes you're just not in the mood for it.
You know, you're tired or whatever.
You're not in the mood for it.
And then you just, then you don't have to turn it off.
There are certain comedians that, yeah, you're like, I wish you would just turn it off.
Because it seems like, and I'm sure we've, I'm sure we've done it even on the pod today, but like, you know, you're just trying to have maybe like a thoughtful conversation.
And then if something organically becomes funny, you do it.
Oh, yeah, you haven't done that at all.
No, no, no, not a single time.
But but meaning more like sometimes you're talking to someone that's like, it just feels like they're waiting to say the bit instead of like actually listening to what you're saying and like thinking about it.
Yeah, that's right.
And that is a balance on a comedy.
There'll be times when you do turn off the comedy and like if you're at a funeral or something, you're not going to start cracking it.
I found as I got, as I did comedy more, got better at it, got more acclaim at it, that part of me that needed that validation is much quieter.
So offstage, I don't feel the need to do it.
And you can tell when someone wishes they could have done comedy or isn't where they want to be.
And then they're really forcing that.
And I get a little irritated, but I also have empathy.
And I'm like, oh, I probably, like, we would go to diners early in our career and make the biggest scenes.
And it's probably we needed that attention because we weren't getting it.
And there's the equivalent of that in philosophy when it's like when you sort of say to somebody like, oh, hey, happy birthday, man.
And they're like, birthdays are arbitrary, man.
Yeah.
So like, even if you actually think that, like, yeah, okay, it shouldn't, you shouldn't like be sort of, you can tell when someone's like putting it, not even putting it on, but like they're enjoying the fact that that's who they are, right?
But that's the thing is, when you switch it off, like you're at a funeral and you're not cracking jokes.
If, if like, you know, if the guy at the front, if the priest or whatever, looks at the coffin and says, you know, just looking at her now, you know, like in the coffin, it just, it just makes it so hard.
You're not going to not think of the joke.
You're not going to not find it, but you're just not going to say it, right?
And so there are situations in which you turn it off in the sense where you decide, I'm not going to like start talking about this, but it's still like there, obviously.
It's all like, you still think it's not going to be a little bit more like it.
But you can still process the motion in an authentic way without analyzing the I'm interested in philosophy, right?
But everybody does this.
Like you've been at parties and you suddenly are sort of like, man, what's everyone doing?
Like you start thinking about like social interactions and how weird, like everybody does this, right?
Like I'm not some like.
I just, it's a very normal thing that people do.
I feel like you probably just do it more.
And then I'm wondering what the emotional cost of that is.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
I mean, it's got, it will have an emotional cost to it.
I'll give you an example.
I have a daughter, right?
And I love making her laugh.
Definitely makes me feel good.
And she's just awesome when I make her laugh.
And but I have to remind myself that like she might get just as much enjoyment of just walking around the house and like playing with things and me just watching her and me just being around.
And I have to constantly remind myself because I have this thing built in where it's like, oh, I'll feel good and they'll feel good if I'm providing some sort of laughter.
So I'm like fighting my neediness or whatever it is to just be a better dad, which is sometimes just like being there supporting and observing.
I have to fight it.
And I'm talking to my wife about it.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, she and my wife is like, she had a great time.
And she was bouncing around at gymnastics.
I was like, okay, I wasn't like acting like an animal to make her laugh.
I was just there supporting her to make sure she didn't fall.
But I have to work on that.
Yes.
Is that something that you feel like you have to work at?
Yeah.
Have normal human interactions with someone who...
Yeah, actually, it comes up a lot when somebody has a moral dilemma.
Yes, they really want to share something with you, get your advice.
Yeah.
And you're taking them through these thought experiments.
Because it kind of comes to mind.
If somebody is going through something like a personal experience or they don't know what to do, and it can be very serious or something.
And you have just read like 15 different papers on this.
And there are thought experiments and there are ways which actually genuinely could be quite useful ways to think through, but it just doesn't feel appropriate.
But that is the equivalent of, you know, the meme about like the girlfriend who sort of comes to you and says, I've got this problem.
You're like, oh, well, here's how you solve it.
And they're like, I don't want you to give me solutions.
I just want you to listen to me.
There's a lot of that going on.
That's all humans.
I saw a version of that.
There was like a woman who was talking to a boyfriend.
And it was like on an online video where she's sort of like, you know, I just feel like she's got this headache all the time and like it just won't go away.
And I feel like a lot of pressure.
And then it cuts out.
She's got this like nail in her head.
And the guy's like, well, you have got a...
You have got a nail stuck into your head.
And she's like, oh, you're always looking for solutions, aren't you?
You never just want to listen to how I feel.
But that's all people want, right?
Is to feel.
I asked a question on that whole area.
Do you have a therapist or someone that you go towards?
I imagine, once again, I don't want to over-intellectualize you or put you in a position where it's like, I don't know, but.
I do in his name as Jesus.
I was just wondering, do you have someone that like if you have a moral dilemma, do you find yourself or a dilemma or any problem in your life, do you find yourself having a hard time over-intellectualizing it?
And do you go to a therapist?
Yeah, like I'm incredibly indecisive.
I haven't done therapy, like not, not, not consistently anyway.
I think I probably should.
I think everyone should.
It's probably a good thing.
In some ways, it might be a sort of a perversion of the Catholic confessional, though.
It's sort of like, you know, let's take this thing which is rightfully God's and give it to human beings.
But honestly, this actually is more to the point that if I've got some kind of genuine like moral problem, if I've got like an issue with a friend or something like this, I am not going to go to like my philosophy tutor.
I'm going to like speak to my friends.
I'm going to speak to my mom.
Because there is something about not being caught up in all of that.
Like Thomas Jefferson said, something like, if you've got a moral problem, he'd just as sooner give it to the plowman as to the academic or the philosopher.
No, you're going to Thomas Jefferson.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Because they're not going to get like quite a bit of a problem.
Give us a moral problem.
We're going to help you out.
In artificial rules.
Tell us something you're going through.
This is good.
We're going to de-philosophize.
You're going to be the therapist.
No, we're going to be your boys.
Thing is, man, like, I think it's more fun to talk about the sort of weird, wacky, ridiculous, like, ethical dilemmas.
You don't like talking about yourself.
No, because then when the real ones come up, like, it's, it's, it's.
Why don't you like talking about it?
It's easier to work through them.
Because I'm, like, quite uninteresting.
You know, I am a, I am a...
Oh, now we're getting somewhere, bro.
I am just a mouthpiece for other people's ideas.
That's what I do on the internet.
You think that reflects a low self-worth?
I don't think so, because I think I know what I'm good at and I stick to it, you know?
Like, I don't think...
Would you be worth something if you weren't good at it?
I don't know.
I mean, why not?
Because I don't think that worth exists.
I'm not angry.
No, trivially no.
So if worth doesn't exist, then you'd be worth just as much as anybody else.
Yeah, I think so.
That's the thing.
And just as interesting.
Well, maybe.
Depending on the thing, clearly you're interesting to us.
But the thing is, man, when I say that's what I think I'm good at, or that's what I'm interested in, or that's what I can talk about.
That's not like to doubt because you say, like, well, if you, if you didn't have that, that interesting thing about you, would you still be interesting?
It's like, well, no, but in the same way, I could say, like, if you weren't funny, would you still be funny?
It's like, well, it depends who you're talking to, I guess.
What I might find the most interesting thing about you is your hesitation to talk about yourself.
Visual Hallucinations During Experiences00:15:36
Right.
Like, that's what I really want to know about.
But, I mean, like, what do you want to know?
I want to know the last moral dilemma that you've been in.
Well, genuinely, the reason why I hesitate to answer that is just because I struggle to remember exactly.
Like, the last time I had a serious moral quandary.
What about not serious?
What about just like a disagreement you got into?
A personal conflict.
Yeah.
Your girl's mom was saying something annoying.
Honestly, man, like, I don't know.
What was the last one?
What was the last one?
You put it on me.
I don't think I can remember.
Oh, I think, I think, oh, I remember now.
Yeah.
So I was booking a train up to up to D6.
No, talk to us.
This is so good.
I mean, there's so much analysis.
I was on a train once and I saw a bunch of workmen on the tracks.
And I posted a picture because I was like, man, I have trained for this moment.
I was so ready.
You know, it's cool.
I was getting on a train.
I was booking a train and I thought to myself, I was trying to choose between which class of seat.
Yes.
Because I wanted to get some work done.
I was like, should I get the fancy first-class thing where you get the space and stuff?
And I was like, it'd be like an extra hundred or 200 bucks.
And I'm thinking, I could take that 200 bucks and I could donate it to charity.
I could deworm about 15 children somewhere else in the world.
That's a moral dilemma.
Yeah.
And that's something that I do actually think about quite a lot.
Really?
Yeah.
Is in terms of spending money, how you could spend it more.
I mean, I think about it and then I spend the money.
But I do think about it.
Sometimes that's all we need to be good people.
Think about it.
So, yeah, I mean, I really was just struggling to think of something, but that's an example.
You know, I will think about that.
Are you a good friend?
I like to think of myself as one.
In particular, I have a kind of, I guess I sort of have a philosophy of radical honesty.
Like, I genuinely can't stand when I'm keeping something from someone.
Does that make it hard to build friendships?
It can do because sometimes it's like to a point of pedantry.
Like, if I feel like I've done something that I shouldn't, or like, or something that I like, I will like volunteer this information to people that I care about.
Sometimes selfish, right?
And that's exactly.
Yeah, that is definitely sometimes selfish.
I'm pulling that lever every time.
And maybe, maybe that's what's drawn you to philosophy because it's made you feel more normal.
Right?
Like, well, I don't know.
Like, I you're looking for justification for I genuinely just find it interesting.
Yes.
Well, of course, you wouldn't, you wouldn't follow somebody else.
Because actually, the sort of kind of stuff that's like life applicable, stuff about like whether it's always wrong to lie or this kind of stuff, I actually find really uninteresting.
Right.
Like in my personal life, that's the stuff that I wrestle with the most, moments like that.
Like, is it okay to lie in this circumstance?
But like in doing academic philosophy or whatever, it's the least interesting thing in the world to me.
Whether one should lie or shouldn't.
Yeah, I want to talk about trains.
It's probably just all autism, isn't it?
Which is like it's trains and it's like academic.
You've dedicated so much time to your life to this.
And you're obviously an expert and masterful in debate and all that stuff.
And like, is there time?
I find myself, even anytime I talk to a therapist, I find myself avoiding talking about myself.
And I'm like, what am I doing?
Why do you think that is?
I don't know.
How does that make you feel?
Yeah.
And I think you're being condescending a little bit right now.
But there is something that's like, what am I avoiding?
Am I like, have I retrofit justifications for all my behaviors and those are fine to me and it feels good enough, so I don't want to fix it?
Or am I scared of what I might find and how that could like shatter my foundation?
I don't know, but I find myself doing that.
But I wonder if you've done so much analysis on the human condition and maybe really just your own and why you don't have like a strong feeling about a certain thing.
So you're like, why is that normal?
Because I imagine you could indulge both sides in a lot of these arguments and that's normal for you.
Where like the average person is like, you can't pull the lever when you're a psychopath.
Yeah.
You were probably made to feel pretty weird that you could indulge both sides.
So you're like, I need to find a justification for why I can do that.
That's true.
I also like, I spent a lot of time like really, really thinking about this before, like really trying to get to know myself in a way.
Like I spent a long time where I sort of took some time off of making YouTube videos.
And it's kind of, yeah, everyone has that moment where they're like, they're in the pits for a bit and they don't really know what they're doing.
Like career-wise, you didn't know?
Like, just in my life.
It was just like a bad, it was just like a bad time.
How old were you?
There was lots going on.
I was probably like 20, 21, maybe something.
So you're studying at this time?
No, it was just afterwards.
I can't remember the exact date or whatever, but like it was just like a period of just thought, just straight thought.
I used to just sit at home and do nothing.
And I was smoking a lot of cannabis.
That will induce thought.
Yeah.
Just like, just thinking, basically.
And I would like wake up and I would like watch a TV show and I would just think about it.
And I was writing in my diary.
And that period in my life was this essentially like a long period of realization of things that I think about the world.
And it was a kind of psychoanalysis.
It was a sort of like looking into myself and thinking, why do I think this?
What's actually going on?
And that's why now I'm much more comfortable saying like, well, I think I have a philosophy of like radical honesty or whatever.
Because I realized that was something that I was doing.
I didn't notice it before.
So I have like been through that.
It's just that like right now, I don't know.
I'm not indulging in that way.
That's something that's something that I've done.
That's something that I've explored.
And I think that maybe in five years I might need to do it again.
It's like a little audit, a little philosophical audits, you know, every now and then.
You avoid, bro.
Right now, I'm ready.
You're going to think about yourself once every five years.
Well, to that level of depth.
Yeah, because if you want to do it properly, it can be soul crushing.
Yeah.
That is, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
It can be soul crushing.
If you want to do it, you've got to do it properly.
Well, I mean, a lot of people probably avoid it.
Yeah, I think so.
And then what if there's societal benefit to kind of avoiding it and finding other distractions?
And I'm not trying to make you religious or anything right now.
I was raised with no religion.
But like, I wonder if that's how some people cope with the potential nothingness of life and what is better.
Yeah, because a lot of people don't spend enough time thinking about it.
Like people who realize that they're going to die or whatever.
It's like, when was the last time you just stopped and thought?
I'm talking like two hours straight, just thinking about the fact you're going to die until like it clicks, until like you actually like recognize it.
It's not just an abstract idea.
Yeah, you won.
I remember the first time I ever seriously, I remember like being in my bed as probably like a teenager or a child or something.
The first time when I thought about, you know, everyone knows that they're going to die or stuff, but I just seem to remember this one time when I was thinking about death, and for some reason, it just clicked.
It was like I got it.
It was like the difference between like, you know, people often think about like how, oh, I'd love to be rich one day, right?
And then you win the lottery and you're like, oh, and it's a different feeling.
You're like, it's actually happening.
Right.
And I had that kind of feeling about death.
About death when I was a teenager.
And I was just like, oh, like, I'm, and I was, I was just like overcome with sort of, I like shuddered, you know, like the shiver down the spine, everything.
I was just like, whoa.
Like, I suddenly realized what it actually meant to think that you're going to, that you're going to die one day.
And even now, like, we're talking about death.
We're having a discussion about it, but none of us are seriously like clocking it right now.
Is that crazy?
You have to seriously sit with it for like a long time and really think about what it means on Instagram, like the amount of time you'll see your parents again.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Have you seen this?
Yeah, if you can work it out.
Somebody calculates.
I think it's Jordan Peterson definitely talked about this.
He was like, if I see my grandparents once every two months or something and they're this age, how many I'm going to see them 14 more times ever?
Shockingly low.
Yeah.
Have you ever dabbled with like psychedelics?
Yes.
And has that changed your thought process or anything like that?
I think, yes.
I mean, it's hard to say because like my experience with psychedelics came around the time in one's life when they tend to sort of grow up a bit anyway and start like changing the way they see the world.
So I'm not sure if it was because of it or if it just coincided with it.
But certainly like literally like my enjoyment of art, for example, I mean like literally the visual arts like painting and stuff just did not exist.
It just wasn't a thing until I'd taken some drugs and not just psychedelics but also cannabis.
And it seems to just open, it seems to just open something up.
And I'm not entirely sure what it did.
But I think it did something.
I think it shows you that your like mode of thinking is that the most interesting thing about taking a psychedelic drug is not what you see.
It's the fact that you've seen it.
It's the fact that you realize that your brain is so usually on like guide rails that you didn't know existed.
And suddenly you're sort of out of it and now you're back and you can remember how it felt.
And it's very sober.
It's not like waking up from being drunk and being like, oh man, what happened?
That was crazy.
Oh, I was so stupid.
I said that thing and I didn't mean that.
Like you remember it.
And you're like, no, I saw this thing and that's what I felt.
And I can still account for that.
So I was thinking at various times, it depends on the experience.
Sometimes it was just like a very emotional experience with a friend.
But other times it's like I'm thinking about stuff and I start having like realizations.
And that stuff does stay with you.
Have you ever done ayahuasca?
Never ayahuasca.
Well, some people take it and they say they see God or now they believe in a higher power or something like that.
I'd be curious if.
Have you heard of that kid?
Is his name Josh Bassett, the Disney star kid?
I think he's the guy who became a Christian.
He told the story, I think it was ayahuasca, where like he's, he's this Disney kid and he went to one of these places and you have to like go somewhere and you're with all the people and there's all the shamans and stuff and you're like out in the rainforest or something.
And like he starts tripping, I guess, and he looks around and he just sees everyone as demons.
He just sees demons on their faces.
And he's like, what the hell is going on?
So he gets up.
He's like, I need to get out of here.
And the woman tries to stop him from going.
He's like, you can't, you've got to stay in here.
And he looks at her and just sees a demon.
And he's like, so he pushes past her and runs outside and he looks up to the sky and he's like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
Because he looks up and he just sees Jesus.
And he's like, oh, you know, like, seriously?
Like, oh, my God.
No, come on.
This is two on the net.
That's what happened.
And he saw Jesus.
And now he's a Christian.
And it's weird because for people who've done psychedelics, I don't know if you've all done psychedelics before.
I don't know how he dabbles in mushrooms, but I have.
Have you ever had a serious visual?
No.
So you know how people say, like, oh, like, dude, I did psychedelics.
And like, you know, like, I saw a chameleon or something.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not like you're literally seeing like a chameleon run to the room and climb up.
It's hard to explain.
The best explanation I've ever found of what I experienced at least was, you know, how like when you see something that looks a little bit like a face, but it's not really a face and the human tendency to see faces in things.
Yeah.
So when I look at like, you know, two drain pipes and a line underneath, right?
Like, oh, I saw a face.
I don't literally think I saw an actual face in the wall.
What I'm trying to say is for some reason that presented itself to me as a face.
That was what a lot of the psychedelic visuals were a bit like.
Like when I see a chameleon on a tree, I meant to see that the tree in some sense, for some reason, like presented itself as a chameleon to me.
But I was under no confusion about what I was actually seeing.
I felt the same way, like doing mushrooms, seeing trees move.
It was less the visual of seeing the trees moving and more the feeling that the trees moving made sense.
Yeah, and then breathing, shifting.
And that I wasn't concerned about it.
And that I wasn't like, it's less like for me, at least psychedosis was less the visual, but it's more the feeling that the visuals make complete sense.
I had the feeling of bliss and like being thankful to God and then thinking, oh, the closer I get to God, the more I feel this just generally.
And then I looked in a mirror.
We were at Mercer Labs, which is like this visual plane.
There's like this wall of mirrors or whatever.
I looked into a mirror one time and I was really tripping and I saw myself aging into like a 70 year old, 80 year old man.
It was insane.
Like I saw my eyes are already kind of sunken in.
It's sunk in more.
I saw more grays.
I saw more wrinkles.
And I remember taking from that, I was like, oh, you're tired.
You're not taking good enough care of yourself.
This was like six months ago when we're Jordan Chow and them.
And I was like, I need to take better care of myself.
But it wouldn't be the same as seeing a filter of yourself as an old man, right?
Like if you saw a filter of yourself as an old man.
The Snapchat thing that made you an old man, it wasn't that crisp, but it wasn't far from it.
You like see it in yourself, right?
Yeah, you're looking at a mirror and the mirror is looking.
I had a similar experience on a drug called 2CB where I looked into a mirror and I had the exact opposite where I saw myself as a child.
I literally like just saw, and again, it wasn't like I suddenly shrunk, but I just, it's like sometimes you catch yourself in the mirror and you realize you're the same person.
You kind of see your features and how it all resembles.
And it was like, it was kind of like the kid from adolescence.
So wait, so what happens?
You see yourself as a kid, this innocent kid.
Oh, and I was just sort of like, I think it was just this realization that I'm the same person.
Yeah.
So like, I remember like seeing myself as a kid.
And as a kid, like, you know, everyone, everyone goes through a lot as a kid.
You're working out the world and stuff.
And I kind of, you're kind of just looking at this kid.
And it was almost like I could, I couldn't actually communicate with the kid, but it's like I wanted to.
Yeah.
So I want to look at the kid and be like, it's okay, man.
It's going to be all right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So cool.
You're going to figure this shit out.
Very sort of, very sort of therapeutic moment.
But then I remember just before that, I'd looked in the mirror and I can't remember this very well, but I'm sure that I like, I looked into the mirror, which you're kind of not supposed to do in psychedelics because it can go wrong.
But I was like, I was looking at my hair or something.
And then I looked down at my eyes and I saw like a delay.
Like I looked down at my eyes and I saw in the mirror my eyes come down and I fell.
Have you tried MDMA?
Yes.
And was it a similar experience?
Because when I did MDMA, I did sort of the over-analyzing thing the entire time.
Anytime I've ever done any illicit substance, I keep a ledger.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta write it down.
I write down the experience as it unfolds, like moment by moment, so I can reflect on it and then make an assessment if I want to do it again.
Yeah, I think that's wise.
What did you find?
This is from the Hamptons?
Yeah, basically every time I do Molly, I like keep a ledger.
And what did you say?
And Mexico City had this.
I was talking about it because I was the only one sober.
Oh, yeah.
I was like, I just like check in every hour or two.
I remember you were like, I feel good, but I can get the same feeling from X, Y, and Z.
And I was like, well, you're taking, these guys are having way more fun.
Well, you got to follow up with me in two hours from that moment because I'd change my tune.
But there's a perfect example of that hyperanalysis of that moment might restrict the joy.
Which it does and doesn't.
It's true.
I give you a ton of credit.
When we've done Molly together, I was over-analyzing at the beginning and you said, hey, don't look for it.
Don't wait for it.
It's going to happen.
Just relax, enjoy, put sunglasses on and whatever.
I had a way better time because of that.
So it's interesting to see that you're able to.
Is that life in a microphone?
I was going to say, such as life.
Stop, stop, overthink.
Like, it can be interesting in the same way that you might be interested in drugs because drugs are fascinating, right?
Like, why does taking a tiny little pill or something have this crazy effect on your mental shape?
That's really interesting, right?
But that is a separate kind of fun, the fun of like looking into the brain chemistry to the experience of the drug.
That is a great analogy.
You're right.
But for like philosophy and life in general, they're enjoyable for two different reasons, but you should not confuse them.
And you should make enough time for both, probably.
Yeah, that's right.
It's really fun to chew on the fat.
I love it.
But it's also.
In the same way that you can take MDMA and never be interested in the brain chemistry, but still have a good time.
Yes.
You can just live your life and still have a really good life by any philosopher's standard of what good means.
Philosophy And Life Enjoyable00:02:00
Yeah, without ever like realizing that that's what you're doing or thinking about it in that way.
And I think that's kind of the aim.
That is religion.
Otherwise, you're doing the wrong thing.
That's God, bro.
Otherwise, well, maybe, but God can make people do all kinds of different things.
Soak and drugs.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, that's true.
If we're wrapping up, I would.
No, no, we're not wrapping up.
The train, would you pull the lever?
I don't know if we got that.
Oh, yeah, maybe we didn't know.
I think I would probably.
Well, I don't know if I, because one thing we haven't actually pulled out here is the difference between what you should do and what you would do.
Like, I think it's probably permissible to pull the lever, but would I actually do it?
It's really difficult to imagine a circumstance in which you are actually certain that you know everything the lever is going to do.
Because, of course, in practice, like you have no idea if it's going to run down different dragon kiln people or whatever.
So, like I said earlier, you've got to, in a thought experiment, you've got to assume that.
But it's actually very difficult to do that.
And so I don't know what I would do.
With certainty.
I think I would probably pull the lever.
What about pushing the fat guy?
No.
Wouldn't do it.
But I recognize that that is just that in any of these circumstances, I'm just doing what I think feels right.
And there's something about like, you know, Michael Sandel has taken people who say, who are in my position, they said, okay, what if the fat man's walking across the bridge and you can pull a lever and the lever like opens a trap door and then the man falls down.
So you're still like pulling a lever.
And you can just keep making the situations more and more similar to point out that there's an inconsistency.
But I'm happy to just admit that, yeah, I'm not being rationally inconsistent because I'm not being rational.
Like I'm an emotivist.
I'm just feeling a particular way about these about these trolley problems.
All right, guys, if you enjoyed that episode with Alex O'Connor, you are in luck because we have a second episode coming and it's all about God.
Not my God, your cracker ass gods.
We're talking about if Jesus was the Messiah or was actually John the Baptist.
He talks about Joseph Smith and Mormonism and he talks about our boy Wes Huff.
It's a little Bible beef going on.
What does he really think of Wes Huff and his arguments?