Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Sam Harris on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Sam is the author of five New York Times bestsellers,
Speaker 1: including The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation,
Speaker 1: The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying and Waking Up. The
Speaker 1: End of Faith won the two thousand and five Pen
Speaker 1: Award for Nonfiction. Is Writing in Public Lectures cover a
Speaker 1: wide range of topics neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation, practice,
Speaker 1: human violence, rationality, but generally focus on how a growing
Speaker 1: understanding of ourselves in the world is changing our sense
Speaker 1: of how we should live. We also hosts the Making
Speaker 1: Sense podcast, which was selected by Apple as one of
Speaker 1: the iTunes Best and has won a Web Award for
Speaker 1: Best Podcast in the Science and Education category. Sam, thanks
Speaker 1: for making the time to chat with me. Happy to
Speaker 1: be here, Scott, I'm really looking forward to this chat,
Speaker 1: and I really want to set the tone by saying
Speaker 1: I appreciate your intellectual honesty and your intellectual bravery. Sometimes
Speaker 1: one can just be intellectually honest, but it happens to
Speaker 1: go with the flow of the current of the culture.
Speaker 1: But your intellection honest, and you're you don't mind being
Speaker 1: intellectually honest if it doesn't always win your friends. So
Speaker 1: I really want to to say I appreciate that, even
Speaker 1: if I don't necessarily appreciate and if I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: agree with everything you say in your arguments. And I
Speaker 1: thought we could go through very carefully today lots of
Speaker 1: areas of mutual interest and work through them very carefully
Speaker 1: and see if we can arrive at some some maybe
Speaker 1: even transcendent conclusions. So sure, yeah, happy to do it. Cool. So,
Speaker 1: since this is the psychology podcast, I did want to
Speaker 1: start a little bit with your your development, your child development,
Speaker 1: and that that's obviously formed some role in who you
Speaker 1: are today and kind of interest you have. I'm curious
Speaker 1: what you're like in a child as a child, and
Speaker 1: in particular in the sort of way you interacted with
Speaker 1: other people and in the way that which you engaged
Speaker 1: with the truth as a child. Mmm. Well, in so
Speaker 1: far as I remember, Actually I just read a uh
Speaker 1: I guess it was a fourth or fifth grade you
Speaker 1: review of me by one of my one of my teachers.
Speaker 1: I just happened to find that my mother happened to
Speaker 1: produce this. Uh So it was kind of hilarious to see,
Speaker 1: uh the who I am now prefigured in who I
Speaker 1: seem to be then. But I think I, you know,
Speaker 1: I was certainly recognizable to myself as a little kid.
Speaker 1: I think I was very logical and rational and you know, argumentative,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, I was a little debater
Speaker 1: and negotiator, and it was I was very interested in
Speaker 1: many different things. So I was. I was a good student.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't especially happy. I don't think I was.
Speaker 1: I was. I was a perfectionist and very hard on myself,
Speaker 1: I would say, I mean, I think I was very
Speaker 1: self critical. My dad left when I was two and
Speaker 1: a half, so I you know, I you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know in so far as the pop psychodynamics of
Speaker 1: that are are easily interpreted. I mean I think I
Speaker 1: kind of internalized that. And you know, that was that
Speaker 1: was that framed my childhood pretty decisively. But you know,
Speaker 1: I had I had a great mom and I have
Speaker 1: a great mom and and uh you know, it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was not definitely not an unhappy childhood,
Speaker 1: but it was the thing that that really changed my life.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure we'll get to this, but you know,
Speaker 1: when when my introspective, contemplative life started around the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen, that was a very clear break with who
Speaker 1: I used to be in terms of access to anything
Speaker 1: like tranquility or you know, any kind of ease of
Speaker 1: being in the world. So I don't remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I had my moments as a kid that
Speaker 1: were just you know, childlike awe and wonder and joy.
Speaker 1: And I know I did have those moments, and I
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with my friends, but I
Speaker 1: was in terms of in terms of the the way
Speaker 1: myself seemed structured. It was always poised to be unhappy,
Speaker 1: as honestly as any self really is, but I felt
Speaker 1: like there was a layer of perfectionism and self criticism
Speaker 1: that was, you know, unusually strong. I would say, were
Speaker 1: you in the debate club? No, I don't think there was.
Speaker 1: I don't, Mike, Mike if if we had a debate club,
Speaker 1: I didn't notice it, but no, but I was. I
Speaker 1: still would debate as you know. You know, I think
Speaker 1: one can make the error in looking at your calm demeanor,
Speaker 1: your tranquility and kind of assume that, well, there's not
Speaker 1: much emotion going on. I think one can easily make
Speaker 1: that error, as they do with a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are go through many years of meditative practice. I
Speaker 1: was struck by something you said in an interview when
Speaker 1: you were describing leaving you Your father was in the hospital,
Speaker 1: he was dying. You were seventeen years old, and you
Speaker 1: left the hospital. You didn't really feel full motion in
Speaker 1: that moment, but you went then watched a movie. Is
Speaker 1: that right? And and all these emotions kind of poured
Speaker 1: out of you when you were able to kind of
Speaker 1: fully process or more fully process what was going on
Speaker 1: through the medium of art. Do you remember making that
Speaker 1: point in the interview. Yeah, I definitely remember the experience.
Speaker 1: It was so the movie was right on point. It
Speaker 1: was Terms of Endearment, which has somebody dying of cancer,
Speaker 1: and if memory served so, which my dad was dying
Speaker 1: of cancer. So yeah, so I do remember that where
Speaker 1: it was it suddenly gave me access to the kind
Speaker 1: of the full grief rather than leaving me like the
Speaker 1: the Sartrey in character or the I guess it's Camu
Speaker 1: in the Stranger. Doesn't he get convicted of not crying
Speaker 1: at his mother's funeral? Yes, well, Larry David gets convicted
Speaker 1: of many crimes like that social taboo, curb your enthusiasm. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I bring this up because to me,
Speaker 1: that was poignant when you told that story about your father,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to bring out a little bit
Speaker 1: more of the humanity of Sam Harris, I guess was
Speaker 1: my point in doing that. I know you don't talk
Speaker 1: about personal things too often, and I certainly don't want
Speaker 1: to do it in a way that would make you uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But I think it's important to paint a picture of
Speaker 1: you as human as well, right before I go into
Speaker 1: full vulcan mode, Yes, yes, before we talk about Trump
Speaker 1: is also human. I think I think my my so
Speaker 1: called Trump arrangement syndrome has revealed me to be all
Speaker 1: too fraught with emotion. So right, that's a good as
Speaker 1: someone your critic would the uncontrolled emotion. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: not just emotion here, Okay, nagles to say I disagree
Speaker 1: on that point, but that's a debate for another time. Now.
Speaker 1: You were really interested in martial arts early, even in
Speaker 1: your youth, right, not jiu jitsu but a nin jujitsu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: around fourteen I got into martial arts, or what seemed
Speaker 1: to be martial arts at the time. My sense of
Speaker 1: what is a truly effective martial arts has evolved since then.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as a I think I was fourteen when
Speaker 1: I started training and did that for until I was
Speaker 1: through college, and then stopped for you know, almost twenty
Speaker 1: twenty plus years, and then then had a midlife crisis
Speaker 1: and got into Brazilian jiu jitsu and then got a
Speaker 1: lot of injuries. But that was that was fun. Well
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about your college crisis, twenty year old
Speaker 1: quite crisis. You were in Stanford. You were experimenting with
Speaker 1: ecstasy related kind of drugs, Is that right? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I had one md M, a trip that was really
Speaker 1: decisive for me, and that was my I think it
Speaker 1: was my sophomore year. Yeah, it was my sophomore year
Speaker 1: at Stanford. And did that play a role in you
Speaker 1: deciding to you dropped out quite literally dropped out of
Speaker 1: Stanford and go in the spiritual journey went on for
Speaker 1: ten years. Yeah, yeah sort of. So kind of on
Speaker 1: paper it looks like a bad idea, you take drugs
Speaker 1: and you drop out of college, but that is what happened,
Speaker 1: And yeah, there was almost certainly a direct connection there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I what I experienced in that
Speaker 1: first trip was just that the mind was a very
Speaker 1: different place than I gave it credit for. You know,
Speaker 1: that it was possible to experience well being directly, that
Speaker 1: in a way that's not contingent upon the success in
Speaker 1: one's life or in anything one thinks one wanted. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, So I had had a girlfriend break up
Speaker 1: with me the year before, or I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: just a few months before, and had been pitched into
Speaker 1: kind of real unhappiness and now I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: full on depression as a result of that. So it's like,
Speaker 1: by my happiness had seemed to be totally dependent upon
Speaker 1: being in a relationship that I that I've you know,
Speaker 1: valued and being with someone I loved, and and just
Speaker 1: my sense of myself completely imploded. And then I had
Speaker 1: this experience on MDMA, which was a perfect counterpoint to
Speaker 1: all of that. Right, I just realized, okay, that there's
Speaker 1: there's a door in the mind that can swing open,
Speaker 1: that can leave you with the the ah utter certainty
Speaker 1: of your capacity for your own you know, your freedom
Speaker 1: really is really deep psychological freedom that doesn't need a
Speaker 1: reference point in your life. Right. You could be on
Speaker 1: your deathbed, you could be uh, you know, you could
Speaker 1: be that you could you could tap into this way
Speaker 1: of being before anything changes in your life, right, So
Speaker 1: like it was, it was that it was that discontinuity
Speaker 1: between the way I was feeling, you know, and and
Speaker 1: you know, and obviously the mind's capacity to feel that
Speaker 1: way and anything one might you know, link it to
Speaker 1: in one's life. Now that I should say, that's also
Speaker 1: part of what's dysfunctional about drugs, obviously, And if you're
Speaker 1: I mean, what, we want our sense of well being
Speaker 1: to have some connection to the reality of our lives
Speaker 1: and the reality of the world, because then you're you know,
Speaker 1: the alternative is you can be delusional and and you know,
Speaker 1: you could just be a heroin addict who's lying on
Speaker 1: the couch and blisting out based on on the pharmacology
Speaker 1: of the moment, but having you have a totally dysfunctional life.
Speaker 1: So I'm not recommending that, but it was just it
Speaker 1: was the the recognition that how I was tending to
Speaker 1: be by virtue of what I was thinking about and
Speaker 1: what I was paying attention to, was was a had
Speaker 1: really become a machine producing my unhappiness, right, And the
Speaker 1: machine stopped during this you know, six hour period on MDMA,
Speaker 1: and I could feel as I came down, and as
Speaker 1: I could feel it start up again, I felt intuitively
Speaker 1: that I could understand something about the mechanics of this
Speaker 1: and that there were other ways to to to to
Speaker 1: arrest the hideous progress of this machine in my life.
Speaker 1: And so that's how I got into meditation and other
Speaker 1: esoteric things we could talk about, well, in terms of
Speaker 1: esoteric things. It's true, is it true that you once
Speaker 1: worked in the security detail for the Dalai Lama? Well,
Speaker 1: not worked. I was, you know, I was really into
Speaker 1: meditation at that point, and that Dalai Lama was doing
Speaker 1: a like a month long tour of France, you know,
Speaker 1: teaching in you know, almost in a different city each night.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was practically not more than twenty four
Speaker 1: hours in any one place. So it was just literally
Speaker 1: a tour of France. And my friends who were also
Speaker 1: you know, a long time Buddhist practitioners, many and many
Speaker 1: of whom had done three year retreats in various meditation
Speaker 1: centers in France or organizing this trip, and so I
Speaker 1: got tapped as you know, yet another other student of
Speaker 1: meditation who could be part of you know, of the logistics,
Speaker 1: and so we got you know, I got put with
Speaker 1: with you know, maybe a dozen other people as part
Speaker 1: of his security detail, which you know didn't strike me
Speaker 1: as totally inappropriate, given I had at this point a
Speaker 1: pretty long background in martial arts. But you know, no
Speaker 1: one else did, right, So it really we weren't really
Speaker 1: a security detail, and we were the buffer between him
Speaker 1: between his real security detail and the public. Right. So
Speaker 1: like there was he had like four secret service guys
Speaker 1: with guns who were his real bodyguards, and they weren't
Speaker 1: a dial Lama's bodyguard. No, I was. I was the
Speaker 1: I was, you know, the but ironically we were the
Speaker 1: ones who had all the conflict with the press and
Speaker 1: the public because we were the buffer between the real
Speaker 1: guys with guns and and the you know, the rabble
Speaker 1: who were could be surprisingly raucous and weird around the
Speaker 1: Dalai Lama was. It was amazing. I mean was actually
Speaker 1: one moment where somebody literally grabbed him by the robes
Speaker 1: and turned him around, so it was to get a
Speaker 1: picture with him, right. So it was like you you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you spend any time at all in
Speaker 1: a circumstance like that, you you do discover some very
Speaker 1: odd behavior from people. But you know, it was just
Speaker 1: a it was. It was a very interesting way to
Speaker 1: be with him because I got to spend you know,
Speaker 1: a month with him, uh you know, pretty up close
Speaker 1: and just to see how he functioned in that in
Speaker 1: that mode. And he's a he's a very self actualized guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just a he's just a real mench
Speaker 1: so inspiring guy. I love spending time with people like
Speaker 1: I remember I was on a This is gonna sound funny,
Speaker 1: but I was on a party bus with Matu Ricard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Matto was there too, yeh know, wonderful, wonderful when we
Speaker 1: were at a conference together, and I can genuinely say
Speaker 1: that he was. He seems so content with his you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something about a certain contentness with being where you know,
Speaker 1: people are making, you know, tawdry jokes. You know, people
Speaker 1: were making inappropriate jokes about the party bus we were on,
Speaker 1: and he laughed. You know. You know, there's a certain
Speaker 1: there's something about an ease of consciousness where someone can
Speaker 1: sort of just uh get amusement from from all aspects
Speaker 1: of human nature. Yeah, Matthew's a remarkable person. As you
Speaker 1: probably know, he was a scientist before he became a monk.
Speaker 1: So he's he's, uh, you know, he's got a PhD
Speaker 1: in molecular biology. And then you know his study, his
Speaker 1: study with some of the greatest Zuchin teachers of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. And yeah, matt Matthews. And he doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: as you say, he doesn't take himself seriously. So he's yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a He's a wonderful guy. So this ten year
Speaker 1: period of your life, it was very formative, Peard for
Speaker 1: you studied with some very big name leaders in the
Speaker 1: in the Buddhist tradition. You study facilitated by in some
Speaker 1: cases facilitated by Matteo. Matteu was translating you know, every
Speaker 1: every teaching I got from his teacher, Digal Kenzie. You know,
Speaker 1: Matthew was translating for and uh yeah. So I spent
Speaker 1: some time with with him and his teachers in Nepaul.
Speaker 1: What a wonderful serendipity there. I had no when I
Speaker 1: brought up Mattou's name about being on a party bus,
Speaker 1: I had no idea you had spent so much time
Speaker 1: with Mattu and he was so formative in those years
Speaker 1: of your life. So I'm really glad. I'm glad I
Speaker 1: brought it up then I brought it up, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I I was really amazed when I when
Speaker 1: I looked into this and preparing for this interview and
Speaker 1: I saw who you studied with. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: all these people that you knew the people, but I
Speaker 1: know you had studied with them. So my eyes widened.
Speaker 1: You know, you got such a first hand look at
Speaker 1: not only you know the character structure of some of
Speaker 1: these as well as their teachings. Right, So I'll just
Speaker 1: mentioned some names, uh SAIDA you Pandita. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: like university. Yeah. Yeah, So can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about that experience, because I think that you
Speaker 1: had mixed feelings about it. If i'm if, I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: so broadly I am. When I started practicing meditation, I
Speaker 1: got into vipassana first, and vipastna is This is usually
Speaker 1: translated as insight meditation, and it comes from the the
Speaker 1: oldest school of Buddhism, the Terravada, the Buddhism of of
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, Thailand and Burma, Sri Lanka, and it is
Speaker 1: the tradition that has given us this boom in mindfulness.
Speaker 1: Mindfulness is an export from from the you know, the
Speaker 1: Travada of Theapastana teachings. It's not to say that doesn't
Speaker 1: have analogs and other traditions of Buddhism and even in
Speaker 1: other traditions, but it's you know, mindfulness framed as mindfulness
Speaker 1: is really you know, Terravada Buddhism. So I started with
Speaker 1: that and spent a fair amount of time on retreat
Speaker 1: studying with you know, both Western students of the practice,
Speaker 1: like Joseph Goldstein, who's who was certainly my main Western teacher,
Speaker 1: but you know Jack Cornfield and Sharon Salzburg and all
Speaker 1: the people who started you know IMS and Spirit Rock.
Speaker 1: I did most of my retreats at IMS, the Inside
Speaker 1: Meditation Society in Massachusetts, and they brought saida Bandita out
Speaker 1: to teach there, and he was, you know, he was
Speaker 1: their teacher of again Ravada of Apastana inside Meditation, and
Speaker 1: he was a very rigorous kind of martial style teacher
Speaker 1: who he was a monk, and when you sat with him,
Speaker 1: you took you know, some subset of the monks of ows.
Speaker 1: So you know, you didn't eat afternoon, and you tried
Speaker 1: to only sleep four hours a night, and it was
Speaker 1: just wall to wall meditation and so I spent several
Speaker 1: months on retreat with him. I did you know, at
Speaker 1: least I did a two month retreat and I think
Speaker 1: one or two one month retreats with him. I sat
Speaker 1: with him in Australia for two months at one point,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and that was it was extremely useful. But
Speaker 1: the logic of that practice was something that I felt
Speaker 1: that I eventually graduated from it and moved on to
Speaker 1: to a different way of thinking about just you know, what,
Speaker 1: why one is paying attention to to one's experience in
Speaker 1: this way, and what there is to realize about the
Speaker 1: nature of the mind. You get a the division conceptually
Speaker 1: is really between dualistic and non dualistic forms of mindfulness
Speaker 1: and means that's the way I tend to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about these things in Waking Up
Speaker 1: my meditation app or in the book by that name.
Speaker 1: And so then I moved on to study with some
Speaker 1: of these other teachers we'll talk about, but like Matthew's
Speaker 1: teachers in Nepal, they were teaching a style of meditation
Speaker 1: called Zogchen, which is which is a non dual kind
Speaker 1: of awareness practice, which which is, you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways the same I mean, it's not that it's not
Speaker 1: that there isn't it's not that there's something different to
Speaker 1: realize ultimately, but it's a different set of instructions with
Speaker 1: respect to just know what to pay what to pay
Speaker 1: attention to and why. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: that goes by the way of meditation instruction that is
Speaker 1: ultimately somewhat misleading. And and you know, if you get
Speaker 1: deeply into it, if you if you really if your
Speaker 1: life is about seeking enlightenment at any point, if you
Speaker 1: really want to fundamentally change the firmware of your mind,
Speaker 1: you know, it's possible to really get frustrated and experience
Speaker 1: a lot of psychological pain born of one's you know,
Speaker 1: spiritual seeking. And and so that's zoake chin is A
Speaker 1: is a Tibetan teaching which is often translated as great perfection.
Speaker 1: It can also be translated as great completion. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a you know, the the the message is
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a a completeness and perfection to
Speaker 1: the nature of consciousness itself inherently right, that there's something
Speaker 1: that to realize about consciousness that you're not producing by
Speaker 1: your efforts, right, it's not that you're you're meditating so
Speaker 1: hard that you know, you wind up uh, perfecting consciousness. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's you're you're you're recognizing something that's already there, right,
Speaker 1: This is not a something you're manufacturing. And it's an
Speaker 1: important distinction because it's you can at a certain point,
Speaker 1: you can get the sense that you know all the
Speaker 1: work you're doing contemplatively. I mean, you're sitting for for
Speaker 1: a dozen hours a day, day after day, week after week,
Speaker 1: month after month, in many cases, year after year. If
Speaker 1: you ask yourself why you're doing that, right, that there
Speaker 1: can be an implicit logic to it that is both
Speaker 1: false and and unhappiness producing, which is that you you
Speaker 1: you can feel that you know you really are bound, right,
Speaker 1: You're really not free in this moment, and you have
Speaker 1: to do something rather heroic to get free. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have there's a prison you have to escape from, right,
Speaker 1: you have to order, there's there's a there's a disorder
Speaker 1: in your mind that you have to put right. And
Speaker 1: even if you're even if you underst that that's not
Speaker 1: quite the right way to think about it. There's this
Speaker 1: tacit sense in each moment that you're not good enough.
Speaker 1: Your life isn't good enough, your experience isn't good enough,
Speaker 1: and that's why you are making these weird efforts in
Speaker 1: the first place. Right, I mean, you want to improve
Speaker 1: something about your your mind. Right You're you're neurotic, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to be neurotic, right you. You're having
Speaker 1: anxiety attacks, and you don't want anxiety attacks, right you.
Speaker 1: You know, you you notice that your relationships are mediocre
Speaker 1: because you're not all that loving and you can't figure
Speaker 1: out how to get more loving, right you know. So
Speaker 1: it's like you're you've got a problem you're trying to solve.
Speaker 1: There's a knot you're trying to untie. And so even
Speaker 1: if you're given a philosophy which says no, no, actually,
Speaker 1: the mind is intrinsically radiant and pure, and you just
Speaker 1: have to recognize that. You're trying to do that because
Speaker 1: you have a problem that you want to solve, right
Speaker 1: You're you can't you don't recognize that, really, and now
Speaker 1: you're trying to because you want to put out these
Speaker 1: very as fires in your life. So it's it is
Speaker 1: a it's a bit of a conundrum. How you can
Speaker 1: ever get to the place where you're not making those
Speaker 1: kinds of dualistic, you know, problematized efforts, and you're actually
Speaker 1: enjoying what the mind is like before you screw it
Speaker 1: up by you know, seeking happiness. And uh so yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: Zoakchen unties those knots very directly and and uh you
Speaker 1: know it's so it was very useful to to get
Speaker 1: the time I got with those teachers. I mean, my
Speaker 1: main teacher was took Oregon Rippache and and also Nyosho
Speaker 1: kan Rimpa Jay and those are both people who took Oregon.
Speaker 1: I only saw in Nepaul, you know where Matthew and was.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't the you know, he wasn't the primary
Speaker 1: student of Tukurgan Rimpche he was. I was dealing with
Speaker 1: different translators at that point. So did you study with
Speaker 1: Dogo Kyense Yeah? So yeah, Diggo Cancer Repertay was was
Speaker 1: Matthew's main teacher and really wanted them. Yeah, the great
Speaker 1: Lamas of his time. Did he appear in a dream
Speaker 1: of yours before you met him? Am I making that up? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I never forgot where I spoke about that, But I
Speaker 1: wasn't even sure if that was you, But that was you? Okay, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I was. Actually it's funny now I remember I once
Speaker 1: I actually told the Dalai Lama who Dali Lama also
Speaker 1: studied with cancer repertay. He was his scent teacher, and
Speaker 1: I told the Dalai Lama about this dream. But in
Speaker 1: the middle of my telling him this story, I realized
Speaker 1: that there was no way to tell the story without
Speaker 1: pointing directly at his face, because that's what digal Cans
Speaker 1: was doing to me and the dream. He was pointing
Speaker 1: in my face, and the dream doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can tell you what the dream was,
Speaker 1: it makes absolutely no sense without pointing. But it is
Speaker 1: that it's in fact a cultural taboo to point at someone,
Speaker 1: you know, in Tibet, right like this is this is
Speaker 1: like it's essentially, you know, as far as I understand it,
Speaker 1: a candy, you know, giving someone the finger. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just rude. And here I'm now and I've launched
Speaker 1: very enthusiastically into telling a dream to the Dalai Lama,
Speaker 1: who I'm sitting directly across from, you know, like there's
Speaker 1: no it's just it's just me and him, and it's
Speaker 1: just you know, I've launched into this thing, and now
Speaker 1: I realize I'm about to point in his face, so
Speaker 1: I kind of half pointed. And I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: that it was a it was a coherent story at
Speaker 1: that point. But no, the dream was actually quite simple
Speaker 1: and brilliant. Uh. It was one of those dreams where
Speaker 1: you realize that there seems to be a part of
Speaker 1: your mind that understands something that you the dream protagonist
Speaker 1: that doesn't. Right. So, like I was genuinely so I
Speaker 1: was in dialogue with you know, obviously some imaginary person
Speaker 1: in my dream, you know, a product of my own mind,
Speaker 1: but he was saying and doing things that were totally
Speaker 1: coherent and you know, enlightening actually, uh. And the dream
Speaker 1: protagonist was fairly stupefied by being in this relationship, and
Speaker 1: the the dream protagonist was me right. So it just
Speaker 1: it was just one of those moments where where clearly
Speaker 1: the mind is bigger than than you thought you were
Speaker 1: in that moment, you know. So it's this kind of
Speaker 1: part a partitioning of intelligence. But anyway, the dream was
Speaker 1: he was h looking directly into my eyes and he's
Speaker 1: he was saying, he was saying, tell me, tell me
Speaker 1: who you are, and and I was kind of struggling
Speaker 1: for words, and he's and he said tell me, and
Speaker 1: he pointed directly into my face, and I just got up,
Speaker 1: you know, still struggling for words, and he said tell me.
Speaker 1: And then he then on the third tell me, he pointed,
Speaker 1: He said, tell me, and he pointed directly over my shoulder,
Speaker 1: right looking past me, as though there was someone directly
Speaker 1: behind me. But I knew there was no one behind me,
Speaker 1: right and in that like and I mean, it actually
Speaker 1: seemed like I've never heard anyone, you know, I've never
Speaker 1: heard about any exoke gen master or any other Buddhist
Speaker 1: master or any master kind of give this sort of intervention.
Speaker 1: But there was something about suddenly having like this, the
Speaker 1: intensity of being, you know, being pointed directly to, you know,
Speaker 1: in my face, and then to have it overshoot me,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of go over one of my shoulders.
Speaker 1: He had actually just sort of teased out the structure
Speaker 1: of selfhood in my mind, because I realized that there's
Speaker 1: there is something there is something about this self, this
Speaker 1: sense of being in relationship to oneself, that there's a
Speaker 1: there's an I and a me. You know, this the
Speaker 1: structure of our our thought is predicated on this, the
Speaker 1: idea that you can talk to yourself, right, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: like if you're the one talking and the one hearing,
Speaker 1: how does that make any sense? Right? You already know
Speaker 1: the thing you're saying to yourself, presumably because you're saying it, right.
Speaker 1: So it's like when I'm when I uh uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I sit down at this desk and I, oh, where's
Speaker 1: that pencil? Right? Like, I'm who am I asking? Like?
Speaker 1: Is there someone else in me who needs to be
Speaker 1: part of the search party? Right? Like? It makes absolutely
Speaker 1: no sense, and it just strikes it still. It strikes
Speaker 1: me to this day as a kind of brilliant gestural
Speaker 1: way of revealing that this is a a false situation, right,
Speaker 1: that the starting point for your paying attention to these
Speaker 1: things is not what it seems to be anyway. So
Speaker 1: that's what you know that the dream was quite uh,
Speaker 1: it was quite powerful and that and then I went
Speaker 1: to Nepaul and got to study with him, which was
Speaker 1: which was great. That is brilliant. It's I'm laughing. One
Speaker 1: thing you said, you said, you know, you're saying the
Speaker 1: dream was quite brilliant. I'm thinking like you know, we'll
Speaker 1: get to the whole free will thing later, but like,
Speaker 1: who should take credit for the brilliance of that dream?
Speaker 1: You know, because it's funny. Well, it's funny because some
Speaker 1: people are inclined to take if you consciously wrote that story,
Speaker 1: it would seem immodest for you to say, you know,
Speaker 1: my story is brilliant. But for some reason, you saying
Speaker 1: my dream was brilliant, No one, it doesn't at trip,
Speaker 1: it doesn't, you know, trigger that immodesty. People get what
Speaker 1: that means. And I think that's it's interesting. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to double click on that. Right then, there's a
Speaker 1: question that are we ever more responsible for our thoughts
Speaker 1: than we are in dreams? Right? Yeah, how would we
Speaker 1: come to the answer to that question using scientific methods?
Speaker 1: I don't think there is any scientific method that'll judicate
Speaker 1: that answer, but we'll get into that. Yeah, we'll definitely
Speaker 1: get into it. And just just to close this childhood
Speaker 1: so we get to the real meat of the intellectual arguments.
Speaker 1: You were a fiction writer, and it's maybe even inspiring.
Speaker 1: I heard somewhere that you have in a drawer somewhere
Speaker 1: a couple of novels that you wrote during that ten
Speaker 1: year period. Is that true. Yeah, I assume they're on
Speaker 1: one of my hard drives. I don't think I have.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have a hard copy of
Speaker 1: anything at this point. But yeah. So when I when
Speaker 1: I originally dropped out of school, it was of I
Speaker 1: had a dual purpose. I was going to write fiction.
Speaker 1: I was going to write a novel. And that's you
Speaker 1: know that just there seemed to be no reason to
Speaker 1: stay in school if that was my professional aspiration. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one cares where you went to school or whether
Speaker 1: you finished if you write the great American novel. So
Speaker 1: I started doing that, and I also got more deeply
Speaker 1: into studying meditation, and you know, went to India to
Speaker 1: study with some people and spend some time on retreat
Speaker 1: and then I would come get off and write more fiction.
Speaker 1: But once I got sufficiently interested in the nature of
Speaker 1: the mind, I just started writing. Yeah, I cut bent
Speaker 1: toward writing nonfiction. And then then I obviously needed to
Speaker 1: go back to school to to get the bona fides
Speaker 1: to do that credibly. So that's what changed for me.
Speaker 1: But I never when I the fiction I wrote, it
Speaker 1: was I never finished something that I felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is I can really get behind this. I was
Speaker 1: growing so much as a writer that you know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of sort of the you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of running across the bridge, and it was crumbling behind me.
Speaker 1: Like every time I finished something, I looked back on
Speaker 1: and noticed how how inadequate it was. As you know,
Speaker 1: it was not something that I was going to want
Speaker 1: to publish, So you might you probably won't. Let I
Speaker 1: do not think I'm going to publish any of these
Speaker 1: early novels. No, yeah, I say David Egle, because he's
Speaker 1: published fiction about consciousness as well. As I could imagine,
Speaker 1: I could imagine writing fiction again, or writing a play
Speaker 1: or write I mean, I I could imagine wanting to
Speaker 1: do that. It's you know, finding the time, as you
Speaker 1: know is always the is the puzzle that needs to
Speaker 1: be solved here. But I do yeah, I could imagine
Speaker 1: doing that, but I can't quite imagine going back and
Speaker 1: dusting off the stuff I wrote in my twenties that
Speaker 1: that's probably not going to happen. I want to read
Speaker 1: a sentence that you wrote because I have all sorts
Speaker 1: of issues with it, and I want to just give
Speaker 1: you my perspective and see what you think. You say,
Speaker 1: consider what it would actually take to have free will.
Speaker 1: You would need to be aware of all the factors
Speaker 1: that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need
Speaker 1: to be in complete control of these factors. To me,
Speaker 1: the sentence kind of reads like you're an implicit duellist
Speaker 1: in a sense, because who is the you in that sentence?
Speaker 1: You know, it's obviously not it's obviously not something non physical,
Speaker 1: because in your own view, that wouldn't make sense. So
Speaker 1: the only remaining possibility is that it's your consciousness. And
Speaker 1: if it's your consciousness, then how is it even enough
Speaker 1: to generate ultimate free will? Since consciousness must itself be
Speaker 1: a physical process. So even if it was fully aware
Speaker 1: of all the influential factors, and even if it were
Speaker 1: complete control of them, it would itself still haven't to
Speaker 1: be a set of physical processes with their own deterministic,
Speaker 1: antecedent causes. Also, you know, it seems to me like
Speaker 1: the role of consciousness is actually pretty large, just indirect.
Speaker 1: You know, consciousness affects our later choices and actions rather
Speaker 1: than our immediate ones, So you're absolutely right, You're right
Speaker 1: when you say that, But I still think it does
Speaker 1: affect the things that it's still essential to what people
Speaker 1: mean by the term free will, and that might get
Speaker 1: to the crux of this argument. You know, people care
Speaker 1: about the potential for growth and the capacity to exhibit
Speaker 1: self control of destructive impulses that might detract them from
Speaker 1: reaching their long term goals. That's what people really care
Speaker 1: about when they when they talk about free will. So
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get some of your thoughts on
Speaker 1: this because I'm not completely clear. I understand that that sentence. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not really understandable in that way. I mean,
Speaker 1: what you've really just landed on is the problem with
Speaker 1: the concept of free will. It just it doesn't it's
Speaker 1: an incoherent idea and so far as we we actually
Speaker 1: connect with what people really think they have, the concept
Speaker 1: makes no sense. I mean that there are versions of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, as you know, Dan Dannatt has tried to
Speaker 1: purify the concept of free will in ways so as
Speaker 1: to give us a you know, in his terms, a
Speaker 1: free will is worth wanting, right, Like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a compatibileist project that that tries to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously libertarian was called libertarian free will doesn't exist. That
Speaker 1: makes no sense. I agree on that. Here, here are
Speaker 1: all these other things we have and are and are
Speaker 1: you know, right to want, and let's just call those
Speaker 1: free will. There are several problems with that. One is
Speaker 1: that it is actually a way of just changing the subject.
Speaker 1: It's just not you're not actually interacting with what this
Speaker 1: this spurious and spooky and and incoherent thing that people
Speaker 1: feel they have. You're not and you're not acknowledging just
Speaker 1: how many important things shift ethically once you let go
Speaker 1: of that spooky free will. I think that things really
Speaker 1: do change, and and they change in ways that are
Speaker 1: important not just for our our justice system, and you know,
Speaker 1: they just are a very concept of justice. They're important
Speaker 1: for our ethical intuitions about just what it means to
Speaker 1: be a good person and how we should feel in
Speaker 1: the presence of of you know, all of the misadventures
Speaker 1: we have in life, of just you know, you know,
Speaker 1: colliding with with people who who bother us, annoy us,
Speaker 1: frighten us, you know, I mean, just like how should
Speaker 1: we feel about evil people? Like like what is what is?
Speaker 1: What is this whole uh uh demarcation of our of
Speaker 1: our world into these concepts of good and evil. How
Speaker 1: should we think about all that all of these things
Speaker 1: shift to a greater or lesser degree once you get
Speaker 1: rid of this notion of free will. And Dan Dennett's
Speaker 1: project acknowledges none of that, right, And that's that's the
Speaker 1: problem I have. That's why we he and I have
Speaker 1: never agreed on this topic. He you know, the analogy
Speaker 1: I use is, you know that we're living in a
Speaker 1: world where most people believe in Atlantis. Right, they believe
Speaker 1: all the the spooky things people tend to believe about Atlantis.
Speaker 1: They believe in an underwater kingdom and a you know,
Speaker 1: just some prior civilization that had all the answers and
Speaker 1: then got submerged, and you know, and like that's what
Speaker 1: really preoccupies them. And Dan comes along saying, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: do you realize Atlantis is actually Sicily? And here are
Speaker 1: all the reasons why Sicily and Atlantis just you know,
Speaker 1: just historically, and you go into the what Plato was writing,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty clear he might have been talking about
Speaker 1: an island in the Mediterranean, and here's the argument. And okay,
Speaker 1: so now let's talk about Sicily. Right, Okay, we can
Speaker 1: talk about Sicily, but Sicily is not Atlantis right sicily
Speaker 1: is not what people think that. It's not what has
Speaker 1: infatuated generations of people who've been talking about Atlantis. And
Speaker 1: people are infatuated by this idea that again, this is
Speaker 1: just libertarian free will, that they could have done otherwise right,
Speaker 1: Like it seems to most people that if you rewound
Speaker 1: the movie of their life to a few seconds ago,
Speaker 1: they could have thought or acted or wanted or intended
Speaker 1: and therefore behaved differently than they did. And when you
Speaker 1: do something that angers me, if you say something that
Speaker 1: offends me, you do something that you know, you break
Speaker 1: a promise, you do, you do something, my anger also
Speaker 1: tends to presuppose that ability in you to have a
Speaker 1: moment ago to have done otherwise like you should have
Speaker 1: done otherwise right. I'm pissed now because you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: done that right. And and when you actually trace the
Speaker 1: you know that my my emotional reactivity there down to
Speaker 1: its roots. I am relating to you differently than I
Speaker 1: would be relating to a gust of wind, or a
Speaker 1: wild animal, or a miscalibrated robot, or something else that
Speaker 1: was also behaving the laws of nature about which I
Speaker 1: would never say it should have done otherwise, right, Like
Speaker 1: when when a machine is malfunctioning, I have it may
Speaker 1: cause tremendous harm in my life, right. Or or if
Speaker 1: a wild animal, you know, shows up and starts you know,
Speaker 1: if if a cougar shows up in my yard and
Speaker 1: starts attack me or my kids, that's an that's a
Speaker 1: horrifying problem to figure out how to solve, right, And
Speaker 1: it certainly would warrant killing the thing if I can
Speaker 1: do it right. But at no point am I under
Speaker 1: the illusion that this is living out the consequences of
Speaker 1: its free will, and that I'm in a relationship to
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that could and shouldn't do it,
Speaker 1: could and should do otherwise if I could rewind the
Speaker 1: universe to a moment ago and people, So people are
Speaker 1: the rules ethically and psychologically seem to change entirely for people.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about people, you know, they don't think
Speaker 1: this way about chimpanzees. They don't think about this way
Speaker 1: about people with certain kinds of brain damage. So there's
Speaker 1: a certain layer of human ability, right, behavioral regulation, linguistic production,
Speaker 1: goal setting. Right, there's that layer of our humanness, which
Speaker 1: arguably is the most important. Some of that certainly some
Speaker 1: of the most important stuff we do that convinces us
Speaker 1: that we are not part of the clockwork of the
Speaker 1: universe anymore. Right, and then, and there are other spooky
Speaker 1: ideas that that get inserted here where people wonder about
Speaker 1: their souls. You know, they might have an immortal soul
Speaker 1: that somehow pulling the strings of the brain, or maybe
Speaker 1: there's kind of some quantum events here that that give
Speaker 1: us some degree of freedom that you know, mirror monkeys
Speaker 1: don't have, right and all, from a scientific point of view,
Speaker 1: there's no reason to grant any of that credence. But
Speaker 1: the crucial piece here, and this is really my honestly
Speaker 1: my only original contribution to this conversation, because this is
Speaker 1: for two thousand years it's been obvious that free will
Speaker 1: did make any sense. Yeah, I mean, it's the problem
Speaker 1: is that just it doesn't make any sense. There is
Speaker 1: no way to describe causality where this, this notion of
Speaker 1: I could have done otherwise makes sense, because randomness doesn't
Speaker 1: get you there. But the only thing that's original that
Speaker 1: I've contributed to this, or at least it's original in
Speaker 1: the sense that I didn't get it from anyone else.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure someone else has made this precise point,
Speaker 1: because is there to be made is that the starting
Speaker 1: point for this conversation is deeply mistaken. That the starting
Speaker 1: point for everyone is listen. We know we have free
Speaker 1: will because we experience it. We have this experience of
Speaker 1: free will, the experience of I can choose to move
Speaker 1: my right hand and my left hand, and clearly I'm
Speaker 1: doing it. No one's forcing me to do it. I
Speaker 1: can take a long time and decide, and I can
Speaker 1: go back and forth like this is I am the
Speaker 1: author of my behavior here. I know this from the
Speaker 1: first person's side. But it's very difficult to figure out
Speaker 1: how to make sense of this in terms of the
Speaker 1: streams of causality that I'm not aware of, in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, gene transcription and you know neurotransmitter behavior,
Speaker 1: and you know all of the causes reaching back to
Speaker 1: the Big Bang that I didn't author. That are you know,
Speaker 1: the state of the universe that counts for me for
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, you know, whether it's deterministic or random,
Speaker 1: all of that causality. It's hard to map free will
Speaker 1: onto all of that. But I know I have it
Speaker 1: from the experiential side. Right. The truth is that is
Speaker 1: an illusion, right, It's not even an illusion. My point
Speaker 1: is that the illusion of free will isn't even there
Speaker 1: if you look closely at it. So there is no
Speaker 1: there is no mystery to solve experientially, right, everything about
Speaker 1: your experience is totally compatible with determinism or determinism plus randomness,
Speaker 1: neither of which gives you this freedom people think they have.
Speaker 1: But honestly, your your behavior right now, your emotion, your intention,
Speaker 1: your thought is totally compatible with the most deterministic picture possible,
Speaker 1: Like like the novel of your life has already written. Say,
Speaker 1: let's say, let's say we live in a block universe
Speaker 1: where the future exists just as much as the past, right,
Speaker 1: where there's literally zero degrees of freedom. There's no such
Speaker 1: thing as possibility, there's only what is actual, right, Like,
Speaker 1: so like the next thing you think, and do you
Speaker 1: know your reaction to the thing I'm saying now is
Speaker 1: is already written. Right, Let's say that's true. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's the universe we live in, but I am
Speaker 1: saying that your experience of yourself in the world in
Speaker 1: this moment is totally compatible with that sort of universe.
Speaker 1: So there really is no problem to solve here. Now,
Speaker 1: there's there are many things that follow and don't follow
Speaker 1: from that, but we simply do not have an experience
Speaker 1: of free will. We have an experience of there being
Speaker 1: a difference between voluntary and involuntary action, and we can
Speaker 1: talk about the things we do experience. But free will, uh,
Speaker 1: is just not something that is that It's impossible to
Speaker 1: find a place in your subjectivity to make sense of
Speaker 1: the claim. It's no, it's no. It makes no more
Speaker 1: sense subjectively than it does objectively or in terms of
Speaker 1: third person causes and effects. You're really hung up on
Speaker 1: the magical free will part of this of this. It's
Speaker 1: it's not hung up. It is what people mean. It
Speaker 1: is when when you have someone who feels that someone
Speaker 1: should be punished for the really punished because they deserve
Speaker 1: their punishment, desert that just deserts, right. That is someone
Speaker 1: who feels that the logic of retribution is anchored to
Speaker 1: libertarian free will, not that their genes and their environment
Speaker 1: one hundred percent conspired to make them do what they did.
Speaker 1: It seems like the argument you're making is besides the point, though,
Speaker 1: because I think compatibleist free will when you really look
Speaker 1: at the philosophy of mind literature on compatibist free will.
Speaker 1: I think it's a lot more like full conceptions of
Speaker 1: free will than sicily is like Atlantis in your analogy,
Speaker 1: because you know, the point is that let me let me,
Speaker 1: let me outline what I think the why what you're
Speaker 1: saying is besides the point, and you tell me why
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I'd love to hear why I'm wrong. If
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. It seems like people can do all the
Speaker 1: things they care about if they think that they care
Speaker 1: about making choices that are somehow on cause they just
Speaker 1: aren't understanding what that literally means. As you point out,
Speaker 1: what people really mean when they insist that free wall
Speaker 1: is important is they don't want to feel coerced. They
Speaker 1: think of causes as sources of coersion. But that's a confusion.
Speaker 1: I think people want to make choices that are consistent
Speaker 1: with their own goals and be able to deliberate about
Speaker 1: the causes where their desires aren't totally clear, and they
Speaker 1: can do those things, and it's pretty clear their consciousness
Speaker 1: participates causally in that process. I would dispute that. I
Speaker 1: think that's uncertain, But I mean the boy, Baumeister did
Speaker 1: a global review of the literature and all this. You know,
Speaker 1: you focus on the obey we bet, I don't forget
Speaker 1: how you pronounce l ib Et studies. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't really get at the issue, because when you actually
Speaker 1: look at the role of consciousness as playing a causal
Speaker 1: role in human behavior, you see it's a very pervasive,
Speaker 1: strong effect of sciousness. I guess the way I view
Speaker 1: the situation is that we have certain degrees of freedom
Speaker 1: in depending on the role of the mix of conscious
Speaker 1: and unconscious processes that we can bring to bear to
Speaker 1: a task at are conscious at any moment of time.
Speaker 1: And you don't see there being a wigle room there
Speaker 1: in the degrees of freedom of a meaningful sense of
Speaker 1: the term of free will of what people care about. Well, well,
Speaker 1: my criticism of free will is happening on another level,
Speaker 1: and bringing in consciousness is conscious is additionally a difficult
Speaker 1: thing to talk about, right, So yeah, So I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with Baumeister's work on consciousness and agency, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: get at the issue that I'm raising here. So I mean,
Speaker 1: for instance, there are certain things I'm conscious of, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm conscious and they seem to have a relationship
Speaker 1: to my behavior. Right, So I'm conscious of you know,
Speaker 1: just deciding to do this podcast with you, right, So,
Speaker 1: like it seemed like consciousness was necessary to get us
Speaker 1: both here to do this podcast. Right, But we've also
Speaker 1: read it no, no, no, not at all, but the
Speaker 1: so so to decide to do something in the future
Speaker 1: to organize your behavior such that you actually arrive at
Speaker 1: the appointed hour to care about right, Well, so this
Speaker 1: this is, this is voluntary behavior, and it is it's
Speaker 1: it's in conformity with various goals and promises, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to get uh chickens to behave any
Speaker 1: anything like this. And there's really no other animal that
Speaker 1: we know of that does a good job of organizing
Speaker 1: their behavior in this way. And we seem to do
Speaker 1: it based on uh consciously thinking, thinking about certain things
Speaker 1: and paying attention to certain things. And there's something that
Speaker 1: to say that it's conscious is to say that that
Speaker 1: there's a qualitative character to all of that. And there's
Speaker 1: there's something that it's like to be me deciding to
Speaker 1: do a podcast with you and then you know, showing
Speaker 1: up and being here and making small mouth noises of
Speaker 1: the sort that I'm now making. And yes, this is
Speaker 1: all illuminated by consciousness in our case. Now the question
Speaker 1: is one, what what what is really going on there?
Speaker 1: And I mean, first of all, everything that I that
Speaker 1: either of us is conscious of is being promoted into
Speaker 1: consciousness on the basis of neural activity of which we're
Speaker 1: not conscious. Right, So there's a there's a kind of
Speaker 1: base layer of neurophysiological causality that we can't inspect, and
Speaker 1: that is simply producing. It's producing everything like I'm getting
Speaker 1: to how am I getting to the end of this sentence? Right?
Speaker 1: It's in conformity with the grammar of English somehow? Sometimes right,
Speaker 1: I make errors. I sometimes I notice them. I'm this
Speaker 1: pronounce certain words I. But but basically I'm, you know,
Speaker 1: somehow I'm getting to the end of this sentence in
Speaker 1: something like grammatically correct form. And I can't inspect the
Speaker 1: micro events that are I'm not conscious of any of
Speaker 1: the micro events they're allowing me to do that, right,
Speaker 1: So there's a there's all the unconscious processing that our
Speaker 1: conscious phenomenology sits on top of. Now the question is,
Speaker 1: and this is you know, essentially a criticism of of
Speaker 1: what Baumeister was up to there. There's much much of
Speaker 1: what we seem to do consciously. It remains mysterious why
Speaker 1: consciousness need be associated with any of these things. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: we could imagine building robots that were that could pass
Speaker 1: the tour the Turing test, that could do all of
Speaker 1: these things without there being something that it's like to
Speaker 1: be those robots, right and so and and maybe that's
Speaker 1: not in fact possible. Maybe conscious maybe a certain level
Speaker 1: of intelligent behavior just produces consciousness. You know that that,
Speaker 1: you know, the jury is still out on that fact
Speaker 1: that I like the idea that free will evolved in humans.
Speaker 1: You don't. You don't like that argument at all? Well, no,
Speaker 1: it was. But what would for if we could if
Speaker 1: we build a robot that can do a podcast, that
Speaker 1: can agree to do a podcast, that will show up
Speaker 1: at the appointed hour, that will put it in its calendar,
Speaker 1: and that we'll that that will have a touring, a
Speaker 1: touring test, passing conversation with you? At what point in
Speaker 1: our building and at what point in the manufacture of
Speaker 1: that robot and in your interaction with it, however pleasant?
Speaker 1: Will you imagine that we inserted free will into its code?
Speaker 1: You know? From my perspective, it's just when we've been
Speaker 1: able to give it conscious control in some way, to
Speaker 1: be able to override its programming so to speak. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean humans evolved, you can't override its programming. It's first,
Speaker 1: we are just so of course we are just our biology.
Speaker 1: What else would we be. But isn't the point that
Speaker 1: our biology encompasses all the interesting stuff that we all are?
Speaker 1: I mean, you could still say the robot it means
Speaker 1: something for the robot too, to be a unique, unique robot, right,
Speaker 1: I mean don't don't you don't you think that that
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is that you know the biology that
Speaker 1: the biology encomplashes. You know all the unique aspects of
Speaker 1: of what Sam Harris is and who Sam Harris is,
Speaker 1: including your unconscious and your consciousness. But but so the
Speaker 1: things of which I'm unconscious. Right, So so here's here's
Speaker 1: the I'm just trying to think of how to how
Speaker 1: to get it get at this so as to have
Speaker 1: it have the point Land. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the psychology podcast dot com. Thanks for
Speaker 1: being such a great supporter of the show and tune
Speaker 1: in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.