Sam Harris

00:01tell me when it's up for folks who were just tuning in on Ustream we just started talking about uh Sam Harris the big big fat islamophobe what is that man is that because they're brown is that because people are trying to be like super Progressive is that whoops yeah um it's it's a very dangerous irony in double standard it's really it's one of the most disturbing phenomenon I think uh to just to be found on the landscape now it's say um for folks tuning in on Ustream just to to keep you up to date um we were talking about how you can make fun of Christianity with no problems whatsoever make fun of Mormonism nobody cares but if you make fun of Islam Progressive people will call you islamophobic yeah it's a combination of very understandable fears of racism and xenophobia so we have this we're obviously trailing a legacy that we should be mortified by this you Legacy

00:56of slavery and colonialism and um and all of that is something we should we should uh have a critical distance from and not want to recapitulate in any form and so it's it's it's important to be mindful of that obviously but there's this this um combination of of white guilt and political correctness and just sheer Stockholm syndrome in some people that has made it impossible to criticize Islam without being branded a racist and Islam traditional if you're not going to buy traditional then conservative if you're not going to buy Conservative then extremist there's some version of Islam that is the most odious ideology operative now it is just it is uh leading directly to the am miseration of millions of people and the moment you try to uh really draw a straight line and and Myriad straight lines exist between that phenomenon and the actual doctrine of Islam the actual idea set

01:57handed down from Muhammad you're accused of of bigotry and you're you're put right next to Michelle Bachman and any anyone else on the on the right who who obviously you can't uh you you can't ally with in any sense um so it's it's it's very um it's very troubling because because you have those whole websites and magazines like salon and and um Alternet and even the nation that just reflexively demonize anyone who said anything about Islam the religion that's negative and that's it's a double standard we're going to have to overcome Salon goes hard MH they go hard with the progressive silliness I mean they they got mad at Pat and Oswald for making a joke about someone making a joke about Chinese accents like it was so stupid it made them look so petty pedantic and silly it's just like what are you guys doing like there's a lot of like real issues going on in the world there's a

02:50lot of real things to think about in this day and age yeah know I I I wrote a blog post about Malala yosai the uh the 16-year-old girl who was at 15 shot by the to Taliban and was up for the Nobel Prize which he didn't win uh but should have and my my blog post was totally praiseworthy of her I said she's the best thing to come out of the Muslim World in a thousand years she should have won the Nobel Prize she's elegant eloquent and brave and um and the headline in Salon was Sam Harris slurs Malala wow and my slur was not uh basically accepting her view of Islam as the canonical Islam because she's not an atheist and and and they they thought I was sort of Co co-opting her as an atheist which I obviously wasn't doing so it's just it's incredibly frustrating because so many smart people or otherwise smart people are taken in by this because people really want to

03:43believe that all religions are the same and that people everywhere are the same and want the same things and if we just got our act together on the world stage if we just if we just cease to exploit people and we cease to be selfish and we just and and we we pulled back all the drones everyone would behave the same way we would have rational actors everywhere and there's just no evidence for that and there's there's just as much evidence as you could possibly want to find for the antithesis which is there are some people who are in a death cult who are certain of paradise and very eager to get there uh and there not there's no talking to them and then there's a there's a a a much vaster number of of people around them who support them who are not jihadists but who are basically aligned with them in in terms of the worldview so um you know we have to win a war of ideas and we

04:34have to win u a war and uh we have to be honest about it yeah we we certainly do and there's this weird thing going on right now in Saudi Arabia where women are protesting uh the the uh right to drive they're all driving and this is a big issue and it's crazy that in 2013 and that is directly related to religion oh yeah yeah and it's it's incredibly and risky to do it's just amazing to get if you're a woman to get behind the wheel of a car in Saudi Arabia is a um a LIF disorienting risk you know to to to make that kind of social protest um I mean so if at best they're behind us by whatever 50 years 75 years in certain social um epiphanies you know so so if you roll back the clock in the US and look at racism we don't really have the same analogous religious um brainwashing but but if you look at racism in the US what was going on in the in the teens and 20s

05:41and 30s is just Unthinkable now I mean just lynchings and and uh newspaper editorials that were starkly racist there in newspaper editorials not OP EDS but actually the editorial of of the New York Times in the LA Times uh in 1910 1915 that read exactly like a KKK pamphlet I mean just just mindboggling so at at the very least we have societies that have to catch up uh in their attitudes towards women and homosexuals and uh pluralism and Atheism and and uh we have to facilitate that process by not caving in when Free Speech issues come up so when when someone WR draws a cartoon in the prophet Muhammad and people start burning embassies the move on our side can't be to apologize for cartooning and and to and to become self-critical and masochistic about you know why is it that we had these cartoonist that did this terrible thing and and and that's and that's essentially what we did and

06:42and we pulled all no Magazine with exception of one uh free inquiry in the US published those cartoons they were totally benign cartoons you probably saw them they're available online but um we we we practice self-censorship to a degree that it's just just astonishing and and really just harmful to to to this um this conflict that both the hot and cold conflict that we're having it's caricature it's a like a a caricature of uh overblown reaction that you get from someone that b maybe was is put in a situation where they want to always use this as an excuse for why things are like it's racism man this is racism or you just hate women like there's a bunch of these like oh you're islamophobic it's like boom they throw that on you this wet blanket and the it's a weird thing because you call it a cult and I agree with you but that's a very controversial thing to say if you say

07:42that people get very upset with you but the reality is somebody's in a cult okay if you got 20 different whatever how many different religions that are practiced worldwide I don't know how many how many are there well probably hundreds but just there's you know a handful of main ones we care about but the main ones we care about okay let's just say there's only for someone's in a cult someone's lying some they have four different stories so what's going on who's telling the truth someone's in a cult and no one's willing to admit that this of course everyone believes the other people are in a cult but just the cognitive dissonance allow involved in picking some ancient ideology and thinking at some point in time somebody actually had a conversation with a Divine wrote it down verbatim and it's perfect and it's never been touched by the hand of man or distorted it's it's

08:27weird that you get that from something like salon and that's essentially what they're doing by calling you islamophobic they're endorsing this idea that this wacky cult that makes you kill people if they draw a picture of their guy women aren't allowed to drive cars you suicide bombing in in this day and age is like very very common and religious based and sure that's the most extreme faction of that religion and there's many people that are moderate Muslims who despise that as much as we do but still it's it's an ideology and ideologies are real problems yeah yeah well well the the dispute is that uh the link that I'm drawing and that many other people draw between that behavior and the religion is being challenged so so the people who would brand me as an Islam islamophobe would say that this Behavior has nothing to do with Islam in principle is that that one you have

09:18extremists in every religion and they all misbehave or bad people will do bad things uh anyway and and religion is always a pretext uh and that is just not true the scary phenomen on um uh I think the most scary phenomenon really to be witnessed anywhere is that you can have psychologically healthy rational otherwise competent and capable and charismatic people who have other opportunities in life you know that the the quarterback of the football team can become a jihadist given the right ideas uh and it and if you just admit to yourself that certain people actually believe in Paradise and believe that there's a specific way to get there that entails violent defense of of the faith then it becomes totally rational to behave this way then you and I would be flying planes into buildings if we actually believe this doesn't matter what other opportunities you have in

10:13life and the the thing that most secular liberals can't get their minds around is that people actually believe in Paradise people actually believe that that that a certain book was dictated by the creator of the universe and it has provided a blueprint uh and a moral framework um that many many people millions of people believe is perfect and unchallengeable for all time and then once you admit once you admit that you just have to look at the blueprint and this this particular blueprint says a lot about a holy war uh and fighting the Infidel and subjugating the Infidel and killing apostates so you know if if you if you convert to Islam now on this show and then by the end of the show say yeah you know I thought better of it I don't feel like being a Muslim anymore I'm uncon converting that is a crime punishable by death and that's just that's not extremist Islam that's not I

11:07was in a training camp in Afghanistan with 10,000 other lunatics Islam that is plain vanilla Islam uh now you can sort of Dicker around the edges of that Dogma by saying you're dead to me oh no you can't you can't go that far unfortunately not dead but you're dead to me you can say well the person has to speak out against the faith or repeatedly he has to be an obnoxious apostate but um you what you don't get are millions and millions of Muslims who belong to some bonified tradition of Islam who say oh no APO apostasy is fine you should you should be free to change your your mind about the faith and we don't care if you were once a Muslim and now you become a Hindu or you were once a Muslim and now you become a Christian or an atheist that is that is fine with us if if that existed well then you could just point to that brand of Islam and say well you go over there guys that's the

11:59that's the Islam we should be encouraging but we have to and clearly we have to figure out some way to massage the faith into Conformity with that kind of pluralism and secularism but it's just not there and for for magazines like Salon to pretend that that um killing apostates has no connection to the real religion of Islam is just a just pure delusion and it's it's a dangerous one it's it's also dangerous just to have a very strict ideology to have a thing that not just you're supposed to do because the culture wants you to do it but because God wants you to that's weird it's it's it's dumb it's weird it's it's insane if you think that in 2013 with the kind of access to information we have that we really believe that someone actually wrote this stuff down from the Divine it's craziness it's a with Christianity whether it's Mormonism Mormonism is hilarious Mormonism and Scientology are

12:58my two favorites cuz we know the guy who made them right you know those are and we know they were the conmen well not just know way too much about them yeah I mean El Ron harbard was a science fiction author he made a science fiction religion I mean it's really beautiful in a way it's hilariously beautiful and and someone like me who appreciates the Folly of life I I I can appreciate that in a big way it's just it's it's like endless comedy it's just so stupid yeah yeah what is it though why do we need something why does everybody need something but the the the it's crucial that you acknowledge the difference between the various ideologies on offer because just have just Bel believing that your worldview has come from God is not necessarily a deal breaker in terms of living in a global Civil Society if that worldview prescribes lots of benign things I mean so if you think God told

13:50you to be a vegetarian and never harm anyone and uh learn everything you can about Science and Mathematics and and uh economics and become a a really energetic contributor to Civil Society if that's your religion well then you're never going to show up on anyone's radar as a dangerous person um uh it's just the the the main religions on offer don't have that kind of those kinds of ideas uh and um you know they have first century and uh Iron Age uh attitudes and strictures that that have now been canonized in these books and there's just there's no way to rewrite the books you can't edit the books people effectively edit the books by ignoring the most barbarous stuff in there but there's no way to say we're going to we as Muslims or as Christians are going to craft a new scripture that's in line with all that we've come to learn about the universe uh and follow that as

14:53though it were the word of God because the they would know they were making it up and and that's um you know that that's not satisfying Christians are funny because they ignore things conveniently like I've met so many Christians that have Christian Bible quote tattoos like did you read that thing you're not supposed to do that you're not even supposed to write on yourself you're not even supposed to use a magic marker and here you are getting a tattoo of a Bible quote that's like you know God's like Jesus Christ did you pay attention to what I said well it's a long book a long book un unfortunately the Quran is not as long a book you can read the Quran in a weekend it's it's a much shorter book you read the Bible cover to cover it takes you month and a half but you read the Quran uh it's a much more unified document and there's not you can't cherry pick you can cherry

15:37pick it a little bit but you can't cherry pick it in quite the same way you can't just take Jesus and half his moods the way you can as a Christian and say well this it's all about turning the other cheek and I've got I don't care about hell and I don't care about um any of these culture War issues um you just can't you really can't do that with Islam and that's that's why this Fusion of of the religion and the politics is so difficult to to break because it's it's explicit and there's just no there's no Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar in the Quran as there is in in the Bible so my favorite religion is Mormons they're the nicest people yeah they're so sweet yeah like every time I've had a Mormon neighbor or you know meet Mormons they're the nicest people they're almost like childlike in their belief like childlike in their their approach to religion like uh my

16:24wife has a friend who's a Mormon went out to dinner with her and her husband and uh somewhere along the line the subject of higher power came up and she was grilling me like do you believe in a higher power and you know basically I said I don't not believe I don't know I mean who the knows she's like you don't know if you don't know how do you sleep at night right for her like someone had to tell her so she could tuck herself into bed like a little kid like my 5-year-old like sweetie God's watching over you and everything's going to be okay okay like now I can go to sleep for her it was very child 40y old woman like she had this childlike narrow tunnel of thinking that she Pres SC crib to yeah ex Mormons are awesome because there there's there's no group of people that are more energetic in their atheism that I've met than ex Mormons because they they're coming out

17:09of this thing that is just so obviously made up I mean he's like you got Joseph Smith as a dower and a con man and um and 14 and just and just getting it on with everyone's wife and just and making up uh principles you he's get he gets New Revelations to appease his jealous wife he goes into the closet and God and God tells him that he's got to have you know more hot girls um so it's just and it's just so it's just there in the in the floodlines of History to be inspected and so once they once they get out of it and they see just that that they're trailing all this nonsense um they're very um they're very fun to talk to what is it about people that we need or some people need that they need that they need an ideology they need a framework they need a scaffolding to live their life on they can't just freeall it they can't just go who knows let's just figure out what we already

18:03know and apply that to wonder they can't do that they need an answer well uh I wouldn't be the first to observe that death has something to do with that this anxiety about what it all means in light of the fact that it all apparently ends um is really a um a defense against grief you know these beliefs a belief in Paradise is really the only thing you can tell yourself or tell another person or tell your child in the presence of death that makes death fundamentally uh unpraised meet again in some Perfect Place uh and you're going to spend eternity there and and be perfectly happy and all you have to do is believe the right things in the meantime uh and not screw up too badly as a homosexual or whatever else you is is on the checklist of don'ts um and you will get there and you'll be reunited with everyone you care about and that and that is there is no secular or atheist or rational

19:28alternative alternative to that and I that's that's a bullet I think we just have to bite it's just there's you know at the gravide of a child The Atheist doesn't have something to say that says this is not a problem you know this is your tears are wasted um and Christians and Muslims and Mormons and basically everyone who posits a heaven that you're that is assured based on the right beliefs they do have something to say that that the the crowd buys into and uh there's no question that it relieves that suffering um now I think it's I think I think it it it comes with a uh a host of other problems that that um that even that tra off uh is not worth it I mean if if even if we grant that a certain kind of suffering is is relieved there there's other kinds of suffering that spring up and people are not learning how to grieve they're not learning how to teach

20:29their children to grieve they're not they're not learning intellectual honesty they're not um uh and they're mired in a way of thinking that is const is causing them constantly to collide with reality in in unfortunate ways that where they they they they actually don't get what they want in life uh because they're believing things that that that just don't line up with how the world works and so you I think it's it it is if you if you look look closely you can see that even that uh you know the best thing I mean the baby in the bathwater of of faith is um is still dysfunctional the uh Mormon friend she applied for a real estate license and didn't get it she failed a test she was upset she's like I'm a good person why didn't I get it I'm doing all the right things and I'm a good person like that's what she kept saying it's like being around a crazy person like she just believes that

21:23if you do God's word good things is going to happen to you I'm a good person why didn't I get this right meanwhile not looking at the fact is's Rich As lives in a great house has healthy kids like there's all this wonderful stuff going on in your life like maybe you just didn't apply yourself enough to this whole real estate thing that's nothing to do with God failing you right right do you think that religion is something that's allowing human beings to make this jump from animals to enlightened connected beings it seems to me that with uh the connection that we're enjoying through technology through uh the internet and through the the access of information seems to me that we're we're slowly but surely dissolving all the boundaries between people and information and we're going to have much more truth about life and death and the the very origins of the universe in a hundred years or a

22:12thousand years than we had a 100 years ago or a thousand years ago and I always wonder if like religion is something that just allowed us to keep our together just long enough for some really smart dudes to figure out the internet keep our together just like Keep Together morally give give these crazy Apes some sort of an excuse or a reason to live and you know so they don't just go marauding and jump off Clips out of Despair and give them something that that allows them to continue the work and that work being Society ultimately moving towards uh some sort of technological innovation zero point you know like everything we do whether it's cell phones or laptops or cars every year it's better no one ever goes we're good this this cell phone I have this Galaxy Note no one's ever going to look at this and go this thing's perfect okay we're done we don't ever have to make another

23:04cell phone again we're going to continue to move forward faster speeds more connections more apps more things that they can do Holograms time travel whatever the it's going to be it's we're never going to stop and it almost sometimes I wonder if what what religion is is just like some sort of a scaffolding that lets us build Society on yeah I I actually don't view it that way I think it's there people who think that religion paid EV evolutionary dividends because it allowed large groups of people large groups of of kind of dimly related people you know not just just family but larger tribes to cohere in a way that they couldn't otherwise so it's the way to get a bunch of strangers to cohere is to put a big Idol in the corner and say you know anyone who trespasses uh the God is is going to be killed uh and we're going to we're going to commit a sacrifice of of a few kids

23:59you know every month or so um and keep everyone in line and we're going and Outsiders who come into our world who don't understand our tabos and our and our precepts are going to be easily recognizable as Outsiders and there's a long list of things that people think religion may have given uh our ancestors that may be true I I happen to think that that religion most of what explains religion is just more fundament Al cognitive and emotional mechanisms that that have nothing in principle to do with religion and which have also given us science and reason and everything else that that we that is recognizable as as human cognition so uh I think the the most rudimentary piece here is belief formation you and I and every other human being who is neurologically intact has learned comes into this world equipped to represent reality in language and to trade in those represent

24:58and to and to give them Credence to one or another degree so you tell me where this this studio is I believe you I I it's just language right and and the the language got me here my belief in the language got me here um if I thought that I had transcribe the address wrong um that belief would have caused me to call you and get make sure I got the so I mean this is all just these are all just you know ones and zeros in our in our computer at the moment but um uh the virtually the totality of our uh worldview is linguistically mediated in this way um uh everything is not a matter of direct sensory perception in in each moment so uh religion is just part of that it's part of it's the set of beliefs people form for which they have very loose evidentiary criteria and which govern uh all these no-go areas for science you know what happens after death what is

25:56the meaning of life what is you know what What's um uh what's the most important thing uh to live for and I I think I think actually reason can capture all of those conversations as well and is in the process of doing it but uh it really is just a matter of believing certain propositions and the rules by which we we vet those beliefs when we are in conversation with one another and the problem with faith is that it really operates as the permission people give one another to believe things strongly without evidence and we don't give that permission in any other area of Our Lives we don't give that permission in science we don't give it in in politics in so far as we're we're we're practicing politics that anyone can tolerate um and it it's a um that permission that the the the taboo around criticizing that Faith um is something we've we're um you know

26:53hopefully getting over we're going to have to get over it because it is the reason why people oppose gay marriage it is the reason why people want laws that that make uh blasphemy a a criminal offense um and so that's um uh it's just in so far as you actually believe something it can't help but show up in the public sphere and belie people think beliefs are private they're not they're only private if there's nothing in your life or in the environment that is calling them out but the moment that that they are relevant to your behavior they can't help but inform your behavior in so far as you actually believe them and that's uh it's just I mean this is an example I I gave in um in one of my books but it's like a belief a true belief in the efficacy of prayer is dangerous if you are in so far as you really believe it you're going to be tempted to rely on prayer you're going

27:49to be tempted to rely on prayer for your children you've got these people who won't take their children to doctors because they think prayer is going to work I imagine if you had a a a pilot who's who's trying to land the plane with prayer uh I mean it's it's clear that I mean it's a ridiculous example because we think no one would ever do that but in some sense people do that in situations where the stakes are just as high and certainly everyone who's waging Jihad thinks that their belief in Paradise is is um is true and and and it's the it's the Credence they give to that that real just pure language in the mind that is um is so dangerous did religion religion did religion ever play uh an important function in society did it ever allow people to get past the Barbarian ways and and apply some sort of moral and ethical rules to to society did it ever have any function or any

28:42positive benefit that maybe wouldn't have come about if people were just a bunch of savage tribal people well yeah you can you can say that it did but see I look at it from the other side so so for instance when you say that that when you look at all the good things Christians have done under the ages of Christianity uh occasionally you can you can point to Something in the doctrine of Christianity that seems to be the operative of variable so if that Doctrine were different Behavior would be different but for the most part what you see is just people being people trying to get what they want out of life they're building bridges and they're learning about disease and they're they're they're trying to to uh develop scientific principles uh and it just so happens they're all Christians doing this and and Christianity doesn't really get credit for the birth of science it shouldn't

29:40get credit for the birth of science it shouldn't get credit for all the bridges we built or or the roads we paved um it's just there was no one else to do the job in in Europe you know this this was everyone was a Christian everyone came into this world and was indoctrinated into a worldview view that they got on mother's knee and there was nowhere there was there was no other worldview on offer so um I mean it's just as true to say that everyone virtually everyone who ever fought a war or or saved a life or built a bridge did it in complete ignorance of darwinian evolution right that doesn't that doesn't mean that ignorance of darwinian evolution was The crucial variable there or is a good thing or is something we should want to promote or that something we should we should we should Safeguard uh it's just so happens that that you know prior to 1859 this notion of evolution was not uh

30:38it was not an idea that had had had appeared in anyone's head and so uh there was no alternative but to not know anything about Evolution uh now we could have gotten if you could draw a line from you the the ancient Greece uh and uh uh give us a civilization with a very rich dialogue about ethics and about uh social norms that would not have needed to invoke the war god of Abraham I me so like Plato uh could have given us the basis to think rationally about the good life and you know Plato and everyone like him in Asian Greece um and that that is a that is a stream of ideas that is unencumbered by uh this notion of of you know maybe maybe there's an invisible monster out in the desert who wants a human sacrifice from time to time and maybe had a son who uh who died for our sins uh so it's it's a um so I know I don't think it's actually um even if religion has seemed to do it in

31:41certain circumstances I don't think it was actually a necessary piece I think we are so deeply wired as social creatures to care about ethics that ethics was going to show up anyway so Christian ethics was not just Christian and Jewish and Muslim ethics were not not a necessary scaffold for us but there's also examples of dehumanization of the other you know really common examples the way uh societies are allowed to look at their enemy as not being human and commit horrible atrocities because of that there's a ton of examples of that um well that that's our default yes our default is the guys over in the next Valley we don't know them I mean so so chimps have that right so so chimps will band together in in war parties and kill other shimps who who are not part of their tribe um if they happen to outnumber them and that is a behavior that clearly you know tribalistic

32:39xenophobic violence is is is clearly something we are good at and and do reflexively in a a state of nature um so yeah that's that's where we start so we overcome that by extending the the circle of our moral morality and extending our our relationships with you know our economic relationships our cultural relationships our our our peaceful collaboration with strangers I that's what that's what civilization is civilization is a machine to get us to peacefully collaborate with strangers and that's and the and the the frontal cortex of every human brain is a machine that allows for that collaboration and it's if you damage that in in an individual you get a uh I mean there's many different pathologies there but one is is psychopathy one say if you have the right damage to your brain um you are someone who sees no basis for collaboration you don't feel empathy for

33:41other people uh you either don't care that you make them suffer or you you actually take sadistic pleasure in making them suffer and uh you uh this the the the very basis for trust breaks down in in relation to such a person and there what what I would argue is that there are actually cultures that are for all intents and purposes Psychopathic there in which you can put perfectly normal in individuals people who who are neurologically intact who don't have any of the the anatomical problems of of psychopaths but put them into a a s system of of poorly aligned incentives and bad ideas and they essentially act like Psychopaths the guy who got on the bus and shot Malala in the head for uh wanting to go to school and that's essentially what happened the Taliban just a Taliban gunman tried to assassinate a 15-year-old girl for the crime of wanting to get an education um

34:49most people look at that and think well he must he must have been a psychopath or he must have been crazy and I I think the situation we in in is far more Sinister than that he very likely was a perfectly normal person per and very likely a father who thought he was doing a a good thing and in every other moment in his life it was it's probably a nice guy probably a compassionate guy probably a guy who's capable of empathy Weir jump why would you think that well because you just have to look at the kinds of atrocities that normal people perpetrate in in mass movements that are for want of a better word evil so mean look at Nazi Germany how was the how did the Holocaust occur it was not that there were hundreds of thousands of psychopaths eager to collaborate in the destruction of a people there were a lot of normal people who given the requisite ideas and the requisite incentives and

35:47and and the the ability as you described to dehumanize the other just saw no problem they could they could they could burn people in gas Chambers by day and go home and and shed a tear over Vagner at night and play with their own kids and that that disjunction morally uh never had to be inspected now obviously there are some people who were racked by guilt and some people who refus to collaborate but um I mean this is one of the scary features of the human mind it's possible to be an otherwise good person and do horrible things in the right situation that's not to say that there aren't Psychopaths who who are evil and and essentially monsters but but normal people are capable of terrible things and in the context of certain religious ideas I think it becomes quite rational for them to to to perpetrate evil I agree with you but I don't think there's any evidence that

36:44this guy was like a normal nice guy in everyday life and I just don't understand why you would assume he was I'd always assume that if everyone knew that she was going to school and there were so many people that knew it would take an extreme version of that ideology in order get on a bus and shoot a 15-year-old girl essentially a little kid well I so let me just say I know nothing about this particular person I'm just guessing but uh I think there's no reason to believe that uh every member of the Taliban or every member of al- Qaeda is a psychopath or is an other is a person who would otherwise do terrible things to innocent strangers um there's there's no reason to believe that and there's there many reasons to believe otherwise and and you you can just look at how people get radicalized and um it's not you don't have to you don't have to round up all the Jeffrey ders of

37:39the world and and brainwash them and turn them loose it's they're far more functional people than that um isn't that what we do when we train troops well we yeah we do it you can even go into a more um uh in in a stranger Direction than that when you look at what a a surgeon has to do just to cut into a human body there's a kind of desensi desensitization and and a a shutting down of empathy the kind of normal circuits of empathy and compassion uh to do that so so you and I in the presence of the suffering we would see in in an ER say um would probably be uh physiologically and emotionally really um uh amped up because we're not used to it and we just we can't you know we see someone in tears with you know a major wound or a broken arm and all of our empathy circuits kick in and we're not very useful in that circumstance I mean leave aside for the moment that we

38:44actually don't know what to do uh even if we did know what to do the the a an elux of empathy in that moment is not especially useful and you what to be a great you know trauma surgeon you want to be somebody who is not distracted by the tears and and you know the obvious signs of human suffering and who can just deal with this like a machine that has to be fixed uh and there's there's something there's even a point of contact between that ability just to kind of shut out the other human stuff and deal with the machine that is is on a Continuum with this this cognitive emotional gesture of dehumanizing the other um and just just seeing no no moral implication in just blowing up bodies I see what you're saying so it's essentially you're talking about a broad spectrum of possibilities of the way the Mind operates and there's some people that can learn how to shut things off

39:42and that's what you're doing when you're a soldier you just learn out of this is your new reality um there was an article recently where they interviewed that guy who uh who was a soldier who got in trouble because he was urinating on a a a dead insurgent and they interviewed him and it was it was really interesting because he was very honest about uh how he felt about the situation he said that people have this idea of what they want out of a marine they want a guy who's on the commercial who slides the sword into the The holster or the Scabbard and stands up straight and is wearing a perfectly trimmed suit and you don't want a guy who's going to piss on a dead guy right but you don't get one without the other you don't you don't get a killer you don't get a guy who who doesn't have total disdain for the enemy and that's what develops you see your

40:29friends die you see those around you die you see these people shoot at you you you develop total disdain that it's okay to kill people but it's not okay to pee on them gets real weird and I'm not saying that it's okay to pee on people I'm certainly not saying it's okay to kill people either but I'm saying it is weird that we get mad at one and not the other it's almost like there's a thing about sexuality that's I always found really odd you can't watch sex but you can watch graphic violence you can put a movie and if it's sex it's everything there's legs covering there's angles and you don't ever see genitals if except it's very brief and there's no actual intercourse we not allowed to show intercourse intercourse is somehow or another ridiculously taboo but we can watch people's heads explode on regular television The Walking Dead is just every episode it's just boom slash

41:17swords cut heads off and guns blow people up and we're weird yeah yeah and some of that weirdness can be laid at the feet of religion I there's there's obviously the the conditioning we have around sexuality has religious Norms U hammered into it and um yeah it's it's always been strange to think that that uh very explicit violence is um acceptable just just acceptable entertainment and uh any kind of sexuality whether it's you know objectifying or or obviously you know romantic and and and uh imbued with love is is so charged that we have to protect people from it in in um very careful ways I I think the I mean I don't know that that that story about the the Marine um I don't know whether that's true I think this this it's close to something that must be true what do you mean what part is true well just whether whether you can't get one without the other whe whether you need

42:21um clearly in order to uh function in that mode of Defending yourself and your buddies against the threat of the enemy and killing the enemy wherever you find him um that is a u uh that's a mode in which you can't be thinking about how the enemy has kids just like you and is eager to get home to his wife and I mean that's that's just not that's not helpful uh and it's easy to see why that would start to get drummed out of you uh so um and it's I mean it's a huge problem that we can dehumanize other people uh it's also a huge problem that we can be part of systems and collaborate in ways which effectively destroy other people's lives and we don't even notice it we don't even have the mechanism by which we would notice it and we don't see um we just don't see that that the there is kind of a zero sum game here uh in the back operating in the background which we are all we we can't help but

43:25participate in which uh leaves you know people trying to eek out their survival from trash heaps in developing nations uh and you and I wondering whether we should get the the iPad Air uh and there's there's no way to really Square in in a in a moral ethical sense the way we use our attention in that space so it's so it's like there there's no there's no clear way for me to help the person on the trash Heap in wherever Nairobi um because s just cutting another check to the Red Cross or UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders that's you know while while that's a good thing to do uh it's this sort of telescopic philanthropy where it's there's not not a real connection that it's not a real imperative you know so when when I get a a mailing from a a charity you know help another person who's who's near starvation in in East Africa uh my failure to do it my disinclination

44:28to do it my sense that I've got better things to do than open this junk mail never shows up in in my mind or in in my conversation with anyone else as a shocking misuse of my resources and this is not this is this is a what I'm what I'm in a very um loose way I'm sketching a um a series of thought experiments that that people like uh the philosopher Peter Singer and Peter anger have um have uh put in um really blisteringly clear ways where you where where what we all seem to justify to ourselves uh by default is living in a way where we we we care about our own happiness to a much much greater degree than we could possibly justify in the presence of someone else's abject suffering and because we're not in the presence I mean so if if after this podcast you you and I walk out onto the sidewalk and see someone starving to death in front of us see you know a

45:35child starving to death we wouldn't be able to ignore it there's just no it's clearly it's our responsibility to figure out you know we have to call the authorities we have to get some food we have to get a blanket we have to do something um but because it's happening in in another society and and the only evidence of it that that is being thrust in our face at this moment is an appeal by email or a letter um just hitting delete doesn't doesn't strike us as the as analogous to stepping over the body of a child on the sidewalk and say say saying it's not our problem and it really in a global Society it is analogous and yet we don't have the mechanisms in place to make it um friction free for us to feel the imperative uh and care about suffering elsewhere we and we have have to clearly we have to figure out how to do that as a a species yeah it's just it's almost

46:32overwhelming well it's not almost overwhelming it's totally overwhelming the the sheer numbers you look at the amount of people in Africa that have AIDS you look at you know the the amount of people in in third world countries that are struggling to find food every day it's the the sheer numbers when you look at India there's a billion people in India it doesn't like I think 500 million or something live in total poverty something crazy like that I just made that number up totally yeah right not far off it's probably right um but that that seems like oh yeah I'm just going to go to the store I don't have I have time to do this I got to take care of my kids I got to go to dance class you know it's like there's at a certain point in time it it seems like it's not your responsibility there's this diffusion of responsibility that comes in large numbers that allows

47:15people to ignore a rape if there's a hundred people around and not if there's one right you know they've talked about that before like people can watch people get robbed in Time Square and not do anything about it because they're surrounded by other people and they're waiting for someone else to make a move and it's okay to be a coward but if you were alone in the woods and you saw some man beating some woman to death you would feel compelled to try to do something yeah yeah well actually to to segue to questions of self-defense I think that that diffusion of responsibility idea has been oversold because I think I think more of what's going on for people is they don't want to be the first one to get stabbed you know that it's like in many of those situations you got somebody with a weapon it's not just a guy die as a guy with a knife um and uh and especially in

48:02that CA the original case that K Kitty genev case where um that notion of diffusion of responsibility was coined you had a guy with a knife stabbing a woman to death on a sidewalk um over the course of many minutes and there were many witnesses uh but the the problem from the point of view of the herd is the first guy to rush the guy with a knife is very likely going to get stabbed and and terribly injured or killed uh and maybe the second guy is too but if five people rushed him at the same time if there was some sort of you know tactical intelligence in the group very likely he could be taken down and and neutralized and that would and you know you know maybe someone would still get hurt but it's it's not going to be like one guy after the other getting a fatal stabbing um and that's uh it's just a it's a problem we have in that people are frozen in people freeze and

49:01no one wants to be I mean we we don't have this we don't have the knowledge tactically uh uh among untrained people that if you all go in at once you have a very good shot at bringing down even a very scary looking guy you know if you take it if you take if you hit him low and I hit him high and another and another person and hits him in the middle it doesn't matter who he is you know if he's got three 180 people 100 180 PB guys hitting him um it's uh we're going to bring him down and um you know obviously if we have training that's it's all the more likely but it's um what we need in in situations like that are people who are going to take responsibility for the safety of others you know the the the innocent bystander whether you're talking about bullying in schools among 10-year-olds or you're talking about crime in in public it's the fact that we're we're so willing to be just

49:57bystanders um that's that's a a problem that creates a lot of suffering well in this soft society that we have our society is so soft and nice and it's the easiest Society that's ever existed there's not a lot of conflict in people's lives and new things like conflict are terrifying especially physical conflict with another human being wants to hurt you it's absolutely horrifying I've told this story on the podcast but I'll tell it again for you I was watching a guy was at the comedy store and there was two guys arguing and they were in the middle of the street across from the House of Blues and they started arguing I don't know what happened I just I I saw it in the middle of it and they started swinging at each other and it was a white guy and a black guy and the white guy just went into full panic mode and was literally standing square and just flailing

50:45closing his eyes with his Open Hands flailing and then a bus pulled in front I couldn't see him anymore and then as soon as the bus moved he was unconscious I didn't see what happened to him that's very cinematic yeah it was it was it really was but I've never forgot that because I I saw I knew it was because I've seen people fall apart before you I've seen it I've seen it in much lower levels in fights but to see it in that this street fight I've seen it in competition I've seen people be intimidated and not perform to their ability or be paralyzed by the moment a lot of people don't know what to do and the hits the fan we never have to we don't have any character but the truth is you don't even 10 people don't really know what have to do what they what they have to do as long as they're going to all rush in at the same moment and just swarm the guy that's a good

51:34idea on paper try getting 10 people together hey who's with me we're gonna attack this guy you come after me I'm stab you I'm not going to go near that guy he's gonna stab me he's not going to stab us if we all go together he comes running after you I'll tell you where the the rules have changed or people's intuitions have changed it's at 30,000 ft on an airplane that's true so so and we haven't really we haven't decided this this hasn't this hasn't come about from the top this is come about organically but I think we all have the sense that if something starts going down on an airplane we're all going to rush the guy and there's just going to be no hesitation because we know how bad that can turn out yeah um and that is a uh I think that attitude could be brought down to ground level and so when you're talking about you know an active shooter situation in a movie theater uh the fact

52:23that everyone is just run everyone's running away from the guy uh and uh it's just he he basically has as much time as he wants to just pick targets and reload that is what makes it a a circumstance of just a massacre by in principle uh if everyone rushed the guy it some people would get shot but it's you're you're not talking about a half hour with a guy stalking the Halls uh assassinating people you're you're talking about someone who got off a few shots and then was covered with bodies uh so yeah you always wonder you know what you would do in that scenario everybody has listen bro that ain't happening to me if I see that I'm going after that dude but real conflict seen it many many times you know I've seen thousands of guys get beat up like real up close you're talking about in competition yeah in competition and it's um conflict is terrifying for people you know

53:27I've seen plenty of people get beat up on the street too um but there's something about the potential for things to happen badly to you that are absolutely horrifying for people yeah yeah and it's it's not that it's it is rational to be the first person to run away it's not it's not that that's bad advice for the person um and it's probably advice that we should all take if our only concern is to avoid violence wherever it appears and that's you know and and there are situations where you're going to want to do that no matter who you are so if you're if you're out in public with your your six-year-old daughter um that's probably not the moment for you to try to be a hero that's the moment for you to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible uh and that's that may be true even if you're a cop you know it's you have to rank order your priorities and and do it very

54:21quickly but um I just think that there's there's an ethic that we could have much more of in this society that could could be tuned up by I me would certainly be tuned up by martial arts training in in many more people but it it could just be tuned up even without the training that uh things are a lot worse when you give the bad guy endless freedom to move uh and and there are very few bad guys even armed bad guys who can deal with a crowd and and so when these things go down in public and you have a natural crowd if everyone's just running away or clinging to the exits um it's it's very different than if if we all um took uh the responsibility of being the first to take him down I think that martial arts should be taught in school the same way we teach writing the same way we teach math I really do I think if you wanted to avoid bullies avoid uh people

55:18becoming bullies teach people how to fight teach people to compete all that bully stuff will go away bullin is mostly born out of insecurity mostly yeah B born out of insecurity and born out of this desire that animals have um you know to assert their dominance you know you see it in the animal world you see it constantly and in people it's almost like a natural reaction to uh try to gain some security by making others feel weak it's a a terrible answer to this conundrum of you know of insecurity I think a far better one is not being insecure learning that the actual martial arts techniques and learning what your character is all about learning how to do something that's really difficult learning how to push your body when you want to quit learning how to escape a situation that looked hopeless those things are regular lessons in a martial arts class I can't

56:07tell you how many times I've almost tapped and then gotten out of something and like woo and then you learn you learn how to not tap you learn how to get you know and tap when you have to don't get injured but you learn how to keep calm and not freak out whereas um I've been in class before with new guys and it's really it doesn't I don't it doesn't happen very often I don't really roll with white belts very often but I would roll with them and you would feel them panicking you'd feel them going to full panic attack you could feel them like hyperventilating you know and I'm always I'm I'm the guy who's always like just chill out relax dude this is what you need to do and I'll try to talk him through it but it's a weird thing to see this this Natural Animal reaction simply because a person's not trained or I'll be in that same position with a guy who's like a blue Bel or something like

56:53that and they just stay calm they know how to do it they been there done that they know how to do it and they might get tapped still but at least they're going to do what they have to do to to try their best to get out of that situation I think that martial arts for men especially and I think for women too I shouldn't even say men especially I obviously don't know what it's like to be a woman but I think for men it's a critical part of developing your personality not because you should be fighting people not because you should be I think people need to do difficult things to explore their character I think it's important for for human beings yeah yeah no I I complet Ely agree I think you we'd want to distinguish between or among the martial arts because I think they're martial arts that that tune up the wrong part of the ego because you're actually not ever

57:40having your skills confirmed or disconfirmed because it's all in the in this in this domain of fantasy and pantomimes of violence and um just very Co it's just this we have this this Cooperative exchange of attacks and and replies to the attacks where you're not actually fighting right you're not actually poking the person in the eye and seeing what's what what happens or getting poked in the eye so so this this is sort of the cut between uh you know what are either either the fantasy based martial arts or the or the uh so-called um realistic you know self-defense martial arts and something like Brazilian jiu-jitsu where where you're really you're you're pressure testing it 100% uh now I think I think there there are uh pathologies to the the the sport pressure testing as well I think you have to have a to get a very clear view of what what works in the world you have

58:35to be a an intelligent consumer of all these things but there is something toxic about training in a an art where you're always left wondering whether it works yes you know and and and especially as a a teenage male if the feeling that you might have something to prove and the fear of of being someone who couldn't actually prove it and that whole paranoia that happens in a school where you have teachers who whose skills are by definition never tested like the black belt uh Sensei never is going to roll with his students in these Arts I mean all he's doing is walking around teaching his fantasy techniques uh and you you never the students wouldn't be comfortable you know wrestling him to the ground and you know sweating and tapping him out yeah so I mean just it's you have this this high Archy that is never um uh it's you just imagine that the guy's got mad skills but it's

59:33they're never they're never demonstrated in a way that is other than you know yeah maybe he can do some very pretty kicks uh but he's not actually fighting anyone it's very cult-like when I was uh doing tawo when I was a kid it was very cult-like I mean there was a we we showed that it was effective against taond do in training but they didn't take advantage of the cult it was a very good school and it was just about discipline and for me it was hugely important to have that discipline as a Young Man the Bowing and all that stuff there's rules that you just don't cross like I remember when I was um when I was 15 I had a crazy girlfriend and uh she used to want to she used to want to do it all the time she was crazy and she wanted to do it at the school cuz I was teaching at the time I used to have the keys to the school and I wouldn't I wouldn't let her I mean that's the only

60:17time ever the Only Rule that that could have prevented you from doing that especially as a horny 15 16y old whatever I was that's ridiculous you know I mean I a locked key to a building yeah and no one was there and we could just bang it out no problem there's couches there was no problems I was like nope we can't do it here you know and I'd never had any discipline whatsoever as a young man but I remember when I started learning the Taekwondo was like very limited there was a lot of holes in it as a style especially when it comes to uh punching like tawo is all about kicking there's benefits to that because you learn like really incredible leg dexterity and some of the best kickers ever are Taekwondo guys who eventually learn Muay Thai kickboxing boxing and wrestling right there's a lot of guys in the UFC now that that are super effective with those techniques but when

61:05you start training with kickboxers and just get beat up it's a a really humbling Revelation I realize oh you know I've been wasting time like I'm I'm doing something like I had to revamp my whole style like completely right and then I started kickboxing and then I thought well at least I've got you know that whole patched up and then I went to Jiu-Jitsu class yeah and I I got mangled and I was like oh no I'm helpless I was like at least I thought like in a street fight with striking even if I wasn't like the best kicker or puncher that so I would be able to keep somebody off of me but I there's this kid that was a purple belt this Brazilian kid who us just rape me he just run through me just smash me every time we trained I had never had a chance and he wasn't trying to let me survive he was getting great Delight he was about my age getting great delight and

61:53strangling the out of me and it was um very important because I could have quit oh yeah I could have quit then I could have said you know what this I'll just go to a kickboxing gym where I'm proficient and I look good I'm not doing this where I just get humiliated anybody's watching I look like a right but I decided I want to do what he's doing I want to be able to do that that's incredible this guy just manhandled me we're the same size and he could do anything he wants to me he could tap me he was mounting me arm baring me triangl me he was just running through drills on me I was like this is ridiculous yeah it's such an astonishing Epiphany as a it's probably true for anyone but it's especially true if you've come from a background in martial arts where you think you have some skills did you yeah yeah what was your background well so I I I studied with a guy um uh as a

62:39teenager through maybe uh I think I stopped when I was 22 and this it's a guy who whose background I never totally uh believed I mean he's like he he had real skills and he taught something that was uh very analogous to KV Maga or something it's like a street oriented self-defense where you're learning you're basically taking the boxing the Striking from boxing and the kicking from mu Thai and just a a smidgen of grappling but I I basically did not know how to Grapple but I I I felt like I knew a lot about how to defend myself right uh but I hadn't done martial arts for 20 years and I get back into it uh and start doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and got on the mat with h Chris howder uh and it was like it was like wrestling with a martian I it was just it was just like the rules of physics did not apply to him he's he's my he's probably 10 pounds lighter than me he's maybe an

63:36inch shorter and um it was just this most surreal uh experience of being of making a 100% effort to survive and failing every 30 seconds or minute and a half and just then being resurrected by just the sheer fact that he decided not to kill me and and then doing it again and just G there's nothing like gassing under that kind of pressure when you have no idea you have no idea what to do and you have no idea to relax it's like like you can't it's you can't Rel awesome yeah and Chris howder is old school Machado black belt he's been around for a long time yeah he's uh I think he was one of John Jack or hean I don't know who he's under is he under hean he one of hegan's first black belts he's got some skills he's one of the I think they I think that they're called The Dirty Dozen I think the first 12 American black belts he's one of the he's one of the the first 12 as one of

64:32the um without a doubt one of the greatest accomplishments in my life when when I got my black belt that was no doubt yeah that's awesome it's like wow whoa and was hard to believe you know it's like whoa you know when when I can do that to people that's the weirdest thing ever when I can do what that purple belt did to me I don't do it I'm not mean like that but that when I can just just play with somebody it's so funny it's so strange it's like and then people can play with me if I roll with Jake Shields or Marcelo Garcia or Eddie Bravo they just Maul me I mean there's not all I'm doing is surviving if I roll with Eddie Bravo it's just survival John jock same thing survival try to survive try to hang on Survival try to use defense and John jock goes easy on you he's like my friend look out for your arm you know he he jokes around with you as he's rolling with you right but um

65:16the uh the the technical aspect of Jiu-Jitsu is very overlooked to people who don't participate in it because it's weird when you're looking at it it's just a bunch of guys around on the ground like they don't understand it I remember watching the original um UFC's before I started Jiu-Jitsu like what is he doing I I understand what he's doing I didn't understand the movement so all I was seeing was the end right where I take great pride in when I do commentary explaining the various steps that a guy has to do like this is what he's got to do and this is what he's got to avoid like there's two things going on right now there's a battle of position and I've had so many people come up to me that said they started Jiu-Jitsu based on listening to the commentary they're like I got to learn this this is so cool so weird and it's one of the few martial arts where the little man really can

66:01defeat the bigger stronger man easily and there's a lot of that that fantasy martial arts you were talking about where there's people that have the death touch and they can you know me you see those videos online where guys throw their hand at people and they fall to the ground and you got to wonder what's going on whether the person's helping out and they're falling to the ground on purpose or whether they really believe they get zapped with some Chi but when you see a guy like Hoy Gracie defeat a guy like Shamrock or defeat a guy like um like the old school Dan yeah when he caught him in that triangle off his back he Taps him I mean Madness like how does this happen how is this possible this guy's 250 pounds the other guy's 170 soaking wet buil like a popsicle stick and he just he just tapped that guy he gave up yeah it's so technical you know and so it's really the the one

66:48martial art that actually has that whole Bruce Lee thing going on where the one small guy can defeat the large guy it's it's also the one art where it has what a keto claims it has it really is at least potentially the peaceful art where you can it's just a negotiation I mean you control someone's position you can you you control someone's ability to harm you yeah and then you can just start talking like how far do you want to take this exactly and and it's uh I mean in principle all grappling is that and all you know joint locks added to grappling I guess is that but Brazilian jiu-jitsu is I think the if you're just going to take the off-the-shelf solution to that Suite of problems where you've got two people trying to dominate one another physically and you want to do it in a way where the violence is truly incremental where you do you can just you can turn it up as slowly as as the

67:47the laws of physics allow U Brazilian jiu-jitsu is is that and whereas a striking based solution is not that you don't know what's going to happen when you punch someone in the face you you you may break your hand you may knock them out you may knock them out and have them hit their head on the curb and die there's a lot there's a lot you can't control for and you and and you can't I mean you can't apply a punch incrementally uh to to solve the problem and so it's um and they can hit you too you know when you're grappling with a guy if if I get a guy down and I mount him and he's a white belt he's not choking me it's not going to happen right but if you're Swinging with some guy out in a parking lot you could easily get knocked out I've seen fights in the UFC where a highlevel striker gets ko'ed by a guy who has no business in the ring with him it just happens the

68:32guy swings a punch he connects on the jaw and that's a wrap yeah there's not a lot of luck in grappling zero there's zero luck and that's what's amazing about it it's I mean no one ever says you got a lucky triangle you can't get a lucky that's a complex move to set up you have to cut angles you have to secure it you have to make sure it's not over the foot it's over the ankle there's a lot of lot of variables involved right you're uh you were talking about your instructor not quite uh believing in him Eddie Bravo has a great story of a guy that he was training under before he found Jiu-Jitsu that was doing one of those sort of multiple art bait systems he had like you know five black belts and different arts and he told everyone he was going to China to train you know he had a great master in China that he was going to train and uh Eddie went to the

69:16supermarket and he recognized the guy's car and so he goes inside and the guy was shopping right he was pretending he was in China he just took the week off and was just hanging out and shopping he was going to come back and tell everybody he went to China and learned some chiong have you seen those videos online where they have those Old Masters that think that they can actually fight oh yeah no I've posted a bunch of those on my YouTube page they're so sad they're well they're the sad one where the guy offers the challenge and then gets punched in the nose by the this very ordinary looking martial artist um that that one's sad but the the the they're just mesmerizing to watch the ones where there is no confirmation there's just the just the cult in full yeah uh Splendor and you just have everyone complying with this Magic Touch I mean even the distances of 20 feet you got

70:06people you know writhing in pain and flopping around um and I don't I don't know what explains it I I don't think it is conscious fraud on the part of most of these people I think there's a there's a kind of induction there's a sort of there's a hypnotic component to it and a s suggestibility but and also social pressure and self-deception and and just many things get get uh conspired to make people participate in this thing that it is seemingly the most delusional thing that has ever happened explain it to people have no idea what we're talking about okay so that you can actually um a good place to see it do we have a video yeah on on um on my uh if you go to H my YouTube page there's a there's a fake martial art stream um uh and uh Sam Harris orgorg is is my is my YouTube page but there's um and also I wrote a blog post the um the pleasures of drowning where I talk about Brazilian

71:06jiu-jitsu and in that blog post I think it's in that blog post I'm pretty sure it's in that blog post I link to one of these videos where um uh the um he builds himself as someo master I can't imagine he's actually a nikito guy but this is the guy who is causing people to fly all over the room at a distance of 20 feet and then he issues this Challenge and I think it was a $5,000 challenge to any martial artist who had the courage to test his powers and you see the challenge match where um oh no this is um these these guys are also awesome these guys are amazing yeah U it just throws them off so um there there there's so many there's so many videos out there that are are just Priceless and they should be impossible this is really this is not cuz this this just this has all the features of religion except the thing that that's a guy oh yeah because this is the guy who's got a

72:01so you see his skills this is this is where his his skills work um but then you see his challenge match and uh he he clearly did not know that he couldn't do this because otherwise he never would have issued that challenge right he really believed it this working he thought this was working but you can imagine what if you open a school and for the next 30 Years everyone cooperates with you you know so you've never met someone who wouldn't fall down uh to your Magic Touch uh I you could see how he would believe this I he's basically run a psychological experiment on himself and brainwashed himself in the presence of all these compliant students um but anyway his challenge match is is U somewhat depressing but also it's also pretty satisfying to see a mass delusion disconfirmed that emphatically I mean this is what you want to see go down with religion the

72:56problem is the the religion really is tennis without the net I mean there's just there is no there's no disconfirmation that is so clear that the religious person is going to accept it whereas this guy getting repeatedly punched in the face he has to accept that he's lost the fight I me one imagines maybe he still has a school somewhere but um it's just it's clear that his his martial art doesn't work well he gets so confused when he gets hit you could see the look on his face play it to the part where he gets beat up he gets so confused pull it like it's way ahead where he's uh there's looks like a a kyushin guy who's wearing a pair of shorts yeah this is the guy some sort of karate so this I mean just imagine if he got in there with with uh Anderson Silva Anderson Silva or someone who really wanted to prove a point I mean the guy he's with here is is just

73:50Jo Joe karate the guy's skilled though when he did a really smart thing he grabbed his ghee he grabbed his ghee and just started wailing on him in the face he punched him three or four times and then he kicked him in the face and he's a old man but but also you see that in the other video you see that this guy really doesn't want to hurt him he's worried about hurting him and so after the first blow lands that's it right there that's that's post first blow right before that he hits him for the first time and he stops right there's there's another angle on this there's a video shot from the other side where you can see um can seear that kick while he's holding onto his arm yeah he can't move he just holds him in the air and punts him in the face yeah but it's it's a um it's amazing so I mean this is this is the uh the perfect look the perfect window at what

74:38the human mind is capable of so so if the fact that human Minds can do this proves that religion can be every bit as delusional as atheists say it is uh or at least the the the doctrines about the afterlife and you know all the Gish stuff that that uh we think of in terms of religion it can it's it's so much easier to deceive yourself about that than it is to deceive yourself that you can knock you know 20 opponents down with your magic touch and yet this is possible what's the mechanism what's going on there is you're a neuroscientist tell me what's happening in a person's mind that allows them to just accept like hypnotism that's real right it is real I you know there there's there's a frontier between what's real and what uh and just just what I you know I don't I don't know where fraud starts and and genuine demonstrations of hypnosis end and and so um but clearly some people and

75:38there's a spectrum of of suggestibility some people are not hypnotizable it's not it's not like everyone can can be um you know the Manchurian Candidate but uh there's there there clearly there's clearly uh a phenomenon where you can be given a uh a you can be inducted into a state where you're given suggestions which then are operative at the level of your behavior and emotion and um and about which you may have no recollection uh so I think hypnosis is is is real um and it's a uh there's also there's there are other features to this so there's the the social pressure I mean so just and and just the sunk cost I mean what imagine devoting years of your life to something which does not work um but pays all you have the the the belongingness to the group you have all of the you know all of the uh the rituals and um just the sunk cost of how much time you've spent

76:40doing this thing whether it's religion or a fake martial art uh the the pressure the the the emotional pressure not to realize it is can be excruciating and and when you meet people I mean one of the one of my favorite conversations with a a a former person of faith that I've ever had was um I met someone at dinner who had lost her faith that day literally I got her just fresh you know that just just when the the thought bubble had had burst uh she she just showed up at this dinner and the her overriding uh feeling was just of uh depression over how much time she had wasted just like like the sunk cost of because she had spent decades fixating on this this stuff and it had it had completely distorted her relationships and it had been the center of her life and she finally admitted to herself that day that in this case with Catholicism that none of it was true you know this is she

77:45had just been you know brainwashed uh and but but the the the the regret the level of regret over the time wasted and all the things she could have done with that time and all the it's just it's it's that is a wall that that many people just can't clear because it's it's just too painful to acknowledge it's very painful what was the mechanism for her what was the the reason um well actually she she credited one of my books in that she maybe something else had had had helped her along but no the last thing she had been reading where she finally realized oh my god I've been deceived about this uh it was was one of my books Hoodwinked was it letters to a Christian Nation I don't know it was either that or the end of Faith lying is your new book and um what it's uh there's a really important thing that you uh you bring up and I it's not on um the front part of this I read it

78:40online uh somewhere that you you can avoid a lot of problems in your life yeah yeah simply by not lying almost almost all of them I mean of all the ones that are avoidable yeah when you just at how people screw up their lives lying is if it's not the reason it's the thing that enabled the other reason I mean just it's people complicate their lives massively by a willingness to deceive others uh and and this has many features to it one is just there are all the things you you can do based on the cover that lies provide that you shouldn't be doing because they're not good for you and no and everyone would hate you if they knew you were doing them or you know your wife would leave you or whatever whatever it is uh and so the the lies lies create a space in which you can let your life run off the whale run off the rails whether it's becoming an addict or or or um uh you

79:42know perpetrating Financial frauds or whatever it is um uh but there's there's also this component where you don't actually you never actually discover who you are in Social space if you always leave yourself this out of line so it's like you never discover if you keep canceling plans with people and just tell this white lie that you're too busy or you're not feeling well or you never have to confront the fact that these are people you actually don't want to see you know you like you got people in your life who want to go out to dinner with you you don't want to see them and you're never having to confront that because you have this out that you're just going to lie you know and and and there's it's just if you want there's actually no change in a person's life that I think is more important in terms of getting your life straight your your relationship straight you're just

80:34getting into the future uh without screwing it up for yourself um there's no more important change than than a commitment to being honest in in in whatever the situation is that presents itself so you don't fake it till you make it that's not good have you ever heard that F make it well no you can that not good that I think well you can fake you can fake something till you make it which is you can fake confidence a positive attitude toward uncertainty I mean you so you can so you can go into a situation without any guarantee that it's going to work out or that you're going to develop the skills that you need or that you are going that people are going to like you but have a positive attitude uh and and um I mean there sort of a good will toward the future that you can develop and that is a kind of fa I mean F faking confidence and faking Comfort maybe but that's not

81:28lying that's a lying is is when you are int intentionally implant planting false beliefs in others when they expect the truth so it's not I mean so so being a card magician or being a poker player I mean this is not this is not lying this not mean deception I'm talking about is when someone has every reason to expect the truth and you are purporting to give the truth but you're not and you're actually deceiving them um and uh what I focus on in the book because most virtually everyone recognizes that some subset of of deceptions are a problem I mean the egregious lies that you know the frauds that that really harm people and the lies that you know when a pharmaceutical company says the drug works and they're lying I mean everyone recognizes that that's a problem that we've we've all paid a huge price for the the the skepticism we now have about governments

82:30and corporations because whenever we catch them in a lie we just now for the next 10 years can't forget that these people in power often lie to us uh but the uh the lying that people there there's there's another U set of of of lies that people think are actually unavoidable you know or or or good uh and this is they're usually called White Lies um and I think that I think the price we pay for White lives is also excruciating and it's it's not something that people are quick to to see actually I didn't see it until I went to when I was a freshman at Stanford I took a course with a professor who I actually interview in in the back of the book um Ronald Howard who is a um really a brilliant guy who's who started a a whole academic field called decision analysis in the 60s and it's it's a um it's a me a mechanism which um allows someone to make as rational a decision as

83:32possible by putting all of their information about a topic into into a essentially a calculation um it's got nothing to do with with uh with line or or honesty but he's a he's a a a professor in the engineering economic systems Department Stanford and he as kind of a sideline to his his academic work was teaching these these courses on ethics and one course was just on the question whether it's ever ethical to lie and so as a freshman I was sort of put in the machine of this course and came out the other side convinced that in virtually any situation apart from like a self-defense situation where you're would where things have really broken down and you're not in the presence of someone who you're going to collaborate with line is just unacceptable it's just not it's not how I want to live it's not how um anyone should want to live if they look at it closely enough and it's really one of

84:28the the huge problems that we have as a race is we we know how to communicate we know how to uh we like when you were talking to that Rabbi that we were talking about earlier and he has this like very eloquent and you know very theatrical way of communicating and you know it's it's it's it's kind of tricky because when someone's really good at that you want to believe that they're telling the truth you want to believe that someone who is is lying to you in a very charismatic way is telling you the truth until we actually can read each other's minds there's a lot of confusion that goes on in human interaction just bumping into each other just not getting anything done not figuring out what's really going on not figuring out the real relationship you have to other people in your life you know I know people that lie constantly and they never get their together they just

85:13have like these little lies here and there like why didn't you call me back a this thing came up and it's always they just and they're always in a mess there's just a mess and I think you're 100% dead on I think that that that part that the be honest part that's one of the most critical aspects of human behavior we make an agreement with each other if you're going to be in my life we're going to be friends we have to be 100% honest with each other and as soon as someone's not 100% honest well then what percentage are you honest is it 90 is it 80 is it 70 what do I got to do I got to throw everything through a filter this a it's not worth it it's not worth and then then there's the question of whether you want to have a different ethical code for your friends and for strangers right and then you you you run to situations where the stranger suddenly is a friend and you you're now

85:59confronted with having had a different ethical code or you discover that this is this person is somebody's brother and you just lied to them it's just it's it's not tenable to live this way and it's what I'm interested in are the the subtle ways that it erodes trust between people because there there's one example I use in the book where a friend was um out with her her girlfriend and she wasn't like her best friend but they were very close friends and um the girlfriend was had plans later that night with another friend uh and didn't want to to have that plan and so this you know friend a watches her friend call up the third friend and lie about why she can't have plans and she lied so convincingly and effortlessly and just it was just you know something with her kid being sick whatever it was and then you got off the phone and went back to the conversation with with friende and

86:54what friende experienced in that moment was just a a subtle but absolutely uh obvious erosion of trust like a permanent erosion of trust but it was it was something that could never be rectified because it was not they were not so close that she was going to perform an intervention there and say you know why are you lying and why do you do this and have you ever done this to me she was just left with this vague sense that probably this woman had lied to her in the past and would lie to her in the future and and we go through life like this with people and and people the people who are who are telling these little lies are just they're never so the the the liar in that case never knew that she had subtly degraded her her friendship with the first friend um and these things just don't get discovered and they're it's very toxic I find also that people that lie are very difficult

87:47at seeing lies in others or or or are very bad rather at seeing lies in others I think that people who are bullshitters can be bullshitted people who are con arst can be conned there's uh there's a there's some sort of a disconnect that people have that don't live in especially an introspective really objective version of themselves like really looking hard at all their issues if you're lying you're not doing that so if you're not if you don't you know you might have some walls up that you might not know about and they could lead to you getting lied to it's very possible right right to go back to the to the rabbi though I think in that case he wasn't lying I I don't think I I think most religious people believe what they say they believe he's so smart though I got of think he knows yeah but that that's the that's the scary thing about I that's so this is not certainly

88:33doesn't apply to Rabbi walpi but but um this applies to the jihadist who thinks he's going to get 72 virgins in Paradise you can be smart and believe that that's that's the scary thing you can be the engineer who could have had everything but decides to be a jihadist Because he believes that the afterlife life conforms to the Quran and the the Hadith and and that that is a um so I don't I deception is part of the game and self-deception is part of the game but in in many cases I think you have people who have been um indoctrinated from birth or get a message from uh their culture that or get emotionally hijacked in ways that allow them to believe the unbelievable and then they're being perfectly honest when they when they spread those ideas they're not they're not frauds um and that's that I think is um so it's a different problem a deception is is self-deception is certainly a component

89:34in many of these cases but do you think it's possible that technology will eventually make lying obsolete like what what we're seeing right now with this uh invasion of privacy thing with the NSA we're seeing in a it's a one-sided trip obviously and then you have Wikileaks and Eric Snowden or they're the Eric that his name Edward Edward Edward Snowden on the other side releasing you know scratch bits of information that they can scratch together and and and and and smuggle out but it seems to me like that's where the trend is ultimately going the trend is ultimately going to you're not going to like if you send someone a picture of your dick online it's going to be out there someone's going to get that if you you know if you send you know a blank if this happens if that happens if you know if it's going to it's all going to be recorded you're going to know where you

90:20were you have a GPS chip on your phone or your Google Glass knows exactly where you were it records you all the time I think this NSA thing is terrible I think it's terrible mostly because it's the government that has all the power in the situation it's these people that are they're not using it I mean the ideas that they're using it to prevent terrorism I I guess maybe but there's so much evidence that points to the fact they were spying on other world leaders that they didn't think were terrorists they're it's essentially using as a vehicle for control right and but it brings up a fascinating new area of technology and that is this this new era that we're entering into where everything's getting closer and closer and closer to the point where one day we're going to have this one data base that we all draw from all the time if we have the internet we're going to have

91:14something that it's like a pair of glasses or like something that you wear inside your skin or or something that's going to allow everybody to be connected all over the place I don't know how we're going to manage it but all that information we're going to be able to get to it I'm going to be able to know what you had for lunch today yeah yeah well there's there's so there's that component there's the just the sheer transparency based on having so much data but there's this other technological uh fix for deception which is just actual lie detection and I think that is coming I I think there's no question that at some point we are going to have line detection that we it may not be perfect but it will be valid enough and reliable enough that we will rely on it uh in the way that we rely on DNA evidence so if it's if it was your DNA at the scene you know we we we think you're involved if

92:08you are caught lying as measured by this machine we're we're going to think you're line and that's going to be you know forensically actionable I think that's we're not we're certainly not there yet but I think that it would it would really surprise me if we don't get there I wanted to talk to you about this because I had uh one of your colleagues on my show uh Joe Rogan questions everything I can't remember her name right now oh blond woman was it pam pam Douglas I believe so I believe that was who it was yes and she was talking about fmri results and how a woman was actually convicted of a murder I believe it was in India because of fmri that she had what they called functional knowledge of the crime scene right rightow or another I mean that I think that strikes almost any neuroscientists as a premature use of the technology and in that case you're talking about a um um I mean that I

93:03think that I think that mode of inquiry is is problematic because you're you're talking about just just familiarity with the crime scene or with the with with the evidence and there are clearly other sources of familiarity and and you know if if if the per if the dead girl is wearing a dress that you just bought out of the J crew catalog you're familiar with the dress and I don't know that they have a I don't know that they've operationalized us in a way that that will will protect you from just just accidentally being familiar with the with the um uh some features of the crime scene um to say nothing of the fact that we just cannot resolve brain function uhar clearly enough to to uh base those kinds of decisions on on a judgment that the person is is lying or not we don't understand that the the neuroc corelates of of honesty and deception enough to know but it's I

93:59think it would be very surprising if we never get there and so so and again now I'm just speculating if it was Pam on your show um she actually took she was a what's her name again Pamela Pamela Douglas is is the woman I'm thinking of she was she was a graduate student in um the lab I was in at UCLA and she after I did a um yeah it's her after I did a a study of belief um where I compared belief and disbelief and um uncertainty with fmri uh she came back and and re and used all of my data to look to to to see if she could discriminate what subjects believed at the single trial level which is at on on each question so so what I did is I I put subjects in a scanner and I gave them propositions to read that were either clearly true or clearly false or clearly undecidable and just compared belief versus disbelief versus uncertainty and that is if you could do

94:57that if you could do that at the single trial level you essentially have a a lie detector because if you believe that you were the person who committed the crime uh and we can we have a understanding of the neural correlates of belief versus disbelief then we could easily ask you you know whether you were involved in a way that would tease that out so she she wanted to see um whether we could uh see the difference between belief and belief and uncertainty at the at the kind the micro level just just you know on the single question level and her her um classifiers were over 90% accurate so she was she was over 90% in in guessing essentially whether someone was could believed or disbelieved a a proposition U and so if you had a it's easy to see how we would now with available technology have a lie detector that was 90% accurate now that's not accurate enough to put people away and you know

95:57for for misstatements in court but if we could get it to the level of accuracy that we now rely on for DNA evidence uh I think we would it's it's it's it's an interesting question philosophically and experimentally how we'd ever bridge that Gap and how we'd ever be truly confident that no matter what sort of histrionics and protestations this person is lying this is though this person is is is claims you know on his mother's life that he's telling the truth the brain scan evidence says otherwise somehow I feel like that is going to be harder to achieve than uh him saying it's not my blood it's not my blood it's not my blood but the DNA evidence says otherwise um but in principle I don't see any reason why we couldn't get there and that and that I think would change things a lot because when you look at the price we pay for not being able to determine whether someone is lying it is

96:55huge I mean it is I mean we're talking there are people in prison for the rest of people have gone to death row and been executed who we know were innocent you know not just one oh yeah I mean and and in the most horrific I mean there was this one guy who's name is now escaping me but um there was a New Yorker uh profile on him where his house burned down and he was charged with the crime of having set the fire and killing his two kids now imagine being someone whose house burned down and your two kids die in the fire and the world thinks you did it and not only do they think you did it they prosecute you your defense fails you go to death row and you're executed right for the crime of having murdered your children um uh now that if we could just tell whether someone was telling the truth that that problem goes away and we're and and there you know they think

97:50of think of the the implications of um you know negotiation among you know leaders of countries where you don't know whether people are telling the truth and you know we do or do not have nuclear weapons you don't know whether they're telling if if if there was transparency at the level of all for all of those conversations it would it would really be a GameChanger not only that women will have to finally accept What Men actually think right we could stop bullshitting we could stop Sex in the City and notebooking our way through this life that would be we'd also have to find out what women think it would be awful well it would be great but you know for a while it would be awful do you do you think that that ultimately is going to lead to the change that we need in World governments is that what the big one is going to be the ability to discern whether or not

98:41people are telling the truth because if that it seems like just that alone would change everything If You Could See Clearly motivations You Could See Clearly benefits to certain actions you can clearly see deceptive tactics based on you know well you know really what they're trying to do is this you know read it out you know what they're actually trying to do is make money for excorporation they're pretending that they're trying to save uh the country from an evil dictator but really what they're trying to do is extract resources here's the clear data like what do we do if we have everything out on the table what a weird world we would live in it would that could be the total 100% GameChanger even bigger in fact than the internet if we could find out what everybody actually thinks yeah there there are a few wrinkles to it because if you were self- deceived if

99:26you actually believed what you were saying but you're what you're saying is not true um then you could sort of game the system right like a li detector test yeah I mean so so you know if we had if we totally understood the the neuro neuroc corelates of deception we wouldn't necessarily be able to detect someone who believed their own lies and there may be some way to to be confused enough or are confabulist enough about reality that you can just or spitball or or um say what you want to be true or kind of hypnotize yourself I we just don't actually know what's true at the level of of the mind's cognitive elasticity so you so it's possible that you could have people who are not good subjects of lie detection in some sense and um that's something we could we would understand if we understand OD all this uh but I think in the in the general case uh and certainly in the case of big

100:30lies virtually all the time the liar knows he's lying and is hoping not to get caught and is picking his words carefully so as not to get caught and keeping track of the things he said uh and and is consciously calculating against the expectations of cogency and and uh um uh plausibility in his audience I mean there's a massive calculation going on virtually all of which is conscious in a liar and it seems to me that that is is going to be detectable in with great reliability at some point it just seems like it's inevitable what everything progresses everything gets better and that's uh something they're working on on a constant basis whether it's 100 years from now or 200 years from now what but people they'll hate this this will because the the orwellian uh fears of of the misuse of this or the fears about the or or willing and misuse of this are pretty

101:29easy to to um uh get a hold of and and I think um people feel like there's the kind of the last and mo most uh critical uh uh loss of cognitive Liberty I mean so so if you if you didn't have the a fundamental right to privacy uh that could be safeguarded by lies uh something crucial to our Humanity has been lost I think many people will feel that and it it won't matter how high you pile the benefits you talk about the guy who was in prison for and and killed and and he didn't kill his daughters but we thought he did and we killed him and you multiply that guy by 100,000 uh and you talk about you know treaties and deceptions at the level of you know nation states where you know millions of lives hang in the balance um there are people who are going to say no no this is not acceptable and and I I think um and they they'll they'll have a few points on their side but I I think the the the

102:35cost to us personally and economically and socially for consequential lies um I mean I'm not I'm not imagining a world where we would have lie detection technology running all the time so that every time you you know someone says how are you and you say I'm fine but you're actually not fine and some red lights going to go off on your you know sweater turkey T I mean there's not there's not um I don't think any of us would want to live in that world but when the stakes are high and conversations matter I even just in court say you know the conversation is is important enough and consequential enough that it has now moved into a court and we've got lawyers on both sides and now we've got people swearing oh of honesty let's have this conversation under in in a framework where we know that that lies will be detected I think I think any sane person is going to sign up for that um isn't

103:29that the pro the the the progression though that's always existed like people were resisting books you know when books were first printed yeah because it was going to erode our our memory which it probably did but um yeah I mean they thought that was something crucial to our happiness would be lost by by uh by literacy well there's a lot of people that also believe going online is bad I've talked to a lot of people that take pride in not going online I think it's hilarious it's like dude you know you're just the guy that doesn't like books you're the same guy you're the guy you're the guy who doesn't want a cell phone you don't want people to know where you are you you want to be free yeah like those days are gone man those days are gone like there's there's a new world going on by the way if you're driving around your car everybody knows where you are they can find you it's

104:12super easy you know you have a GPS in there it's very unique they try if they if the police need to find you they trace it they find you instantly it's not like you you're not hiding like there's no hiding anymore yeah yeah although it's interesting I I don't know I me clearly there's some form of progress that is um harmful and you could be only dimly aware or just sheerly oblivious to the harms uh until after it's too late and I I I'm not sure how I mean just speaking personally my own use of of the internet and my use of the way in which my my day gets segmented by the checking of email and and just just the way I can disappear online in the middle of a conversation you have to I think we all have to be mindful of what that what that's doing to us and it's a very good point and it's um I mean just to be on the phone with someone and also be checking your email I mean that's

105:09something that that you can in a very lazy way just do more times than not and it's it's a um it's uh there are now a thousand moments like that that we all confront and if we're not if we're not aware of of How It's playing with um the fabric of Our Lives that you just you you can just wake up one day with a very fragmented kind of attention and um it's just a u it's just it's it's it's a less satisfying there's something about multitasking that is I think intrinsically stressful and not rewarding but you know what the real issue is it's not really multitasking yeah if you're sitting there at dinner with someone and someone's checking their phone they're not really talking to you you're just you're just segmenting your your the experience I was at a dinner the other day and there was four Dudes and they were all on their phone I was like this is the craziest ever like no one's talking

106:03to anybody we're all just looking at our phones like this is bananas like let's make an agreement shut these off for an hour W my kids you know I don't want it them what if someone calls you know work is in the middle of a deal nobody wants to just detune you know vacation do it on vacation sh I didn't check my email for 5 days it was like a big deal o you disconnected from the Hive you're crazy what do you make of uh this whole NSA privacy thing do you think that can be rectified it seems like when the Genie's out of the bottle with something like that like once they can do that and then once they justify doing that like you know and not all that Obama's been lying about it like left and right it's fascinating when you find out that he oversaw a lot of these these decisions to to to spy on people and there's a lot of things that were done during the Bush

106:51Administration before him uh that go way back to 2002 yeah German counselor chancelor confronts Obama about us spying on her cell phone why would you spy in the German Chancellor do you think she's a terrorist is she evil well no but that I mean we have this history of Espionage which in which that is just clearly something you would do so no one one problem here is just that and this this is one of the consequences of of um increasing transparency uh it when Once certain facts are acknowledged people have to respond to them there's there's a you know I know you know and you know that I know that you know and now this is now this what was a essentially an Open Secret has to be explicitly talked about and reacted to and so everyone knew for for decades that we would make every effort we could to spy on everyone we cared about spying on and that is that is allies and

107:53enemies and everyone did it in so far as their resources allow and that is just what has always happened but the moment you actually put too fine a point on it and and declare Angela merkel's cell phone has has been bugged by the the NSA or the CIA um that is uh intolerable and it's just it's not it's it's a little bit like um what would happen to us uh if we saw a photo of everyone we killed in war you know if if it was just all transparent what kind of Wars would we actually emotionally tolerate it might this might be a good thing it might be a bad thing it might be it might be we might be defenseless because we would find the the the act of Waging War so unconscionable that we wouldn't do it or we'd be slow enough to do it that we would be you know sitting ducks and so um I don't know I just have a it's just a big question mark there how much there are cases in which true

109:02information is prevents you from being able to do something that you actually would want to do and and perhaps should want to do to protect people who need to be protected protect people from the realities of the world that they're not necessarily aware of that they haven't come to grips with like that some people aren't looking for your best interest some people will shoot a 15-year-old girl on a bus because she wants to read these people real people and you're not going to change them you're not going to Enlighten them instantaneously unless you know that's the next invention and until then you you're going to have to deal with the realities of the world you live in yeah so so either we should have Espionage or we shouldn't now a lot of people think you know there shouldn't be a CIA there shouldn't be an NSA there's something including JFK um yeah so it's just if you're one of

109:57those people if you think we shouldn't be spying on anyone then obviously anything we do in that sphere is is unethical and um uh problematic but I'm not one of those people it's it's obvious that that we want information that people don't want to give us and that's and this is this is information that relates to to the most consequential things that could possibly happen nuclear terrorism I mean we want to know if someone is is trying to get loose nukes in in the former Soviet Union and blow up an American city they're not going to tell us and if there's any way to find out so as to interdict that process um uh that's let's call that Espionage and that's going to be a matter of tapping people's phones or watching their email and so and if you just have to imagine how you would feel if a nuke goes off in the in the Port of Los Angeles killing 150,000 people and

110:56making a region of Los Angeles uninhabitable for for decades uh if not more um how would you feel if the NSA said yeah you know we actually we had the technology to detect all of those machinations that led to that catastrophe but we decided not to use it we decided not to use it because Glenn Greenwald made enough noise that it it just became politically inconvenient for us to use it or we were respecting the rights of of people to you know to have private evil thoughts that we weren't good we just didn't we it was something unsavory about reading email we didn't want to T tap anyone's cell phone I I think we we would the clearly the price is the price for that kind of delicacy is too high in the aftermath of that kind of event so if you if you live in a world where you think that uh or if you think we live in a world where those events are are not only possible but

111:50there are people waking up tomorrow morning trying to do that um then I I think you want some level of of of very energetic EES dropping on certain people and and then then the question is just where do you draw the line can you get like a TSA Pre exemption like one of those things but know you could do TSA Pre they know you're not a terrorist oh you're Sam Harris the writer you can just go right through but but the only way you're exempt is is to invite that intrusion into your life in the first place true so you have to be willing to to part with some kind of privac but isn't I mean the The Devil's Advocate position would would be that there's a reason why these people are upset at us we're occupying Holy Land we're doing terrible things we're stealing their resources there's a lot of things that the United States is doing that actually promotes this radical Jihad thinking

112:37well the to some degree that's true most of that is based on their religious perception of the world in the first place so that I mean so many of these grievances are are liberals tend to describe them as political but but they're actually religious grievances so you know if the if the Saudis invite us in to help secure the O oil wells that Saddam Hussein is threatening right someone like Osama Bin Laden perceives that as the sacil of having Infidel boots on the ground in the Holy Land right that and and then someone like Glenn Greenwald will describe that as a political grievance that's a religious grievance that is that is you we were invited in by a government in that case to protect oil wells uh we're not stealing the oil we're buying the oil I mean but isn't it a bit disingenuous because sadon wasn't really a religious guy oh no no he he's he was not religious but he was using he

113:36one he was tamping down the the religious sectarianism of the Iraqi people which you know the moment we removed him chaos exploded yeah um but so so who but what who gets the blame for all of that it's like we we've got Sunni and Shia killing each other based on is that politics we can call it politics but that that is religious sectarianism no question in that way it can actually be argued that it was better for the people to have that ruthless dictator in power than it is to have the United States sort of loosely helping them govern themselves I don't agree with that obviously um I think you know ultimately the the best thing for everybody would be some sort of a compromise but when you look at the fact that these people are both Muslims they just have a different sect of Muslim of Islam and they they kill each other like on a regular basis like the amount of

114:24Slaughter involved most people don't even know that that's going on we're not we're not paying attention to it it shows up on you know page eight of the New York Times sometimes but yeah sometimes but but the the um I mean this is that's one thing you have to keep in mind whenever you hear uh people rail against US foreign policy being the engine as driving this Global Jihad and and Muslim violence you just have to look at what Muslims are doing to other Muslims in contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with with our overreaching our colonialism our stealing of resources I mean you you can you can make us as bad as you want but go to Pakistan and ask yourself why are they why are sunnis blowing up Shia or ahadi mosques and but you some guy is willing to lay down his life tomorrow morning and you know become a bomb and kill 75 people um and it's got nothing to do

115:23with us it's got that is and it's we can we call it politics it's we're talking about in many cases the victimization of a religious minority that has no political power it's not it's not politics by it's not like this these it's not the tea party you know really trying to get something this is this is a this is someone waking up willing to die for the pleasure of killing men women and children um uh and it's to to no end apart from the imagin end that he's going to wind up in paradise and get everyone he loves in there after they die do you think that it's possible to turn that around is there a way or do you think that the reason why you support United States occupying these countries is because they're so chaotic that you need to keep an eye on them you need to keep the area settled I actually don't I don't support U occupation anywhere actually I I never I I supported our going into

116:24Afghanistan because we had to do it we had to had to strike a blow against al- Qaeda and did we have to think we had to what was it what is the main uh well because what just you look at the consequences of our never having done it before that we were there was this slow bleed of of of attacks on us without any real reprisal for decades I mean you know since you know the early 80s um and uh we were you know the hostages and Lebanon and there were there were you know the Marine Barracks got got blown up and and the the the lesson drawn among the jihadists of the world was this is you know the West is a paper tiger America is a paper tiger they're just going to run away um and we can keep taking it to them and um that is a um that's not the lesson we want jihadists to draw I I think the lesson we want them to draw is that uh it is very dangerous to be a

117:25jihadist and you know if you if you are desperate to get to paradise and you're going to tell all your friends and Neighbors in your in your suicide video that U you want to get to Paradise uh will help you get to Paradise I me I think we have to have a policy toward toward jihadist which is a policy of of of Hot War but I don't think we should be occupying countries to do this I think I think it should be largely covert I well then how are we going to control how do we control the heroin then if we don't occupy how are we going to be able to put have lock down and all that Afghan sweet heroin I think well we can just we can just buy it if we want it do you think that that's going on do you think that uh the United States like some secret factions of the United States have some sort of uh an involvement in profiteering off of drug use I have no idea did you ever see I'm sorry I didn't

118:16no I mean it's it's totally it's possible I it's it's not something I've thought about it just it seems like uh most things are for sale I mean certainly heroin is for sale if it's not and like what is the margin of of you know for stealing it and fighting a war to steal I mean clearly whatever if if we had ulterior profit seeking motives in any of these wars uh they didn't turn out they didn't pan out I mean these wars are so much more costly than anything else we could have gotten from them um but the uh I think the L lesson I draw from these wars is that we there is a consequence to having boots on the ground uh and it's a it's a bad one uh which is there's this perception that we based on our own desire for conflict and Conquest are at war with the Muslim world there's a perception this the perception in the Muslim World some of it is is is fraudulent and you know they don't

119:12really believe this some of it is is genuinely believed by many many millions of people that the West is just trying to conquer the Muslim world and destroy this this the one true religion uh that's not a perception that we can just keep humming for a century we have to deflate that and so and and one way to deflate it is to treat this all like a um in some sense like a like a crime problem uh but a crime problem that is going to be uh remedied with covert uh covert Act of violence so you know I think I think we should assassinate jihadists that's and and we shouldn't we shouldn't make a big thing about doing this we shouldn't own it every time it happens it just should become clear in a hundred countries that if you're a jihadist who opens open sets up shop as you know the jihadist who's now going to going to install the the global caliphate and kill infidels um your life

120:17just got very dangerous um and and but the the endgame for us and for for a global uh civil civilization is to get moderate Muslims to do that job I mean so the moderate Muslims have to realize that they need to win a civil war with their jihadists as long as moderate Muslims and and conservative Muslims who are not jihadists think that jihadism is not their problem or or has no or they're just scared of of their own extremists um there's going to be no one else to to to prosecute this war and there's something intrinsically inflammatory about us doing this job not only in the minds of jihadists but in the minds of of uh normal Muslims who would never think of waging Jihad but they just find it uh uh intolerable to see Western you know guys sitting in in office parks in Vegas flying drones over Pakistan which are pretty precise and they kill a lot of bad people but they also kill

121:27some some innocent bystanders that is you don't have to be a someone who was going to be a jihadist to find that objectionable if you are a devout Muslim who just feel or you're a person with conscience no but but but but there's this there's a Sol religious solidarity that is working against us um which the only remedy for which I think is to have Muslims wherever they can be found to rise up and own this thing which I mean until until moderate Muslims find Al Qaeda and the Taliban every bit is enim enimal to their you know their hopes for this world as we do um you know it's going to it's an untenable situation we can't keep doing this I I want to go back to what you said about the war being so expensive in the first place that it wouldn't be a war for selling drugs for profit I'm not saying that it's entirely for involved or it's based on selling drugs for profit but

122:28there's no denying that the heroin production has increased radical since NATO op excuse I have a cold ladies and gentlemen I don't know if you could tell uh NATO occupation I mean there's an article here it says it's a 40 times higher production of heroin since NATO occupied but well part of that could be again this not not something I know anything about but the the um there are other clearly there are other explanations for that one is just that you you have people who have no other livelihood but to grow crops and the most valuable crop they can grow is heroin that's true and and that's so so what are they going to do it's like they're they're just coming out of the Civil War obviously isn't over but they came out of a period of of of just wall-to-wall violence uh and we we we dump billions and billions of dollars in there we we we pave a few roads and now

123:22you know if you're an Afghan Afghan farmer what are you going to grow um you know it's it seems like it that would be the right the right choice if you're if you're someone we we've got the buyers on our side that's the problem right but isn't also the problem when they have United States Army troops guarding poppy fields there's video of it haraldo River interviewing I mean it's it's clearly that there's some military involvement the United States military involved in the the heroin production in Afghanistan it's like it's pretty transparent and the idea is that they're saying that the reason why they do it is because they need to to help these people grow their crops so that they'll ride on the Taliban yeah well which is a perfectly reasonable explanation for me say so you just tell me that there there are Marines guarding a poppy field there are many interpretations of that but one is

124:07just what you gave they have to win hearts and minds they have to figure out some way to get the non- radicalized people to rat out the very scary radicalized people who may come to kill them um uh and how are we going to the item number one in in engineering that cooperation can't be let's force all these people to destroy the most profitable crop they they they could grow um because of our drug laws that's interesting way of looking at it the unfortunate thing for me though is that there's a ton of evidence that the United States government has been involved in drug smuggling there was a um CIA jet that had been to Guantanamo Bay twice that crashed with several tons of cocaine in Mexico pull that up it's kind of hilarious it's uh you see this Jet and inside of it it's just stacked with cocaine I think obviously this is probably not the entire organization but

125:01there's some factions that are profiting off of it they have forever there's a guy named Barry seal who was involved in back during the Pablo Escobar days he was uh according to him he was selling drugs for the CIA there's also what happened with uh Freeway Ricky and the whole Oliver North Contra in Nicaragua situation the United States was clearly involved in drug trafficking trafficking to promote a hidden War this is the plane crashed with several tons of cocaine all that cocaine that's hilarious and it's a that's a jet that had been to Guantanamo Bay twice I mean I don't want to go too far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole with you but you have to take that into consideration that there's a lot of evidence that some is a foot and has been for a long time whether it was in Southeast Asia heroin in uh the Vietnam War or whether it's this right

125:48now there's something and when you say that it costs so much money anyway but to who it doesn't cost so much money to Halbert and it doesn't cost so much money to all these companies that are profiting off of War th that's the idea is that war is is very profitable for the people who get the government contracts and go over there and and build airplane hangers and all these different things that they're doing over there it's it's not we're not talking about what's profitable or not profitable profitable for the United States taxpayer we're talking about the people that are actually controlling the game in the first place yeah well that but that's the that's the issue the is there someone controlling the game and are their interests aligned enough so that they really have control over it so and that I think is in most cases I'm not saying that people never conspire or

126:36that um it's not possible to have a sufficient number of of people in power who who have selfish and short-sided interests that can get them to to you know do terrible things on the world stage I that that that clearly could happen at least in principle but for the most part there's just people's interests are not aligned all that well there's not halberton is not that powerful so that it could decide to launch a war and so and and and I me one way you can see this or one thing I would get you to to reflect on is you take someone like like um President Obama when he was Senator Obama he was against the Iraq War he was allegedly yeah but yeah yeah but but he he spoke on this board he was a he certainly means nothing if if you base it on what he's told us since he's got into office and what turns out to true so yeah but I'm asking I'm asking how you account

127:29for that transformation in him so he's he's someone who was a Critic of the former Administration if you had before he was elected if you had asked him what do you think about Bush and what do you think about Cheney and what do you think about Rumsfeld and what all the stuff they did poers he would he would have a uh and and this all this came I'm not just speculating he said many of these things but he had a a very clear critique based on on liberal principles that that almost any liberal who was was enthusiastic about his election um would recognize that this would the Iraq War was unnecessary we were we went in there on false pretenses this was a terrible idea the consequences the you know now there's a mess that has to be cleaned up but now he's become uh to the eyes of many liberals just a neocon shill m someone who's who's you know more secretive and more agile in

128:27his prosecution of a covert War than Bush and Cheney ever were um and what so what do you how do you explain that transformation is he someone who uh was always that way and was just lying but but lying for some reason that doesn't make much political sense um or was he is is there some nefarious process where some Star Chamber where the really the people who are really in power got to him and scared him like he's he's president of the United States but he had a meeting with halberton and a bunch of powerful guys some billionaires who who who scared him straight and now he's just doing their bidding or you don't believe that's possible no I yeah no I don't think I I think that's no I don't think that's possible but uh or and this is the the um uh obviously the interpretation I favor or are the facts of the world so scary and is governance so messy and is it so

129:31hard to get anything done that this this process of apparent transformation just happens you know so so he get so he got in office he's a senator who's not really privy to all the facts now he's president who every morning wakes up and is told the scariest intelligence we've got um what does that do to you and how how eager does that make you to uh make sure that a a a a terrorist incident of an order of magnitude larger than September 11th doesn't happen on your watch I mean so imagine having the responsibility to protect whole cities from massive acts of Terror just how M just how how squeamish are you going to be about bugging people's cell phones um I think it's it's very easy to see that through no um evil hand behind the scenes you could have somebody like Obama who was a genuine liberal you know mean he's not he's not uh as far left as as many people want him to be but there's no

130:32reason to doubt that he objected to the Iraq War and and uh uh he's basically um straight down the middle of the Fairway liberal who's now essentially functioning like a neocon I think I think the details have to be terrifying and I think it's I think it's just uh it's an immense responsibility I don't think it's or I think uh it's very possible excuse me it's very possible that both things are going on it's very possible that there are people that are absolutely profiting and want to get involved in Wars for profit and I think also the world is scary and I think it's easy convince a guy like Obama I don't doubt that halberton sees an upside to a war because they make all the stuff you and they provide the services so yeah it's part the next war is is part of their business plan but the question is is how much power does any one person have for every billionaire like the the

131:26coch brothers who who's twirling his mustache and uh doing the nefarious right-wing thing there are billionaires who do not align with with them politically who can do the leftwing thing right but that's just a that's a microcosm of human beings in general there's evil people and there's nice people that's just that doesn't necessarily preclude the idea that someone not just profits off War but Engineers War for profit it seems if you're talking about something like billions and billions of dollars and you can justify to yourself This inevitable anyway because these people are cave people they're going to up and you got all these look what they do to women look what they do to their their people look what they do to each other look what they do to fellow Muslims you're you're also maybe not making the best humanitarian choices because you're making choices based on

132:09profit and the profit is absolutely enormous I mean it's it's massive and there's pretty clear evidence the United States basically lied to get into the Iraq War I mean I know that there was a lot of people that genuinely believe believe that there was something going on in Iraq and genuinely believe that s Saddam Hussein was a threat but there's also people that believe it was a whole lot of including po pal well well everyone believe when when colen Powell delivered that that presentation at the UN virtually everyone believe with with a few exceptions virtually everyone believed that that was true no one it was it was not it was uncontroversial that the the the premise that that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was controversial and all the people who were against our going in in there were against it for reasons that did not entail doubting

133:00whether there were weapons of mass destruction they there were other reasons not to go in there it's just it was going to it was a hornets nest it was going to it was a quagmire it was it was you know what specifically are the weapons of mass destruction that would motivate us going there and not going into North Korea oh right so it's well because of the amb there's no money in North Korea well no there's that but no because he didn't he didn't have nukes he was trying to get nukes or we thought he was trying to get nukes so we we could deal with a chemical weapons attack you you give everyone a gas mask and a pmat suit and we can still fight a war uh that the the the nukes change the game and that's why that's one reason why Pakistan is so terrifying so you don't open yourself up to the possibility of conspiracy no I I do I just know that that this is an adage I

133:44don't know where it comes from but never ascribed a conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence or the tragedy of wasted opportunity the idea that just because a tragedy gets capitalized on doesn't mean that the people who capitalize on it cause the tragedy but that's a standard operational procedure for warriors to to find something wrong and say look this is what happened we got attacked we're going into Iraq right right yeah I see in in every conspiracy and again I'm not doubting whether anyone ever conspires it's just that there are so many constraints on people doing what they want especially when they're nefarious things um the constraints largely being everyone else's opposing wants um that uh it's it's hard for people to uh bring these these big plans off but isn't that your argument for even dropping on people in the first place that they're planning

134:37big plans somebody said this I forget who it was I think somebody said it on the podcast SC but it's a different scale of conspiracy I mean so you look at the 19 hijackers okay it's just 19 guys with box cutters yeah but it's a big organization I mean that's not just 19 guys those guys planned it out they had help they learned how to fly they pulled it off someone said this not not launching a war it's not it's not you know half a million guys and tanks right because it's 19 guys and not halberton not a a multi-billion dollar operation that the CEO the former CEO just happens to be the vice president of the United States and gets multi-billion dollar no bid contracts to go and rebuild we blow up I mean it's it's pretty connect the dots if you wanted to argue for a war for profit that's about as cut and dry as it ever gets someone said on the podcast I forget who it was I don't know

135:24who it was maybe I read it online someone said do you believe in 911 ask people if they believe in conspiracies do you believe in 911 like what what do you mean does do you believe 911 was done as a conspiracy by the government no do you believe it happened and everyone says yes well then you believe in conspiracies because it was a conspiracy someone conspired to fly planes into buildings and whether or not the United States government was involved or whether or not it was these 19 guys from Saudi Arabia that was they pulled that off conspiracies exist but something like 35 % of Americans believe that the US had some hand in that conspiracy that we let it happen and 16% think that we engineered it I hate those things though because so that that we demoed the buildings that someone in the dead of night had to fill the Twin Towers with with thermite and that we

136:10hit you know we hit the plunger at the right moment just just after that the planes went in or maybe they weren't even planes maybe they were Holograms and once you get deep into this the 911 conspiracy you get you know the CIA faking voices of all the passengers on the flights so explaining the the answering machine messages of of the relatives of the Dead passengers by by CIA voice faking technology and it's just it's just it's completely insane and and and the problem with it is it's totally unconstrained by any um overall explanation or plausible hypo hesis about what could have happened what it is is you you look at every anomaly I any any event you could possibly describe it's going to have a million Co what what looked like coincidences in it uh and which which if you if you tried to engineer beforehand would seem like the odds against them were astronomical but

137:13in the aftermath something had to happen so it's like the people sold stock in American Airlines that day right so how is it that you sold your stock in American Airlines the very the day before an American Airlines jet uh flew into a building right how how did you know that is that's fishy right well the real problem is you find other people buy and sell those stocks every day exactly so but so there there are uncountable number of things like that but if if you're only looking for an anomalies and you're and and you're not constrained by by any overall thesis uh you can find them in any any situation and but I mean just be honest about what this picture of reality actually is this is the the most diabolical plot in human history con that that entailed thousands of conspiracists um conspirators and and they none of them have have cracked no one has no one

138:11woke up feeling so guilty that they had to tell their story and to to 60 minutes and yet this whole thing was designed to leave George Bush reading My Pet Goat at the moment it all kicked off you know it's just not it's like it's this the marriage of perfectly competent diabolical intelligence with the most inept I so so all these people conspired perfectly and yet the Iraq the Iraq War was was launched as inly as it could possibly have been well I certainly don't believe that the United States was involved and conspiring uh I think there's some question that maybe some people might have known about it the real issue comes when you find out about actual real false Flags actual real false flag events that the United States has engineered that they've pulled off that they haven't pulled off that they were planning that they didn't go through the real problem is that that's

139:01a genuine ideology that's a genuine thought process the the idea of look we have to make this happen this is what we're going to do we're going to blow up a ship we're going to blow up a jet airliner and blame it on the Cubans the operations Northwoods right well but that's so so if you wanted to run a false flag operation and get us into a war with Iraq under false pretenses so we we've got a a no fly zone over Iraq for years that we've been policing with our f-16s you just shoot down one of our planes and then you tell the world that Iraq though we told them they couldn't shoot at us shot down one of our planes this is an act of War we're going in that would have been totally justifiable what you don't do is send mostly Saudis to come kill 3,000 of the most connected uh people uh on Earth and destroy our economy we're in agreement I don't think that the United

139:54States engineered it I not in any way shape I know some people do and perent do but you know what 46% of Americans think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and the problem with those polls are those are 100% idiots that answer the polls who answers polls I don't answer a poll nobody I know answers polls people call you up randomly in the middle of the day and ask you to answer a poll most likely you're busy most likely you're going to hang up the amount of people that actually answer polls they don't think they represent the the the real you know the real population of the United States So when you say it's 13% 133% of the people that you pulled right but there are ways of correcting for that so for instance you could just pull college students you know you could you could literally be in a polyi class and ask people who got into college and are attending class I mean that that

140:40wouldn't be that would be an elite sample uh but you get weird sure you get weird opinions even in among Elite Samples well that number the 46% of Americans believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old that's a real one that's a Gallop poll that's that's that's that alone throws polls like oh 133% think the United States engineered 911 okay that's nothing compared to the idea that the Earth is 10,000 years old the amount of evidence that the Earth is more than 10,000 years old is staggering and yet a way higher percentage believe in that than believe in but that's because it's it's a religious Doctrine course and and that's conspiracies aren't they religious isn't a isn't a belief that the government engineered 911 or isn't a million different conspiracies don't they have sort of a religious aspect to them the the pure belief the confirmation bias the

141:25ignoring anything contradictory people want to have an answer for sure definitely whether it's Pro or con there's that real thing that people want to wrap something up tight with a bow either the government is full of evil criminals that are trying to kill your baby or it's all just a part of life and the the real issue is there's Boogeyman out there yeah yeah know I think there is it hijacks some of the same features of the human mind or or of certain human Minds because many people are very uncomfortable without cognitive closure they're very not knowing why something happened is um destabilizing to to people to different degrees and um whereas one person can just feel no emotional cost to living with the mystery of why something happened or freely admitting why that they have no idea um or merely having a you know a hunch other people crave certainty and

142:21and there are other features to it so people have an intuition that something huge couldn't have been kicked off by something trivial you know so if something huge happened if this thing this 3,000 people dead and and and the biggest buildings coming down and and uh U uh the world in chaos that couldn't have been just 19 guys with box cutters that had to be the cause had to be bigger and that that I think is an intuition that some people have more than others and it's it's a intuition but it's some people have a have certain schemas that through which they view human events which make conspiracy thinking uh very um attractive just very plausible and you see you'll notice that and there's been actually research done on this that if you if you're someone who believes one conspiracy theory you're very likely to be someone who believes all of them you're someone

143:14who's who's read the JFK books and who's read the the um uh you know the Roswell I mean you're you're you're you're talking about extraterrestrials and and um uh you know CIA um uh Misadventures in many places there's a whole esoteric literature out there that that I'm not so familiar with but I know that people who go down one Rabbit Hole tend to go down many of the others sure and it's a kind it's kind of a personal it's a personality type that um I think you can become you know I I tried to uh it's actually it's interesting you you so you mentioned um what I you asked me what I thought about the NSA thing and and to some degree my my perception of this this news event has been polluted by my relationship with Glenn Greenwald who who you don't like that guy no no but I actually started was interesting is I started out liking him not liking him in that I aligned with with all of his

144:09views or even many of his views but um we had a a a a brief uh personal uh exchange by email where he actually did me a favor which was which was great and it actually links up with this conspiracy thing um so I have someone in my life who's who's who's very close to me who is a 911 conspiracy very close to you yeah yeah M someone's dad or something a member of my family who who is a who is a uh and a very bright guy who is a 911 conspiracy guy and so I I fought with him about this for now for years so like every six months just it it blows up and we'll we'll write the you know that we'll have the two-hour Email exchange um and I've tried to debunk this and uh uh and one idea I had about how to debunk it is is I I noticed that he had a few liberal writers who he really admired and Glenn Greenwald was was the top of the list and I knew that Glenn Greenwald couldn't be a 911

145:02conspiracy guy so I reached out to Glenn I never met Glenn um and I said I said will you do me a favor and just tell me in a short little essay why you don't believe any of this stuff why now why is it that you you seem to align with a lot of these concerns the overreach of P power and you know NSA wiretapping and and why is why is someone in your position uh not at all attracted by this 911 truth nonsense um and he wrote he wrote the perfect email he and I told him why I needed this I mean it's basically an intervention for for a family member he wrote the perfect email which was just crazy enough to give him perfect credibility I mean he's like you know he was like you know grateful for the 911 truth people and and he was it it was a perfect email and I imagined that I was going to send this into my uh my relative's brain and it was gonna he was going to have the Epiphany that I

145:54was expecting which was here's someone he trusts as an authority on all of these points and this is why this guy who's got much more time to look at this than than uh my relative does um this is why he won't touch it with a 10- foot pole and it had it did not have that effect at all all he wanted to do was to get in touch with Glen green Walls to show him all yeah to educate him show him all the stuff that he hadn't seen right so anyway but I started this place with Glenn um uh feeling very positive toward him and then he he just basically in a in a in a very unethical way misrepresented my views in a series of Articles and when I called them on it privately he just doubled down basically just said you this is what I even if you don't think this is what you were saying this is what I think you were saying oh wow and um what was his argument what what was his point like

146:47what was he trying to paint well was this whole islamophobia business he basically branded me a racist who who hates Muslims and there's a there's an animous against against people I'm not talking about ideas I'm this is this is just by you asking him to write something why no no this is this was unrelated this is why I this is why the NSA thing this is why the NSA thing was sort of hit me in the in in the the wrong part of my brain because when when Glenn was the was the quarterback for the for the Snowden Revelations um basically I saw a guy who's just blogging in his underpants in Brazil with his 10 dogs and his boyfriend who was handed this story which is in fact true I mean he's not this great investigative journalist who found this he was based on his ideological bias and his track record was someone who Snowden liked and thought would be you know a

147:37very sympathetic year for the story and he just handed him the story I mean so tomorrow night someone could email you the next big decades shaking story based on your interests and how they with his and you that wouldn't make you the greatest investigative journalist so anyway so Greenwald was someone who really was not functioning like a journalist and he certainly does not have the principles of of honesty and factchecking and admitting when he was wrong got something wrong that that most journalists have drummed into them so I I I find him a very um unreliable witness have you spoken him in person well we have a long exchange but email just email I I hate email I mean I love it but I I hate it for clarifying something as important as this yeah no it's true but and a lot and this is another way technology is is screwing us up because we're we're we are able to

148:31things run off the rails when you're writing in a way that they wouldn't face to face yeah like a Blog about someone you could write some horrible things whereas if you were sitting in front of that person talking to them and you said that be like well I don't think that no you've misinterpreted my position I think this and I've respect to your and you could have a nice Exchange in so someone just can just spew out their nonsense in a blog with no checking them and then yeah you know it gets really it gets really squirly when you're allowed to do that unchecked with no social cues and and that's what he did and he but he makes it he considers it a virtue he said this in the New York Times when he was just becoming famous for the Snowden story he they they asked him about his approach to journalism and he said he said that he approaches it as a litigator he he assumes people are lying

149:13and then he goes and checks to Jo goes and tries to prove that they're lying and so and so I mean personally this is a highly dysfunctional and obnoxious way to be and so when I'm representing my ideas he's assuming I'm lying and he goes to make goes to try to prove that I'm lying and then he quote minds or he gets readers to quot mine my work where he can pull sentences out of context which seem yes in out of context I can see how someone would see as an inflamatory thing to say about Islam but I mean I have not been it's impossible to catch me saying something extreme about Islam that I didn't mean to say everything I've ever said about Islam is is is incredibly uh wellth thought out I know exactly what I think and it has absolutely no logical relationship to racism because I because I'm everything I say is it applies every bit as much to you know John Walker Lind or Adam goddon

150:11or any white guy who woke up in Marin or or Orange County and decided to join the Jihad in fact it applies even more to them because they weren't indoctrinated from birth by any by you know any kind of Middle Eastern cultural upbringing um and so so what so the the I view Greenwald as just the um the least scrupulous and among the most consequential uh people who have been just flogging this islamophobia thing and it's it's um I mean it's been very ugly and and so in so far as the NSA story has been his story it's been I've had I've had to do a lot of kind of U uh parsing of what what what is what's said because his his intuition is about what is important and factual I I I just fundamentally don't trust so because of his philosophy on and just how he operates um but that's not to say that the Edward Snowden story isn't a huge story it's absolutely huge how do you

151:12when I I think it is too so for you it's just a very Bittersweet thing because you don't like that guy personally well but and but also I'm uncertain about where the line is between facts we genuinely want to know and and a public service rendered by journalists and whistleblowers who leak those facts and treason that is really consequential that we should have laws against and prosecute people for and I don't know where Snowden falls on that Continuum I I just I'm just agnostic as to what um uh I mean 10 years from now are we going to think he was a hero or someone who did our country more harm than anyone in the last 100 years I don't know they answer that question I really think he's the guy who got the ball rolling I think that's what it is I think he let people know what was going on behind the scenes for quite a long time and I think that's good it's lying

152:03right it's what you were talking about in your book it's lying the government lies and we caught him on a lie now we know it's not it's not a a lie well it's not a lie if the NSA if if the job of the NSA is to spy on people but everybody well no I I don't know where so the government lied I mean no question Obama lied larger yeah there's this larger question about what what do you want the NSA to do what do you want our intelligence or organizations to do um that is I don't feel like I'm uh I mean if given a menu of you know things to check off you you you and I may check off check different boxes in what we want them to do and frankly I don't know uh where I draw the line on some of these questions because it's you know I'm just a conversation away from someone who has more information than me about top secret information um uh from being convinced that oh yeah

152:59we really do want that information yeah yeah I don't want my daughter to grow up in a world where nukes are going off in our cities so yeah if you're you're telling me that that tapping that phone or reading reading all email if only retrospectively um is a way to stop that and here's why here's why you think that um I could be sold on all of these points I mean so there's nothing about there's nothing about my email that I feel like needs to be private if you keep raising the stakes on the side of arguing why it shouldn't be private but isn't the argument alwayss that the United States has shown a long history of deception I mean how do you how do you like when you put this into your box how where do you put false Flags where do you put those yeah well no that I mean that that's the so the consequence of having a government that lies on issues like that over and over and over

153:56and over again since the beginning of time no it's the most toxic thing and but you're giving them opportunity to have this is not timate power but this is but so I talk about this briefly in my book about Espionage being something that if if you grant that undercover operations are sometimes necessary then you what you're saying is there is some space in which otherwise good and ethical people are going to need to lie now so the way I I think about that is I think that is necessary I think it is it is someone is it is a life that I don't want I couldn't be I couldn't work for the NSA but it's an unfortunate fact in the world we live in fact yeah yeah I couldn't so I couldn't be the guy who comes home to his wife and lies about what he did all day because that's part of the career um I don't want to be that person I I I view it as a kind of moral self- imulation

154:43where you just you're you you have to take a hit for the team in the spectacular way in order to function in that space and um but I think it's probably necessary and so but is but within that frame it's not actually deceptive if if the NSA the NSA says listen we're GNA we're going to suck up a ton of data um and we're going to abide by laws we're not going to we're not going to imprison you for uh growing pot based on having suck this data up but we're looking for jihadists that's something I can sign on to and we may want to you know read the fine print there but um I I I was never under the illusion that the NSA was doing anything other than that so it's not that's not a surprise to me right and I don't think it's a surprise to anyone and so and and keeping you know lying and keeping secrets are different things you know the we need people to keep secrets we

155:40need and and you can honestly keep a secret you can the president could say I can't tell you that that's top secret our national security depends on my not telling you that right that's an honest statement if you know if you if I ask you how much money you have in your bank account you know tell me tell our listeners now you can say I don't want to say that's that's that's an honest statement when you talked earlier about your friend the story about the woman who lied in front of her friend and immediately damaged the relationship right um why would you ever knowing that the government has planned and possibly executed false Flags why would you ever give them the benefit of the doubt well be again this this comes to uh that's I mean false the larger question of human nature like what do you think is going on in the world do you think that there are that most people most of

156:28the time are psychopaths or or ruthlessly mercenary and uh out to just screw everyone or do you think those are the anomalies and what do you think of government do you think government is so corrupting of of otherwise good people that they're just going to just just going to run Ry with their power all the time and everywhere or do you think basically it's a lot of good people inefficiently trying to get stuff done that we need done and if you're on the I think the more realistic side of that of those um questions I think I think you uh have to admit that that it's for the most part they're they're people just like us in a vast bureaucracy trying to get stuff done and their influence I mean there's so many competing interests that the bad people don't have as much power as you fear they have uh and the good people don't have as much power as you want them to have and so so to so to

157:30conspire to just grab all the strings of the military and uh wage a war on false pretenses or uh you know s divert our fighter jets so that this this hijacked plane can fly into the World Trade Center um I mean how many people in the the Air Force had to conspire to decide to you know run War Games elsewhere so that we wouldn't be able to respond I mean then you're what you're attributing to people are conscious motives to kill massive numbers of innocent people that I just I think um just could not form in the minds of of most people most of the time well if that's the case then how did false Flags ever get planned out how was the Northwoods document ever signed by The Joint Chiefs of Staff and vetoed by Kennedy where they were planning on arming Cuban friendlies and bombing Guantanamo Bay where they were going to a drone jetliner they were going to have

158:21a jet and blow it up and they were going to blame it on the Cubans they were going to kill Americans they were going to kill Americans in guantan MO Bay how could that possibly fall into what you're saying well no there are I mean so so we but we do this all we kill Americans all the time right but like that like us pull the trigger in order to how could you possibly justify that is that's the only way to do it the only way to do it is to have a false flag event where we kill Americans and lie and blame it on other people I mean that goes against the very doctrine of the lying book that goes against the very idea that human interaction should be at all times honest especially at the highest levels of government it should in fact be even more important no I'm not I'm not I'm not saying it's a it's a good thing and I'm I'm saying the consequence of finding out that one such

159:04event has occurred not just one there's been many no but the consequence of even one is this very conversation these very doubts in the minds of millions of people but wouldn't you assume when there's been several that it's probably a a method of operating that that's how they do it if you find out about the Gulf of tonan you find out what Bush and Cheney were planning on Iran before they left office when you or or allegedly what do I know you know when when you find out about the Northwoods document what do you I mean where do you put all that that's that's clear that's people that are on our side killing our people in order to get us into a war where we kill other people and profit like crazy it seems pretty cut and dry and I think there might be I mean looking at it the way you're looking at it I see what you're saying but not with all the evidence not with all the evidence that

159:48it's actually happened I see what you're saying if there wasn't any evidence if it was just 911 and everybody was using that as an example I agree with you I think it's probably most likely a series of coincidences and most likely we just had lack security and most likely 19 people plann this out and pulled it off however when you look at the Gulf of tonan when you look at the Northwoods incident when you look at you look at all these different things that we have planned it's not one it's several and it's several over the course of several different administrations the Bush Administration I mean the the Kennedy administration I mean during Kennedy's day they were doing this well what I would say is that in the case of 911 you have on the other side a a a very obvious conspiracy that's taking credit for it that has taken credit for it you have this this phenomenon of al- Qaeda

160:40and Global Jihad uh which much of which is is much of this violence is directed at the rest of the Muslim world and it's not just us but you have we have clear enemy that thinks it's our enemy that is taking credit for uh these these uh uh goals that to call them an own goal when you have someone uh who's who's seemed to be the kicker and who's taking credit for being the kicker and um it just seems like a um it's a misapplication of the principle even if we were going to agree that that that that we you know every few years draw our own blood for some perverse reason of trying to to to motivate ourselves to do something we wouldn't otherwise want to do well I would assume that if there's a series of events that have taken place that have absolutely either been planned or Absolut I mean the Northwoods document is pretty straightforward it's there's really no denying it uh Gat

161:36tonen basically reported in history classes today that that was a false flag event right so those are those are real forget about 911 let's throw that I mentioned Gul of tonan in the book and and and there are you know many other um more easily understood uh lie big lies that should worry us so for instance I mentioned pharmaceutical companies I mean pharmaceutical companies seem to clearly rig their data uh and this puts people in state of chronic doubt about whether you can trust anyone in a position of authority you when you have people there's no one who knows more about whether drugs are efficacious than the people who are designing drugs right but that's that kind of disingenuous you're dealing with an entirely different group of people that you're saying are also evil has nothing to do with the government no I'm not saying it's evil I'm saying I'm saying that the the the

162:27principle that is well one there's two principles one is just a willingness to lie that's that is the thing that enables all of this but there's also just um and I think this is this is um the most the most important change we could make in in our society is is to notice the ways in which systems of incentives cause otherwise good people to behave like bad people and there there are endless numbers of examples of this but you don't have to be a bad person to behave in evil ways if you're part of a system you know the the the entire tendency of which is to Incline toward evil so if you are and if you just follow the incentives and and so they're very simple kind of um you know petri dish examples of this I me one example I use is um to talk about what it's like to be thrown into a maximum security prison imagine you get sent to you know fome prison uh and you're an

163:24innocent person you're not you're not a violent person you want and you're you have this this nightmare experience of now you're thrown in prison for for a crime you didn't commit and um all you want to do is get through your that this experience you your 10 years say all you want to do is do your decade of of of time in Peace unmolested by all these other people uh and you're terrified that you're going to be victimized by people the the reality is that you are you're coming into a situation where the the in the incentives are so perversely misaligned that even a good person like you who just wants to be a nice guy is going to have to align himself with uh psycho you know racist Psychopaths uh in order to not be screwed over by everyone I mean so for instance you'd have to so so in in most maximum security prisons they exist in a Perpetual state of race

164:21war so it's you know the whites against the blacks against the Mexicans you and and certain Mexicans against other Mexicans but it's just like you have is shattered into racial gangs and a white guy like you would have to join a a white supremacist gang now you might not have a racist you might not have a racist bone in your body but the only way for you not to be over by everyone is to align yourself with a gang but isn't what you're saying another reason and not trust the government you're saying that the government's evil you're saying that good people do evil things because they get involved with evil Psychopaths meaning the government which is why I'm saying that false Flags occur no I'm saying that we need to be aware of of the way incentives can be perverse where where where you your natural selfishness and your natural fear and your natural

165:10desire just to just to survive can be uh channeled in ways that make you as an otherwise good person uh uh collaborate to to to do terrible things and there's there there there are many ways in which so conflicts of interest are the classic example you have you have CEOs who can run the global economy off a cliff because they incentives are totally perverse they have no they have there's no economic incentive for them not to just leverage their company out of existence if they've you know if if if they can benefit from this this windfall you know pop of the stock and they have a golden parachute I mean there so there's the problem of moral hazard where it's like there's no there's no consequence to being rapaciously selfish you're going to get people being rapaciously selfish to the detriment of everyone and so and so the point I'm making is that s two levels at which you

166:05can you can try to improve human life you can you can argue that each person needs to have a a more more refined ethical code you know you have you have to be more honest I have to be more honest or uh you can have SI or in addition you can have systems where interests are aligned so that so that we Ma so that the the the penalties for the the the the rewards for honesty are more obvious and and and um I me you'd have a system where where people I mean another classic example is like like the job market where people everyone's padding their resumés because they know everyone else pads their resumés so it's like you're trying to get a job you're desperate to get a job your your family won't eat unless you get a job and you know that everyone else applying for this job has padded his resume has lied about his background so everyone else does false Flags so Obama gets in office

166:59and does exactly the same thing is that what you're saying no no I'm saying I'm saying that that we need there's two levels at which we address these problems and and one problem you're pointing to is is um system level in this case government level U uh misalign misaligned incentives that have great consequen which which don't require evil people all the time to pull the strings you don't think that requires evil people to do a false flag americ but in a false if you're saying we're going to blow up a jet and fake and pretend that another country did it um yeah that would require evil people to to hatch the idea and say do it in all fairness I think there was an empty jet I think they were going to have no no I'm just think of a prototypical situation where it it seems um uh as bad as possible yes that would require um I mean the reason why I don't believe the September 11th conspiracy

167:57theory is that would it would require too many evil people it just makes no sense I still don't understand how you rectify the idea of false Flags like where do you put that well I I so this I mean there are many F I don't know which which are true I mean I believe the Gulf of tonen tonen was a false flag and what about Northwoods I don't know enough about it okay what about the uh did you pay any attention to the the plan allegedly that bush and Cheney were concocting to get us into Iran before he left office I don't know if that's true at all no no but so so for instance there's a new book about the Kennedy assassination which which brings and I don't know if I don't think the guy is a conspiracy theorist at all here but I think he thinks Oswell did it but there's a new book which shows what do you think I don't I don't know I me I think it's I think it's uh very likely

168:44that the I mean the Warren Commission seem I haven't read this book but but um from what I know the Warren Commission seems to have been a ridiculously inept uh uh effort to get to the truth and with many um uh perverse obstacles to getting to the truth one being that that Warren didn't want uh to inconvenience uh jacqulyn Kennedy at all so I mean she's she's grieving he didn't want to interview her he wouldn't let her be interviewed on the you know on the record he interviewed her himself I think and and just sort of summarized what she said um so there's just kind of weird ways in which this thing um was never about really getting to the bottom of what happened but uh the the point is that when you look at all the way so but like that is a that's a that's an all to human M you you can you can look at it some nefarious interpretation of that like you know he knew that this was a

169:45mob hit that was enabled by the CIA or whatever the story is um and you know this is his way of of of you know hiding the truth or he's just a guy who's embarrassed to ask this The Grieving Widow uh who was who was a you know a friend of his uh about what it was like to see her husband's face get blown off you know so it's like there there alternate explanations for these things and yet the conspiracy side is always um uh the nefarious mustache twirling perfect Genius of evil interpretation and I think think that uh it rarely uh is true uh certainly in a society where political power is not as concentrated as it is in a you know in the under the Third Reich I think there's probably a little bit of both in there I think uh there's definitely some inept uh qualities of the warrant commission but there's also this search for a predetermined outcome that's why the

170:39they the the whole reason why the magic bullet theory was invented was because there was a bullet that hit a curbstone underneath the overpass they had account for that that's why they accounted for one bullet doing all this damage to two different people instead of you know making the more obvious conclusion there was more than one more than one shooter I mean that seems much more likely I mean if one person was shooting why would you just assume that Lee Harvey Oswell didn't have a a cohort why would you just assume that I mean they wanted to wrap it up nice and tidy the same reason why Jack Ruby got to Lee Harvey Oswald in front of all those cops no security shoots him puts it to the end you know he had all these obvious mob ties I mean it's so obvious it's so silly in fact to think that there wasn't something going on I think the truth like many things lies somewhere in the

171:20middle it's not an either or situation but I don't think Lee Harvey oswal acted alone he might have been a part of it it's very possible he was a part of it but I don't think he acted alone but usually what's going on again I'm not discounting the fact that there there are situations in which evil people brilliantly bring off their evil uh or evil conspirators conspire but most of the time it's people rather like us afraid for their jobs covering their asses afraid of getting sued doing things which when incentives are aligned in such a way as to make it effortless for them to do them create a huge mess for everybody else and so you I mean when you when you look at what people do because they're going to they're afraid to get sued you know just look at the just look at all of the stupid decisions people make in our society because they just want to they want to hide the

172:12problem it's there's a there's a book on um on what it's like to become a neurosurgeon uh called um when the air hits your brain and it's a it's a pretty entertaining and somewhat harrowing look at at just the training of a neurosurgeon and there was so he talks about what it was like to be a resident neurosurgeon and at one point there's a scene where a resident is a um is performing his first uh prepping his first surgery which entails drilling into a person's skull and and cutting you know a large hole and uh prepping the uh uh the person's uh head for the the the chief neurosurgeon to come in and perform surgery and what he did is he drove the drill in way too deep like you know it just supposed to go just just supposed to do skull but he just went into you know pure pink oatmeal um of the person's brain and his only concern at that moment was not how the

173:09patient was doing it was to hide the evidence that he had screwed up now that is an all too human and in the aggregate completely evil outcome and yet he he doesn't have to be a psychopath to be worried about covering his ass in that circumstance it's a natural human instinct and that's if you had a system in which he would be massively rewarded in some way for showing exposing that problem um I me it's hard to see how you would design that but that would be a much better system you know if if the incentives were aligned in a way that that that that his guilty conscience would would win as opposed to his you know his effort to preserve his career so he could stay free so would so he could stay free so he wouldn't get jailed or sued yeah or or just just no no longer have a career in medicine you know Ian that's but there are uncountable numbers of situations like that where massive

174:01suffering acrs and it's not because it was an evil person uh intent upon causing that suffering I agree 100% I think there's an neither or I think you got to be able to look at both sides there's an either or but there's a lot of evil out there that are doing some creepy well no doubt at least one at least one % of us are are uh Psychopaths so three hours just flew by wow that was three hours that is that was fun that's a fast three hours yeah it was really enjoyable so your book is lying uh you could get it at Sam Harris org uh is it on um like say Amazon and book it's just hitting bookstores do you have an audio book yeah audible audible yeah oh beautiful audible is one of our sponsors so perfect go to audible.com Joe and uh get it for free did they pay you still the book gets they must yeah they have to even if it's for free it's not for free to you I

174:50think I think it's free if you join audible yes for that yeah okay beautiful thanks man appreciate it Sam Harris org on Twitter um uh follow him and read some books and uh thank you very much very enjoyable thank you always a pleasure all right thanks everybody for tuning in the podcast thanks to Legal zoom.com use the enter the code Rogan in the referral box and save yourself some money thanks also to Hulu Plus go to Hulu Plus Rogan and get a special offer where you can try Hulu Plus free for two weeks check it out and thanks also to on it.com o n niit t use the code name Rogan and save 10% off any and all supplements we will be back next week we got a lot of podcasts coming up ladies and gentlemen we got uh next week who do we got here we got Dave asprey we got Maynard from tulle we got Dan Carlin on Friday we got lot of things happening folks a lot of good stuff Sam Harris

175:51thank you brother I appreciate it very much