0:24

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Guru, the podcast

0:26

where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the

0:28

greatest minds the world has to offer and we

0:30

try to understand why they're talking about what they're

0:33

talking about. I'm Matt Brown with

0:35

me is Chris Cavanagh. How are you doing today, Chris?

0:38

Good, dude. I'm doing well. Insights

0:41

from the realm of psychology, the

0:43

world of anthropology. That's where we

0:45

bring the expertise from.

0:48

We've got our insights from these disciplines and

0:51

we apply them critically to

0:53

guru material. That's what we do, Matt. That's

0:55

what we're here for. Yeah. And

0:58

you know a bit about psychology as well. You're

1:00

not just an anthropologist. I'm a professor

1:02

of psychology. Associate

1:05

professor. Associate professor. Yes,

1:09

I do. I'm published in many psychology

1:12

journals. I'm

1:14

published in one philosophy journal, Taitlan

1:16

Philosophers, and it's a German

1:18

philosophy journal at that. So yeah.

1:21

I remember when I published an article, a

1:23

couple of articles in vaccine. Yeah,

1:26

obviously, vaccine. And I thought, hey, you

1:28

know, I'm a medical researcher now. You're

1:30

a vaccine scientist. If

1:33

we were gurus, we could just be like,

1:36

you know, well, I'm a neuroscientist now. I'm

1:38

published in Cognition. You

1:40

know, that's it. So yeah, yeah,

1:42

that's what we are up to.

1:44

We're working hard. I like the

1:46

little busy beaver academics that we

1:48

are. We're back now from

1:51

our winter retreat. And

1:54

we are going to have a special guest on

1:56

this episode. But before that, Matt,

1:58

there's a couple. I need to

2:00

raise your attention. Yes. You like

2:03

to do this, don't you? Is

2:05

it something nice? Something nice happened? Somebody killed a

2:07

puppy. I'll let you be the

2:09

judge of that. Why don't you listen

2:12

to this? It's just a short segment.

2:15

It's just over a minute long. How

2:17

much sadness can be in one minute?

2:19

Let's listen. How many

2:21

people were promoters of the vaccine and died

2:23

suddenly? It's

2:26

crazy how many fucking young people just died in

2:29

their sleep after they

2:31

took it. And everybody's like, nothing to see

2:33

here. I said an adult back syndrome. Yeah.

2:36

Just died suddenly. You ever go

2:38

to the died suddenly Instagram page? Holy shit.

2:42

There's so many. And

2:44

so many people talking about people who

2:46

are anti-Darwin, anti-vaxxers, and then you're dead.

2:48

Sorry. You bought into the wrong place.

2:50

But that's, you know, if you really

2:52

want to get cruel, that's Darwinism. Do

2:54

you not know they lie by now?

2:58

Are you not aware of the opioid crisis? Are you

3:00

not aware of Vioxx? Are you not

3:02

aware of the various 25% of all FDA

3:04

approved drugs that get pulled? It's

3:08

one out of four. And you're

3:10

like, really? You're an anti-vaxxer? Really? Really? Really?

3:14

Really? What are your conspiracy

3:16

theorists? You're a fluidist.

3:18

You're a conspiracy theorist.

3:21

You fool. Darwin's going to do its work with

3:23

you. You're modifying your genes, you

3:25

fucking idiot. Like,

3:27

what are you doing? What are

3:30

you doing? You're just going to trust Pfizer? Well,

3:32

they do support Anderson Cooper, brought to you

3:34

by Pfizer. So that was Joey

3:36

Ricken with it. Yeah. That was it. Yeah.

3:41

Old Joseph displaying

3:43

his keen insight on a

3:46

range of topics that are

3:48

mostly circulating around the

3:50

vaccines and the sudden deaths that they've

3:52

caused. Have you not noticed

3:54

that all the vaccinated people, they're just dropping

3:56

dead? Like, there was an

3:58

Instagram. There's an Instagram. grandpa called sudden

4:01

deaths. Yeah, suddenly. Yeah, that's it. So

4:03

there's a movie of the same

4:08

name, which has actually included

4:10

people in that movie that

4:13

are claims that have died who are still

4:15

alive. So you know, they died suddenly and

4:18

returned to life equally as suddenly.

4:21

But yeah, so you know, it's

4:23

anti-vax rhetoric, stupid stuff,

4:25

but it's how much he

4:28

crams into one

4:30

minute, which is quite impressive. Like he

4:32

demonstrates that he thinks the

4:35

vaccines are killing lots of

4:37

people, right? And that is

4:39

source of information from this

4:41

is boomer posts, you know,

4:43

anti-vax Instagram accounts that he

4:45

saw. And he does the funny

4:47

voice, you know, like, my

4:51

critics will say, Oh, truth to science,

4:53

that marketing thing. And he manages at

4:55

the end to mention that you're all

4:57

being credulous. You're all just, you know,

4:59

accepting the corporate things. It's changing your

5:02

DNA. Yeah, like, if

5:04

he believes that vaccines are actually

5:06

rewriting your DNA, then, you

5:09

know, he's pretty far gone. Like, he's in the

5:12

extreme level. And I know that he, he devotes

5:14

like a lot of time to anti-vax stuff now

5:16

and has been doing for, for a long

5:19

time. I can't

5:21

buy that. Like, every week. Yeah.

5:24

And like, he's, he's

5:26

the biggest podcast in the world.

5:28

And in terms of

5:30

the impact, Joe Rogan's impact

5:33

in terms of actual medical misinformation,

5:35

it's got to dwarf some of

5:37

the other influences out there, like

5:39

your John Campbell's and your Brett

5:41

wine scenes, just the sheer magnitude

5:44

with Joe Rogan, like how much

5:46

anti-vax drivel he spews multiplied by

5:48

his reach. He's got to

5:50

be responsible for, yeah, a

5:53

lot of death, I gotta say. Yeah.

5:55

And you do also get from

5:57

that clip that he's still very

5:59

afraid. Like, you know, his whole

6:01

thing is, you know, making

6:03

fun of the people that are

6:05

getting vaccinated and boosted and, you

6:08

know, they're just too afraid to

6:10

go outside. But you

6:12

can see that, like, actually, he's really

6:14

afraid of the vaccine. Like, he thinks

6:16

that if he gets it, the side

6:18

effects are very likely to

6:20

kill them. He talks about, you know, how

6:22

he's dodged a bullet by not getting the

6:25

Pfizer vaccine when the UFC was kind of

6:27

mandating that. And yeah, like,

6:29

it's just this funny thing

6:31

because back at the start of the pandemic,

6:33

like a lot of people, Joe was also

6:35

very, very concerned about catching the virus. He

6:37

talked on the show about waking up at

6:39

the night, like, sweating about the danger that

6:42

he was in. And this

6:44

is a common thing that you see in the

6:46

anti-vax arena, that they have, like, a

6:49

hyper concern about the

6:51

sanctity of their body. And while

6:53

at the same time presenting everyone

6:55

else as being these scared sheeple.

6:58

But like, Rogan is probably

7:00

out of a lot of

7:02

public figures, the one that is most still

7:05

focused on vaccines and

7:08

the dangers they pose and the virus

7:10

and all that, long after most

7:12

people that are vaccinated have stopped thinking

7:14

about it. Yeah, we've talked about this

7:16

before, which is it almost seems like

7:19

existential fees with someone like Joe Rogan.

7:21

He's afraid of contamination. He's afraid of

7:23

getting sick. He's afraid of taking the

7:25

medicine. He's afraid of getting old. He's

7:27

afraid of getting weak and

7:29

hence the testosterone and things like that.

7:31

I mean, I think it goes

7:33

to one of the things that's always interested me, which

7:35

is why do some topics

7:38

attract a high degree of

7:40

conspiracism and misinformation

7:43

and delusional beliefs and not

7:45

others? So for instance, why,

7:47

I don't know, pick

7:49

something random, like, whether you should,

7:52

how you mow the grass in

7:54

your backyard or something. Like that doesn't

7:56

attract the same level of delusional beliefs

7:58

as health related issues. strategies like

8:01

COVID and it's because, you

8:04

know, these are existential concerns, things to do

8:06

with your health, things associated with potentially getting

8:09

sick, getting old and dying and that's

8:11

why the wellness industry and

8:13

the diet industry and

8:16

the optimizers and stuff like that,

8:18

that's why it's so weird because

8:20

we're squishy biological creatures

8:23

and we're all terrified. Well, just to one degree or another,

8:25

I know you and I have repressed it effectively but we'll

8:29

express it differently. We're

8:31

all, you know, unable to deal with

8:33

the existential facts of our own mortality.

8:36

We're all managing the existential

8:38

dread, the terror in different ways

8:41

and some are just more unhealthy

8:43

than others but speaking

8:45

of which Matt, the although movement

8:48

in the guru

8:50

bodies that I wanted to raise

8:52

your attention, it's actually related or

8:54

maybe it's related. Let's see what you think. There

8:57

was an Instagram comment under a post

9:00

by Peter Adia about neutering

9:03

dogs and whether or not it's good or

9:06

not but our good friend

9:08

Andrew Huberman responded and I'll just

9:10

read what he wrote, okay. I

9:13

put Costello, my bulldog master

9:16

on PRT Testosterone

9:18

Replacement Therapy when he

9:21

was 9 years old and he dramatically

9:23

reduced his shedding, joint pain and boosted

9:25

his mood and no, he did not

9:27

mount more often after that. He

9:30

just looked at me with thanking eyes. I

9:33

have a close relative who's a veterinarian and

9:35

said this is becoming more common practice. I

9:37

regret I neutered him but I'm sure that

9:39

I'll catch a lot of flack for saying

9:41

it. He lived to be 11 which is

9:43

a good age for his breed. Huberman

9:47

believes so much in the

9:50

importance of testosterone and

9:52

PRT as this very beneficial

9:55

thing for virility and

9:57

various other things that he's able to do.

10:00

old pup is dog of nine years old

10:02

had to go on PRT. So the point

10:04

that I want to make there is one,

10:07

it illustrates that if you're

10:09

injecting your dog with testosterone,

10:12

you're really, you know, a true believer levels

10:15

of that. And secondly,

10:17

that Huberman mentioned, you know,

10:19

these positive items, he shared

10:22

less and had less joint

10:24

pain. But really, I think

10:26

the crucial criteria that he

10:29

he was working from is that he

10:31

mentions it boosted this dog's mood and

10:33

that the dog looked at him with

10:35

thanking eyes. And I think that speaks

10:38

to the level of evidence that, you

10:40

know, it takes to get the Huberman

10:42

to regard some treatment as a success.

10:44

I'm kind of imagining Scooby

10:48

Doo. I mean,

10:51

I mean, even if you

10:53

assume, Grant, that this

10:55

testosterone is doing wonderful things for the

10:57

dog, right? It's the best thing for

11:00

him. The idea that the

11:02

dog could somehow be aware

11:05

that these benefits were attributed to the injection.

11:07

Yeah. Dogs

11:13

famously good with their long duration

11:15

causal reasoning. Yeah, they know what's

11:18

going on, Chris. They know. They

11:20

know. Yeah. So

11:22

because I'm sure that dog

11:24

was jabbed, famously dogs enjoy

11:27

injections or, you know, however you give it, maybe just

11:29

give it in the food. I don't know how you

11:32

do TRT. I know when we

11:34

take our dog to the vet and, you know,

11:36

he's got to have the injections. He's looks

11:38

at me with thanking eyes afterwards because he knows

11:40

they could. He

11:43

hates it. He hates the experience. He doesn't

11:45

understand why we've been so mean to him.

11:48

Yeah. Cause actually I was thinking that, well,

11:50

if it's not an injection, if it's food,

11:53

then you know the dog maybe, but that's

11:55

even worse because then how would

11:57

the dog even know? Oh,

12:00

my food tastes like a chilli. What

12:02

did Andrew put in there? And

12:04

then, you know, later, oh, I'm feeling more

12:06

muscular. And then, oh, thank

12:08

you, Andrew. And he did it

12:11

with his eyes. Yeah. And

12:13

also on Hooperman News, he developed an AI,

12:16

which lets you, you

12:18

know, ask questions so that you can search his

12:21

protocols. I think it goes

12:23

through transcripts of his show. So I

12:25

went to a show called Hooperman News, and I was

12:28

of his show. So I went on

12:30

it and asked the questions about, you know, what's

12:32

he said about grinding? But the ones that I

12:35

was most curious about is, what

12:37

has Andrew Hooperman said about vaccines? And

12:39

has he ever recommended COVID vaccines? And

12:41

I already knew the answers, but with

12:43

vaccines, it was like, oh,

12:45

Andrew has never discussed vaccines. It would

12:48

go, he did highlight the issue

12:50

about autism and vaccines and that the

12:52

evidence is not strong there. So it

12:54

kind of says he's never covered it.

12:56

And with COVID vaccines, again,

12:59

kind of emphasizes that he hasn't made

13:01

any strong statements about it. And he

13:03

decided not to talk about it because

13:05

it's outside his area of expertise. Very

13:08

responsible. That's a stance that he

13:10

doesn't seem to apply consistently. But

13:12

the AI, you know, when it was

13:14

giving the answer, it

13:16

did mention that he has on a

13:18

couple of occasions discussed COVID vaccines in

13:21

different contexts. And invariably,

13:23

the context is that he's

13:26

raising the need for empathy

13:28

about alternative points of view and

13:30

about that there are side effects

13:32

that we have to consider. So

13:34

it's just all of

13:37

it is kind of he hasn't said

13:39

anything, but what he has said has

13:41

emphasized that there's two sides

13:43

to every story. So so thank

13:45

him for that service. That was

13:47

a useful thing that he's developed.

13:49

You can search his protocols. Oh,

13:52

yeah, that is good. That is good. I

13:54

won't be searching his protocols, but it's good

13:56

to know it's there. Okay.

14:00

The men and brogan

14:02

post testosterone adult or

14:04

balls with perfectly healthy

14:06

attitude towards is that

14:08

approaching senescence and immortality.

14:10

But let's leave them

14:12

floating. I during the

14:14

Girl Galaxy and turned.

14:17

To. The. Episode

14:19

of We Have for People Today. So.

14:22

Today mot we have ah

14:24

a right to apply slice

14:26

discussion slides to be it

14:29

with one Sam Harris by

14:31

the I don't think we

14:34

need to introduce him to

14:36

many people neuer audience but

14:38

he is a public intellectual.

14:41

has written books on. He

14:43

if he has I'm on three

14:45

well on the nature of of

14:47

of cell phone. Telling. The

14:50

Truth on Ah on various

14:52

things and he has a

14:55

successful podcast and they successful

14:57

up for meditation and introspective

15:00

purposes so we have talked

15:02

to him previously recovered. And

15:05

his material recently on a on

15:07

a podcast and he agreed to.

15:10

Come. On and you know discuss of

15:12

us some of the things we said

15:14

and some broader topics. Nevsky exercise his

15:16

right to reply acid free formerly covered

15:18

him on the Great in the Garage

15:20

and Machida. Little introduction to remember Honestly

15:22

if you listen to the can the

15:24

Garage Eternity Sam Harris's then. He

15:27

did. You meet you want to Lost

15:29

out of our citizens. As I said,

15:31

this is his sister. It's an Ems

15:33

that so you know we'd We'd always

15:35

know what's happened by the magical podcasting.

15:37

It's already a card so I did

15:40

one that took this opportunity. It's just

15:42

that much about. this is one point

15:44

during the discussion as you might anticipate

15:46

there's no back and for fun and

15:48

whatnot. Then I will say this time

15:50

I don't mention tribalism. not even once.

15:52

I didn't say s Today I was

15:54

tempted say the car five. but if

15:57

you go. back and listen to the original

15:59

episode when i can up. I

16:01

actually did at the introduction of that episode,

16:03

explain, you know, we're part of the versions

16:05

of perspectives. So if you want to hear

16:07

that, go there. And we tried not to

16:09

cover the same ground as before, but there

16:12

were some restrictions about the time and whatnot. So

16:14

at the end, it ends up a little bit

16:16

rushed and condensed, but that's the nature of

16:19

people being busy and having schedules and

16:21

whatnot. So but I deserve the credit

16:23

because I didn't mention tribalism. So you

16:25

all can't complain. Yeah. I mean, tribalism

16:27

is one of our banned topics. There'll

16:30

be no talk of tribalism on our podcast ever

16:32

again. The other thing that we never read again

16:34

is that we're not going to

16:36

talk about the nature of consciousness and whether it's a

16:38

mystery or not. No, that's bad. You

16:40

keep saying that. Let's wait till Kevin

16:42

Mitchell comes on and let's see what

16:45

happens. No, I don't want to.

16:47

Okay. But that's not what I wanted

16:49

to mention, Matt. That was me just giving

16:51

myself credit. But I wanted just one very

16:53

quick thing to know at the end, we're

16:55

talking about somewhat sensitive topics of

16:58

like the far right and rising authoritarianism

17:00

in various European states. And

17:03

Sam is giving his thoughts there. And

17:05

during that, he ends up

17:07

characterizing the UK and

17:09

London in particular, almost as if

17:12

it has fallen to a self

17:14

Islamist empire. And I'm

17:16

not sure that I would agree with that

17:18

characterization. But as you will see in that

17:21

period, we were kind of pressed

17:23

for time. So this is just to say that

17:26

us not leaping in with objections

17:28

should not be taken at that point

17:30

or any other part of the interview

17:32

as us endorsing the characterization

17:35

because I do not think

17:38

it is fair to present London as

17:40

having fallen to the

17:42

jihadis. Nor do I think that

17:44

all the protesters at the various

17:48

antiwar marches or critical of Israel

17:51

marches are all supporting

17:53

Hamas. There are segments

17:56

Of that audience that at least have a

17:59

rather ambivalent. It selective traditional, not

18:01

my eyes. I think a lot of

18:03

people are just, you know, Left.

18:05

The anti war types. So. So

18:08

yeah okay so that sir and voice

18:10

disagreements duly noted That Chris obviously was

18:12

nothing one seriously agreed with every word.

18:14

But you know as I you hate

18:16

it, it only applies the me where

18:19

you don't hear my object. That means

18:21

that he signs off outside the up

18:23

to be upset her ass is just

18:25

to the A minds and send your

18:27

correspondent says way a half minutes yep

18:30

I can So good for let's move

18:32

on. Yeah so anyway let's get to

18:34

the interview on the I'll see you

18:36

after. For. I'll be brief.

18:39

Okay and so he we have a

18:41

with us Sam Harris thanks very much

18:43

for joining is Sam and exercising your

18:45

right to reply and actually having an

18:47

interesting chat with Chris as well. Yeah

18:49

good to see gentlemen I believe some

18:51

that you listened to the episode that

18:54

we stayed on you which which must

18:56

have been a joy is as a

18:58

create entertaining moment and have some points

19:00

a dude like this in a result

19:02

ah sorry push back on and then.

19:05

assuming. We end up with time

19:07

those similar topics of we would

19:09

might provide that we have different

19:11

opinions on file. I think some

19:13

of them might. Come up

19:15

and the point that you might be a

19:17

so let's see But thanks for coming on.

19:19

Yeah. I've. Been doing. It's interesting

19:22

when people do so the floor is

19:24

yours. Eli I seem to remember a

19:26

guy did listen to the the audio

19:28

but damn. Spin! While

19:30

I seem to remember, two things stood out,

19:32

One one is that you. Salsa.

19:35

Me for. My.

19:37

I'm Lab Leak episode with Matt

19:39

Ridley and Alina Chan. He.

19:43

Seemed to wish that I had

19:45

done much more. Adversarial

19:47

research and. Was.

19:49

Far less credulous on the on

19:51

the point of the lab late

19:54

hypothesis, and he seemed to. Suggest.

19:56

that i had some commitment to

19:59

believe in in a lab leak

20:01

as opposed to a zoonotic origin, which really I don't.

20:04

I mean, my only hobby

20:07

horse to ride into that conversation was that

20:10

I, the lab leak

20:12

hypothesis always struck me as totally

20:14

plausible and not at all racist.

20:16

And as you know, it was

20:19

immediately condemned as a,

20:21

you know, as a racist symptom

20:23

of bigotry, largely

20:26

because, you know, it's some version of it had come

20:28

out of Trump's mouth. But

20:31

it was always plausible and it is

20:33

in fact still plausible. I mean, you know,

20:35

I've since listened to your episode, which

20:38

followed mine, you know, where you, you know,

20:40

you brought on your, you had your experts

20:42

on. And

20:45

yes, if I had heard that before I

20:47

recorded with Matt and Alina, I might have

20:50

asked a few more skeptical questions. But

20:52

the truth is even in the aftermath

20:54

of hearing your episode, it's still, you know,

20:57

the jury's still out on, it's

20:59

still totally respectable to believe that,

21:01

that a lab leak is at

21:03

least still possible. And as you

21:05

know, the intelligence

21:08

community is split on it. I think the FBI

21:10

and the DOE still claim

21:13

that it's likely of

21:16

lab origin based on evidence that is

21:18

not publicly available, if I'm not mistaken.

21:23

And as for trusting the

21:27

community of virologists, either

21:31

reasons to, you know, this also came out

21:33

a little bit of my episode with

21:36

Matt and Alina. The reasons to worry

21:38

that the world's leading

21:40

virologists were not altogether forthcoming,

21:44

you know, around what happened and around what they actually

21:46

suspected. Donald

21:49

McNeil, the New York Times writer who

21:51

has covered pandemics for 25 years

21:53

for the Times until he Was

21:56

defenestrated for, you know, a war.

22:00

The reasons, as you might know, He

22:03

just came out with a book talking

22:05

about how he knows that are some

22:07

the leading by Rodgers A in America.

22:10

Really? Were lied to him any kind

22:12

of circle the wagons and he eg,

22:14

I think through a Freedom of Information

22:17

act he got their slack communication and

22:19

they were. They were collaborating to bleed

22:21

him a stray when he was reporting

22:23

on the possibility of a lab leaky

22:25

or in early on. For. You

22:28

know, out again working for the New York Times or

22:30

and he's talk about that in his in his book

22:32

this guy again the system as since I recall my

22:34

podcast. So.

22:37

I like again I would. If I were

22:39

going to do that job that interview again

22:41

again with with Matt and Lean I would

22:43

I would. plowing in a few of your

22:45

skeptical points from your episode. Certainly.

22:47

But. It's. Just I hate

22:49

it still is sort of and coin

22:51

toss own for me. What? whether it's

22:54

it's zoonotic her or lap lake and.

22:56

We. Certainly can't trust the Ccp to

22:58

be forthcoming and transparent on this subject.

23:00

I'm in a have not been. Good.

23:03

Collaborators at all in this is that they purchase

23:05

been start adversaries as far as I now. so.

23:09

You. Know I don't trust the viral adjust

23:11

entirely A may I have done other

23:13

episodes on. My. Concern around virus

23:15

on day in and near the deep vision

23:18

program. That. Has since been abandoned to the

23:20

United States was in my mind of. A

23:22

total scandal intellectually and and

23:24

ethically. I. Think allow that work is

23:26

deeply sauce back and the fact that there any

23:28

by Rodgers who. Don't. See that

23:30

now is some is of great concern

23:33

to me. So

23:35

I'm. He. i'm as

23:38

a as just as good as kind

23:40

of my vomiting up my my memory

23:42

of what what my reaction was when

23:44

i heard your your criticism as a

23:46

as a couple of points that some

23:48

that i think like one single we

23:50

will definitely agree on is that it's

23:52

not off the table to reason about

23:54

scientists non scientists to consider the possibility

23:56

of allow play tonight i think all

23:59

of the x that we discussed

24:01

with also made that point. And

24:03

also that even that it's perfectly

24:05

reasonable that people would be skeptical

24:07

when they hear various details and

24:09

that we are right to not trust

24:11

the CCP account, which to be

24:13

clear, they were also denying that there

24:15

are any, you know, relevant animals

24:17

being sold in markets initially and so

24:20

on. So the CCP, like not

24:22

being forthcoming, seems like a given

24:24

that most actors in this

24:27

space would agree on. Actually,

24:29

the one point I would add there, which

24:31

I forgot to say is that it's always

24:33

struck me as strange that there is this

24:36

preference for the zoonotic

24:38

wet market story, because that

24:40

actually strikes me as politically, the

24:43

more invidious and, you know, not to say

24:46

racist account, I mean, it's

24:48

just I just think it's a worse

24:50

look for the Chinese to

24:52

be maintaining these atrocious

24:54

wet markets at, you

24:56

know, and imperiling all of humanity, because they

24:58

can't figure out how to stop eating raccoon

25:00

dogs and pangolins and all the other crap

25:03

they have in these markets piled

25:05

on top of each other. It's

25:08

just that that looks more

25:10

barbaric and insane than

25:12

a lab leak. Like the lab

25:14

leaks happen to everyone, the most

25:16

civilized, most careful societies have lab

25:18

leaks, we know that and it's

25:20

a great concern. But the idea

25:22

that there would be this passionate

25:25

bias as

25:28

a hedge against so-called racism and

25:31

xenophobia for a zoonotic

25:34

origin makes absolutely no sense to

25:36

me. Yeah, of course, you're talking

25:38

about like political narratives and preferences

25:40

and that is

25:42

the preference I detect in the

25:44

reaction to anyone who is speculated

25:47

about a lab leak. Yeah,

25:49

I mean, the other lens that's look at

25:51

it, I mean, this is how we try

25:53

to approach it is that you focus on

25:55

the scientific evidence rather than the spin either

25:57

way and, you know, the. As

26:00

far as I understand, the scientific consensus

26:02

has only firmed up since the interviews

26:05

that you had and we had. The

26:07

discourse is always there. There's

26:10

always political stuff going on. Trump

26:12

was definitely using the issue as a

26:14

political football. There was definitely a reaction

26:17

against that claiming about xenophobia and racism,

26:19

whatever. But that's all on the

26:21

surface of the discourse, right? Underneath that, you either

26:23

believe that all the scientists are corrupt and they're

26:25

all in the pocket of somebody or

26:27

you believe that there is actually a community of

26:30

career virologists, experts and specialists who

26:32

don't really care much about

26:34

Trump or the CCP or anything like

26:37

that and they're actually beavering away

26:39

to figure out the evidence on where the

26:41

virus actually came from. I would

26:43

say some that like the experts

26:45

we spoke to, one of them,

26:47

Michael Warberry, for example, was on

26:49

a paper originally arguing for more

26:51

efforts to be presented to investigate

26:53

the lab-like origins but he subsequently

26:55

changed his position based on investigations

26:58

and evidence and all the experts

27:00

that we talked to in that

27:02

episode, they weren't saying it's racist

27:04

to ever consider it. They were saying

27:07

the overwhelming weight of evidence continues to

27:09

point to this being likely. They

27:11

were talking about the genetic evidence and

27:14

the epidemiological evidence and

27:16

so on. On the

27:18

counter side, and this is kind of

27:20

the criticism, I think the main criticism

27:22

that at least I was levying is

27:25

that very recently there was an expert

27:27

survey on the general weight

27:29

that you attach a probability

27:31

to a lab-like versus a

27:33

natural zoonosis origin and

27:35

the results show from epidemiologists and

27:37

virologists overwhelmingly the consensus is that

27:40

a lab-like is less likely. It's

27:42

something like 80% and

27:44

relevant virologists were on the

27:46

side of natural zoonosis being

27:49

more likely. That's still saying that

27:51

there's scope for disagreement but Alina

27:53

Chan and Matt Redley, in this case when

27:55

you spoke to them, they

27:58

presented the case that that

28:00

there was a very strong

28:02

implication that virologists are potentially

28:04

conspiring to hide their own

28:07

culpability. In the

28:09

case of a lot of people that we're

28:11

talking to, that clearly doesn't seem to be

28:13

the motivation, whereas on the

28:15

lab leak side, there are people

28:17

who now have profiles purely about

28:20

promoting the lab leak as a possibility.

28:24

In the case of Matt Ridley, who I know

28:26

is a respected science writer and I know that

28:28

many people are fond of him, Richard Dawkins reads

28:30

him and so on, but he also does have

28:32

a history of advocating

28:35

various fringe positions, including on

28:37

climate contrarianism, alternative origins, DHIV,

28:39

AIDS. Well,

28:42

just to be clear, that I knew

28:44

nothing about, but again, you have to

28:46

take people's views as they

28:48

come. I mean, obviously, some people can entertain

28:50

sufficiently crazy ideas that I would never want

28:53

to talk to them. But,

28:56

and RFK Jr. is one of those

28:58

people. But yeah, I mean,

29:00

Matt is a totally respected science

29:02

writer about biology and he's written a

29:05

bunch of books that many people have found valuable and

29:07

as you say, Dawkins is one

29:09

of them. And yeah,

29:14

I can't be held responsible for views of his

29:16

that I'm not aware of. I know he's been

29:19

somewhat contrarian with respect to climate, but there's

29:21

a bunch of people in that bin who we can't cancel.

29:27

You know, you talked about in

29:29

the usually in the context of the

29:31

rampant conspiracies that you see all over

29:33

the place, but including then I don't

29:35

know the Bret Weinstein side of the

29:37

ad, wherever that is, right, you know,

29:39

or Alex Jones or Elon Musk, and

29:42

they show a tendency to endorse

29:44

a wide variety of conspiracies. There

29:46

isn't just one. It's, you know,

29:48

that there is a history of

29:51

conspiracies that it should lower your

29:53

assessments when

29:55

they're alleging another conspiracy, right? Like,

29:57

at least not that the conspiracy is true.

29:59

but the fact that they are

30:02

alleging it means something significant because

30:04

they are prone to alleged conspiracies.

30:06

So in that case, I heard

30:08

you very eloquently talk about with

30:10

Joe Rogan or Brett Weinstein that

30:13

they're selecting experts on COVID,

30:15

you know, people like Pierre

30:17

Corey or Robert Malone, Peter

30:19

McCulloch, who have genuine credentials.

30:21

And they then

30:23

give their audience the impression

30:26

that because there's no respectable

30:28

figure to kind of like to be

30:30

it back the following week, that

30:33

the fringe position is

30:36

much more firm and

30:38

convincing than it is. So there seemed

30:40

the potential parallel there

30:42

from if your

30:44

podcast has on like a Lena Chan

30:46

and Matt Ridley, and then

30:49

leaves the lab leak issue alone. I would

30:51

imagine that a lot of your audience would

30:53

come away thinking that a

30:56

lot of the criticisms that they put

30:58

are convincing because they pushed them in

31:00

a very convincing way. So like the

31:02

experts that we had on, if you

31:04

think those questions are worth answering, why

31:07

not seek out to raise them with them?

31:09

Well, again, I would have had I known

31:11

them again, you had you did your podcast

31:13

after I did mine, right?

31:16

So I didn't have the bet.

31:18

You know, I need a time machine to to

31:20

be fully informed. And it is true that I

31:22

didn't, you know, I didn't do much more than

31:24

read their book to prepare for

31:26

that interview. So it's not like I I

31:30

went into this having preloaded my

31:33

brain with lots of reasons to

31:35

be skeptical of their thesis. And

31:38

but but actually, the the the

31:42

line we took in that interview was

31:44

was, I thought, fairly balanced.

31:47

I mean, anyone listening to the interview

31:49

would come out feeling like, well,

31:52

the lab leak certainly seems very

31:55

likely or more likely than not, perhaps to

31:57

me. But it's still it was still sort

31:59

of. and COINTOS, so and it wasn't

32:01

like this is 99%, you know, we have a

32:04

90% confidence that it

32:07

was of lab origin and

32:11

neither Matt nor Alina were claiming

32:14

that. I

32:16

mean, I think I probably, hearing your

32:18

interviews, I probably became a little more

32:21

skeptical of the lab leak origin but

32:24

still, now, I mean, again, it's

32:26

still not a decided question. You still

32:28

have the Department of Energy and the

32:30

FBI saying it's likely

32:33

based on evidence that we can't see

32:36

and again, you should listen to Donald

32:38

McNeil's account or read

32:40

his account in his recent book of

32:43

what it was like to deal with the virologists, right? I mean,

32:46

there was a circling of the wagons. There

32:48

was a pretending to be

32:51

settled on zoonotic origin when behind closed doors

32:53

they were saying, oh, shit, this

32:55

looks like a lab leak, right? So,

32:58

you know, as far as, you

33:00

know, that doesn't answer the basic

33:02

scientific charge that your

33:05

guests made which I think is very interesting. I

33:08

forget some of the details but if memory

33:10

serves, perhaps the most interesting

33:12

was that it looks like there were two

33:16

origin stories, right, from

33:18

that suggests more of

33:20

a zoonotic origin

33:22

as opposed to a lab leak origin

33:26

but in any case, it's,

33:28

yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know that we

33:32

can extract much more wisdom from this. I

33:34

realize I didn't do the interview you wished

33:36

I had done but it is just

33:38

true that I, you know, I did not have much

33:41

prior bias one way or the other going

33:43

in. It just, my really

33:45

strong bias was everyone

33:47

who was claiming that the lab

33:49

leak thesis was racism was

33:52

a moron, right, and should

33:54

be chastised as such until

33:58

the end of the world. That's

34:01

still where I stand. Okay. I

34:03

think Chris disputes some of the minor points in

34:05

some of that, but we're not going to let him

34:08

respond. We can let the lab

34:10

leak lie, I think, for now. So,

34:12

Sam, was there anything else you wanted

34:14

to respond to from that episode? Well, I

34:16

think I remember you – I forget how

34:19

you – what

34:21

your focus was in the conversation, but you seem

34:23

to be saying that many

34:25

of my claims about what

34:28

one can realize through meditation, I think

34:30

in particular that the illusiveness of the

34:32

self, that

34:35

those were kind of

34:37

merely subjective claims that I

34:39

was kind of trumping

34:43

up into some greater

34:46

than rational status

34:49

as objective claims, right? But

34:51

I get – like, the

34:54

path by which I'm seeking to

34:56

make credible

35:02

claims about the nature of human subjectivity

35:04

is not one that can

35:07

actually be walked because all it really is

35:09

is a matter of personal experience or personal

35:12

opinion down that path. I mean, introspection

35:15

on some level can't bear objective

35:17

fruit. And I would just

35:19

challenge that. What's happening – what I heard happening in

35:21

your description, you might want to just give

35:24

your criticism again so that our listeners

35:26

can hear it, but what seemed to

35:29

be happening for me is that you were confusing

35:31

the linguistic

35:35

claims for the reality

35:37

indicated, right? Like,

35:41

yes, when talked about, it

35:43

is just language, right? These are just, you

35:46

know, small mouth noises that I'm making now and anything I

35:48

say about the nature of mind is just going to be

35:50

a string of sentences, but

35:54

what I'm talking about isn't just at

35:56

bottom a string of sentences and there are

35:58

features of the mind. mind

36:00

that we can only experience

36:03

directly from a first

36:05

person side about which we

36:07

can nevertheless make objective claims, right?

36:09

These are not merely subjective claims,

36:12

not merely bias, not merely personal.

36:14

There's a functionally infinite number of things you

36:16

can say about the mind from a first

36:18

person point of view which

36:21

are nonetheless objective, you

36:23

know, epistemologically objective

36:26

while ontologically subjective.

36:29

I think I got lost somewhere

36:31

there. Chris, sorry. And

36:34

it's partly that I'm a little bit vague about the crux

36:36

of these. Well, actually, let me just sharpen that up with

36:38

a couple of claims. So, for instance, I

36:42

mean, again, it may

36:45

sound hyperbolic for me to

36:47

say you can make an infinite number of

36:49

claims about the mind, the subjectivity of people

36:52

that are nevertheless objective, but you obviously

36:54

can, right? So, for instance, I could

36:56

say, you know, what was

36:58

John F. Kennedy thinking

37:01

the moment he got assassinated, right?

37:03

Well, we don't know, but there's an

37:06

infinite number of things he wasn't thinking and we

37:08

can rule those out absolutely, right? He was not

37:11

attempting to factor the largest

37:13

prime number human beings

37:15

have discovered in the years since,

37:17

right? He wasn't thinking about string

37:19

theory. He wasn't thinking about

37:22

what a genius Edward Witten is, right?

37:24

Just add your propositions that he was

37:26

not entertaining, you know, ad

37:29

libitum. It's just these

37:31

are objective claims about his mind, right?

37:35

We know what we these are things that

37:37

we can rule out, right? So, we're talking

37:39

about his subjectivity. We're talking about what

37:41

it was like to be him from a first person point

37:43

of view and we're making claims

37:46

about what wasn't there, right, in his

37:49

conscious mind. And

37:52

so, that's just one way to

37:54

see that you can make objective

37:57

claims about subjective states of mind

37:59

without any doubt. Engaging in

38:01

introspective practices, I would concede

38:04

that there are basic experiences

38:06

that the nature of the

38:09

way that human minds operate that if somebody is

38:11

to engage in, you know, introspective practice in

38:13

a certain way, that they will very likely

38:15

have those experiences, right? And I think that

38:18

a coach of what you're saying about, you

38:20

know, being able to make

38:22

statements that are objectively

38:24

true or that you can introspect

38:26

and see for yourself if it's

38:28

easy to not make thoughts

38:31

about the future and past arise in your mind when

38:33

you just sit, right? It would be

38:35

very strange if somebody sat down and said, oh,

38:37

I have no problem doing that, right?

38:39

That you've met a quite interesting

38:41

person in that case. But from

38:43

there, there are plenty of different

38:46

introspective traditions and

38:48

spiritual, religious, philosophical

38:50

practices that investigate

38:53

mind using introspective practices

38:55

and arrive at rather

38:57

different conclusions about the

38:59

nature of mind. Now, there are mystics

39:01

and comparative religious people who have tried

39:04

to argue that they're essentially just grasping

39:06

the elephant from all different points. But

39:09

the conclusions of a

39:11

transcendental meditation practitioner and

39:14

a dog-shin Buddhist

39:16

are often different because in

39:19

part of the framing that those

39:21

traditions have provided to help interpret

39:23

those experiences. And our

39:26

argument, I think, is

39:28

that you, like all

39:30

people who engage in

39:32

those practices, have inherited

39:34

a particular interpretive framework,

39:37

which you tend to present as reflecting

39:40

a kind of universal insight

39:42

that people from any tradition

39:44

could have. Well, no, it's universal just

39:46

to be like, it's universal if it's

39:49

true, right? So I fully agree with

39:51

you that there are different traditions and

39:53

they don't totally agree. And

39:55

from my point of view, the various

39:57

traditions are more or less cluttered with

39:59

consciousness. concepts, some concepts are more

40:01

useful than others. Some

40:04

teachings, you know, I do somewhat take

40:06

the Buddhist view that some teachings are

40:08

more appropriate for different sorts of

40:10

people. So there's kind of a skillful means argument

40:12

that some of these seeming differences of

40:15

opinion can be reconciled with

40:18

a different skillful, differences of

40:20

skillful means for depending

40:22

on the audience. But

40:25

I think, yes, I think there are maps

40:27

that fit the territory better than others. But

40:32

there is a territory, right? And there

40:34

are certain, you know, you're talking at

40:36

the leading edge, yes, there might be

40:38

differences of opinion. And there's

40:41

certainly differences with respect to the

40:43

metaphysical picture suggested by the experiences

40:46

that practitioners have. And I'm

40:48

very slow to

40:51

draw any metaphysical conclusions from any

40:53

experience. I'm very, I'm fairly skeptical

40:55

about, you know, all of that. So

40:59

I don't tend to talk like Deepak Chopra

41:01

and say that the because you experienced this

41:03

thing in the darkness of your closed eyes,

41:06

you now know something about cosmology, right?

41:08

So these are what I'm what I

41:11

claim is that we can make

41:13

objective claims about the nature of experience, not

41:15

about the nature of the cosmos on the

41:17

basis of meditation. And and

41:19

one and there are many claims that

41:22

there would be no disagreement about really, no matter

41:24

how, how different the

41:26

traditions are, like, for instance, that, you

41:30

know, thoughts arise and pass

41:32

away, right? Your thoughts are

41:34

not permanent. You know, you say there's

41:37

this experience of, you know, first there

41:39

was that particular thought of what

41:41

you ate for lunch yesterday wasn't there

41:43

a moment ago, and now it's there and

41:45

there it's gone, right? So it's, they,

41:48

there's a transitory quality

41:52

to the to the flow of thought,

41:55

right? To each increment of thought that

41:57

you can, you can, you can you

42:00

think about distinctly or experience

42:03

distinctly. So anyone who's claiming

42:05

that that doesn't happen and, you know, thoughts are

42:08

permanent, you know, that would be an odd person

42:10

to have a conversation with, right? It's

42:12

almost like saying that, you know, sounds are permanent, right?

42:15

Or sentences are permanent. All

42:18

right, this sentence eventually comes to an end,

42:20

you know, period, full stop. So

42:23

does the analogous thought. But

42:26

that's again, that's there. There's certain things follow

42:28

from that, right? I mean, so if you

42:30

can be if you can notice the transitory

42:33

nature of mental

42:35

objects, you know, thoughts included,

42:38

any and emotions, right, you know, that

42:40

the states of the state of anger, it can't

42:42

be permanent, right? Because it wasn't there a moment

42:44

ago, whatever physiology that

42:47

that constitute it, constitutes

42:49

it in this moment is by

42:51

its very by the sheer fact that

42:53

it arose is it

42:56

will prove impermanent. It's not going to

42:58

be there for a week and a half, right? It's

43:00

not even going to be there for an hour, it's not even going

43:02

to be there. So in here, we get closer to a an

43:04

objective claim that's kind of interesting and

43:07

certainly psychologically useful. I would the

43:09

claim is that it's not going

43:11

to be there for even minutes.

43:16

Unless you get lost in thought about the

43:18

reasons why you're angry again, so that you

43:20

can't sustain the emotional reaction of anger

43:23

for more than orders of seconds

43:25

or tens of seconds, I would

43:27

I would claim unless

43:30

you then unless you get lost

43:32

in thought in a very

43:34

dream like way, identified with thought

43:37

about why you're angry, right? And

43:39

so that that is, you know, this is the first

43:41

useful thing I've said from a meditative point of

43:43

view, that offers a key

43:46

to how you can become free of

43:48

anger if you want to be, you

43:50

can notice the linkage between thought and

43:52

emotion and break

43:54

the connection, you can you can notice thoughts as

43:56

thought and how they're impermanent, you can notice the physiology

43:58

of anger and how it's impermanent and

44:01

you can continually break

44:03

the spell of identification with

44:05

thought and notice that an

44:07

emotion like anger has a

44:09

certain half-life and is very,

44:12

very brief, right? Astoundingly brief

44:14

and there's liberation from

44:16

anger to be found in that. Again,

44:18

this is anyone adequate to

44:21

the task of observing this, right? And

44:24

not everybody is and it takes a little training

44:26

to become so can

44:29

converge on an agreement

44:31

about the nature of this experience, right? And

44:33

anyone who says, oh no, that's complete bullshit.

44:35

Whenever I get angry, it lasts for 17

44:38

hours and I'm not thinking

44:40

at all at that time. I

44:43

know that person is unable

44:45

to witness certain things about

44:47

them, about what it's like to be them based

44:52

on just a lack of facility or a lack of

44:54

training. And you can know that

44:56

every bit as much as you can know, you

45:00

know, that somebody claiming to run a

45:03

three-minute mile is just his guy, he's

45:05

got a broken stopwatch, right? It's just

45:07

not happening. Right? Sam,

45:09

I might jump in and reply. I'm

45:12

a little bit vague on exactly what way she

45:14

was too. I think it

45:16

partly could be the idea of

45:19

pointing to subjective experience and like,

45:21

for instance, the benefits you experience

45:23

from meditation as

45:26

the kind of evidence for a

45:28

particular way of looking at things.

45:31

I don't dispute that that may

45:33

well be true. I'm not against

45:35

meditation. All for self-reflection. All for

45:37

taking a pause, practicing a bit

45:39

of simple awareness, especially the way

45:41

you just phrased it then. It's

45:43

kind of just good advice, right?

45:45

It's homespun wisdom perhaps in

45:48

some ways, but that's the kind of

45:50

advice I'd give to like a young

45:52

person, for instance, who was a bit

45:54

emotional and not practicing a bit of

45:56

self-reflection. The problem is when we point to our own self-reflection,

45:58

we're not going to be able to do that. subjective

46:00

experiences, right? Like the immense

46:02

calmness and groundedness that we're

46:04

experiencing by doing X, then

46:07

ultimately other people have to take it

46:09

on faith a little bit,

46:11

right? Unless they do

46:14

the thing that we're telling them to

46:16

do. So in terms of epistemology or

46:18

whatever, it's not fundamentally that different from

46:20

the revealed truth that

46:22

a mystic doing any

46:24

other kind of thing, saying that he's

46:27

getting messages from God or pulling them

46:29

out of a hat or something like

46:31

that. It's quite different

46:33

because again, I'm not

46:35

making that the lurch into metaphysics,

46:38

right? If you're claiming

46:40

to be hearing the voice of God, right?

46:43

Now you might be claiming to hear voices

46:46

and that can be an honest claim about

46:48

which I really wouldn't doubt. If someone said

46:50

to me, listen, I hear a

46:52

voice and it's not my own, well, you

46:54

know, then we're talking about schizophrenia or we're talking

46:56

about, you know, something, but the

46:59

claim that this is the voice of God is

47:04

a metaphysical claim. It's

47:06

a claim about the

47:08

relationship between this person's

47:10

subjectivity and other

47:14

entities in the cosmos and

47:17

it's testable, right? So like if

47:19

I wanted to test whether someone

47:21

was actually hearing the voice of

47:24

an omniscient being, I would

47:26

ask that voice a few questions,

47:28

right? And that is provable. The

47:30

person could give me answers of

47:33

a sort that would prove that they're

47:35

in contact with some kind of superhuman intelligence,

47:37

right? I could, you know, I have a,

47:41

I could write down on a piece of paper,

47:43

you know, a 15-digit number and

47:46

known only to me, not even known to me because

47:48

I can't even remember it. I just wrote it down

47:50

and I've forgotten it, right? And it's in my desk.

47:53

Tell me what that number is, right? If the person can

47:55

tell me what that number is based on this voice they're

47:57

hearing, okay, I'm all ears.

48:00

Let's talk about the

48:02

miraculous situation we're in, right? So

48:06

all of this is amenable to testing. The

48:09

claim I'm making, I mean, and I think that the claim that

48:11

you were most uncomfortable with was not so much like the

48:14

impermanent of thought or the impermanence of emotion,

48:16

which seems kind of this remedial self-help technique,

48:18

but the more the spookier

48:20

claim that the ego is an illusion, right?

48:23

The sense of there being a subject in

48:25

the center of consciousness is

48:27

an illusion. And I will

48:29

admit that is a claim I'm making

48:32

that is not just for me and it's not

48:34

just for people who agree with me, it's for

48:36

you whether you realize it or not, right? So

48:38

it's a kind of, you

48:41

know, it's an

48:43

intrusive claim, it purports to be

48:45

objective. And the analogy I

48:48

would give, which I've given before, and

48:50

perhaps even on your podcast, is

48:52

to the optic

48:54

blind spot, right? So like I have

48:56

a story as to why the

48:59

optic blind spot is there to be noticed. I

49:02

also have a story as to why it's hard to

49:04

notice and why most people don't notice it and

49:07

it requires a little training to notice it. And

49:10

some people also notice it and it's

49:13

not even interesting. And I was like, so what, right?

49:16

All of that maps on to

49:18

the territory of so-called

49:20

self-transcendence or noticing the illusiveness

49:22

of the self rather

49:25

faithfully, right? It's neuroanatomically

49:27

plausible that this would be true

49:31

and it's, as is the

49:33

case with the optic blind spot, it's

49:35

hard to notice, you know, arguably harder to notice

49:37

with respect to meditating

49:40

on the illusiveness of the self. And

49:45

it can be noticed and then overlooked again, right?

49:48

And it's in the same

49:50

way that the blind spot can. But it's an

49:52

objective claim in the same way. The only difference

49:54

is it's a little bit harder.

49:58

In some cases, maybe a lot harder. to confirm

50:02

and I

50:06

can't easily say, I can't, you know,

50:08

we can't use a piece of paper

50:10

and a pencil to do

50:12

it in a way that is super

50:14

reliable because it is harder, right? And

50:17

that's just an accident of,

50:20

you know, just what it takes to

50:22

notice this thing. I think something that

50:24

might tighten up the disagreement here is

50:26

that when I've heard you present this,

50:28

you know, you tend to

50:30

preemit that people, they don't like the

50:32

thought of not having a permanent self,

50:35

right? It's a kind of challenge to

50:37

those notions of identity. Yeah, some people,

50:39

yeah. But if they engage in the

50:42

practice, they'll come to see that. And

50:45

I had and have an

50:47

interest in introspective practices. I focused

50:49

on Buddhist traditions for my initial

50:51

studies because of like an interest

50:53

in that, which I think

50:55

mirrors a lot of the interest that you

50:57

had when younger as well and you've retained

50:59

the interest. But whenever I

51:01

engage in introspective practice, whenever I

51:03

use your app as well, most

51:06

of the things about the self that

51:08

you point out about that, when

51:10

people try to grasp that idea of

51:13

a little homunculus, it falls

51:15

apart on observation, right? But

51:17

I agree with pretty much

51:19

all of the kind of

51:21

insights that you can gain from

51:23

introspective practices about the way

51:25

that the minds are operating and the narratives that

51:28

they're constructing and so on. But

51:30

I haven't reached the same conclusion as you

51:32

or a lot of Buddhists

51:34

in regard the notion that

51:36

like self

51:39

is non-existent, except to

51:41

say that the popular conception of

51:44

self is non-existent. But there are

51:46

aspects because like you can focus

51:49

on an individual moment and go

51:51

down the layers of analysis until you get

51:53

to the level of atoms and then say,

51:55

well, where's the actual person? It's just by

51:57

creating forces around it. And in the same way.

52:00

you can go through thought

52:02

processes down to the individual

52:04

thoughts and you know reactions

52:06

in the individual arising moments

52:08

in consciousness. But the

52:10

patterns in the brain

52:12

and like the way that it's

52:14

structured life experiences are consistent

52:17

patterns over time right that's why we

52:20

have personalities that's why we have autobiographical

52:22

memories and to me

52:24

saying that the sense or autobiographical

52:26

sense is a complete illusion

52:29

is it finds more.

52:31

That's not what I'm saying though part of

52:33

the conclusion might be on what self are

52:36

we talking about right so there are

52:38

many ways we can use the term self and

52:41

there's really only one that I'm

52:43

claiming is illusory right I mean the others

52:45

are are you

52:48

might say are constructed they might not

52:50

be what they seem either right I

52:52

mean like you they're they're they're subjective

52:54

to they're subject to a kind of

52:57

deflationary analysis of the sort you just suggested

52:59

right so you if you if you look

53:02

at it you know any object closely enough

53:04

that it resolves into its constituent parts and

53:07

you know the object itself is not in any of the

53:09

parts right and so and so there's

53:11

this sort of mirage like quality

53:13

to everything that we we decompose

53:15

and so we you know

53:18

everything is just a and a this is this

53:20

is a Buddhist trope I mean just

53:22

to going back to a

53:25

famous uh suit uh the you know the

53:27

the questions of King Melinda where he was

53:29

he was asking the Nagasena

53:35

the uh the the monk

53:37

was asking you know is a chariot in the

53:39

wheel and the axle and the in

53:41

the rope in the carriage in the seat and you

53:44

know you can't find a chariot in any of the

53:46

chariot and you bring all the parts together and you

53:48

have a chariot and and the question

53:50

is like at what point do we actually get a chariot

53:52

I mean you can talk about a chariot without an axle

53:54

but you really can't talk about a chariot

53:56

without a wheel an axle a carriage you know you

53:58

know every every other chariot part and

54:01

so does with any aggregate thing. You can imagine

54:03

a person missing a hand but you can't really

54:05

imagine a person missing, you know, a

54:07

hundred different parts and still be a

54:09

person. I'm

54:13

not saying that people are illusions,

54:15

right? I'm not saying that it's

54:19

mysterious that you

54:21

have your memories and I have my memories and I,

54:23

you know, why don't I wake up

54:25

tomorrow with all of your memories, right? Like that's

54:27

not, so that like there's no

54:30

mystery about personal identity of that sort.

54:34

The self that is illusory, you

54:37

know, that is in fact spurious, that

54:39

doesn't survive analysis and that you can

54:42

actually experience to be absent is

54:45

the self as the presumed

54:47

subject of experience, right? So again,

54:49

forgive me, I feel like we

54:51

must have had this almost identical

54:53

conversation of this sort last

54:56

time but I mean just to

54:58

remind you and your listeners, the

55:02

claim is that most of us, certainly

55:05

most of us, perhaps not all of us but

55:07

most of us, most of the time

55:10

feel like certainly

55:13

prior to any real experience with

55:15

meditation, feel like we

55:19

don't feel identical to our experience,

55:21

right? We feel like we're having

55:24

experience from almost from someplace

55:26

outside of experience or on the edge

55:28

of experience, right? There's this feeling of

55:30

being a subject, a

55:33

locus of consciousness, an

55:35

aimer of attention and if you're

55:37

talking about action, a willer of will, this

55:39

entity that has free will, right? The whole

55:41

free will conversation is just the other side

55:43

of this coin, right? The feeling of agency.

55:46

It's me here doing these things. I'm pushing

55:48

these sentences out, right? I'm having thoughts. I'm

55:51

the thinker of my thoughts and

55:53

I'm the doer of my doings, right? And I'm, you

55:55

know, if I'm gonna reach for something, I'm

55:57

the mode of force. I'm the as

56:00

the subject. And

56:02

so there's this sense that there's

56:04

an observer, right? It's almost like you're

56:06

looking over your own shoulder into the theater

56:09

of your experience. And

56:11

then there's the things you experience. You have

56:13

sights and sounds and sensations and thoughts and

56:15

emotions and it's all changing

56:18

and yet there's this something static

56:20

about the subject, right? There's

56:23

almost a sense that there's an unchanging subject

56:25

that gets carried through moment to moment. That

56:30

subject, the feeling that there's a

56:33

man in the boat, right? Or that you're on

56:35

the bank of the river, you know, watching the

56:38

river of consciousness go flow

56:40

by, that is the

56:42

illusion. And when you look for

56:44

that subject clearly enough, precisely enough,

56:47

if you're attentive enough to what

56:50

it's actually like to look for

56:52

the one who is looking, right? You

56:55

can kind of, there's a subjectively

56:57

speaking, there's a needle to

56:59

thread here and it is again

57:01

somewhat analogous to looking for the optic

57:03

blind spot under the right conditions. You

57:05

can confirm for yourself the

57:08

absence of data. I mean, just as if I give

57:10

you the piece of paper and with the two marks

57:12

on it and you stare at one, you

57:14

stare at the fixation cross and you move at

57:16

the other, the dot, you know, in

57:19

and out of your, you know, in and out of

57:21

existence in your visual field,

57:23

you can confirm for yourself that

57:26

there's this area in the retina where

57:29

you're getting no data, right? Where you're

57:31

just, where there's just an absence of

57:35

visual experience. You

57:39

can do meditation, you know, this kind of

57:41

meditation on the nature of the

57:44

self or

57:47

in Buddhist terms, you

57:49

know, on a

57:51

selflessness or shañata emptiness, depending on how

57:53

you want to think about it. You

57:57

can play at the boundary of that sense

57:59

of self. and no self in

58:02

a refined enough way, in a

58:04

meticulous enough way so as

58:07

to confirm for yourself that this feeling

58:09

of subject, the feeling that you are

58:11

divided from your experience in

58:14

the subject-object way is

58:17

spurious, right? And that there really is, as

58:19

a matter of experience, only experience,

58:21

right? And there's not – you're not on the edge of

58:23

it, you're not in the middle of it, you're

58:26

identical to it, right?

58:28

There is this totality

58:30

of energy, sight,

58:32

sound, sensation, everything in your

58:34

sensorium, including your mind

58:36

and its objects, and

58:38

there's no boundary between you and any

58:40

of it. There is no you to

58:43

be aiming the spotlight of attention into

58:45

it or onto it, right? And

58:49

there are many things that follow from that

58:51

insight. The more you can explore it, the

58:53

more you can sort of unpack its significance

58:55

psychologically. But

58:59

there's a lot to be said

59:01

about that. And there, as Chris pointed

59:03

out, there are differences of opinion about

59:05

the metaphysics of all of that and

59:08

what any of that means and what we

59:10

should think on the basis of that experience.

59:12

But this is a – if there is

59:15

an experience that exists at

59:17

the heart of the perennial philosophy that

59:19

unites all of these mystical traditions to

59:22

some degree, it's this –

59:24

it's the intimation of this experience that,

59:26

again, in certain contexts, immediately gets layered

59:28

with what I consider to be bogus,

59:31

you know, religious concepts and metaphysics.

59:34

But there is this ground truth. I mean,

59:36

it really is the ground

59:38

of being by another name that

59:41

can be discovered.

59:43

And that's – again, it's an objective claim,

59:46

but it's a very simple claim and it

59:48

takes – you know, in my – again,

59:51

in my case, I

59:53

probably spent a year on silent retreat and

59:57

still couldn't reliably notice this. about

1:00:00

my mind, right? So it's like I was, you know,

1:00:03

and by silent retreat, I mean, I mean, like, you

1:00:06

know, really doing nothing, but

1:00:08

meditate for 12 to 18 hours a day. You know,

1:00:12

I did that, you know, the longest I ever

1:00:14

did was three months, but I did that twice

1:00:16

and I did two months, many times in one

1:00:18

month, and I probably done at least a year

1:00:20

before I got enough and I got

1:00:22

kind of crucial instruction for me that

1:00:25

that allowed me to notice this just

1:00:29

very directly without any, you know, real effort and

1:00:31

that was a, as Chris said, I mean, that

1:00:34

was in his Oak Chain context. So there is

1:00:36

a role for precise information

1:00:39

here. I think it matters to

1:00:41

have, if you have a confusing map,

1:00:44

it's not going to be surprising that you're confused

1:00:47

about the territory and I

1:00:49

view some maps as intrinsically

1:00:51

confusing, but anyway,

1:00:54

that's, it's an experiment

1:00:56

you can run on yourself and yes,

1:00:58

it can be frustrating, it can sound

1:01:01

grandiose, it can sound certainly

1:01:05

adjacent to mystical and religious

1:01:07

claims that do not have

1:01:09

good scientific bona fides, but

1:01:12

there's nothing unscientific about this. It really

1:01:14

is, you can tackle this

1:01:16

very much in the spirit of scientific

1:01:18

hypothesis and ultimately

1:01:21

confirm it or not. I

1:01:23

mean, granted, it is somewhat,

1:01:27

I mean,

1:01:30

it's confusing what to make of one's failure to confirm it,

1:01:32

right? Like if you go, if you went on a 10-day

1:01:34

retreat and you didn't experience anything like this and you came

1:01:36

away thinking, well, there's no there there,

1:01:38

you know, I would, I,

1:01:40

you know, I would have nothing to say

1:01:42

but try harder, right? But the problem

1:01:46

is this

1:01:48

insight can't be physically demonstrated in a

1:01:50

way that some things can. Like if

1:01:52

I was telling you, well, it's possible

1:01:54

to hit a golf ball 300 yards,

1:01:58

right? And here's how to do and then

1:02:00

you have someone like Tiger Woods who can do it, just go

1:02:02

up and do it, right? Then it

1:02:04

doesn't matter how much you struggle and fail to do

1:02:06

it, you still know it can be done, right? You

1:02:08

know, like you just saw someone else do it. And

1:02:13

there's some, for certain things, that

1:02:16

can't be demonstrated in that way. Yeah, yeah,

1:02:18

I take that point. I'm sorry to jump

1:02:20

in and cut you off, but I think

1:02:22

we're not gonna get to the bottom of

1:02:24

metaphysics in 25 minutes, but

1:02:27

we've definitely given it a good go.

1:02:30

Because you have to go shortly, I

1:02:32

thought we might move on to some

1:02:34

other topics. Sam, maybe this, I can

1:02:36

tie two together that are, I think,

1:02:39

related. I can't remember if it came

1:02:41

up in the past content, but I

1:02:43

know you've thought about it quite

1:02:45

a bit. So you've done a

1:02:47

number of episodes on the Palestine

1:02:49

and Israel conflict, understandably, and took

1:02:51

quite a strong line

1:02:53

in presenting it as the

1:02:56

forces of civilization fighting the

1:02:58

kind of jihadism, extremism. And

1:03:01

there's a couple of points I'd like

1:03:03

to raise there. But one is that

1:03:05

you very strongly emphasize

1:03:07

the role of jihadism as

1:03:10

like a core component that

1:03:12

goes kind of under-acknowledged, and

1:03:15

that that is part of what

1:03:17

is very much driving the conflict,

1:03:19

and which makes it an asymmetric

1:03:21

warfare, because one side is not

1:03:23

playing by the same rules, right?

1:03:25

Because they are pining for an

1:03:27

everlasting second life, right, so stop

1:03:29

me if there's anything that I've

1:03:31

said wrong there in terms of

1:03:33

framing jihadism as

1:03:35

the central component of that

1:03:37

conflict, motivating it. Yeah, I

1:03:39

mean, it's, I'm

1:03:42

sure I know where you're going here. Let

1:03:44

me just perhaps

1:03:47

save you some time. I fully acknowledge

1:03:49

that in many of these conflicts, and

1:03:51

certainly in the conflict with the Palestinians

1:03:53

between Israel and the Palestinians, there

1:03:56

are other layers to the problem. And there's a

1:03:58

layer of nationalism. You

1:04:00

know Hamas is Hamas is that if you were

1:04:02

gonna ask you know What is the difference between

1:04:04

a group like Hamas and a group

1:04:06

group like the Islamic State? That

1:04:09

the variable of nationalism is is

1:04:11

is certainly a lot of

1:04:13

the difference right and and for you

1:04:16

from that for that reason You

1:04:19

know the the Islamic State jihadist organization

1:04:21

like the Islamic State would view Hamas

1:04:23

as a kind of you know an

1:04:26

apostate Organization right and the

1:04:28

fact that they have the goal of a nation-state

1:04:32

Is anathema right? so

1:04:35

get so it's not just jihadism,

1:04:37

but the thing that worries me

1:04:39

most about this conflict and about

1:04:44

Many of these other conflicts is the

1:04:46

is the fanatical religious layer of it

1:04:48

that that's the thing that makes it

1:04:51

truly Insoluble from my point

1:04:53

of view if it was just ordinary nationalism

1:04:55

even if you add a layer of terrorism

1:04:58

onto nationalism as you did and you know

1:05:00

in the The

1:05:02

so-called troubles and in in Ireland right it's like

1:05:04

that's I The

1:05:06

troubles would be would have been a

1:05:09

much more troublesome You know granted they

1:05:11

were awful, but they would be they

1:05:13

would have been much worse if

1:05:16

you added a layer of Fanatical

1:05:19

commitment to martyrdom and jihad right like

1:05:21

that's that makes things worse And that

1:05:23

and that's that's always the point I

1:05:25

want to bang on about that that

1:05:28

if you're not going to acknowledge that Piece of

1:05:30

it you know like the cancer on top of

1:05:32

the the bacterial infection

1:05:37

We're not we're not talking about

1:05:39

what's real. I think completely that

1:05:41

like any account which doesn't acknowledge

1:05:43

the role of Jihadism

1:05:45

and extremist ideologies would be

1:05:48

absolutely incomplete like you you can't

1:05:52

Deal with Islamic extremism provide

1:05:54

talking about the underlying ideology,

1:05:58

but one of the issues that I

1:06:00

have with the way that you've

1:06:03

presented it is that whenever you

1:06:05

are talking about the need to

1:06:07

take into account what the extremists

1:06:10

say, right, and to look

1:06:12

at what they are telling us, right, the

1:06:14

issue of Tabik for, you know, why

1:06:17

we hate you, you've commented on it and that

1:06:19

kind of thing. There are various

1:06:22

statements from Hamas and other

1:06:24

groups active in that area

1:06:27

which come across as motivated

1:06:29

by jihadist ideology and they want

1:06:31

to wipe Israel out and it's

1:06:34

a holy war. But at the

1:06:36

same time, there are also statements

1:06:38

which very clearly link it

1:06:40

to political grievances,

1:06:42

especially national grievances and

1:06:45

in the off-referenced Hamas Charter,

1:06:48

right, that they started with.

1:06:50

They did produce a

1:06:53

more moderate one. Now, I'm not saying

1:06:55

you've got to hand it to Hamas

1:06:57

for doing that or take them at

1:06:59

the word, but I'm saying that the

1:07:02

fact that they would remove the section,

1:07:04

right, that specifically is openly anti-Semitic, openly

1:07:06

stating that they're going to wipe Israel

1:07:09

out, doesn't that contradict the image

1:07:11

that you're suggesting that if these are

1:07:13

people that are purely motivated by going

1:07:15

to heaven, why don't you see so

1:07:18

many more martyrs? Why would you

1:07:20

find things like them trying to

1:07:23

moderate language in a new charter?

1:07:25

Why not double down? Doesn't

1:07:28

that like somewhat contradict

1:07:31

the notion that it's purely about

1:07:33

the religious ideology from their own lives?

1:07:36

It's not purely, again, it's not purely.

1:07:38

I think it's purely, the problem is

1:07:40

more or less purely religion, right? I

1:07:42

mean, if everyone were Sunni

1:07:45

Muslim in the region, we'd have no problem,

1:07:48

right? So religious

1:07:50

tribalism is the major

1:07:53

variable here, but

1:07:55

jihadism itself is

1:07:58

an additional problem. And,

1:08:01

yeah, I mean, I can, I think be

1:08:04

forgiven for not trusting Hamas. I

1:08:07

think that their original charter is far

1:08:09

closer to what they really

1:08:11

believe and really want than their

1:08:14

subsequent refinement of it, which is still,

1:08:17

you know, not good. It's only

1:08:19

just good by comparison. I

1:08:23

just think they're, you know, they're politically,

1:08:25

you know, perhaps a

1:08:27

little savvier than they used to be.

1:08:29

They realize they have to export this,

1:08:32

you know, their product to the

1:08:35

rest of the world and use the rest of the world as

1:08:37

leverage, but against Israel. But

1:08:39

I mean, still, I mean, just look at

1:08:41

how carefree they are with respect to their

1:08:44

atrocities. I

1:08:47

mean, they're not

1:08:50

really trying to seem like

1:08:52

rational actors to

1:08:54

the rest of the world. I mean, you don't burn

1:08:56

families alive and shoot

1:09:00

it on your GoPros and

1:09:02

then drag, you know, dismembered

1:09:05

bodies through the streets and,

1:09:07

you know, bloodied hostages and,

1:09:09

you know, kidnapped babies. And

1:09:13

it's just the idea

1:09:16

that they're moderated in

1:09:18

a way that I should care about is fairly

1:09:21

absurd. Yeah,

1:09:23

I'm not saying you should care for that.

1:09:26

It's more that, as

1:09:28

you mentioned, the terror that they

1:09:30

unleashed on October 7th is very

1:09:32

well documented. Yet you have lots

1:09:34

of their supporters and maybe actually

1:09:37

a majority, citing many of the

1:09:39

things that happened, right? You have

1:09:41

the Hamas stating that they didn't

1:09:43

target civilians, right? In various statements,

1:09:46

like Hamas officials make different kinds

1:09:48

of statements. But the point is that if

1:09:51

you're right, and it is just about

1:09:53

a holy war and paradise, why even

1:09:55

pretend in that case? Because if

1:09:57

it's good to kill Jews as men, then you're right.

1:10:00

as you can. Why cast

1:10:02

thoughts that there's a conspiracy? Why not

1:10:04

say that you are just about targeting

1:10:06

the infidels? Well, in

1:10:09

most cases they're not. In most cases,

1:10:11

the leaders of Hamas in

1:10:14

the immediate aftermath, I don't know what they've said since, but

1:10:16

they said they would

1:10:18

do this as many times as they could, right?

1:10:21

They were not... But until...

1:10:24

They're just... They're splitting it differently

1:10:26

than I think you're suggesting. They're

1:10:28

just saying that there are no non-combatants

1:10:30

in Israel. They're all combatants because

1:10:33

they're occupying land that's not theirs,

1:10:35

right? All these... They're all settlers.

1:10:37

They're all colonists.

1:10:42

It's all

1:10:44

illegitimate, right? From

1:10:46

the rivers of the sea. So it's

1:10:48

not... So like if they're killing teenagers

1:10:50

at a rave, they're

1:10:53

not disposed to distinguish between

1:10:55

them and soldiers carrying guns,

1:10:58

right? It's just that's... They're all combatants.

1:11:00

I'm not... I'm certainly not

1:11:03

clearing like Hamas is an ethical

1:11:05

organization that is making those. I'm

1:11:07

saying that various members of their

1:11:09

leadership and supporters make

1:11:11

appeal to that, which suggests that

1:11:13

they aren't occupying the kind of

1:11:15

justification space that you're suggesting the

1:11:17

majority of them are. I would

1:11:19

agree. And I've said this before.

1:11:21

I think it's a distinction that doesn't make much of a

1:11:24

difference in the present case, but Hamas,

1:11:27

certainly historically, I mean, prior to

1:11:29

October 7th, if you

1:11:31

had asked me to compare Hamas and the Islamic

1:11:33

State, I would have said

1:11:35

the Islamic State was much scarier

1:11:38

than Hamas, much more of

1:11:41

a real jihadist organization

1:11:44

than Hamas is. And I would

1:11:46

still say that to some

1:11:48

considerable degree. And yet

1:11:52

Hamas, even

1:11:54

with all of its sort of

1:11:57

quasi terrestrial goals, was

1:11:59

still capable of medieval barbarism,

1:12:01

which they seem committed to

1:12:03

replicating whenever they're given the

1:12:05

chance. Yes,

1:12:08

the Islamic State is a much purer

1:12:11

case of where jihadism

1:12:14

leads and it's what it

1:12:17

looks like in

1:12:20

a Petri dish. That's the

1:12:23

unadulterated strain, the

1:12:26

Islamic State. So I guess the flip side

1:12:28

and it relates to that is that whenever

1:12:31

discussing Israel, that

1:12:34

yourself and I would say Douglas

1:12:36

Murray as well who you've had

1:12:39

on the channel are rightly pushing

1:12:41

back at the equivalence that we

1:12:43

see on the far left, right,

1:12:45

or the kind of anti-Semitism that

1:12:48

is clearly there in the reaction

1:12:50

to the October 7 attack. But

1:12:53

in so doing, there's often a

1:12:55

loss of nuance that on

1:12:58

the Israel side, you have

1:13:01

also religious extremists and not just

1:13:03

fringe extremists with no influence, right.

1:13:06

You have a member of the

1:13:08

government, Ben Gavir, who

1:13:10

had the poster of

1:13:13

the Goldstein massacre guy, right, the

1:13:15

person who went in and gone

1:13:17

down. That's somebody in the Israeli

1:13:19

government who had a poster in

1:13:21

the wall of a terrorist and one,

1:13:24

Ben Yahu, kind of supporting the

1:13:26

increasing settlement movement according the far

1:13:29

right, the religious right. So my

1:13:31

kind of point there is if

1:13:34

you present that conflict as being

1:13:36

purely by the forces of civilization

1:13:38

versus like a religious fanatical cult

1:13:41

and don't mention that there is

1:13:43

a fanatical

1:13:46

religious cult that is in the

1:13:48

government of Israel and has made

1:13:50

various statements which are similarly talking

1:13:52

about the promised land and reclaiming

1:13:55

it, that it seems like you're

1:13:57

being selective and it doesn't mean that you have to

1:13:59

say it. they're both equal in

1:14:01

that respect. You can still completely condemn Hamas

1:14:03

and all the things you can still argue

1:14:06

that Israel has a right to defend itself

1:14:08

but it doesn't require serving as

1:14:10

their kind of propaganda wing because lots

1:14:13

of Israelis were very unhappy with Netanyahu

1:14:15

and his government. It is a very

1:14:17

right-wing government and the last thing I'll

1:14:19

say and I'll give you a chance

1:14:22

to respond Sam is like the ex-Israeli

1:14:24

Prime Minister who was assassinated Rabin, he

1:14:27

wasn't assassinated by Islamic

1:14:29

extremists, he was assassinated by

1:14:32

a Jewish extremist who derailed the

1:14:34

peace negotiations that were going on

1:14:37

and the legacy of

1:14:39

which was that Netanyahu who was in

1:14:41

opposition to Rabin you know ended up

1:14:43

in power. So the history over there

1:14:46

is very complex and that but I'm

1:14:48

arguing isn't there a case that the

1:14:50

presentation yourself and Douglas Murray have done

1:14:53

kind of whitewashes those concerns

1:14:56

which are legitimate. I

1:14:58

mean I raised those points a

1:15:02

fair amount it's just in

1:15:04

proportion to the problem on

1:15:06

the Islamic side they're quite

1:15:08

small I mean they're very unhelpful. I will

1:15:10

fully grant to you that Netanyahu

1:15:13

has been a disaster, his

1:15:16

support for the settlements has been provocative,

1:15:19

he's to some degree culpable

1:15:21

for what happened on October 7th if for

1:15:23

no other reason that he you know his

1:15:25

attention was split you know and

1:15:27

he was he was propping up the settlements

1:15:29

in the West Bank and leaving the border

1:15:32

with Gaza you know fairly undefended

1:15:34

right so but yeah

1:15:36

all the mad work that the settlers are

1:15:38

doing in the West Bank and

1:15:41

the religious extremists who support

1:15:43

them all

1:15:46

of that is incredibly unhelpful and I don't

1:15:48

support it at all and I've said in

1:15:50

other context I thought that

1:15:52

the settlers should be dragged off contested land

1:15:54

by their beards right I mean that's not

1:15:57

a fair that's not a optically

1:16:02

a great thing to say in the aftermath of

1:16:04

October 7th, but, you know, I'm Jewish and I

1:16:06

can say whatever I want on the topic. I

1:16:09

think those people are religious

1:16:12

imbeciles and they're creating

1:16:15

immense harm, right? And

1:16:17

their imagined claims upon real

1:16:19

estate based on where they

1:16:22

think Abraham walked shouldn't

1:16:26

be supported because, you know, I

1:16:30

think it's very unlikely Abraham even existed at

1:16:32

this point. So

1:16:36

religious maniacs in every context are,

1:16:39

you know, are people I would, you

1:16:41

know, they're these are views and behaviors I

1:16:43

would condemn. But again, we

1:16:46

have to be alert to

1:16:48

the differences, the differences both with respect

1:16:50

to the sheer numbers of people and

1:16:52

their influence, but also with respect

1:16:55

to the specific beliefs that

1:16:57

they're maniacally adhering to and

1:17:00

the logical and behavioral

1:17:02

consequences of those beliefs. I mean, the

1:17:04

differences really do matter and it

1:17:07

matters that Judaism does not have a

1:17:09

clear conception of the afterlife and

1:17:11

much less one that could really motivate

1:17:13

a carefree

1:17:16

attitude toward martyrdom, right? And the martyrdom of

1:17:18

one's children. I was not saying that there

1:17:21

aren't Jews who aren't willing to die

1:17:23

for their beliefs. I mean, there's their people who are willing

1:17:25

to die for their beliefs, you know, they're all

1:17:27

flavors of those sorts of people. But

1:17:29

there's something about the doctrines of martyrdom

1:17:32

and jihad that are especially

1:17:35

unhelpful, right? And when

1:17:37

you look at just the sheer numbers, there

1:17:39

are 15 million Jews on earth and most

1:17:41

Jews don't believe anything that I care about.

1:17:45

There's very little commitment to otherworldly propositions

1:17:47

and the supernatural among Jews generally. They're

1:17:50

just an overwhelmingly

1:17:52

secular and even agnostic

1:17:55

group of people. And then you

1:17:57

have the ultra-Orthodox who... Yes,

1:18:01

I believe whole

1:18:03

rafts of divisive nonsense that I

1:18:05

don't support and I think

1:18:07

they should be politically disenfranchised insofar as

1:18:10

possible in Israel. And

1:18:13

yeah, when you can find one of

1:18:15

them who's saying

1:18:17

idiotic things about some

1:18:20

kind of counter-genocide, or

1:18:23

talking about the Amalekites and the

1:18:25

Bible that needed to get wiped

1:18:28

out down to the last child, you'll

1:18:31

kill their livestock as well. It's

1:18:35

sheer religious barbarism, Taliban

1:18:38

style that I would

1:18:40

never support. But again, there's so few

1:18:43

of these people. Yes, a few of them are in

1:18:45

the wrong places. A few of them are too close

1:18:47

to power in Netanyahu's

1:18:49

government. But

1:18:52

there really isn't much of an analogy to draw

1:18:55

between the two sides. If

1:18:57

the Jews in Israel were

1:19:00

behaving like the Palestinians,

1:19:02

if they were committing

1:19:04

analogous atrocities, going

1:19:07

into music festivals in the

1:19:09

West Bank and raping and burning

1:19:12

teenagers, and then supporting it

1:19:14

to the tune of 80%, once

1:19:17

you export these details to the rest of

1:19:19

Israeli society, you had Jews dancing

1:19:21

in the streets over these moral

1:19:24

victories. And when you

1:19:26

poll them, 80% claim to support the

1:19:29

atrocity just committed, or they're

1:19:31

just riddled with conspiracy

1:19:33

theories about how it never happened. There's

1:19:35

just no way to have a reality-based

1:19:37

discussion with these people, because they're so

1:19:40

addled by their religious mania. If

1:19:42

that were true of the Jews of Israel,

1:19:45

I would condemn them in precisely the same

1:19:47

terms that I condemn jihadism

1:19:49

and its influence in

1:19:51

the Palestinian community.

1:19:54

There Was a poll done recently, Sam, and

1:19:56

it was discussed by Rory Stewart, who you

1:19:58

recently had on the. The podcast where

1:20:01

they pulled his really. Public.

1:20:04

About heightened concern they should be

1:20:06

about the suffering of civilians in

1:20:08

Gaza and or was it was

1:20:10

a similar percentage something like eighty

1:20:12

percent. That said it shouldn't be

1:20:14

a concern might be the priority

1:20:16

should be that wiping night of

1:20:18

of hammers and I think for

1:20:20

lot of people they do see

1:20:22

an equivalence not be don't see

1:20:24

the equivalent in terms of like

1:20:26

that division idea is just going

1:20:28

in and and moink dine civilians

1:20:30

or that a rear of but

1:20:32

they do. Look at the fact

1:20:35

that there's huge amounts of people

1:20:37

starving, was no access to water

1:20:39

ny in Gaza right and that

1:20:41

there is a huge step. Told

1:20:44

the moderates. While you think the

1:20:46

wars justified or not it is

1:20:48

absolutely cases there's huge amounts of

1:20:50

unjustified suffering there And so you

1:20:52

pointed the kind of islam athens

1:20:55

or how doesn't but I would

1:20:57

say it's not as creating really

1:20:59

fertile grind for in general just

1:21:01

a psychology of justified grievance. And

1:21:04

I if you have a pie people that

1:21:06

is a going to be. Remembered.

1:21:09

It will lead to support for more

1:21:11

extreme groups if you remove. Hamas.

1:21:14

Either would hope there's a chance

1:21:16

for like more moderate things, but

1:21:18

it doesn't seem that the most

1:21:21

punitive response possible targeting civilian populations.

1:21:23

And I'm I'm not saying like

1:21:25

parting civilian populations on purpose, right?

1:21:28

I am talking avoided using that

1:21:30

collateral. Have attempted to remove Hamas

1:21:32

from civilian populations. But enough respect

1:21:35

whenever you have organizations like the

1:21:37

Tamil Tigers right that was a

1:21:39

marxist organization with Hindu it's members

1:21:42

that was pioneering suicide. Attacks there.

1:21:44

you don't have a very strong demand for

1:21:46

lord and Hezbollah. Yes, they were pioneer in

1:21:48

it after they learned from Hezbollah, but in

1:21:50

that respect have been able to motivate people

1:21:52

for it in a voice to raise the

1:21:55

point as well that if people are very

1:21:57

strongly wedded to a ideology, be at Marxism.

1:21:59

be. Never the case might

1:22:01

be, you don't always need a

1:22:03

paradise in order to motivate people

1:22:06

And so I'm trying to Larry

1:22:08

and two points One is that's

1:22:11

what is happening in Gaza. Ny

1:22:13

is undoubtedly of a humanitarian crisis

1:22:15

with huge suffering and.will motivate as

1:22:18

it seems certainly possible to motivate

1:22:20

more extremism and response and related

1:22:22

to that that. It. Isn't

1:22:25

just the jihad as an afterlife

1:22:27

narratives that enable people to end

1:22:29

up like being willing to sacrifice

1:22:31

themselves for causes. The review see

1:22:33

it all the time and Muslims

1:22:35

causes and in Baltimore to for

1:22:37

different reasons. Five, you know, Japan

1:22:39

and so on. So those two

1:22:41

points that the raise a level

1:22:43

of huge suffering going on at

1:22:45

the minute. and it's it's a

1:22:47

Gaza my primarily you're not and

1:22:49

Israel yeah why I think there's

1:22:52

price three point in their eyes

1:22:54

and respond. To be. One

1:22:56

is just this comparison between the

1:22:59

the moral status of the people

1:23:01

suffering Gaza, the innocent. Victims.

1:23:03

Of of Bomb. Bomb

1:23:06

in his or yeah so cause collateral

1:23:08

damage, which is It was the euphemism

1:23:10

we tend to use here. And the

1:23:13

West sake they've you know, the teenagers

1:23:15

massacred a deep. The. Music Festival

1:23:17

by Hamas rights there. There's a

1:23:19

very important difference between those two

1:23:22

groups of people may have it

1:23:24

did the first are been victimized.

1:23:27

However, surely they're being victimized.

1:23:29

It is inadvertent. It is not

1:23:31

desired on the Israeli side for

1:23:33

the motive. Leave aside that. Sociopathic.

1:23:36

Fanatic who wants to kill Palestinian children.

1:23:39

Generally speaking, if it's the I, the

1:23:41

asked to go in there and kill

1:23:43

only Hamas. He. Was he gave the

1:23:45

magical weapons. What? Would they do with them? They.

1:23:48

Would kill only Hamas. right? And

1:23:50

they would turn Gaza into.

1:23:53

You know the south of France right

1:23:55

of a rabbit is clarified ask what

1:23:57

would people do with you gave them.

1:24:00

power to do anything they want, what would they

1:24:02

do? What would members

1:24:04

of Hamas do? They would kill all the Jews

1:24:06

on earth, no question, right?

1:24:08

And many other people, right? And

1:24:11

what would the Islamic State do? They

1:24:13

would turn the whole world into the

1:24:15

hellhole that they created in Syria and

1:24:17

Iraq, right? That's exactly the way

1:24:19

they like it. Crucifying apostates

1:24:22

and blasphemers, you know,

1:24:24

taking sex slaves, all

1:24:26

of it, right? None of that was

1:24:28

an aberration. That's exactly what they wanted, right?

1:24:31

What would Dick Cheney have done, you know, in

1:24:36

the invasion of Iraq? Would he have killed everybody? No,

1:24:38

he would have turned Iraq into Oklahoma,

1:24:42

right? So

1:24:44

it's important to

1:24:46

track people's actual motives. What kind of world

1:24:48

do they want to build? What do they

1:24:50

want for other people? Just

1:24:52

how zero sum are they, right? I

1:24:56

got to jump in there because

1:24:58

I mean, I'm not sure if that analogy

1:25:00

is helpful. I mean, let me just give

1:25:02

you one aspect before you jump in. Let

1:25:04

me just give you the one real world

1:25:06

variant of it, which you really can't argue

1:25:08

with. What did we do

1:25:10

to Germany and Japan?

1:25:12

We the allies do to Germany

1:25:14

and Japan after World War Two?

1:25:16

What really what revealed our motives

1:25:20

with respect to the German people and the

1:25:22

Japanese people? And we killed a whole lot

1:25:24

of innocent people, right? I

1:25:26

mean, the firebombing of Dresden and

1:25:28

Tokyo, I mean, it's just, you know, to say

1:25:30

nothing of the nuclear bombs we dropped. I mean,

1:25:33

indiscriminate violence of a sort that

1:25:35

Israel is not simply not practicing

1:25:38

now at all, right? It

1:25:40

doesn't matter how many kids

1:25:42

die in Gaza. Israel is not doing what we

1:25:44

did in World War Two at all. I

1:25:47

think those points I now but our

1:25:49

revealed preference. Our preference was revealed with

1:25:55

respect to what we did after we

1:25:57

won. Did we just take them

1:25:59

on? All the pretty girls as sex

1:26:01

slaves, is that what we did in Germany and Japan? Did

1:26:04

we kill all the fighting age males?

1:26:09

No, we helped build those two

1:26:12

societies. We

1:26:15

wanted sane collaborators in Germany and Japan and

1:26:18

we got them. Amazing.

1:26:20

You've made that point well. One

1:26:23

of your points was about the stated intentions versus

1:26:28

unpleasant side effects. That's

1:26:31

why you can't use body count to resolve this issue.

1:26:35

It doesn't matter that the Israelis have

1:26:37

killed more Palestinians than Hamas killed in

1:26:39

Israel. That's not the

1:26:41

way to think about it. It's just collateral damage and

1:26:45

unpleasant necessities is

1:26:47

not always such a clear thing. The

1:26:50

limit to that thought experiment is illustrated

1:26:52

by communism in Southeast Asia.

1:26:54

Take the Khmer Rouge Pol Pot. Their

1:26:57

stated goal was to build a utopian

1:26:59

communist society. If they had the power

1:27:01

to do anything they want, they wouldn't

1:27:03

just massacre a bunch of people. They

1:27:06

would turn them into very good politically aligned communists.

1:27:08

But unfortunately, they had to kill an awful lot

1:27:10

of people because out of necessity. But

1:27:14

there are Orwellian projects. There

1:27:16

are situations where words don't

1:27:18

mean what they seem to mean. You

1:27:21

can't just track the superficial sentences

1:27:25

so as to get to the moral core of

1:27:27

what someone is attempting to do. What

1:27:30

are people's real intentions with respect

1:27:33

to other people? Whatever

1:27:36

Kim Jong Un says about North

1:27:38

Korea, we know what his

1:27:40

intentions are. Please turn that

1:27:43

into a prison state because he's

1:27:45

a total sociopath. It's

1:27:48

not like he wants everyone to be

1:27:50

happy and well fed and prosperous. He

1:27:53

wants to rule like a

1:27:55

sadist over a

1:27:58

prison population. What he's

1:28:00

doing. With. I mean that we

1:28:02

don't take into account that there

1:28:04

are various statements made by senior

1:28:06

figures and Israel which suggests that

1:28:09

my for examples well I'm not

1:28:11

be they want to do it

1:28:13

Expert: Gaza population relocated to Egypt.

1:28:15

That wouldn't be a terrible same right?

1:28:18

and yeah so it's a bank of

1:28:20

year or so on. have made various

1:28:22

extremes statements which which and as i

1:28:24

can run out of the on that

1:28:27

extreme ib i i i don't know

1:28:29

how I'm he's just run a day

1:28:31

as on. I'm. Not supporting

1:28:33

him, but you know, It's

1:28:36

hard to see how Israel survives. In

1:28:38

a long term. I. It's hard to

1:28:41

see how Israel as a viable project. Under

1:28:44

the honest that would the current assumptions

1:28:46

of a so called two state solution.

1:28:49

I. Don't know. I don't know how it works and

1:28:51

to either they're not really states. Or.

1:28:54

Something has radically changed about the

1:28:56

the cultures, but there's no one

1:28:58

state solution given what most. Islam.

1:29:01

As and Jihad as send. You

1:29:03

know, conservatives among the Palestinians actually

1:29:06

want. right? And the that's

1:29:08

that's a recipe for. For.

1:29:11

At at the minimum just these

1:29:13

a demographic change that is. Is.

1:29:16

Not compatible with them to influence

1:29:18

with your state. A demographic change

1:29:20

word the entire Arab population of

1:29:22

Gaza has relocated to a different

1:29:24

country and that big countries than

1:29:27

subsumed into a part of Israel.

1:29:29

That would be. Like

1:29:31

genocide. Right? at least console at

1:29:33

no An A of I don't Anon

1:29:35

Anon Anon Anon that is genocide. have a

1:29:37

surface mining. A. Genocide of a

1:29:39

at least an eighties? A forced

1:29:42

relocation Hamilton Climate Legion? You mean

1:29:44

you mean ethnic cleansing, right? Which.

1:29:47

Is a world which may as often

1:29:49

used along janice along with genocides and

1:29:51

they are worlds apart with respect to

1:29:53

their moral implications of a history is

1:29:55

just full of ethnic cleansing was which

1:29:58

means people moving. By. people can't

1:30:00

get along wind up moving

1:30:03

apart, right? That happens a hell of a

1:30:05

lot and it's, you know, it

1:30:08

can be awful in terms of, you

1:30:10

know, when done at the point of a

1:30:12

sword which happened in

1:30:15

under Islam again and again and

1:30:17

again. I mean, nobody's losing sleep

1:30:19

over the Jews that got run

1:30:21

out of Syria and Yemen and

1:30:24

Iraq and Egypt and Morocco and

1:30:27

all after 1948, right? No one's

1:30:29

talking about their right of return, you know, what

1:30:32

happened to their homes. The

1:30:34

UN's not worried about that, right? And

1:30:36

yet everyone is worried about the Palestinians

1:30:38

as this perpetual refugee population. What about

1:30:40

all the people who left Syria in

1:30:42

2015 and

1:30:45

went to Sweden, right? Okay,

1:30:48

they've been paid. Do they

1:30:50

have perpetual refugee status or are they

1:30:52

just now in Sweden? So Sam, just

1:30:54

to clarify, so you are saying that

1:30:56

like ethnic cleansing of

1:30:59

the Gaza street isn't extreme

1:31:01

position? Two million people? No,

1:31:04

it's totally extreme. It is

1:31:07

totally extreme in that it's

1:31:09

a non-starter. I mean, like no one

1:31:12

in the Palestinian world wants that, right?

1:31:14

And the Arab, and, you know, if

1:31:17

you look at the Arab states' contribution

1:31:19

to the status quo

1:31:21

over the last 50 years, it

1:31:23

has been very deliberately to hold

1:31:26

the Palestinians in perpetual refugee status

1:31:29

so as to put the existence

1:31:31

of Israel in question perpetually. And when

1:31:33

you look at how the Jordanians and

1:31:36

the Egyptians treat the Palestinians, you

1:31:38

know, they're just as culpable

1:31:40

for, I mean, take Egypt, you know, which

1:31:42

governs one of the borders of Gaza, right?

1:31:44

It is just as culpable

1:31:51

for keeping Gaza, I quote, open-air

1:31:53

prison as Israel is, right? Because

1:31:55

they're maintaining one of their borders

1:31:57

and they don't want the Palestinians,

1:31:59

you know, in their society either.

1:32:03

But it's a...

1:32:05

We do recognize the desire for

1:32:07

self-determination and like, you know, I'm

1:32:09

not talking about from the river

1:32:12

to the sea, like recapturing the

1:32:14

land. I mean, purely a people

1:32:16

regarding their homeland as being

1:32:18

occupied or taken or that they've been

1:32:20

moved. That is hugely

1:32:23

fertile ground for breeding conflict

1:32:25

and extremism and that kind of

1:32:27

thing. And just like maybe I'm

1:32:29

a little bit more sensitive to

1:32:32

this as somebody from Northern Ireland,

1:32:34

right? And there, just I

1:32:36

know the situation is not as comparable

1:32:38

in terms of the level of suffering

1:32:40

involved in that kind of thing. But

1:32:43

there you have, for example, a Republican

1:32:45

party, Sinn Féin, that doesn't recognize the

1:32:47

legitimacy of British control of the Northern

1:32:49

Irish state, right, but still gets elected

1:32:52

in the part they were associated

1:32:54

with a terrorist group, the IRA. They're

1:32:56

now, I think, the biggest party in

1:32:58

the Republic of Ireland as well. And

1:33:01

their overall long-term plan is to see

1:33:03

Ireland reunited, right, into a unified thing.

1:33:05

But they are a political party that

1:33:07

people have to deal with and they

1:33:10

have renounced violence and, you know, it's

1:33:12

a different situation. I'm not throwing a

1:33:14

parallel in terms of like saying, well,

1:33:16

how much is just, you know, the

1:33:19

IRA in waiting? No, no, no. I'm

1:33:21

saying, though, that those kind of very

1:33:23

strong feelings about the

1:33:25

right to self-determination. If

1:33:28

you relocated the population out of

1:33:31

Gaza, like that would be the

1:33:33

second NACPA, wouldn't it? And the

1:33:35

first NACPA led to a conflict

1:33:37

that lasted for longer than we,

1:33:39

any of us, have been alive.

1:33:41

Well, the analogy to Ireland, to

1:33:44

make it a real analogy, the reasons why

1:33:46

it doesn't work great, but you also have

1:33:48

to imagine, you know, a dozen other

1:33:51

Irish-speaking states with Irish

1:33:53

culture surrounding this whole

1:33:56

problem that those,

1:33:58

the the Northern

1:34:00

Irish would be displaced too if

1:34:03

they had their knock-back of ethnic

1:34:06

cleansing, right? Like it's a

1:34:08

different situation where you would have

1:34:10

to wonder why. It's

1:34:13

a completely different situation because I've had people say, you

1:34:15

know, like, well, you wouldn't just

1:34:18

allow the British to bomb Belfast, right, to

1:34:20

get rid of the IRA during the troubles.

1:34:22

And that's true. But if the IRA had

1:34:24

launched a raid on a city in the

1:34:26

UK and killed a bunch

1:34:28

of people and stolen babies, I think

1:34:30

you actually would have seen significant military

1:34:32

action in wherever they took

1:34:35

the children away to. So there

1:34:37

are not parallels one to one.

1:34:39

But in the notion of like,

1:34:41

you know, the British arranged plantations,

1:34:43

moved populations over, and the

1:34:46

Northern Ireland ended up with like a demographic. I'm

1:34:48

not disagreeing with you. I completely

1:34:51

understand the nationalistic and

1:34:53

aspirations of

1:34:56

the Palestinians. And there is an

1:34:59

analogy to any other group

1:35:01

of people that want their own nation. But

1:35:05

the moral core of this problem and

1:35:07

the asymmetry of it should

1:35:11

be unignorable. And

1:35:13

it's this. And this is, you know, a statement

1:35:15

that you've probably heard me make and you've probably

1:35:17

heard Douglas Murray make it. But

1:35:20

it's nonetheless true, which

1:35:22

is if the Palestinians

1:35:25

put down their weapons, if they were peaceful,

1:35:28

right, if they even if they

1:35:30

were peaceful protesters of a, you know, a

1:35:33

Gandhian sort, right, they would

1:35:36

this this problem would be solved and the

1:35:38

two societies could live happily together, there would

1:35:40

be a two state solution, there would have

1:35:42

been a two state solution decades ago, if

1:35:45

the the point there was,

1:35:48

let me I'm like, well,

1:35:50

let me just lay out the obvious statement. The

1:35:52

obvious statement is that the Jews of Israel put down

1:35:55

their weapons, there would be a genocide. Right.

1:35:58

That is October 7. reveals

1:36:00

that to be as

1:36:03

objectively true as a statement as we can

1:36:05

make in this sort of area. So the

1:36:07

only point I was going to raise though

1:36:09

is like you've had Netanyahu come out and

1:36:12

say there won't be a two-state

1:36:14

solution. That's because of who

1:36:16

the Palestinians are and because

1:36:18

of how Islam is informing

1:36:20

their worldview. If Islam

1:36:22

were a peaceful religion, if Islam was Jainism

1:36:25

and there was no notion of jihad, we

1:36:28

would have a completely different situation. If

1:36:30

they were producing leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., it

1:36:39

would be a completely different situation. That's not

1:36:41

what... So Netanyahu and again,

1:36:43

Netanyahu is awful and again culpable

1:36:45

for the disaster he's

1:36:48

presiding over. So

1:36:50

Israel needs better leaders, right? But

1:36:53

he is reacting to

1:36:56

the ongoing reality of

1:36:59

what the Palestinians and even

1:37:01

the surrounding Muslim states have

1:37:04

wanted since Israel was born 70

1:37:06

some odd years ago, right?

1:37:09

And so

1:37:11

much of the conversation has

1:37:13

been explicitly genocidal as

1:37:16

to make anything other than

1:37:19

a very strong defensive posture

1:37:22

unthinkable for the Israelis.

1:37:25

Wouldn't that imply that when there

1:37:27

was a much greater chance of

1:37:29

a two-state solution, when the negotiations

1:37:32

were going on and they in

1:37:34

part were... There were people on

1:37:37

the Palestinian side who tried to discover

1:37:39

that, right? Who were doing suicide

1:37:41

attacks and the conflict. But you

1:37:43

also did have atrocities committed by

1:37:46

extremists on the right

1:37:48

who are now people involved with

1:37:50

those movements are in the government.

1:37:53

So it isn't fair to say that there's

1:37:55

just a one... It's a tiny number. I

1:37:57

mean, it's ridiculous when you focus on it.

1:38:00

It's like Biden just passed

1:38:02

an executive order that focused

1:38:04

on four Israelis in

1:38:06

the West Bank. Like literally the President of the

1:38:09

United States created an executive

1:38:11

order that dealt with the destructive

1:38:17

behavior of four people on the

1:38:19

Israeli side, right? I mean, it's

1:38:21

like in order to give somewhat

1:38:23

semblance of balance to the situation,

1:38:25

it's just not an analogous problem.

1:38:28

I'll stipulate everything of that

1:38:30

sort, you know,

1:38:33

the massacre at a

1:38:35

mosque that kills 25 people once

1:38:38

in a generation, right, is

1:38:41

awful and decidedly unhelpful,

1:38:44

right? And yes, a religious extremist

1:38:47

on the Jewish side is who assassinated

1:38:49

Rabin, right? And it was a religious

1:38:51

extremist on the Hindu side who killed

1:38:53

Gandhi, right? There are those people, but

1:38:56

there's just not the

1:38:58

analogous problem, you know, there or anywhere

1:39:00

else. I mean, we have not had

1:39:03

to deal with crazy security concerns getting on

1:39:05

airplanes for the last 25 years

1:39:08

because so many Jews want to blow themselves

1:39:10

up on airplanes. It's just not, it just

1:39:12

has not been the problem. And if it

1:39:15

were, that's the problem I would be focusing

1:39:17

on. Well, I think we might

1:39:19

disagree in the degree to which the far

1:39:21

right in Israel has a

1:39:23

significant presence in the government, but there's

1:39:26

one more. I'm not disagreeing.

1:39:28

I'm saying that's terrible and should

1:39:30

change. And I think it

1:39:32

will change. I mean, the reason why

1:39:34

it hasn't changed yet is because, again, this

1:39:37

is they're in the middle of this emergency

1:39:39

and this war. And, you

1:39:41

know, and Netanyahu is a

1:39:44

very Trumpian figure is

1:39:46

using this emergency to prolong his life

1:39:48

as a political figure. But I

1:39:51

think at the first opportunity, Netanyahu

1:39:54

will be out of office. Right. I just

1:39:56

think that that is the base, the general

1:39:59

sentiment among Israelis. I mean, he's most

1:40:01

Israelis. I don't know what the recent polls say,

1:40:03

but I have to think something close to 80%

1:40:06

of Israelis are

1:40:08

furious with Netanyahu. Yeah,

1:40:11

I think I've actually heard

1:40:13

really good stuff from moderate

1:40:16

progressive Israelis and also

1:40:18

really good stuff from moderate people

1:40:20

in Gaza, Palestinians. And

1:40:22

they don't sound that different, to be honest. I

1:40:25

think most reasonable people have a

1:40:28

lot of sympathy with obviously the

1:40:30

victims of terrorist attacks and

1:40:33

also the civilians who are

1:40:35

killed by indiscriminate bombing.

1:40:37

I guess, look, I'm just going to make one

1:40:39

more point. It is different. It's just, again, we

1:40:42

can't lose sight of... Body

1:40:44

count just does not get at the moral

1:40:46

difference between the two sides. Yeah,

1:40:49

it's a big question. But at the point that,

1:40:51

again, people forget it whenever it's

1:40:53

just... It can't be... It

1:40:59

can't maintain its salience in the face

1:41:02

of images of dead

1:41:04

children being pulled out of rubble in Gaza,

1:41:07

right? It's just like there's just no... You

1:41:11

have to rerun the argument

1:41:14

again so as to

1:41:16

gain some perspective on what's happening. I

1:41:20

think we all get that motivations matter, right? There

1:41:22

is a difference between a child

1:41:25

who is killed by a bomb that

1:41:27

wasn't targeted at them and a child

1:41:30

who was executed by a terrorist.

1:41:34

To give a very anodyne example... Yeah,

1:41:36

children. To give

1:41:38

a very anodyne example, but this makes

1:41:42

the point from the other side, right? The

1:41:45

three of us live in societies

1:41:47

where there's some ambient

1:41:49

level of carnage due to

1:41:54

car accidents every year and it's totally

1:41:56

predictable. In the United States, there

1:41:59

will be something like... 40,000 people