Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today
Speaker 1: we have Brett Weinstein on the podcast. Brett has spent
Speaker 1: two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology, earning his
Speaker 1: PhD at the University of Michigan before teaching at the
Speaker 1: Evergreen State College for fourteen years. He has developed a
Speaker 1: new Darwinian framework based on design trade offs and made
Speaker 1: important discoveries regarding the evolution of cancer, it's ain essence,
Speaker 1: and the adaptive significance of moral self sacrifice. He is
Speaker 1: currently working to uncover the evolutionary meaning of large scale
Speaker 1: patterns and human history and seeking a game theoretically stable
Speaker 1: path forward for humanity. With his wife, Heather Hying, he
Speaker 1: is co writing A Hunter Gatherer's Guide to the twenty
Speaker 1: first Century and is the host of Brett Weinstein's Dark
Speaker 1: Horse podcast. Brett, great to chat with you today, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. So I want to start here because
Speaker 1: you're a theoretical evolutionary biologist, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: might not know what that is exactly. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have heard of a theoretical physicist, perhaps more so
Speaker 1: than a theoretical biologist, and I was wondering if you
Speaker 1: could tell our listeners a little bit about what that means. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, you have the non living
Speaker 1: world and you have the living world, and most of
Speaker 1: what we care about is either in the living world
Speaker 1: or a consequence of it. So it would be good
Speaker 1: to figure out what it is that evolution is trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish, if I can use a term like that,
Speaker 1: and what implications that has for the structures and patterns
Speaker 1: that we find there. So I look into those patterns
Speaker 1: and I try to understand how they got the way
Speaker 1: they are and what it implies about what we should
Speaker 1: expect going forward, especially as it relates to people. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you something because I've done some research on
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology, and some evolutionariologists really despise evolutionary psychology. They
Speaker 1: say they're not the real evolutionary theorists or researchers. I
Speaker 1: was wondering if do you have any criticisms of evolutionary psychology,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on the field. I have one
Speaker 1: criticism of evolutionary psychology, which is that I think it
Speaker 1: has been a bit timid, and that in fact, evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychology represents the right question, but that we need to
Speaker 1: upgrade our tools in order to look deeply into that
Speaker 1: part of the evolutionary pattern. And I'm kind of waiting
Speaker 1: for the breakthrough, but it doesn't seem to come by tools.
Speaker 1: You mean, self report questionnaires on college sophomores and generalizing
Speaker 1: it to all human nature might not be the best
Speaker 1: methodology understand human nature. No, I mean, yes, it's one
Speaker 1: part particulate at that level, that is one part, but
Speaker 1: I think overall, I think the problem is in that
Speaker 1: we have not properly understood what the relationship is between
Speaker 1: the content of human culture and the genes that underlie
Speaker 1: our physical structure. And until we understand the nature of
Speaker 1: that relationship, it's very hard to make any sort of
Speaker 1: deep progress on the cognitive side, because we don't know
Speaker 1: what sort of things to expect and therefore, which patterns
Speaker 1: violate those expectations, which fraction of them suggest We're on
Speaker 1: the right track. What is your your thinking on epigenetics
Speaker 1: and that emerging field epigenetics is incredibly important. I don't
Speaker 1: think we have it placed correctly yet. But when I
Speaker 1: was in college, epigenetics was already a concept, but it
Speaker 1: applied to things like culture. Epigenetics literally means above the genome,
Speaker 1: and there was an understanding then that something like culture
Speaker 1: had to have a relationship to genes. As molecular epigenetics
Speaker 1: has boomed as a field, it has eclipsed our deeper
Speaker 1: understanding of what the epigenetic landscape is. And as much
Speaker 1: as it is revealing some of the most important patterns
Speaker 1: to be unearthed in biology in the last several decades,
Speaker 1: we need to put it in the proper theoretical context,
Speaker 1: which I just have seen almost no progress on so far.
Speaker 1: That is super interesting. I wonder how there can be
Speaker 1: greater integration between kind of work you do and kind
Speaker 1: of work that like behavioral geneticis are doing, for instance,
Speaker 1: within psychology. You know, because yeah, have you thought about
Speaker 1: the twin methodology and how that sure? And you know
Speaker 1: twins are great they do reveal important patterns. They are tough,
Speaker 1: they're great people. Some of them are. Often the great
Speaker 1: ones come in pairs. But but really, we have a
Speaker 1: general problem in science, which is that financial incentives inside
Speaker 1: the university system have caused us to abandon theoretical pursuits
Speaker 1: in many places, not because they don't make sense and
Speaker 1: aren't important, but because they don't pay. The grant overhead,
Speaker 1: being the financial fuel that runs a research university causes
Speaker 1: us to default into favoring people who run big, expensive experiments,
Speaker 1: and that has sidelined theory. So, whereas theory and empiricism
Speaker 1: are partners, we treat them as if they're competitors, and
Speaker 1: experiment has won out. And it's really like your liver
Speaker 1: winning in a competition with your heart. You suffer as
Speaker 1: the result of it. My gosh, I've never heard that
Speaker 1: metaphor before, But well, you suffered personally, right. You were
Speaker 1: at Evergreen for fourteen years and you resigned in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: What did you resign? My wife and I resigned. We
Speaker 1: really had no choice. The administration of the college, which
Speaker 1: was in charge of policing, had allowed an unsafe work
Speaker 1: environment to evolve. Literal anarchy in which I was actually
Speaker 1: being hunted by students who had These are students I
Speaker 1: had never met, who decided that I was a racist
Speaker 1: and therefore in need of some kind of re education
Speaker 1: or punishment. They certainly were demanding that I be fired,
Speaker 1: and effectively the president of the college sided with them
Speaker 1: by telling the police not to enforce the law. We
Speaker 1: had student patrols roving the campus armed with bats. We
Speaker 1: had people intimidated, battered. So it was a very dangerous
Speaker 1: situation and it was not one in which we could
Speaker 1: continue teaching having been demonized. My gosh, what was that
Speaker 1: emotionally like for you in Heather? Fascinating? You know, at
Speaker 1: the time, I was actually teaching about the way civilization
Speaker 1: functions and what causes it to break down. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I think it was the day before, maybe it was
Speaker 1: two days before this protest of students erupted at my class, again,
Speaker 1: students I'd never met before. I had delivered a model
Speaker 1: of witch hunting, and in part it was on my
Speaker 1: mind because of what I was watching take place on
Speaker 1: the campus. But anyway, I had put it on the
Speaker 1: board and my students and I were discussing its implications
Speaker 1: and then a witch hunt broke out right there on
Speaker 1: our campus with me as the designated witch. And fortunately
Speaker 1: for me, I guess the protesters, who quickly became rioters,
Speaker 1: filmed everything and they uploaded it, which allowed the world
Speaker 1: to evaluate for themselves what it was that was taking place.
Speaker 1: So yeah, emotionally it was absolutely otherworldly. Yeah, that must
Speaker 1: have been quite surreal. So despite the protesters' methods, did
Speaker 1: they have any like if you had a discussion with them,
Speaker 1: a cordial, rational discussion, did they have any valuable points
Speaker 1: that they were making at all? I would love to
Speaker 1: say yes, that would be the generous thing to say.
Speaker 1: I did have many discussions with them, though, and while
Speaker 1: I found that I could frequently make progress with individuals,
Speaker 1: that the progress was very quickly erased once they returned
Speaker 1: to the collective, to the group. Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: very frustrating pattern to observe. Yeah, because there's there's some
Speaker 1: amount of social status within your group right to to
Speaker 1: amplify things. There's that. I also think there was a
Speaker 1: great deal of fear and that in some sense, this
Speaker 1: is the important lesson for we're watching unfold in the
Speaker 1: wider civilization right now, is that a lot of people
Speaker 1: end up saying things that they initially don't believe because
Speaker 1: they're afraid not to, and then having said these things,
Speaker 1: they convinced themselves that they're true. They basically rationalize themselves
Speaker 1: into believing these things, which on their face are obviously false.
Speaker 1: So your views on this are are quite nuanced, as
Speaker 1: are most of your views, if not all your views.
Speaker 1: I haven't come across anything categoric where I'm like, no
Speaker 1: nuance there, Brett zero. But this particular particular topic I've
Speaker 1: tried to look through some of your ratings on and
Speaker 1: I just want to quote you because I think sometimes
Speaker 1: you can probably be misrepresented in your views in this.
Speaker 1: So you said, to be perfectly clear, we in the
Speaker 1: US have a race problem, and there is no stable
Speaker 1: solution to be built on a slanted foundation. On those
Speaker 1: two points, we should all be able to agree. So
Speaker 1: just that part, I just want to capture that part
Speaker 1: because I think it's really a great launching pad for
Speaker 1: this discussion about acknowledging that we you know, multiple parties
Speaker 1: cant acknowledge there is a race problem, but disagree on
Speaker 1: this the solution right, and disagree on the methods used. Right.
Speaker 1: So the question is what is the race problem? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess my question is, as you see it, what
Speaker 1: do you see as some of the major sources of
Speaker 1: the racial tensions in the country right now that we're
Speaker 1: seeing in the US. Well, to paint with a somewhat
Speaker 1: broad brush, I would say there are two populations in
Speaker 1: the US for whom the goal of equality has never
Speaker 1: been attained, and that these two populations these are American
Speaker 1: Blacks and American Indians. Equality has never been attained because
Speaker 1: the origin stories for these populations are unlike the other
Speaker 1: immigrants that have arrived here. So obviously, the Indians arrived
Speaker 1: when there were other people or their ancestors did, and
Speaker 1: when Europeans arrived, they systematically disrupted the culture and maybe
Speaker 1: more importantly, the relationship to the ancestral lands that had existed,
Speaker 1: and that disruption has never been undone. In the case
Speaker 1: of blacks, most blacks who are here now derived from
Speaker 1: a slave population in which culture was systematically disrupted in
Speaker 1: order to make African derive people compliant. And the problem is,
Speaker 1: until you actually level the playing field, you don't find
Speaker 1: out what would unfold in a fair society. What you
Speaker 1: get is patterns that never equalize and the white population
Speaker 1: ends up suspecting it has something to do with endogenous
Speaker 1: factors in these other populations, when really it has to
Speaker 1: do with disruption of the natural relationship to habitat and
Speaker 1: to other people that exist in every human population. So
Speaker 1: you wrote, discovering the truth about our race problem is
Speaker 1: a delicate process made impossible by individuation on the left
Speaker 1: and a failure of interracial compassion on the right. I
Speaker 1: thought that was really interesting. I wanted to zoom in
Speaker 1: on what that means de individuation on the left. I
Speaker 1: can understand the failure of interracial compassion on the right,
Speaker 1: but you've critiqued the left as someone who is on
Speaker 1: the left, right, you're still are you still on the left?
Speaker 1: What's the break at breaking news on that. Let's put
Speaker 1: it this way. If I take the political compass test,
Speaker 1: which is not perfect, but nonetheless it took that test,
Speaker 1: I come out extremely far left. Now, that does not
Speaker 1: mean that I believe many of the things that those
Speaker 1: who are self declared leftists believe. I actually find myself
Speaker 1: with very little overlap with them. But nonetheless it means
Speaker 1: I believe we have a society that is not functioning
Speaker 1: fairly and that we have an obligation to change. Basically,
Speaker 1: the degree of danger we are putting ourselves in by
Speaker 1: remaining with the current system is so great that we
Speaker 1: have no choice in my opinion, So yes, quite far
Speaker 1: on the left. Okay, So what is this individuation that
Speaker 1: you're talking about that you're saying on the left? I'd
Speaker 1: love to zoom in on that. Every time I turn
Speaker 1: on Fox News, I hear the enemy is the far
Speaker 1: left woke ideology. That's the phrase that has constantly played
Speaker 1: over and over and over again when you turn on
Speaker 1: Fox News. Is this part of what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: what they're referring to as the far left woke ideology? Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's something endogenous on the left, and it's
Speaker 1: not it's not inherently wrong. It's part of a picture.
Speaker 1: But on the left, you have a tendency towards collectivism.
Speaker 1: That is to say, you have a focus on those
Speaker 1: failures that are the result of something systemic and it
Speaker 1: is our collective responsibility to address them. Which I agree.
Speaker 1: There are many systemic problems and it is our obligation
Speaker 1: to address them. But in order to do this, one
Speaker 1: tends to surrender their individuality towards a group that is
Speaker 1: marching towards some objective, And so yes, we do see
Speaker 1: that in this woke ideology that is spreading so effectively
Speaker 1: at the moment. So is it possible to care about both?
Speaker 1: Is it possible to fight for justice for your in group? Okay?
Speaker 1: Is all this possible at the same time, fight for
Speaker 1: justice for your group, not hate the outgroup. Entreat individuals
Speaker 1: as individuals. Can you Can I be a person who
Speaker 1: does all three others at the same time, or do
Speaker 1: some necessarily pull away from others? I don't know why
Speaker 1: any of us would do anything else. I think the
Speaker 1: thing Yeah, ok so I didn't know where we're going
Speaker 1: to that. I was like, no, society has an obligation
Speaker 1: to make a level playing field. It will never be
Speaker 1: perfectly fair. But the thing that I say that sometimes
Speaker 1: confuses people is that the unfairness needs to be randomly
Speaker 1: distributed with respect to things like race. To the extent
Speaker 1: that unfairness is not randomly distributed, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: bad luck, it's something else. It's a bias. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we have an obligation to fix those things. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side of that, you also have an obligation
Speaker 1: to individually take care of your responsibility. In other words,
Speaker 1: society has to anti up and provide you the opportunity
Speaker 1: to succeed, and you have to anti up and provide
Speaker 1: the ability to take advantage of those opportunities when they're delivered.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that these are two sides of
Speaker 1: the same coin, and the right sees one of them
Speaker 1: very clearly. It gets the individual responsibility part clearly, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't see the collective responsibility nearly as well. And
Speaker 1: the left is the mirror image. So this is interesting
Speaker 1: because you've created an initiative Unity twenty twenty that you
Speaker 1: think helps to correct some of that polarization or some
Speaker 1: of that Yeah, let's just start with that word polarization.
Speaker 1: How do you think this plan by focusing on central
Speaker 1: left and center right, reconcile some of those issues. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm damned if I do, and damned if
Speaker 1: I don't if I say center left and right. So
Speaker 1: people tend to react badly to the idea of centrists,
Speaker 1: and I totally understand why they do. The fact is,
Speaker 1: I'm not a centrist. I don't think there's anything magical
Speaker 1: about the center other than the center is where we
Speaker 1: meet to agree on what is in our collective interests
Speaker 1: as a nation. It has to be so as somebody
Speaker 1: on the far left, I can say, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: meet people on the right in the center to discuss
Speaker 1: what we must do now. Unity twenty twenty is an
Speaker 1: initiative to win back the White House on behalf of
Speaker 1: the American people, and it does attempt to neutralize the
Speaker 1: polarization that prevents us from ever attaining power. That said,
Speaker 1: it is not a policy initiative. The idea is that
Speaker 1: it is corruption in presidential politics and other national politics
Speaker 1: that prevents good policy from being made. So we now
Speaker 1: know that effectively, the interests of the American people do
Speaker 1: not show up in the policies that are delivered by
Speaker 1: Congress and signed by presidents. These are special interests that
Speaker 1: have their desires manifest in legislation. And if it was
Speaker 1: the case that the people were actually being represented in government,
Speaker 1: we could do a lot. There's plenty of room for
Speaker 1: improvement that would make lives better very rapidly. So the
Speaker 1: objective of Unity twenty twenty is essentially to override the
Speaker 1: corruption and return the policy making process to one that
Speaker 1: serves average people. You are a fascinating human being for
Speaker 1: forty seven thousand reasons. But one reason right now why
Speaker 1: you're fasting person is because you're far left, but you're
Speaker 1: not woke. Right Like, if I said, Brett, are you woke?
Speaker 1: You wouldn't say yes to that answer that question, right,
Speaker 1: that's a tougher question to answer than you think for
Speaker 1: the following reason. Now, I don't know whether I'm right
Speaker 1: about this, but my perception is that fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, woke was something I would aspire to
Speaker 1: be because woke was actually an honorable phenomenon at the time.
Speaker 1: Woke was not something you would say about yourself. Woke
Speaker 1: was a designation that blacks would give to somebody who
Speaker 1: understood what the situation they faced was. So it was
Speaker 1: an honor to be called woke by somebody who had
Speaker 1: reason to understand the black experience in the US deeply. Now,
Speaker 1: I would never in a million years call myself woke
Speaker 1: now because I find the view of America that is
Speaker 1: being advanced by this coalition to be absolutely frightening and
Speaker 1: totally Unamerican, the view being just viewing everything through a
Speaker 1: racial lens, primarily right, and that in fact, not only
Speaker 1: must we view things from a racial perspective, but that
Speaker 1: that is a desirable state. Right. In other words, we
Speaker 1: are not even seeking a state in which the law
Speaker 1: or anything else is color blind. We're seeking to accentuate
Speaker 1: these differences. And I find that dangerous, wrong headed, abhorrent,
Speaker 1: and no I would. I would run from that designation
Speaker 1: at the moment. But it doesn't mean that I don't
Speaker 1: miss the honorable thing, you know, the original meaning of
Speaker 1: that term, like so many you know, one time I
Speaker 1: would have called myself a feminist, also because I thought
Speaker 1: what feminism meant was equal opportunity for men and women,
Speaker 1: which seems very reasonable to me. However, what feminism has
Speaker 1: become is something I can't sign up for. And so
Speaker 1: you know, we're losing these terms. But you're not a masculist,
Speaker 1: you haven't. No, I'm a humanist relationship, of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the rational thing to be. So, as you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of unity twenty twenty. This is how
Speaker 1: we got connected. I tweeted I'm in, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't. If you look at all my history of tweets,
Speaker 1: the very few times do I say I'm in. I
Speaker 1: use that very judiciously, So I mean things that I say,
Speaker 1: at least I try and try to mean them at
Speaker 1: the time. So I think that it's a very laudable goal.
Speaker 1: And this is my question though from a strategy perspective.
Speaker 1: You want to include as many people as possible in
Speaker 1: this movement. You want people to see that there's a
Speaker 1: better way forward for them. Maybe if their initial gut
Speaker 1: reaction is, oh, this isn't for me, so this isn't.
Speaker 1: My question is how can we? So let's say we're
Speaker 1: talking to some of our listeners who do identify themselves
Speaker 1: as woke, right, and they don't like to constantly be
Speaker 1: painted with a broad brush themselves right, because in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways they are with people. Just use that
Speaker 1: word and for a whole group of people to think
Speaker 1: a certain thing. But let's say there are people who
Speaker 1: are really part of the Black Lives Matter movement. They
Speaker 1: really think that the methods of the Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: movement are the correct methods for progress for racial quality.
Speaker 1: They're good faith about it. Let's say there's listeners who
Speaker 1: are good faith about it. How can we bring them
Speaker 1: into the fold? Oh, I think this is so important. Yes,
Speaker 1: for one thing, the movement is fueled by anger at
Speaker 1: a system that has left people high and dry, and
Speaker 1: I think that that energy is completely predictable and we
Speaker 1: should just simply have expected this to occur, and that
Speaker 1: the twist is you have a movement that has co
Speaker 1: opted that energy and is now pointing it to very
Speaker 1: bizarre objectives like destroying the nuclear family, eliminating the police,
Speaker 1: and other things. This is not going to help black
Speaker 1: people or anyone else. And so I think the key
Speaker 1: is lots of people are not paying close attention to
Speaker 1: what they are marching for to the extent that they
Speaker 1: have the sense that things are bad and that they
Speaker 1: need to be fixed. The answer is, yep, you've got
Speaker 1: that right, but pay very close attention to what you've
Speaker 1: been signed up for, because it isn't. The contents of
Speaker 1: the box do not match the label. So if you're
Speaker 1: looking for real change, the first thing you should want
Speaker 1: to do is not eliminate the police. That's going to
Speaker 1: result in absolute madness. What you would want to do
Speaker 1: is eliminate corruption. It is the corruption that has allowed
Speaker 1: rent seeking elites to concentrate opportunities so that it is
Speaker 1: not widely accessible to the extent that that's a process
Speaker 1: that's getting worse that millennials are now facing a rather
Speaker 1: dire career picture. The obvious answer is to fix the
Speaker 1: corruption so that policy can work in our favor rather
Speaker 1: than as a mechanism of parasitizing us. You're just going
Speaker 1: to stop there. I'm like on the seat because, oh,
Speaker 1: I mean so at some level, you know, I'm hesitant
Speaker 1: to say more because to me, you know, corruption is
Speaker 1: not a sexy issue. It's not fun to think about it,
Speaker 1: right how you can't imagine yourself marching on corruption and
Speaker 1: sticking a sword through it. But at some level that
Speaker 1: thing is the key to every other issue. I hear you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have these like dreams that people like, God,
Speaker 1: that's so unrealistic, but I have these dreams of like
Speaker 1: everyone fighting the common enemy, which is discrimination in all
Speaker 1: of its forms in any direction. I have this like dream.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I wake up three in the morning with this
Speaker 1: dream where like I'm at a rally and everyone who's
Speaker 1: been discrimined in some people with learning like me, I
Speaker 1: was learning disability discrip Like everyone who can resonate with
Speaker 1: that experience comes together and rallies around a similar experience
Speaker 1: against the like you said corruption or maybe just you know,
Speaker 1: discrimination in a universal value system format as opposed to
Speaker 1: oh well, discrimination only works if you're part of that
Speaker 1: in group, but if you're part of that in group,
Speaker 1: then it's okay to you know. You know. So I
Speaker 1: hear what you're saying, and I maybe I'm just too optimistic.
Speaker 1: I think there's got to be a way of creating
Speaker 1: a world where we can rally around these similar experiences.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole book was Transcendent, was about that,
Speaker 1: so I believe in it. No, you're exactly right, and
Speaker 1: the fact is, at some level we know we're being conned.
Speaker 1: The Hidden Tribes Report, I don't know if you've read it.
Speaker 1: I read it, but it says that there's something like
Speaker 1: eighty six percent of us who basically agree on the
Speaker 1: way things should be eighty six percent. How is it
Speaker 1: that a democracy fails to listen to eighty six percent
Speaker 1: of its population that's in basic agreement about what we want, right,
Speaker 1: that's a stunning fact. Instead of the eighty six percent
Speaker 1: actually dictating the way things function, we find that we
Speaker 1: are divided almost exactly evenly, so that every presidential election
Speaker 1: is a nail bier. Why is that why, if we
Speaker 1: have so much agreement, are we so thoroughly divided in
Speaker 1: a way that affects how power is allocated? And the
Speaker 1: answer is we are all missed. We are looking at
Speaker 1: each other with suspicion, when in fact, the actual enemy
Speaker 1: of our well being is something we could easily overwhelm
Speaker 1: if we could overlook our differences. And it's not a
Speaker 1: remote dream, it's actually the way the country is supposed
Speaker 1: to work. So many people, I think, are beginning to
Speaker 1: realize that we are being played. We are about to
Speaker 1: be played racially in a way that we have not
Speaker 1: been played in a very long time. We are about
Speaker 1: to be returned to a state in which we view
Speaker 1: each other race first, whereas maybe the greatest triumph that
Speaker 1: the nation has is that it has been headed away
Speaker 1: from that view of humanity and towards a unifying, galvanizing
Speaker 1: view of who we are and what we need. Well,
Speaker 1: that was a great segue into Andrew Yang, because you
Speaker 1: literally just said humanity first. First of all, is any
Speaker 1: chance at all Andrew Yang will be one of these
Speaker 1: candidates for unity twenty twenty? Is that still hope? Hopeful?
Speaker 1: A little? I think? So you know it depends. I
Speaker 1: have talked to Andrew Yang, and I have specifically told
Speaker 1: him that this needs to be a draft in order
Speaker 1: to work. Right. So the fact is, if he approached
Speaker 1: us now, I would turn him away and I would say,
Speaker 1: we have to come back to you. The draft is
Speaker 1: the way that this functions narratively so that people understand.
Speaker 1: It's also the way that the success would have the
Speaker 1: power behind it to actually confront corruption, which obviously exists
Speaker 1: well beyond the presidency. So yeah, Andrew Yang would be
Speaker 1: a perfect center left person for the ticket. He's by
Speaker 1: far not the only person who could do it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I favor it. He's also demonstrated an ability to capture
Speaker 1: people's imagination. He I don't think he likes campaigning, but
Speaker 1: he's proven that he's good at it. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: very fond of Andrew and I think he would do
Speaker 1: a good job. But it doesn't have to be Andrew.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I'm looking forward to is
Speaker 1: a discussion of what the ideal ticket would look like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and do you have something in mind for the right?
Speaker 1: Was there a general that you were thinking of at something?
Speaker 1: Admiral William McRaven, Admiral there you go. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: one of those like truth uh mind readers for a second,
Speaker 1: Well I'm getting a general, you know, one of those
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, I'm just forgetting the name of the person.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well he's extraordinary and I would suggest people
Speaker 1: look into him. I saw a recent lecture he gave
Speaker 1: a post COVID lecture at the Navy War College where
Speaker 1: he was or he was the Navy Postgraduate School where
Speaker 1: he was talking about strategic things. Anyway, he's a very decent,
Speaker 1: clearly patriotic, highly capable person who understands what leadership is
Speaker 1: and is perfectly comfortable talking about it. He's also been
Speaker 1: the chancellor of the University of Texas, and you know,
Speaker 1: he's right of center. He's anti Trump. So anyway, he's
Speaker 1: a very interesting character, and I would suggest people check
Speaker 1: into some of the speeches he's given. I think they
Speaker 1: will find him very compelling, as I do. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: also good segue into my question. Because we talked about
Speaker 1: how to get people that woke far left into the fold.
Speaker 1: What about Trump supporters? What would you say to Trump supporters,
Speaker 1: because that's equally equally important is if you want to
Speaker 1: get we want to get everyone in right. We want,
Speaker 1: we wanted to be inclusive. Let's let's be clear about this.
Speaker 1: I think there are people among the woke who are
Speaker 1: so driven by this need to divide and punish that
Speaker 1: they will not join us. And there are people who
Speaker 1: are so died in the wole uh Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: Trump or bust, that they won't join us either. But
Speaker 1: it's not the majority of Trump supporters. So one of
Speaker 1: the very fascinating things that has happened to Heather and
Speaker 1: me over the last few years is that although we
Speaker 1: are very solidly on the left, we have been embraced
Speaker 1: by a good number of people on the right, which
Speaker 1: means that we travel in those circles frequently. We have
Speaker 1: lots of those conversations. We have good friends that group
Speaker 1: of people. Now, dare you well, that's the thing, is
Speaker 1: the joke, of course you were. But the picture, the
Speaker 1: portrait that is painted of people on the right is
Speaker 1: so in error in so many cases. And you know,
Speaker 1: it may be that the portrait matches people on the
Speaker 1: far right fringe, just as the portrayal of these you know,
Speaker 1: wild eyed, insane wocusts might be true of those on
Speaker 1: the far fringe. But it's not true of the average
Speaker 1: person in the street. Average person in the street is angry.
Speaker 1: They know that we have a race problem. They want
Speaker 1: it addressed, and they're not paying attention to the details.
Speaker 1: The average person on the right, they voted for Trump,
Speaker 1: but they did so as a middle finger to a
Speaker 1: system that they knew was broken. And in fact, one
Speaker 1: of the amazing facts of the twenty sixteen election is
Speaker 1: how many people actually moved from Bernie to Trump. That's
Speaker 1: not a logical jump at an ideological level, but it
Speaker 1: is a logical jump if what you were voting for
Speaker 1: Bernie for was because he was actually a challenge to
Speaker 1: the broken corrupt system. And so at the point the
Speaker 1: Democrats successfully dealt with Bernie, the other challenge to the
Speaker 1: broken corrupt system was Trump. So people jumped there not
Speaker 1: because they were pro Trump, but because they were voting
Speaker 1: against the doopoly. This is super interesting for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: And here's one link I thought on the spot I
Speaker 1: think would be interesting to discuss. Let me know if
Speaker 1: this makes sense. But you've done some really interesting work
Speaker 1: on the evolution of religion, and you had a really
Speaker 1: interesting discussion with Dawkins about isn't it adaptation or is
Speaker 1: it a virus of the mind? Right now, I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in this topic as well, and I used to
Speaker 1: teach about this at NYU. I taught a course in cognitivecology,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't have my students debate those two positions
Speaker 1: for and against. What similarities are you seeing between the
Speaker 1: work you've done on the evolution of religion and some
Speaker 1: people are calling wokeness religion these days, Some people are
Speaker 1: calling are saying it it has a lot of the
Speaker 1: similar characteristics of a religion. And I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you've made a direct sort of linkage between those two
Speaker 1: between your earlier research program and some of these ideas
Speaker 1: you're talking about now. Yeah, I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: analogy is unmistakable. There's definitely a lot about this movement
Speaker 1: that functions religiously, but it's not alone in that. Many
Speaker 1: things do, and in fact, the mirror image over on
Speaker 1: the you know, died in the Wold Trumps side also
Speaker 1: functions in a kind of a religious way, and in
Speaker 1: fact sometimes explicitly so. Like as much as this sounds
Speaker 1: like something that had to be a parody, I recently
Speaker 1: ran across a Twitter account that was in Earnest had
Speaker 1: a portrait for its banner of Trump at you know,
Speaker 1: in the Oval office signing a document and Jesus was
Speaker 1: reaching down and literally guiding his hand, and it was
Speaker 1: mirror but you so anyway, I guess my point would
Speaker 1: be the religious modality is one that exists in human
Speaker 1: beings for clear evolutionary reasons. Dawkins doubt of that position, notwithstanding,
Speaker 1: But the nature of the particular program that inhabits that
Speaker 1: religious module is highly variable, and sometimes it's a cult,
Speaker 1: which is to say, a religion that has not stood
Speaker 1: the test of time, so we don't know whether it
Speaker 1: contains information that leads people to evolutionarily sound behavior or not.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's clearly doesn't. But the BLM protest movement spreads
Speaker 1: in the same way that religious dogma spreads, which is
Speaker 1: part of what's frightening about it, because it also, similar
Speaker 1: to a religion, opts out of the mechanisms that would
Speaker 1: allow you to test the claims that are central to it. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying, and I want to clarify something.
Speaker 1: I actually try my best on the Psychology podcast to
Speaker 1: represent the person's views as actly as possible and why
Speaker 1: don't even feel like they're they're representing it. I want
Speaker 1: to even represent it better than they're representing it. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that right now. I saw a
Speaker 1: tweet you you you wrote at one point where you said,
Speaker 1: I'm for Yeah, I believe black lives matter, but I'm
Speaker 1: not into hashtag black lives matter. I think that's an
Speaker 1: important nuance to interject into this conversation. You know, some
Speaker 1: people might be listening to this and say, oh, he
Speaker 1: didn't Brett, Well, did he just say black lives don't matter?
Speaker 1: Is that what he just said? And I want to
Speaker 1: be quite You've you've tried to parse out these things, right,
Speaker 1: So can you can you elaborate riff on that a bit? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and thanks for introducing it. Yes, this is exactly how
Speaker 1: I feel. Right if you allowed a natural discussion of
Speaker 1: this question, I would tell you black people, this is
Speaker 1: one of two populations in the US that has had
Speaker 1: a persistently raw deal right lots of other people, including
Speaker 1: Jewish people, a population I come from, and we haven't
Speaker 1: had it to too. We haven't had We've had trouble,
Speaker 1: We've done Okay, I'm not complaining, But the point is
Speaker 1: has there been discrimination, of course there always is for blacks,
Speaker 1: and for Indians there has been a different problem. It
Speaker 1: comes from the origin story issue. It is urgent that
Speaker 1: we fix those problems. One of the things that bothers
Speaker 1: me most about Trump's approach and his tendency to divide
Speaker 1: US is that make America great again. The again is
Speaker 1: a problem because it has never been great for some populations.
Speaker 1: And the point is to say make it great again
Speaker 1: is to suggest that we should return to some state
Speaker 1: in which it was wonderful. And my feeling is until
Speaker 1: everybody is included, we're not done. There's nowhere to go
Speaker 1: back to. So, yeah, black lives matter. Here's how What
Speaker 1: I think the slogan means is that black lives are
Speaker 1: undervalued in the US and that that's appalling and it
Speaker 1: has to be addressed, which I agree it does. It
Speaker 1: has to be addressed. However, the state we should be
Speaker 1: shooting for is a color blind state, which doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we pretend not to see race. It means that the
Speaker 1: system has to not have any biases built into it.
Speaker 1: In other words, the blindness in color blind is the
Speaker 1: same blindness as in blind justice. You know, the the
Speaker 1: sculpture with the scales and the blindfold over her eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. Yeah, So we have to
Speaker 1: have a society that functions like that, that in which
Speaker 1: your race does not work for you or against you
Speaker 1: in any official context, kind of like a raw sort
Speaker 1: of way, like complete veil. Yeah, a veil. I love
Speaker 1: that the blindfold on blind justice is a rallsy and
Speaker 1: veil of innerds. Yeah. I've been writing about that recently,
Speaker 1: on how we should treat each other, not just morally
Speaker 1: but in terms of ideologies and things. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so what is the campaign slogan of unity twenty twenty?
Speaker 1: If you had insert make America is make America human again?
Speaker 1: Make them like. I'm going through a bunch of things
Speaker 1: in my head right now, but I should probably ask
Speaker 1: you what it is. Well, you know, look, I'm hesitant
Speaker 1: about slogans because fair at sub level, we are just
Speaker 1: drenched in bullshit. And although I think there are honorable slogans,
Speaker 1: anytime somebody is involved in a branding exercise, I just
Speaker 1: want to roll my eyes. But at some level, look,
Speaker 1: make America great. I'm down right you want to make
Speaker 1: America great. I'm first in line let's do that. How
Speaker 1: are we going to do it. Let's get the corruption
Speaker 1: out of the way so that we can deal with
Speaker 1: the obvious problems right and to the extent that there
Speaker 1: are biases and the well being is not evenly distributed,
Speaker 1: let's deal with it at the level of opportunity. It
Speaker 1: happens that when people have opportunity, they make use of
Speaker 1: it if they don't have the tools, let's deal with that.
Speaker 1: But these are all solvable problems if we can just
Speaker 1: get ourselves pointed in the right direction and so, you know,
Speaker 1: make America great at last. Something. It's the again part
Speaker 1: that sucks. Yeah, it's not even that it sucks. It
Speaker 1: doesn't accidentally suck. It's a deliberate finger in the eye
Speaker 1: to one set of people, and it is an explicit
Speaker 1: appeal to a nostalgia that is unjustified for another. I agree,
Speaker 1: and it seems so obvious. But how come, like how
Speaker 1: this is this shit isn't obvious to everyone? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a good question, I would say. In navigating these conversations,
Speaker 1: which is something I've been doing ever more in the
Speaker 1: last three years, there's often a booby trap that as
Speaker 1: you attempt to escape some path that's been established for
Speaker 1: you to traverse. You run into some obstacle and it
Speaker 1: prevents you from escaping the path. And so the trick
Speaker 1: is really figuring out, well, what do I do to
Speaker 1: get over that gap? So, you know, the one you
Speaker 1: raised as a perfect example. Are you for or against
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter? I am for the slogan, I am
Speaker 1: against the movement. Well what does that even mean? How
Speaker 1: could you be for the slogan and against the movement. Well,
Speaker 1: let me tell you. I think black lives are undervalued.
Speaker 1: We have to address it, but that the movement is
Speaker 1: saying some crazy stuff that has nothing to do with that,
Speaker 1: Like the nuclear family is a wide invention and it's
Speaker 1: being used. The whole idea is being used to oppress
Speaker 1: other people. That's nonsense. Or some people been criticizing the
Speaker 1: notion of anti racism is actually another form of racism. Yep.
Speaker 1: So somehow you have to establish that I am against
Speaker 1: a without being four B. Once you do that, then
Speaker 1: you can have a discussion. See it's tough. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever heard of the psychologist Abraham Maslow.
Speaker 1: I think he's a humanistic secon. My whole project is
Speaker 1: to bring humanistic psychology back. That's like, I call myself
Speaker 1: a humanistic psychologist. And he had a great concept that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to bring back called dichotomy transcendence. He really
Speaker 1: believed that wise people are those who are able to
Speaker 1: take all of these false, rised dichotomies people are talking
Speaker 1: about in society and come to a sensible integration of them,
Speaker 1: sense of wholeness. And and I'm trying, you're trying. It's
Speaker 1: I think it can be done. You see, you see
Speaker 1: little hints of progress, you know, like sometimes some tweets
Speaker 1: do well that I write that say, look, look it's
Speaker 1: I'm not so what was one thing I said. I'm
Speaker 1: not a truth warrior, but I'm a truth explorer, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I believe in social justice, but I also believe
Speaker 1: in free speech. Like like like some people trigging all
Speaker 1: these things as dicholomies, right, Like, if you're for free speech,
Speaker 1: that means you hate black people. What what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? What? No? No? Yeah, well you know it's funny.
Speaker 1: I think when I first became aware of you, you
Speaker 1: had I don't want to say attacked, but you had
Speaker 1: issued a kind of challenge over the intellectual dark Web. Oh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about the intelluctual dark web. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: now's the moment. So you know, I was I was
Speaker 1: somewhat troubled by your position because my sense was that
Speaker 1: that's exactly what the intellectual dark web was doing, was
Speaker 1: it was trying to carve out a space from nuance
Speaker 1: in order to not fall into these dichotomous wells. And
Speaker 1: I guess I was troubled by the fact that you
Speaker 1: weren't for an effort like that. Yeah, let's talk about this,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people have been saying to me,
Speaker 1: They're like, Scott, you're you're totally part of the intellctual
Speaker 1: dark web, and I'm like, I am I need to
Speaker 1: ask britt am I. So, yeah, I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about it because it's not part of my identity, right,
Speaker 1: It's not, you know, like this, it's I try to
Speaker 1: hold off on anything part of my identity. It's just
Speaker 1: like that's but maybe that's what makes me part of
Speaker 1: ironically part of the intellictual dark web, is that I
Speaker 1: like to refuse anything that I had to like commit
Speaker 1: to a particular ideology. But also the history of that
Speaker 1: tweet I know, it really pissed off your brother Eric,
Speaker 1: you know he was He responded me on Twitter about that,
Speaker 1: and then all of his followers, you know, came down.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I was thinking about it. I'm always
Speaker 1: open to revision. By the way, my head is always
Speaker 1: open to version. I do research on the light verse
Speaker 1: dark triad, so in one way, just give you some context.
Speaker 1: It was partly Alice Draiger and I had a wonderful
Speaker 1: conversation at the Headerdox Academy conference, and Alice had used
Speaker 1: that term, I believe in one of her podcasts, and
Speaker 1: I was like, ohtho, at least to my white triod
Speaker 1: of research, I'm going to totally use that word. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what, like minefield, that was gonna step into.
Speaker 1: I thought I was being a bit cheeky, you know,
Speaker 1: because I studied the light verse dark triad. And but okay,
Speaker 1: all that behind us, like a year later, right a
Speaker 1: year later, am I part of the intellectual dark? Can
Speaker 1: you tell me what is the uniting thing about that?
Speaker 1: So I can actually think that through it right now
Speaker 1: on the spot. Well, you know, this is an interesting
Speaker 1: topic because I don't think anybody has the answer. The
Speaker 1: fact is there are various avenues that one explores. So
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Ryan Bennett, wrote a piece in
Speaker 1: which he said, the intellectual dark Web is not a club,
Speaker 1: it's not a group of people. It's a protocol. And
Speaker 1: I actually love this. I don't think it's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I think the intellectual dark web is several different things,
Speaker 1: but protocol is certainly one of them. And the idea is,
Speaker 1: if you remind me of what Maslow's term was for
Speaker 1: avoiding these dichotomy transcendents. I love that. I did not
Speaker 1: know that I was reinventing a wheel. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: your purpose is dichotomy transcendence, you are inherently interested in nuance.
Speaker 1: You are inherently interested in forging new ground, and that
Speaker 1: is certainly part of the protocol. So you know, in
Speaker 1: Ryan's formulation, IDW is what IDW does in Ryan's Did
Speaker 1: you say Ryan's yeah, Ryan Bennett. So Ryan bennan a
Speaker 1: friend of mine. You will soon enough, I have the sense.
Speaker 1: But in any case, his point was, it's a protocol.
Speaker 1: It's a mechanism for interacting that avoids the usual failure modes,
Speaker 1: and it tends towards nuance because that's the way you
Speaker 1: do it. And you could also say you know that
Speaker 1: IDW is defined by people who register an obligation to
Speaker 1: treat points made by others that you believe to be
Speaker 1: wrong with the benefit of the doubt, so that you
Speaker 1: can investigate whether or not you may have missed something right.
Speaker 1: So the Twitter phenomenon that we see where people leap
Speaker 1: on somebody for saying something that they don't like, it's
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. And even when IDW doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So if you look at, for example, the initial podcasts
Speaker 1: with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson which fell into an
Speaker 1: unresolvable conflict over the nature of truth, it ultimately manifested
Speaker 1: in two nights of discussion over that very issue with
Speaker 1: me sir as moderator, and I think great progress was made.
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of what we accomplished. And so the
Speaker 1: obligation to figure out what's true. Or if people remember
Speaker 1: the video in which I became a public figure where
Speaker 1: those students were challenging me in the hallway, I said
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested in debate, I was interested in dialectic right.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Well, it means that the purpose
Speaker 1: of argument is to figure out what's right, not to win. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's all we do is college. It's what we're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. It's not necessarily what people do. And
Speaker 1: so anyway, I would say, you know, IDW is no
Speaker 1: more list of people now than it was then. And
Speaker 1: the real question is are you behaving in this way?
Speaker 1: If so, IDW is a phenomenon and you're part of it.
Speaker 1: So I can be IDW and have a heart, is
Speaker 1: what you're saying. I would say, you almost have to.
Speaker 1: Maybe you do have to because it require Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you may not have the same heart. Frankly, I think
Speaker 1: you know, Sam Harris is a very different creature than
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson, really dissimilar. But there's a lot of room,
Speaker 1: you know, since when is being a very different creature
Speaker 1: a bar to positive interaction? I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: very different than my dog, but we really do get along,
Speaker 1: you know, and for good reason. Is there like a
Speaker 1: formal christiening process, like I feel like like I can
Speaker 1: my intuition is feeling like I'm on the verge of like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm gonna come out as IDW right now.
Speaker 1: This is gonna happen for the first time in my life.
Speaker 1: Is there a certain formal pross selection process. Is there
Speaker 1: like a yet the bow at the feet of Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson or something? But what is what is the you know,
Speaker 1: is there any can anyone be in part of this group?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think so, I think you know the way.
Speaker 1: The problem is, here's here's what the gate looks like.
Speaker 1: The gate looks like you have to have been through
Speaker 1: something thing that allows people to know that you're for real.
Speaker 1: In other words, there's a lot you could pretend that
Speaker 1: this was your ethos because I don't know, it was
Speaker 1: a niche and you could make money doing it or
Speaker 1: something like that. Or you could behave this way because
Speaker 1: it's the right way to behave and you would do
Speaker 1: so come hell or high water. And so I guess
Speaker 1: that's the question is do we know if you're faking
Speaker 1: or do we know if you're for real? And unfortunately
Speaker 1: there's no you know, it's not like there's a test.
Speaker 1: The world exposes you to the test and then we
Speaker 1: figure out whether you pass right. But it's not like
Speaker 1: there's a group that votes on it. It's like we
Speaker 1: get to see how you behave in a crisis, and
Speaker 1: it matters. So I'm like friends with eighty percent of
Speaker 1: the people who are in the IDW. But but I'm
Speaker 1: still a little skeptical. And this is another question. Can
Speaker 1: I be in the IDW and be skeptical of the IDW?
Speaker 1: Can am I allowed to? So I have one one
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to point out to you, some skepticism.
Speaker 1: So you recently had on some of my favorite black
Speaker 1: thinkers of of current issues going on in the world.
Speaker 1: Most of them are my friends, you know, Coleman, who
Speaker 1: I know from Colombia, you know, and would have coffee
Speaker 1: right now and then and lunch and have discussions that
Speaker 1: Chloe wonderful. But you kind of brought together this panel
Speaker 1: of people that all basically are part of the same
Speaker 1: you know, into idea framework. Why didn't you bring in
Speaker 1: in that discussion? Why don't you bring in, like people
Speaker 1: from the Black Lives Matter movement to debate them? Why?
Speaker 1: Why have people who are not that far apart from
Speaker 1: each other debate each other? Is that a fair question?
Speaker 1: I mean it's a fair question. I don't think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think there's a tendency to see them as part
Speaker 1: of the same milieu because they get along, right, but
Speaker 1: they actually disagree tremendously. Okay, Right, you have people in
Speaker 1: that group on the far left. You have people in
Speaker 1: that group pretty far right, you know, Glenn Lowry and
Speaker 1: and John mcwurder. You know, they argue every week. Right,
Speaker 1: there is not agreement. What there's agreement on is to
Speaker 1: be decent about it, you know, to listen carefully to
Speaker 1: what the other person's saying. You don't get to deploy
Speaker 1: talking points. And so it's funny to me that people
Speaker 1: read the Black Intellectual Roundtable as a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who agree. Right. There's probably only one thing on which
Speaker 1: that group really agrees, right, and it's that we're not
Speaker 1: going to behave in a certain way. Right, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's an anti authoritarian group. Now, as for having somebody
Speaker 1: from the Black Lives Matter movement on, I would gladly
Speaker 1: do it. What my experience has been is that it
Speaker 1: is harder to get them to agree right to participate,
Speaker 1: So it takes more effort. The people who showed up
Speaker 1: for the Black Intellectual Roundtable on the Dark Horse podcast,
Speaker 1: I just sent them an email. They said, yep, great,
Speaker 1: and next thing you knew we were on camera. So
Speaker 1: not against having point of view that wasn't represented in
Speaker 1: that group. But that group does not represent one point
Speaker 1: of view by any stretch. So I take your point.
Speaker 1: I take absolutely take your point. I was thinking more
Speaker 1: like you if you rang Coats up right, and you're like,
Speaker 1: will you be on this panel with these these fellows?
Speaker 1: Do you do you think he would Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't know what he would say, but well, I
Speaker 1: should say. I do think I made one mistake, which
Speaker 1: is I was trying to invite him, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to find contact information and all I found was
Speaker 1: a publicist. Now, probably at the point that I had
Speaker 1: the publicist's email address, I should have emailed the publicist
Speaker 1: and I would have gotten nothing back, and it would
Speaker 1: have ended up the same way, but I would at
Speaker 1: least be able to say, well, he was invited too.
Speaker 1: But the reason he wasn't invited wasn't that I didn't
Speaker 1: want to invite him. It's that he was harder for
Speaker 1: me to reach. All those other people I could reach,
Speaker 1: they were friends of mine, some of them have stayed
Speaker 1: in my house. I know them well. In Coade's case,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to reach him, and so he
Speaker 1: was just harder to corral, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: he would have said. Okay, so fair fair points. So
Speaker 1: so it sounds like the uniting thing about the intelllt
Speaker 1: dark Weber. You want good faithness and that seems to
Speaker 1: be like a core thing. If that's the case, then
Speaker 1: sign me up, you know, like, if that's the case,
Speaker 1: but you're open to it's one more thing, okay, it
Speaker 1: I think you have to be capable, right, you have
Speaker 1: to be committed to good faith even when it does
Speaker 1: not function in your interest in the narrow sense. But
Speaker 1: you also have to be uh courageous enough to fend
Speaker 1: off what comes back when you have those other two characteristics.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, you know, it's not mine to define,
Speaker 1: but I would say if you were to try to
Speaker 1: reverse engineer what the characteristics were in people who are
Speaker 1: associated with that term, those are always present. But the
Speaker 1: intel dark web is doesn't function as a religion or
Speaker 1: a cult in the sense that you're allowed to criticize
Speaker 1: it from within at certain points. All right, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, and exact you know, Eric coined the term,
Speaker 1: but I think everybody, including Eric is uneasy with the term.
Speaker 1: We're uneasy with you know, are there boundaries to it?
Speaker 1: What are those boundaries. What the hell does the term mean?
Speaker 1: The term was coined ironically, so yes, every single person
Speaker 1: who's associated with it is uncomfortable with it, right on,
Speaker 1: right on. Thank you for all these clarifications. This is
Speaker 1: a great opportunity for those clarifications. So I want to
Speaker 1: move to a topic that is actually a mutual area
Speaker 1: of interest of ours, not as if the other stuff isn't,
Speaker 1: but this is a real mutual area of interest. Is
Speaker 1: growing up with a warning disability. I have just been informed.
Speaker 1: When I told people I don't know if you saw
Speaker 1: on Twitter? I said, I'm talking, you know, to you?
Speaker 1: Does anyone have any questions? And some people said, did
Speaker 1: you do see that tweet? By any chance? I did late,
Speaker 1: but I could see it because I got a million
Speaker 1: all these people right through lots of things. But something
Speaker 1: I didn't know is they said, you know, both you
Speaker 1: and your brother grew up with the worrying disability and
Speaker 1: had some troubles in school. Is that correct? Well, not
Speaker 1: only did we grow up with a learning disability, but
Speaker 1: we each had our own learning disability, so it was
Speaker 1: like we had two of them. Can I know what
Speaker 1: they were? Well, let's put it this way, as an
Speaker 1: evolutionary biologist. I don't really believe that dyslexia exists because
Speaker 1: I know that writing only showed up in humans eight
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and so dyslexia is not what it
Speaker 1: has made out to be. But yeah, I to this day,
Speaker 1: I can't write something, so I can. You know, if
Speaker 1: I write myself a note and I pick it up
Speaker 1: three days from now, it's a very good chance I
Speaker 1: won't know what it says. So, you know, severe dyslexia
Speaker 1: if that were a real thing. But from the point
Speaker 1: of view of interfering with school, Wow, I was off
Speaker 1: track by the second grade, and I really never found
Speaker 1: my way back. Yeah, well you did more recently, only
Speaker 1: sort of. That's true, actually, only you're still an outsider.
Speaker 1: I was an outsider the whole time, and the only
Speaker 1: reason I made it through was that, you know, I
Speaker 1: would say about one in five teachers or professors that
Speaker 1: I had decided that the fact that I was not
Speaker 1: capable of doing the normal stuff was not a reason
Speaker 1: to get rid of me, because I was very good
Speaker 1: at doing some of the stuff that was more difficult,
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know where I would have
Speaker 1: ended up without that. Eric had a harder time. He
Speaker 1: never found an advisor, for example, in graduate school, so
Speaker 1: his story is quite different. What was his learning disability?
Speaker 1: It would also be dyslexia, dysgraphia. Somewhere in that ole
Speaker 1: world I think said they you both had different learning disabilities. No,
Speaker 1: I was just saying that we each had our own
Speaker 1: learning disabit. Was I was kidding? Oh, okay, okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't know if that was technically true. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: grew up with an auditory central auditory processing disilder that
Speaker 1: they made me repeat third grade. Anyway, it's a very
Speaker 1: long story I'm not going to get into. But I
Speaker 1: wrote a book called on Gifted Intelligence Redefined, which tries
Speaker 1: to talk about those science of intelligence in a way
Speaker 1: forward in an education system that appreciates neurodiversity. And I
Speaker 1: suspect this is a topic of mutual interest. Correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, absolutely, And you're like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about But if you are interested in talking
Speaker 1: about this, I'd love to talk about briefly, what are
Speaker 1: your views on IQ and some of the methods that
Speaker 1: we use to assess potential. Because I've been sessed, I've
Speaker 1: been obsessed with this question for twenty years in my career. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this is complex. It's gonna be hard to know how
Speaker 1: to cover it all. But I would say in my case,
Speaker 1: I am certain that as painful as it was dealing
Speaker 1: with what we now call a learning disability, that it
Speaker 1: was necessary to being who I became, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: change it. If I could go back and fix my
Speaker 1: dyslexia and not have any problems in school, I would
Speaker 1: not in a million years choose that path, because being
Speaker 1: on a to deal with the structures that we are
Speaker 1: handed forces you to learn how to do things in
Speaker 1: other ways, and I'm convinced that this is among the
Speaker 1: most useful educational experiences you could have. So I think
Speaker 1: partly we have to be a bit suspicious of the
Speaker 1: way that we teach students that don't have such a disability,
Speaker 1: and we should be trying to figure out, without traumatizing them,
Speaker 1: how to provide the same kinds of hurdles so that
Speaker 1: they can learn to overcome them and become very competent
Speaker 1: as adults. Where do you see IQ coming into the
Speaker 1: picture of that? Have you thought deeply about that measurement
Speaker 1: tool that's often used to select from gifted students. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's cruddy, but I think it captures something,
Speaker 1: and I don't think we deal with it well because
Speaker 1: there's an assumption that if it shows up in a
Speaker 1: metric like IQ, that we're necessarily talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of genetic blueprint for the brain. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that that matches very well the emerging picture
Speaker 1: of what the brain is and how the mind develops
Speaker 1: around it. So I would say I won't be shocked
Speaker 1: if we come up with a much better measure than IQ.
Speaker 1: But IQ is clearly correlated to some things that matter.
Speaker 1: What I don't think we do very well is understand
Speaker 1: that even in the cases where we can establish that
Speaker 1: there is something genetically heritable in IQ differences, we don't
Speaker 1: understand the implications at all, and we leap to a
Speaker 1: conclusion about it what it means that I believe is
Speaker 1: just simply false. Can you elaborate in that at all? Sure,
Speaker 1: so let's say important stuff, it's crucial. But yeah, somehow
Speaker 1: we can't get there because as soon as you open
Speaker 1: the question, you have to deal with the danger of
Speaker 1: what it might reveal, and so there's a desire to
Speaker 1: shut down the conversation because people aren't ready to take
Speaker 1: the risk. But we've covered this many times before on
Speaker 1: this podcast in a I've never gotten in trouble, So
Speaker 1: that's that's good news. Yeah, well, I guess I would
Speaker 1: have to know what it is that you've concluded. But
Speaker 1: let's just say there is a danger of mistaking genetic
Speaker 1: heritability for and inability to alter a difference. So let
Speaker 1: me give you an example. Let's say that you had
Speaker 1: a bias built into a population in which some phenotypic characteristic,
Speaker 1: let's say it's nose shape, hair texture, anything that is
Speaker 1: understood to be correlated with stupidity, not because it is,
Speaker 1: but because populations demonize each other, they dehumanize each other,
Speaker 1: they do all kinds of things for evolutionary reasons. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a child who is born with this phenotypic characteristic
Speaker 1: may be understood to be stupid, not because of anything
Speaker 1: about them at the level of the nature of their brain,
Speaker 1: but as a result of a prejudice. Okay, And that
Speaker 1: child may get less enrichment in school because they're not
Speaker 1: expected to benefit from it. And when they do something well,
Speaker 1: they may get less reward because it will be assumed
Speaker 1: to have been luck whereas if another child had done it,
Speaker 1: it would be assumed to be skill something like that.
Speaker 1: What that means is that that phenotypic characteristic will now
Speaker 1: be inherited with lower intelligence. Not because the phenotypic characteristic
Speaker 1: has anything to do with intelligence, but because it projects
Speaker 1: something into the world that causes something to be reflected
Speaker 1: back that adjusts intelligence intelligence developmentally. So if you then
Speaker 1: study and you just say, well, I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: what the characteristics are, i just want to know if
Speaker 1: there are things in the genome that reliably correlate with
Speaker 1: decreased intelligence. Lo and behold, you find one, and you
Speaker 1: don't realize that what you're looking at is a phenotypic
Speaker 1: marker that causes people to interact with the person differently,
Speaker 1: rather than a blueprint for a circuit in the mind. Right,
Speaker 1: I agree, one d P. Yeah. So what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that's not controversial at all. Oh, it's not controversial,
Speaker 1: but people don't extrapolate from it. What that means is
Speaker 1: that you can identify genes that have effects on intelligence,
Speaker 1: and people will assume that those genes must do have
Speaker 1: some effect on the way the brain is strugued directly.
Speaker 1: Part of the intelligence construct see, I see, I see right,
Speaker 1: When the necessary mechanism may be other people's prejudice, that
Speaker 1: is completely possible. So until we do the work properly,
Speaker 1: we're not going to understand what we're looking at, and
Speaker 1: people will be leaping to the conclusion. The wrong conclusion
Speaker 1: that I think they leap to is that brains look
Speaker 1: like bodies. We all know that there are differences in
Speaker 1: populations because we see different sports inhabited by different people.
Speaker 1: Ethiopia and Kenyons dominate marathon running, right. That's not because they,
Speaker 1: you know, have a lot of marathon running going on
Speaker 1: in Kenya and Ethiopia. It has to do with physiological
Speaker 1: differences between Kenyans and Ethiopians and the rest of us.
Speaker 1: So people assume that the mind will look like this,
Speaker 1: and there's no reason to assume that the mind looks
Speaker 1: like this. In fact, I think there's very good reason
Speaker 1: to assume it doesn't. But when we begin to see
Speaker 1: hints of something that somehow connects genetic differences with differences
Speaker 1: in performance on IQ tests and other things, people assume
Speaker 1: that's what they're seeing, and they have their natural reaction.
Speaker 1: Either it confirms their prejudices or they try to drive
Speaker 1: the information out of view because they don't like where
Speaker 1: it's pointing. And neither of these things makes sense. Well,
Speaker 1: what are the implications here for the actual behavioral genetics research?
Speaker 1: Are you saying that some of the multitude of no
Speaker 1: one disagrees in the field now that intelligence is the contract,
Speaker 1: there's an influence of many, many interacting genes. There's no
Speaker 1: way the gene for intelligence. You say that perhaps some
Speaker 1: of the genes which behavle put within the IQ category
Speaker 1: might actually be related to something else that causes certain
Speaker 1: people to treat that person in a way that causes
Speaker 1: their actual intelligence increase, our decrease. You're making me think
Speaker 1: of the Matthew effect with all of this as well.
Speaker 1: You know, the rich got rich or the poor get poor.
Speaker 1: And there is that great research by Keys Statovich an
Speaker 1: other showing that early readers who have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a difficulty, just a tiny bit, they don't get picked,
Speaker 1: you know for the advanced reading team, those who do
Speaker 1: get picked, and then it continues and continues throughout the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we don't have the first clue what we're
Speaker 1: looking at, and you know, basically we're a long way
Speaker 1: from understanding how the mind works. In fact, we're a
Speaker 1: long way from understanding how a c elegance works with
Speaker 1: something like two hundred neurons. So you know, the point
Speaker 1: is it's too early to leap to conclusions. You know,
Speaker 1: you it's certainly the case that there are actual structural
Speaker 1: differences between the brains of men and women, which would
Speaker 1: be expected to have a much larger implication in terms
Speaker 1: of capacity than any difference between human races. And yet
Speaker 1: we find differences between males and females in average intelligence
Speaker 1: to be negligible. So because female brains are very efficient,
Speaker 1: is what it may suggests. Yeah, yeah, let's put it
Speaker 1: this way. We're a long way from understanding what's going on,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't make sense to be leap into conclusions. Now.
Speaker 1: We can talk phenomenologically about how different brains work, but
Speaker 1: in terms of being able to peer into the genes
Speaker 1: and figure out how that cascades into brains that then
Speaker 1: mature into minds, we're still in the very early stages.
Speaker 1: I hear you, but nothing you said was controversial. Still,
Speaker 1: I was waiting for the other shoe to drop at
Speaker 1: some point, because I thought that you were saying, well,
Speaker 1: people don't take it to the ultimate conclusion and when
Speaker 1: they do going to realize it's how controversial it is.
Speaker 1: But no, what you said is perfectly sensible. Well, the
Speaker 1: problem is you have to be able to accept certain things,
Speaker 1: like there's a genetic contribution to any of our traits,
Speaker 1: for instance. Well, no, I don't find that one is
Speaker 1: so dangerous. But the fact is there are differences in
Speaker 1: IQ between populations in adults. The assumption that people often
Speaker 1: make is that this is blueprinted by genes in some way.
Speaker 1: That's a faulty assumption. I don't know enough to say it,
Speaker 1: and there's good reason to think it's unlikely that major
Speaker 1: differences are blueprinted this way. But even the acknowledgment that
Speaker 1: there are differences between populations in average IQ that are
Speaker 1: predictable is troubling. I find it troubling. Now, the question is,
Speaker 1: are those differences the result of some exposure difference differences
Speaker 1: in the quality of the environments that people are born into.
Speaker 1: Are they you know, due to differences in the nutrition
Speaker 1: that people experience in early life? You know, there can
Speaker 1: be a lot of factors. But even just talking about
Speaker 1: the fact that those differences exist in the first place
Speaker 1: has frightening implications. So what I find interesting about that
Speaker 1: is in certain circles that discussion and the way it's
Speaker 1: framed is more controversial than other circles where the same
Speaker 1: exact data is discussed in different framing. So I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example that I mean, I work in the
Speaker 1: field of gifted education, and I work with people who
Speaker 1: are very passionate about closing excellence gaps. And it is
Speaker 1: a fact that there are huge gaps at the very
Speaker 1: top top of academic achievement. Now when those research are doing,
Speaker 1: it's coming from a place so they want to make
Speaker 1: their little better place, and that's the like it's obvious
Speaker 1: that's what they're leading from, is how can we address
Speaker 1: the excellence gaps that exist? And I find it interesting
Speaker 1: because that's uncontroversial when it's discussed in that framing. But
Speaker 1: there's a different framing where someone just if you just
Speaker 1: come out on Twitter, you say, admit it, you know
Speaker 1: African Americans are not as smart as white people. Well,
Speaker 1: of course, without context, without where's that person coming from.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like a very good faith person to me,
Speaker 1: you know, if they're just going to say that. So
Speaker 1: that's something that I find interesting by this topic is
Speaker 1: because like I am interested personally, I'm interested in excellent
Speaker 1: scaps too. In the field of gifted education, I want
Speaker 1: to understand what are the causes. I want to understand
Speaker 1: who's falling between the cracks, and to do that you
Speaker 1: have to face the reality of the situation head on.
Speaker 1: But in that field, it's uncontroversial to face that reality
Speaker 1: head on. People are actually interested, they've gone beyond it
Speaker 1: already in my field to actually understand it does. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah? Totally. You know, first of all,
Speaker 1: I would say the bitter pill for all of us
Speaker 1: is that we're all dummies. We could be a lot
Speaker 1: smarter if we had decent developmental in environments. And the
Speaker 1: fact is we've created developmental environments that mislead us and
Speaker 1: they cause us to be bewildered more often than not
Speaker 1: as adults, and frankly, we all need to level up.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's not even like trying to
Speaker 1: bring people along to you know, the high achievers, because
Speaker 1: even the high achievers are falling far short of what
Speaker 1: they might if they had the right developmental circumstances. A
Speaker 1: great point. So anyway, Yeah, of course, what we should
Speaker 1: be doing is closing the gaps and leveling all of
Speaker 1: us up and figuring out what a proper educational environment
Speaker 1: looks like. And I assure you it does not look
Speaker 1: like a bunch of people facing the same direction with
Speaker 1: some person at the front of the room scratching, you know,
Speaker 1: higher glyphs on the wall. This is not modern. We
Speaker 1: could do a lot better. Absolutely, So I want to
Speaker 1: be really appreciative of your time. Do you do you
Speaker 1: have time for a couple tweets from others in that
Speaker 1: thread that I put up this morning. Sure, that's a tentative. Sure,
Speaker 1: because you have no idea. I don't know what's you
Speaker 1: don't know what's going I never do. Of course, I'll
Speaker 1: try to pick the ones that are that are most
Speaker 1: good faith in that spirit. In that spirit, Rock Whittington asked,
Speaker 1: ask him how he's doing, smiley face, How are you doing?
Speaker 1: How am I? Yeah, we want to know, like as
Speaker 1: a human, as a human, like, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: It's a good question. I appreciate that somebody would would
Speaker 1: ask how am I doing? You know, it's funny. Twenty
Speaker 1: twenty is very dangerous for all of us, and it
Speaker 1: I can't say that it's possible to feel good about it.
Speaker 1: There's just not a lot about it that allows that.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it has filled me with purpose.
Speaker 1: So in some sense, except for the fact that there
Speaker 1: are not enough hours in the day, I have to say,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm supposed to be doing, and that
Speaker 1: feels good. So I think I'm all right. Good. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that. Holly ninety six days until Halloween.
Speaker 1: That's Hollway's entire Twitter name. I actually really like that.
Speaker 1: Asked or said tips on self improvement as an adult
Speaker 1: for people whose developmental environments were lacking or even downright destructive. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the thing is a lot of us have
Speaker 1: something that knocked us off track early on, and not
Speaker 1: everybody makes it back from that. But the key, I
Speaker 1: think is, if you have been knocked off track, you
Speaker 1: can't afford to have your wound remain open. You have
Speaker 1: to have it heal over and develop into scar tissue,
Speaker 1: which scar tissue is not as good as the tissue
Speaker 1: it replaces, but it does allow you to go on
Speaker 1: with your life. And so I think for those of
Speaker 1: us who have been through things that are damaging and disfiguring,
Speaker 1: getting to the point where those things are no longer
Speaker 1: The primary fact of how we interact with the world
Speaker 1: is the key. And so if you have an open
Speaker 1: wound from whatever has happened to your your first order
Speaker 1: of business ought to be getting to safety and allowing
Speaker 1: it to scar over so you can move on with
Speaker 1: your life, hopefully enlightened by what you went through. My
Speaker 1: cell metaphor get the boat holes plugged, but eventually open
Speaker 1: the sale and move forward. Oh, it's same idea. That's
Speaker 1: that my metaphor I'm kind of putting behind me right now,
Speaker 1: Hannah said, when was the last time he changed his
Speaker 1: mind about an opinion that he holds on something? Slash someone,
Speaker 1: I have one that I recall from the list. Okay,
Speaker 1: so many years ago, I would have been your standard
Speaker 1: advocate for gun control, and I still believe that the
Speaker 1: arguments for gun control are accurate. But I also have
Speaker 1: come to believe that all though the founders did not
Speaker 1: envision the current scenario, they did leave the Second Amendment
Speaker 1: in place with it somewhat perplexing introductory phrase, because they
Speaker 1: wanted a hedge against tyranny. And I do have the
Speaker 1: sense that that instinct of theirs is being proven right,
Speaker 1: that we are watching the collapse of structures that keep
Speaker 1: social order, and as much as that is putting us
Speaker 1: in danger, it also has left a kind of well,
Speaker 1: let's put it this way. I wonder if the Second
Speaker 1: Amendment battle may be over as a result of the
Speaker 1: fact that individuals are recognizing that at some level they
Speaker 1: can be abandoned by government in an almost in an instant.
Speaker 1: Did you see that I became a Second Amendment rights
Speaker 1: poster boy poster child overnight? Did you know fiasco? Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I tweeted something I thought it not. See this is
Speaker 1: You'll notice a pattern here. Sometimes I think I'm twinkling, innocuous,
Speaker 1: and then I step in it like I did with
Speaker 1: you and I, and here we are a year later.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought it up, because I didn't know
Speaker 1: that it pissed you all stuff. So the thing with
Speaker 1: the two A is Amendment. I was here in Santa
Speaker 1: Monica and there was a standoff between some protesters were
Speaker 1: literally throwing smoke bombs up into our into our balconies,
Speaker 1: and we were getting sick. So we called the police,
Speaker 1: and the police said, sir, the city's under attack. Do
Speaker 1: what you have to do. And I couldn't believe that
Speaker 1: the police just said that to me, and so I
Speaker 1: tweeted out, I can't believe the police just says this
Speaker 1: to me. And then before I know it, I have
Speaker 1: a viral tweet. You know, I've and culture, I have
Speaker 1: been Shapiro, I have you know, everyone's like to see,
Speaker 1: this is exactly why we need the second So and
Speaker 1: then I so I stepped into becoming the poster boy
Speaker 1: for the Second Amendment overnight. Didn't expect that. Yep, it's bizarre.
Speaker 1: But I mean, we're seeing all kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: you know this is just the beginning. But there was
Speaker 1: a letter recently released by the Seattle Police chief saying
Speaker 1: that they were no longer going to be able to
Speaker 1: respond to defend property. So you know, that's a long
Speaker 1: way from not defending people. But how quickly did we
Speaker 1: get here is the problem? Well, that's exactly what someone
Speaker 1: one of the park Whend shooter survivors tweet out, life
Speaker 1: comes at you fast with my tweet, and I think
Speaker 1: that was his point. Okay, PHG says why he will
Speaker 1: continue to vote left. I'm going to phrase that as
Speaker 1: a question where we arrange that person's words. Why will
Speaker 1: you continue to vote left. I don't know where the
Speaker 1: assumption comes from. I know this person has a big
Speaker 1: assumption here, don't they. Yeah, I will vote for reason,
Speaker 1: and you know, let's put it this way. In this election,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, Unity twenty twenty is the initiative that
Speaker 1: I'm focused on. But let's say that I wasn't in
Speaker 1: this election. If the right offered a candidate who was
Speaker 1: patriotic and capable, I would have no choice but to
Speaker 1: vote for them over Joe Biden. Right, So the person's
Speaker 1: assumption is simply off. I will vote for a competent
Speaker 1: patriot over an incompetent or unpatriotic person every time. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that I don't think we need to
Speaker 1: make progress. I'm a progressive for a reason. But at
Speaker 1: the moment, what we need is sanity, and whatever part
Speaker 1: of the spectrum it comes to us from, we have
Speaker 1: no choice but to embrace it. Actually, like that is
Speaker 1: your campaign slogan for Unity twenty twenty, Sanity, make America
Speaker 1: scene again? You think that? Like that? I think that's
Speaker 1: what it should be. Actually, think about it, talk about
Speaker 1: it with your team. Yeah. Dan Dolmar had a question
Speaker 1: about Unity twenty twenty, He said, not seeing much traction
Speaker 1: for Unity twenty twenty. Is there going to be a campaign?
Speaker 1: Are your kind of going to be giving any speeches?
Speaker 1: Seems like COVID hasn't made quote stumping impossible. Well, I
Speaker 1: think COVID has made proper stumping impossible. But stay tuned.
Speaker 1: You will see things this week that will change your
Speaker 1: view of Unity twenty twenty and hopefully put it in
Speaker 1: front of a lot more minds. You know what. I
Speaker 1: want to end on that note. I just think that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful note to end on, Brett. I really wish,
Speaker 1: I really wish your project. Well, you know that I'm
Speaker 1: a supporter and I'm like, now the end of this call,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm ninety eight percent in the intellectual dargwab.
Speaker 1: This is up from fifty percent before this call. So
Speaker 1: that's huge. That's huge. Hell yeah, And I really thank
Speaker 1: you for talking to me today and I wish you
Speaker 1: all the best. Well, thanks, Scott, It's been fun and
Speaker 1: I look forward to the next one. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to react in some way to something you heard, I
Speaker 1: encourage you to join in on the discussion at the
Speaker 1: psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology pod dot com.
Speaker 1: If you can, please add a rating and review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: I read all of the reviews and really appreciate your feedback.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.