All Episodes
Previous Next
March 2, 2022 - Making Sense - Sam Harris
48:59
Absolutely Mental Season 3

Sam shares an episode from the third season of Absolutely Mental, his audio series with Ricky Gervais. All 10 episodes have been released today (Wednesday, March 2, 2022) and are available for purchase now at AbsolutelyMental.com. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
This is Sam Harris.
Okay, well, we have released the third season of Absolutely Mental, so today I'm previewing that for you, so you get to hear from Ricky Gervais.
It is always great fun for me to speak with him.
Anyway, if you enjoy this, the other episodes in Season 3, as well as the first two seasons, are all available at absolutelymental.com.
Enjoy.
Hey, how's it going?
Good, how are you?
I'm good.
I actually have a question for you that I've been forgetting to ask before we move to anything that's on your mind.
We're at the moment where we're deciding whether or not to get a pet.
My two girls want a pet, and it's the dog versus cat conversation.
I notice you're always tweeting pictures of your cat, but I know you're also a dog lover.
Do you not have a dog?
No, we, uh, we cover other people's, I go walking every day just to meet dogs.
I think I told you, I talk about this in my standup that I know about 200 dogs by name.
And, uh, you know, it's, they're an absolute joy, a dog, but there's two reasons why we don't have a dog.
One, I travel too much.
You can leave a cat sitting there and it's happy.
It gets fed.
That's it.
You know, with a dog, I can't stand that look on their face.
And they go, why, why are you leaving me?
They're just too...
I when I was growing up, I used to go on holiday with my mum, my dad just look after the house and dogs it and that was his holiday too, because he could get drunker.
And when we came home, our dog pretended to be ill, like come out limping or something.
And the vet said, Yes, it's just it doesn't want you to go away again, you know, so that they do have I mean, they do have emotions, very human, like very close to us that attachment that, you know, that what looks like, you know, fear, shame, gratitude, unlike a cat.
The other the other reason, if I'm honest, I don't think I can live Through 15 years of knowing I'm gonna have to say goodbye to that dog.
It's bad enough with cats, and it feels just as bad, you know.
Every cat I've had to put down, I've been in a state, it's like you can't help.
But you do think there's less of an emotional attachment to a cat in the end, no matter how attached you are?
It's worse with a dog?
No, I think there's less of an emotional attachment from a cat.
You know, I can personify pretty much anything.
I can feel sorry for a car that's left in the road for too long.
But yeah, I do think because there's a genuine It looks like human camaraderie from a dog more than a cat.
Right.
There's still something about the cat that sits on you because it wants to be warm.
And I feel with a dog, and I could be totally wrong and you know more about it than me, but I feel there's genuine love from a dog.
Yeah.
You know?
So that's my pros and cons.
That's no reason not to have a dog.
That's like saying you shouldn't have friends or family.
Or I shouldn't have had the kids in the first place.
Yeah, exactly!
Yeah, well, yeah.
There's somewhere else in the world we're leaving them.
But, you know, I don't know.
If I'm honest, that would be the reason.
You know, I think the travelling too much and if you're going to have a dog, I feel you've got to have a dog 24-7.
It's your friend and you've got to be with it, you know.
And as I say, it's okay to leave a cat for a couple of days if it's in its own environment or whatever.
But, I mean, I'd always say get a pet though.
For all the pain you eventually go through and the inconvenience and remembering to walk it, feed it every day or whatever it is.
I think that's... I can't imagine not being around animals or pets.
Do you know what I mean?
I just genuinely... it sets me up.
There is something... You don't think that's the toxoplasmosis talking?
I don't know what that is, but tell me.
It's a brain parasite you get from exposure to cat feces.
Oh, yeah.
No, I honestly still try and keep away from pet's feces.
I try and distance myself.
That's a good policy.
I go for the other end.
I let a dog lick my face, but that's where I draw the line!
That's putting a lot of faith in the dog's behavior.
Dogs famously don't draw the line too well themselves.
No, well I think it's a no-brainer.
Of course children should have pets.
I think it's also a learning process as well, that attachment and then that early loss, I think.
Well the thing for me is I always grew up with dogs, so I don't have a very clear sense of what it's like to have a dog and how great that is as a kid.
Yeah, I've never lived with cats.
No, well, I mean, it's very different, obviously.
Cats have got sort of one mode.
You know, with dogs, there's degrees of stuff and lots of... Cats are either alive or dead.
Yeah!
Yeah, you don't know till you open the box.
Um, yeah, so I said, no, they've got to get a, yeah, get one of each.
Yeah.
Puppies and kittens.
That's the longer negotiation that I've noticed directed at my brain.
I think it also teaches them duty.
You know, you can't, you can't suddenly go, I don't feel like doing this today or feeding them or walking them.
I do have another question about cats.
I guess some people are allergic to dogs, but I never seem to encounter people who admit to a dog allergy.
But I do know people who are seriously allergic to cats.
So what happens when someone with a cat allergy shows up at your house?
Well, I think you know, don't you, by then?
It's very rarely that one of you gets it and suddenly realizes You just killed your best friend?
Yeah, exactly!
It's the actual dander, isn't it, of the cat and dog?
No, dogs are quite common.
That's why the labradoodle was invented, because they found out that poodles are sort of hypoallergenic.
So they bred poodles with everything, and then you can get most breeds of dog if it's bred with a poodle.
I think that's mostly for the shedding, though.
People just like not having the hair all over their clothing.
Oh, is it?
It's a fashion thing, is it?
I thought it was because people were less allergic to them.
I could be wrong.
Well, we sorted that out.
In Los Angeles, I think it's all about the hair.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
You've got your black clothing that you don't want.
Well, that's the other thing as well about cats and dogs.
The black cats are the last ones to be left in rescue homes.
People don't want them.
And I thought it was superstition.
And it was to a certain degree.
But now the worst crime, right, is people don't want black cats because they don't Instagram well.
Which is like, The most infuriating shallow reason I've ever heard.
I mean, if you want to get more annoyed at the world, just know that fact.
Just filter by Instagram.
Wait a minute, so what kind of breed of cat do you have?
A moggy, a big old normal rescue cat, a big fat healthy tabby.
But that's what that's called?
That is a tabby cat?
Tabby, yeah, with a bit of tortoiseshell.
I mean, yeah, but always get a rescue as well.
Don't buy these £5,000 designer dogs that have been from sort of horrible farms and stuff.
Always get a rescue.
Go to a pound.
Get a big old moggy or a big old mutt.
Okay, I have another question that was on my mind to ask you.
Have you watched any of this new Beatles documentary?
I haven't yet.
No, I haven't.
Let's talk about that when you do, because it's a pretty interesting experience of anthropology, watching these guys interact and create.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
I'll have a look.
It's one of those things that you get around to five years after, I think.
When there's too much hype, I dig in.
I go, no, I'm not going to watch it because everyone else is.
I'll watch it in five years.
Okay, I'll have a look.
Well, my question, I think this might be right up your alley, because I remember a few years ago, I think when we first came in contact with each other, you sent me, you've done a sort of an epic essay, as I remember, or a small book, whatever you'd call it, on lying, hadn't you?
Yeah, you blurbed it.
I think that was our first connection.
I sent it to you.
As I remember, it was mostly about the morality of lying.
I watched this thing that was more about the anthropology and the psychology of lying and the evolution of lying.
Do you know the lying experiment they did with different sample groups?
I know some experiments, but I don't know what you're referencing.
Well, I'll try and explain it, right?
So, they got a group of people, a lot of people, they told them they were doing a test, but not what it was, or what they were testing, obviously.
And what it was to answer as many questions, I think they were just math questions, as many as they could in a certain time.
And then they could grade themselves?
Yeah, they would market themselves and then shred the papers.
Now what they didn't know was they weren't really shredded so people could tell if they were telling the truth.
So they got a dollar for every question they got right.
And 70% of people lied, but only a little bit.
They could have lied a lot more, but they made it realistic.
And we all lie, apparently.
And then they did another experiment where instead of getting a dollar per question, they got a token per question, and they had to go somewhere else to cash it in.
And because of that one-step removal of responsibility, like they weren't ripping off the person they were talking to, they lied even more, right?
And then they did another experiment Where before they did the test, they just said, oh, we're going to do this, right?
They're going to tell them what's going to happen.
They said, please promise not to lie.
And they didn't!
They didn't lie.
They lied.
They lied a lot less.
Yeah.
So I think it's about, it was about social responsibility and guilt.
And which is fascinating that if you're going to lie, and I just wonder, Where it came from, because it's obviously part of our evolution.
It's obviously due to group selection where I suppose it was, it was more important, wasn't it?
It was more important to lie to survive.
It very rarely now lying is a matter of life and death.
And I think a lot of our, a lot of our moral decisions are, you know, our conscious sort of mind suppressing our instincts that might be bad or might have been, you know, more.
Useful before, but apparently exploded with the advent of language.
But there's always been lies in our evolution, even down to, you know, camouflage is a lie in the, you know, pretending you're poisonous when you're not and things like that.
And I just, um, I wonder if you know more about the, the psychology of why we lie, because I think everyone does apparently.
Yeah, well, you know, I had a total change in my outlook on this topic.
It's really one of the, I can count on, I think, one hand and even just a couple of fingers, moments in my life where my relationship to a whole set of behaviors and norms and just, you know, something that was kind of background became suddenly foreground and, you know, just I had a change in how I decided to live as a person.
And it was based on this course I took in college and as a freshman.
And it was just a course that analyzed whether lying was ever ethical.
And it was just this machine for producing people who came out the other side of it, convinced that lying was basically always wrong.
Right now, I carve out... That's a tricky one.
I mean, there's kind of self-defense situations.
I view lying now as sort of the first step on the continuum of violence, so that when you're dealing with someone who you really can't collaborate with, this is not a rational interlocutor anymore, this is somebody who is, to one or another degree, your enemy, and you're now deciding how much violence you need to use to get them out of your life.
A lie is ethically permissible and even necessary in that case.
So if you're thinking about whether you have to punch this person in the face, well then obviously you could be thinking about whether to lie to them first.
But generally speaking, I mean, everyone who took this course, it was really a fantastic professor at Stanford, Ron Howard.
It was a very influential course in the lives of many people because he just deconstructed this background assumption that everyone had that Some amount of lying was not only normal, but inevitable and socially desirable.
That, you know, white lies were an expression of compassion, generally, and you just have to lie.
There's no way to navigate social space without... That must be true.
You must agree that white lies are from empathy and compassion and where you want to protect someone's feelings.
You don't have to I mean, there's lots of steps here, isn't there?
Because telling the truth doesn't mean blurting it out when you don't have to.
So if a little kid says to you, you know, am I ugly?
I mean, whatever you think, surely the better thing to do is no, of course you're not.
I mean, who would argue that that's the ethical answer?
Well, so there are situations where, yeah, so first, as you point out, a commitment to telling the truth doesn't require that you just blurt out everything you're thinking, like you have, you know, some neurological disorder.
Yeah.
And it also doesn't, you know, it doesn't prevent you from kind of curating the kinds of truths you will Because you can't say everything on any given topic.
So there is no burden to say absolutely everything you think or could possibly think about someone or about a situation.
So you're filtering by what's true and what's useful, right?
And so sometimes it's not useful to say something and there's no need to say it.
And some things can be kept private.
I mean, so you can keep a secret, for instance.
Although, you know, I'm not a fan in general of keeping too many secrets.
But, you know, you can be honest about that.
You know, if someone says, How much money do you have in your bank account?
The truth could be, I don't want to tell you, right?
So you can just say it's none of your business.
It doesn't require a lie to carve out different zones of privacy.
But in the case you referenced here, there are situations where you're You're not in a relationship among equals, right?
So you've given me a kid, right?
Yeah, exactly.
No, I went straight to that because I think parents lie all the time for the child's own good, whether they're right or wrong.
But actually, no, but the truth is I have found that we have really never needed to lie to our daughters.
I'm only aware of once telling a lie to one of my daughters and It was really by accident.
It was kind of like a malapropism.
We'd done a Google search for photos for something.
I forget what the search was, but she was very young.
Maybe she was seven.
And we came upon an old woodcut, like a 14th century woodcut of somebody being decapitated.
And she said, We go, what was that?
I just got to try to move by it as quickly as possible.
She said, what's happening there?
And I said, oh, that was a very old and impractical form of surgery.
That was my line.
Well, that's nearly a joke.
Well, then we get into what's a lie.
I mean, okay, well, that's interesting because, so have you never pretended there's a Santa?
No, no.
And that was actually the most common question I got in response to that book, Lying.
What about Santa?
So I have a whole argument about why you don't need to lie about Santa.
But the interesting thing is I heard from Dozens and dozens of people who remember what it was like to learn that Santa didn't exist and to realize that their parents had been lying to them about it.
And they remember how betrayed they felt by their parents.
Really?
Yeah, and it was actually a wound in the relationship.
They just felt like they never quite trusted their parents.
Wow.
I can't imagine that.
I mean, I just, you know, what about I could say my mum lied to me about there being a God, but I wouldn't... I mean, it's ambiguous whether she was lying or she believed it, you know, or not, but as an atheist, I think it's a lie.
In that case, I think she probably believed it.
Also, I did hear from many fundamentalist Christians who said, oh yeah, my parents never lied about Santa because they didn't want us to think they were lying about Jesus, right?
So they were scrupulous about Santa.
That's interesting as well, isn't it?
That's interesting as well, to give another A comparable piece of information, more credibility.
That's, that's really good.
But hold on though.
Okay.
I think that we've got to decide what constitutes a lie, because I think you'll be very, you're being very strict what a lie is when it comes to talking to kids.
What is that?
It's something else, or I don't know.
I mean, because if you say, ask someone and you say, I don't know, and you do know, That's lying, isn't it?
It's pretending not to have heard their question lying, you know?
I think there's an ambiguity to what lying is.
I wish I could think of something.
I mean, it's incredible.
It's incredible.
That you say that confidently, even that you say it, whether it's right or wrong, and I'm sure it is, but that blows my mind that you don't lie, you know, and I only ever mean white lies, of course.
You know, because, I mean, here's the thing, it almost never, I mean, the truth is, I'm almost never in a situation where it's remotely tempting, where I even see, it's like we live in three-dimensional space and it's impossible to visualize, you know, the fourth dimension.
For me, the dimension, you know, where I'd have to point where it's tempting to lie, it has almost been lost in my experience.
Like I can't even, I can't even find it.
I mean, I mean, I can recapitulate it.
So what would you say, what would you say when they say like where, when someone dies, a family member dies, where are they now?
What do you say?
Well, I mean, so the honest truth there, and so this is just a kind of a happy accident because you and I are in slightly different camps here.
My honest truth is, I don't know, right?
Like, I can get into the details of why it's intellectually credible to think that nothing happens, right?
That there's no further experience.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Okay, I see what you mean.
That's a big blank spot on the map for me.
So you genuinely say, you genuinely and honestly say you don't know?
Yes, right.
And so, so yeah.
These poor kids have got to ask the right question to get an answer, haven't they?
They've got to ask about 15 questions to put you on the spot!
I've become a very good lawyer.
Ask him this.
Ask him this.
It's a deposition.
The endless deposition.
That's incredible.
I'm like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates in a deposition.
It depends what the meaning of is is.
Do you ever take the fifth when your kids are asking you about stuff?
No, but in truth, once you recognize that you're on the same team, right, and you have the interests of this person at heart, then it's just a question of how best to communicate the truth to a child, generally.
So, in the case of that decapitation woodcut, there's been many versions of that sort of thing that came up later.
One of our daughters would hear us talking about something horrible that had happened out in the world, and she would ask, what are you talking about?
And the honest truth is, listen, there are all kinds of things that happen in the world that you don't need to know about now, and this is one of them.
But that's not my point, because your argument is a bit of a circular argument.
If we're trying to find out what's best to tell a child, that includes whether the truth is the best thing to tell a child, because we don't know the reaction.
So you might find out Yeah, I just don't know.
I think there are a few cases.
in the greatest scheme of things, in the world.
Yeah, I just don't know.
Because there's lots of other factors.
I think there are a few cases.
There are cases in extremis, right, where you're in some sort of emergency where it's easy to imagine, or at least it's plausible to argue, that a well-crafted lie is the compassionate and even life-saving artifice that a well-crafted lie is the compassionate and even life-saving artifice that you Whereas the truth, however well-intentioned, is going to run risk of serious harm.
But generally, I just have not been in that situation.
And it's always honest to say, listen, we're your parents, and there's all kinds of things we know that we'll eventually tell you.
But right now, you don't need to know that.
I think it's fair enough.
And I think that's probably erring on the side of caution.
And you're probably And you've still got a lot of maneuvering at your disposal there.
It's not like you haven't gone to the point of no return in either way.
So I think you're right, I think in general.
But I think that if you take lies by themselves, in general they are wrong.
But when they're connected to the rest of the world, all those knock-on effects What you've said before, what caused it.
I think it is ambiguous whether always, and I only mean in the sense of like, Act versus rule utilitarianism, right?
Do not walk on the grass.
Very good rule, right?
It's for everyone.
It ruins it.
Someone having a heart attack on the grass, of course you walk on the grass.
So take taking that as a metaphor, there must be many, many situations where certainly immediately, it's better to lie.
And I feel I feel that we know that.
And again, I'm only talking if it's a compassionate lie, if you're protecting the feelings of someone else.
I think that if you're protecting your own feelings and your own reputation, giving yourself an advantage, because that's what a lie does, isn't it?
It gives you an unfair advantage in the world over someone else who's left in the dark.
Yeah.
That's why it's morally wrong.
Well, it is the very... I mean, psychologically speaking, it is... the temptation to lie is always born of the sense that your interests and the interests of the other person have now diverged, right?
Like, you have a view of the world that you now can't share, or it would be too awkward to share, or you're now... you're, for whatever reason, not disposed to share it with this other person.
You don't want to give them access to reality as you see it because you think in some way it would be bad for you.
And so it is the very definition of selfishness, even if you have told yourself the story that it's also compassionate.
Rarely do people, in my experience, think it all the way through to the end and actually believe that if they were the other person, they wouldn't want to know.
Usually, the so-called compassionate lives are born of just this feeling of awkwardness.
You don't want to be the one to say this.
I agree.
But if you were the other person, you would want to know.
The great example in my life that came pretty early for me was I had a friend who was a screenwriter who had been working on a script for probably a full year.
He asked me to read it, and he asked me what I thought of it.
And I thought it was terrible, right?
And I really thought it was bad.
But the truth is, I also thought he was very smart and a very promising writer, and he's gone on to have a great career as a screenwriter and a television writer.
And the net effect of me telling him that I thought that script was terrible was that forever after, he knew I was being honest with him whenever I said I thought something was great.
Right?
It's like, now I'm someone, I mean this is now decades old, but I've always been someone he could trust to calibrate, and it's not to say that my opinions are always right, but He knew I wasn't bullshitting him, ever.
And with our daughters, given how much we've emphasized the value of honesty, they just know we're not going to lie to them.
And it's such a refuge, emotionally, because what you have to price in is How meaningful praise becomes from someone who you know will not lie to you.
That's a very different kind of praise you're getting from people who are just giving it because that's what they do, because it's too awkward to say anything critical.
So your decision, outside your own personal integrity, is that this is better for the child, isn't it?
To learn the lesson that never lying is a reward for all those things.
Would there ever be a case, could you imagine, Where you'd want them to lie.
Yeah, in some kind of self-defense situation.
When you're dealing with someone who, you know, you can't trust, and you're treating this person as a kind of dangerous object, because that's what they've become.
So you count it almost as self-defense, so the metaphor is violence with...
I get that.
And even there, there are, you know, it's worth considering whether the truth might not be better.
I mean, so like the classic case is, you know, the Nazis show up at the door and you have Anne Frank in the attic.
The Nazi at the door says, we're looking for a little girl.
Have you seen her?
Now, obviously, in the general case, the ethical thing to do there is lie and say no, sorry.
But if you were actually in a stronger position, The truth would be better.
I mean, what you actually would want to happen... You could say, yes, fuck you.
Yeah, fuck you.
And if you take another step, I'm going to put a bullet in your face, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Of course.
But we know that's great.
I mean, that's probably the best example we could ever have here.
But to take it as a metaphor as well, the world is full of us not being in charge of the outcome.
It's full of that, isn't it?
And I sort of agree with you in principle, definitely.
I don't lie I never lie for gain I never lie criminally I never lie I just never lie to take an advantage I never do because I know it's wrong but also I couldn't stand I couldn't stand it I couldn't but I do lie As I said loads of times, will you come to my party?
I can't come to your party.
Now the reason I can't is because it's awful and I don't want to be there, right?
But I haven't said that.
I just said I can't.
So... That's an interesting... I'll remember that next time I invite you to a party.
No, I'd make up a really good reason for you.
With you I'd say... I would not detect it, yeah.
I can't, I'm giving blood at the orphanage again.
And you'd go, oh he always gives blood at the orphanage, so that'd be a really believable... He must not have any blood left!
That's why he's so pale and weak.
I heard he fainted on stage at Wembley.
He really couldn't come to the party.
Oh dear.
Okay, but this is a great example, which is, yes, it is tempting to lie in those cases, but, you know, once you set yourself the rule that you're just not going to lie, even in those socially awkward situations, Two things happen.
One is it holds a kind of mirror up to your life where you are then forced to recognize, okay, one, I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to go to these kinds of parties.
I mean, do I want to be that kind of person?
Is that, like, what does this say about me that I don't want, you know, that The truth is, I don't want to go to this party, and that's worth reflecting on.
And two, it holds a mirror up to all of these relationships that you might not want to have, right?
Maybe you just don't want this person to think they should keep inviting you to the party you don't want to go to, right?
Yeah, well it does depend whether it's like, yeah, friends, family, best friends, acquaintance, annoying acquaintance, somebody, exactly.
Of course, there's a sliding scale of wanting to go to the party or not, but It was just that I was, the only reason I came up with that was that I'd say, okay, no, I know what you're saying really.
Yeah.
I think that's a white lie because it's for their good and the truth would hurt.
I'd say, no, I don't, I don't like you enough or that your party would not be as good as me sitting in my pants watching Netflix.
Right.
But, I suppose I'm really protecting myself, aren't I?
That I'm doing... I'm getting the best of both worlds.
I'm staying in and watching Netflix in my pants, which is what I want to do.
And I haven't heard their feelings, so they might like me still.
So it isn't... But also, you know, it's interesting.
I mean, there are certainly relationships I have, where I could honestly say, I'm sorry, I just, I really just don't feel like going.
I just want to just stay home and watch Netflix.
Right?
And that would not be, because of the nature of the, you know, all paths communication, that would be fine.
I mean, the person's not going to take it personally.
No, exactly.
And I mean, actually, this reminds me of something that Annika discovered when she was, when we, I think we just had our first daughter and, you know, she's being asked to various situations and Because she was never telling a white lie to get out of, you know, having lunch or going to parties or whatever it was.
She was just constantly being honest about how exhausted she was, how overwhelmed she was, how just like, sorry, I don't want to go.
I'm just, you know, too tired.
And she realized that most people don't do that.
And you get a false picture, you almost get like an Instagram fake image of how good everyone's life is and how much they're holding it together when Really, they're busy telling white lies to get out of situations that they're just too exhausted to be in.
And once you start telling people how exhausted you are, you unmask that in your network of friends, and everyone confesses, yeah, I just couldn't bring myself to go because I was so tired, I just felt like watching Netflix.
Yeah, but I mean, the script example, that happens to me a lot, right?
As you read this, right?
My heart sinks.
But I already know, however bad it is, I'm never going to say anything too terrible about it.
What I do is I try and find one good thing about it, and I just say that.
I go, oh, I like the so-and-so, good so-and-so, good luck with it, you know.
I could never say, I mean, how honest were you?
I mean, I know, again, this is not my best friend.
I'm assuming this is not my best friend.
No, no, no.
Flip it around.
So you're saying you would be honest with your best friend?
I'd be much more honest.
I'll go, Oh, I don't know.
There's a, there's a thing about that.
I wouldn't do that.
It's a bit clear.
I'd still be, I'd still do it with compassion, but I'd be a lot more honest because I care more.
I'd want my, my best friend to make it more.
Okay.
But what if you had a friend, what if you had a friend who was spending all their time trying to do something?
That you really thought they were not cut out for, right?
Let's take it... No, that's a very good one.
The example I use in the book, I think, is with an actor.
Someone who wants to be an actor, wants nothing more than to be the next Leonardo DiCaprio.
But for a dozen reasons, you think this whole project, this whole life course, is doomed, right?
There's no way this person is going to make it as an actor.
What do you say?
Well, I'd still keep my mouth shut because I could be wrong.
I wouldn't want, if I was the person to say, you'll never make it, give up.
If I could see that alternative reality, if I was God, and I suddenly see that in five years, he actually does something and he gets a lucky break and he's massive, I don't want to be the one in my reality that destroyed his dreams.
Because I don't know the truth.
But that's part of it.
So that uncertainty is The inaccurate description of the truth as you see it, right?
So you can always discount your opinion.
You could say, listen, this is just my opinion, but honestly, I think you should find another game to play.
But you've established that the more you tell the truth like that, the more brutally honest you are to people, the more they respect your opinion.
So now, Me being brutally honest about how terrible he is has much more chance of him believing that and giving up.
All I'm saying is, is my... Yeah, I know.
But that's a good thing.
So, but you just have to think of what... It might be a good thing, or he might be depressed not doing... Because people can do the thing they love and never get anywhere.
That's true.
But actually have had a happier life doing it, you know.
Okay, but yes, but that's, again, this is a conversation and that's more of the truth you're putting out.
I know.
I'm agreeing with you.
I'm just throwing up little, I suppose, counter examples or upshots really, because it is a tricky one.
But also it comes down, I mean, it comes down to the shoot one person and the other nine go free or all 10 get shot.
There's a certain amount that goes, it's not up to me to shoot anyone.
It's not up to me to save the other.
It's not up to me.
This isn't my problem.
You know what I'm saying?
I think it's totally valid morally to go, who the fuck are you handing out Okay, but you just have to visualize the complete situation.
Here we're talking about someone who has asked for your opinion, and if you imagine this is just the golden rule, what would you want to know if you were in their place?
If you were trying to be an actor, and you actually didn't have the talent for it, or the people closest to you thought you didn't have the talent for it, and they weren't telling you.
Ah, but now I'm an expert in the know that can genuinely help him.
You see, I think the important thing is here that I'm not well, people come to me and show me their scripts because they know I'm in, I've made my way, I'm quite high up in that industry.
So it's not just my opinion, it's how useful I am, because I could give them golden nuggets, I could give them, you know, so I think we have to take that out of it.
Yeah, I think I think We have to, I don't know, I can't think of an example, something I don't know about, in my honest opinion.
I think that is more interesting, because it's just purely my opinion, and whether that's hurtful or not.
I'm glad we've had this conversation, because it's been something I've been wanting to tell you, and I'm just going to be brutally honest, I don't think this stand-up comedy thing is going to work out for you.
You know what, though?
When you started like that, it was very well done.
And there was a little adrenaline rush.
What the fuck's he gonna tell me?
I actually, for one second, then I thought this is gonna be a joke.
But for one second, I thought, what the fuck is he gonna say?
But that's my point.
I don't want to be the one to brutally hurt someone's feelings for one second, even if in five years, they might appreciate it more.
I just do I do think the golden rule is that right heuristic here because you just it might be the case that you wouldn't want to know if you were in their shoes and then then it becomes more interesting to consider whether you should tell them anything but if you really if you know you would want to know I mean it's I mean I've I've seen situations where all of the friends of this person are having a conversation behind their back, and no one is telling the person how they're... And we're talking about their closest friends.
It's crazy.
I know.
That's really unfortunate and awkward and a little bit sad, because we're assuming they're delusional now, aren't we?
And that's not nice to be delusional, yeah.
But you say the golden rule, and I think there's a bit of a luxury to saying that, because when you say, I'd want to know it, so so do you, that's arrogant, because everyone's different.
And just because I can take, like, I can take insults, I can take trolls.
For me to suddenly go, well, I can take it, so I'm going to just troll someone on Twitter and do a devastating thing.
Then I'm going to go, what are you crying for?
I can take it.
I think that's a I don't know.
But that's an adversarial situation.
You can correct for what you know of the difference between yourself and another person, but the truth is you very quickly train the people in your life.
Once you start being rigorously honest with everybody, Then people don't ask your opinion anymore unless they actually want it.
I'm almost never in a situation where someone's asking me my opinion, and then I discover this mismatch between my valuing honesty and their expectation of me just blowing smoke, and they walk away unhappy.
Like that hasn't happened for decades that I'm aware of in my life at this point.
I know, I know now if I ask you something and you go... You're gonna get it.
I don't, I don't know.
I know you're lying.
Sam, do you think I'm losing my hair?
I don't know.
Well, look!
I don't know.
You're not looking, Sam.
I don't have eyes.
Ricky, I'm blind.
Sam, you're not blind.
I've been having problems with my vision.
I can see you juggling.
Am I going bald?
Yes or no?
Well, that's a very interesting one as well, because just going back to your kids asking you, you know, where do dead people go?
I don't know.
Again, that's very convenient for you because this is my thing with when people mistake agnosticism with atheism, right, that one's knowledge and one's belief.
So no one knows.
So your kids could say, what's your best guess though, Dad?
What do you believe?
You're a smart bloke, Dad.
You're a smart bloke, dad.
What do you believe?
So you don't know.
No one knows.
What do you believe?
I'm going to say my friend Ricky over here believes.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And that's why we're not going to invite him to the next party.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I am a, in general, I'd say, if anyone asks me, I'm, I think, you know, lying is wrong for all the reasons we've discussed.
I do try and be brutally honest.
I think it's something to be proud of, but I still, I still wield that with a bit of compassion, and I put it in fiction as well, like the film I did with our mutual friend Matthew Robinson, the scene in that where I lie to my mum, because there's nothing to gain from that.
I can suddenly lie, she's terrified of death, she's definitely going to die in 30 seconds.
What would be the point?
Of saying, you go into the ground, you're wormsmeat, bye mum.
So that's an example there of clearly, I could say it's a good lie, even though you could also say it made me feel better that I didn't have to go through that awkward thing and see her in fear.
I think that's quite clearly and distinctly an example of what we have to agree on is a good lie.
Well again, there are situations where you're now no longer Relating to someone who is an equal.
I mean, it's a paternalistic situation where you're saving a child or you're saving an old person or someone with dementia.
You're saving them some emotional distress.
Yes.
And that's where it becomes tempting.
And I think in those cases, yes, it is sort of like, you know, it's different, but it is like the self-defense situation where you're, it's no longer, you know, you're just putting a fire out.
Well with those two caveats, with nothing to gain or lose, and self-defense, I think I'm in agreement.
There's one variable here which we haven't mentioned, which is probably the biggest, certainly one of the biggest reasons not to lie, is that It eliminates a kind of cognitive overhead that people have that is completely unwieldy and is a continuous basis for embarrassment and reputational harm, which completely goes away.
When you know you're going to tell the truth in any situation, there's nothing to keep track of.
You don't have to remember what you said last time.
You don't have to think about what you told some other person who may have told this person.
There's just a seamlessness to your life where, so if your story changes, honestly, well then it's like, it doesn't matter what I said last time.
I might have believed that last time, but now I'm just telling you how things look to me right now.
I agree, but I don't think we can treat Morality and lying and all those things like a science, I still think there's a certain amount of dogma to it that if you say it's always wrong to lie or whatever, I think there's... No, it's not always, but it's not always wrong to shoot someone in the face either.
I mean, that's... No, it's not.
It's definitely not, no.
I think we've both agreed on that one.
Yeah.
In fact, it's probably better to lie to them and then shoot them in the face.
Yeah no okay yeah we we do agree.
I think there's an ambiguity of what lying is as well.
I think there is a convenience of sidestepping the lie that isn't totally honest but with all those caveats I think we're in agreement that in general it is always better to tell the truth and I think the truth will out anyway because there's only there's delusion as well isn't there and there's like You know, people denying the facts that are in front of them.
So that, I mean, that's, that's never good on that scale.
It's dangerous to humanity, of course, but on a very personal level, I think, yeah, you probably do have a better life and everyone around you has a better life.
If you're all, if, if they're all honest and everyone knows they're honest, that is surely the best society we could have because we only have to undo all these fears.
heaven and hell because we started them in the first place you know a secular society from the last living person you know the oldest person in a society who was brought up secular and logical and that probably wouldn't have those we probably wouldn't see those fears starting would we be it would be I I don't know.
I don't know about that psychologically.
Is it better to tell kids to not know, to not give your best guess, not to give the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
I mean, what does death What does death mean to a child?
What does death mean to a 10-year-old?
I can't remember.
The lie is always the stark lie of certainty about heaven, say.
Grandma is definitely in a better place and we're going to see her again.
Yeah.
It doesn't even make sense given the fact that people are still assimilating every death as though it were a genuinely bad thing.
I mean, people are bereaved, they're sorry to not see the person again in their life, but if it were actually true that you were sure that she went to a better place and that you will be reunited, It's just not a bad thing.
The temptation to believe this is that insofar as you actually can believe this about death, it does remove the sting in death.
I mean, there is no problem.
It's promotional.
I suppose I can't get over that.
I care less about Humanity and society when we're talking about this sort of thing than I do about what does it do to one six-year-old when you're brutally... I keep coming back to that.
Is it... I don't know whether we know it's good or bad yet.
I think we know that the thing you actually want to be able to teach a child in order to equip them to be a sane and well-integrated human being is not that there's this fictional world or this world about which no one can be sure that rectifies every apparent problem in life.
The good people go to the good place, the bad people go to the bad place, and you get everything you want after you die.
It's not to teach them that.
It's actually to equip them emotionally to deal with reality insofar as we have every reason to believe it exists.
You want a child who learns that grief is part of life.
It's an expression of one's love for that person, and it's totally healthy and predictable and understandable, and it bonds you to other people with this force of compassion.
We're all in this circumstance together.
And it's, I mean, the very interesting thing about the pretense of certainty about the afterlife that religious people indulge is that it isolates truly grieving people.
I mean, when you're a fundamentalist Christian and your husband dies and you're just, you're actually miserable, right?
And insofar as you're paying lip service to the idea that they might be in heaven and you're going to see them again, You are actually bereaved, right?
You're actually devastated.
You're surrounded by people who are just aiming their happy talk at you, saying, you know, it's all for the best and he's with Jesus.
You're isolated in your grief.
You're not actually getting real compassion from them.
You're getting a fantasy that is not meeting you in the moment of your grief.
Well, in conclusion, if you want the truth and you want kids to grow up knowing the harsh realities of life to prepare them, I think you should not only get them a dog, but get them a very sick dog.
Mission accomplished!
Good!
That was great.
That was great.
That's hilarious. - There it is.
It's great.
It's happening.
Merry Christmas.
▲
Export Selection