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Speaker 1: There's plenty of heated debate about free speech nowadays, and

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Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, almost everyone claims to

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Speaker 1: be in favor of free speech, but they often mean

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Speaker 1: speech from their side and not whatever those dangerous grifters

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Speaker 1: are on the other side, whatever they want to say. Now,

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Speaker 1: from the point of view of the brain, why do

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Speaker 1: I think that free speech is worth defending? And what

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Speaker 1: does this have to do with internal models or Internet indecency,

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Speaker 1: or printing presses, or college campuses or John Stuart mill

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Speaker 1: or cultures of honor or Robinson Crusoe or cancel culture.

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Speaker 2: Why literature matters?

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Speaker 1: And why free speech makes everyone safer. Welcome to Inner

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Speaker 1: Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an

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Speaker 1: author at Stanford, and in.

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Speaker 2: These episodes we seek to.

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Speaker 3: Understand why and how our lives look.

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Speaker 1: The way they do. Today, we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: free speech with lawyer and passionate advocate Greg Lukianov. I'm

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Speaker 1: a defender of free speech, but I'm not coming at

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Speaker 1: this from the point of view of a political principle. Instead,

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Speaker 1: I'm asserting this as a neuroscientist. And here is my argument.

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Speaker 1: As you've heard me say on this podcast before. The

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Speaker 1: brain operates by building an internal model of the world,

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Speaker 1: which is a compressed version of reality that it uses

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Speaker 1: to make predictions and help us navigate. But the thing

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Speaker 1: that's it's not always easy to see is that our

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Speaker 1: internal models are extremely limited. Your model is stitched together

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Speaker 1: from the very specific details of your past experience and

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Speaker 1: the influence of your hometown and the circles you spin in,

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Speaker 1: and the country you happen to live in, and the

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Speaker 1: era you happen to live in, and the context of

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Speaker 1: the culture you happen to be embedded in. That's how

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Speaker 1: you arrive at your version of what is true and inviolable. Now,

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Speaker 1: the thing that's always struck me is so interesting is

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Speaker 1: why it's so hard for us to think of other

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Speaker 1: points of view on any argument. It's difficult because we

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Speaker 1: don't even know what to look for. We're just not

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Speaker 1: smart enough most of the time to think outside the

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Speaker 1: borders of our own model.

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Speaker 2: And this is where free speech comes in.

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Speaker 1: My interest in free speech each is as illumination of

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Speaker 1: ideas that live outside of your visual field. When someone

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Speaker 1: expresses an idea that you hadn't considered, even one that

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Speaker 1: you might find uncomfortable. They're shining a light into a

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Speaker 1: corner of the map that you didn't even know was there.

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Speaker 1: You didn't realize anything was missing from your map. Other

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Speaker 1: people's opinions offer new pieces of the puzzle to your model.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes those are corrections, sometimes just considerations of other points

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Speaker 1: of view. Sometimes you'll dismiss those out of hand, and

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Speaker 1: that's fine, But at least that territory now sits on

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Speaker 1: your internal map while it wasn't even there before. Without

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Speaker 1: that input, your brain is just going to continue making

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Speaker 1: its predictions based on partial data. We are all blind

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Speaker 1: to our own blind spots. So from this neuroscience angle,

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Speaker 1: the important thing about free speech isn't just being allowed

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Speaker 1: to say things. It's about the critical importance of hearing things.

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Speaker 1: This is how minds stretch beyond their parochial borders. Hearing

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Speaker 1: new ideas is how we push, even just by a

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Speaker 1: few inches, the boundaries of our mental models, and slowly, iteratively,

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Speaker 1: we start seeing other territory that we didn't know was there.

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Speaker 1: If I were going to use a totally different metaphor,

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Speaker 1: I might just say that friction polishes us. It's critically

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Speaker 1: important to be exposed to ideas that can stretch us.

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Speaker 1: Lots of the ideas that we're exposed to aren't going

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Speaker 1: to do too much for us, but there's no way for.

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Speaker 2: Us to know in advance which ones will.

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Speaker 1: We are living in an age of personalization, algorithms and

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Speaker 1: social silos, and it seems to me the main risk

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Speaker 1: of this is that we stop even encountering ideas outside

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Speaker 1: our worldview, and that has big consequences for our brains,

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Speaker 1: especially for young brains, because without friction, we lose the ability.

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Speaker 3: To gain wisdom.

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Speaker 1: As a side note, I've previously made the argument on

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Speaker 1: this podcast about literature that reading literature is so important

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Speaker 1: because it allows you to go on holidays on other

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Speaker 1: people's planets. In other words, it allows you to put

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Speaker 1: yourself in other shoes and stand in other vantage points

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Speaker 1: than the one you're used to. This is the same

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Speaker 1: idea with free speech. We have to be exposed to

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Speaker 1: these other vantage points. Often in this case, these are

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Speaker 1: unexpected and maybe uncomfortable political points of view, but that's

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Speaker 1: the only way we can expand our fence lines.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so that all sounds good.

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Speaker 1: But the problem is that free speech triggers a lot

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Speaker 1: of discomfort listening to someone defend a posing idea is

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Speaker 1: is an unnatural act for the brain because it asks

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Speaker 1: us to entertain ideas that we might hate. It makes

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Speaker 1: us defense of it sometimes asks us to sit with

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Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance. It asks us to admit that we are

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Speaker 1: not perfect in our own views and that sometimes we

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Speaker 1: are wrong. But is it important to build some cognitive flexibility? Well,

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Speaker 1: just look at the history of science, where every new

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Speaker 1: idea was very unpopular to begin with. Whether that's the

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Speaker 1: Sun at the center of the orbit instead of the Earth,

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Speaker 1: or the idea that we and other animals evolved through time,

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Speaker 1: or Einstein's theory of relativity. Every single advance in science

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Speaker 1: triggers a lot of pushback before it gains acceptance. We

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Speaker 1: tell the story of Galileo fighting the Church, but there's

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Speaker 1: a sense in which we could equally cast it as

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Speaker 1: a fight against the brain's instinct to.

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Speaker 2: Preserve the status quo.

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Speaker 1: But especially in recent years, it seems like something has

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Speaker 1: shifted on campuses and on social platforms and in institutions.

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Speaker 1: We have seen the rise of emotional reasoning, the belief

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Speaker 1: that if something doesn't match your internal model, it's offensive.

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Speaker 1: Maybe the words are equated to violence, and therefore the

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Speaker 1: speech has to be shut down. And it's no surprise

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Speaker 1: because when you're confronted with ideas that you don't like,

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Speaker 1: your limbic system is cranked up and that steers your reactions.

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Speaker 1: The ancient alarm bells that we have, including for example,

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Speaker 1: the amygdala, these circuits don't distinguish so well between a

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Speaker 1: snake and a sentence that we don't like, and who

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Speaker 1: wants their sense of what's true to feel threatened. So

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Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about all this and why

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Speaker 1: it matters. And I'm so happy to be joined by

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Speaker 1: my colleague Greg Lukianov, who is a constitutional lawyer and

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Speaker 1: a passionate lifelong free speech at we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about the benefits of free speech, including several that don't

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Speaker 1: often strike us. Greg is the president of the Foundation

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Speaker 1: for Individual Rights and Expression known as FIRE, and this

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Speaker 1: organization is very creative and how it defends freedom of speech.

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Speaker 1: They use lawsuits and videos and documentaries and books. And

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Speaker 1: in fact you might know him from his co authored

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Speaker 1: books The Coddling of the American Mind and more recently

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Speaker 1: The Canceling of the American Mind, and also he recently

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Speaker 1: gave a Ted talk exploring how we've come to equate

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Speaker 1: words with violence and how the shift might be doing

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Speaker 1: more harm than good, especially to young minds. So here's

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Speaker 1: my interview with Craig. Craig, you care a lot about

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Speaker 1: free speech. How did you get here?

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Speaker 4: Well, I went to the Stanford for Law School right

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Speaker 4: down the road, and I went to law school to

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Speaker 4: do First Amendment freedom of speech. My family, on my

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Speaker 4: Russian side, you know, fled the Soviets, and I grew

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Speaker 4: up in a neighborhood with a lot of other first

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Speaker 4: generation kids. So we really took free speech very seriously

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Speaker 4: because a lot of us came from countries that didn't

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Speaker 4: have it. So that definitely got that that'll give you

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Speaker 4: that real fire in your belly. And you grew up

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Speaker 4: in a diverse community as well, right I did. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: a lot of kids from China, a lot of kids

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Speaker 4: from Vietnam, a lot of kids from from South America,

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Speaker 4: and therefore.

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Speaker 3: Everyone had different opinions. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 4: Well, they had different opinions, but they also one thing

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Speaker 4: that they tended to have in common was that back

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Speaker 4: home they didn't allow free speech aha, or at least

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Speaker 4: not much of it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay, So you went to law school and

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Speaker 1: you thought, I'm going to really concentrate on free speech.

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Speaker 4: Okay, I took every class Stafford offered on freedom of speech.

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Speaker 4: When I ran out, I did six credits on censorship

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Speaker 4: in the Tudor dynasty because I'm a herd. And then

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Speaker 4: I interned at the ACLU of Northern California up in

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Speaker 4: San Francisco.

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Speaker 1: Aha, wait, give me just one second about what the

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Speaker 1: Tudor dynasty.

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Speaker 4: See, Because the printing press is kind of, like, you know,

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Speaker 4: was the first big disruptive technology of kind of like

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Speaker 4: you know, modernity, and Henry the Eighth was reacting in

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Speaker 4: response to what the printing press was bringing to England.

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Speaker 4: He wanted to have a control over printing in all

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Speaker 4: of England, so there was these print licensing laws that

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Speaker 4: he basically if the only way you were allowed to

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Speaker 4: print in England was using a printing press that was

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Speaker 4: owned by a company that he approved of, which was

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Speaker 4: a smart way to do censorship kind of on the cheap.

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Speaker 4: And so Henry, you know, was no friend of freedom

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Speaker 4: of speech. And Elizabeth wasn't.

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Speaker 2: Really great either.

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Speaker 4: She did have some people, you know, nimed for example

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Speaker 4: for free speech.

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Speaker 1: God, and so the idea is they wanted to control

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Speaker 1: the press is so that they can control the message.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And this is what's in common with essentially all countries

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Speaker 1: that try to control free speech. They work on the presses.

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Speaker 1: I mean, for example, in the Soviet Union. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was the thing. You control the newspapers, you control

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Speaker 1: the weather reports, and control everything.

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Speaker 2: Yep.

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Speaker 1: And so I have a quick tangential question, which is,

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Speaker 1: how did the invention of the Internet change the ability

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Speaker 1: for governments to do that?

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Speaker 2: Oh that's so cool.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that was the thing that got me the

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Speaker 4: most excited about going to law school to study freedom

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Speaker 4: of speech. It was something called the Communications Decency Act

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Speaker 4: in the Telecom Act of nineteen ninety six, and it

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Speaker 4: was trying to ban indecency on the Internet, not obscenity,

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Speaker 4: indecency and indecency is like lewdness, you know whatever whatever

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Speaker 4: that's supposed to mean. And I remember studying this in

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Speaker 4: undergrad and being like this is laughably unconstitutional, Like there's no,

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Speaker 4: this is way too broad, this is way too vague.

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Speaker 4: And so that's what I went to law school to fight.

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Speaker 1: So you gave a ted talk recently a great Ted

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Speaker 1: talk where you outlined four reasons why you are an

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Speaker 1: opinion absolutist. Now we actually just to back up for

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Speaker 1: one second. You're not a free speech absolutist because there

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Speaker 1: are in fact limits to free speech. And actually give

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Speaker 1: us a very short sense of that in America, what

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Speaker 1: are the limits on free speech?

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Speaker 4: Sure, so, for example, incitement to imminent lawless action, basically saying,

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Speaker 4: like in a situation where you're likely to burn down

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Speaker 4: the mayor's office, let's go burn down the mayor's office.

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Speaker 4: You know, for example, defamation is not protected, but defamation

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Speaker 4: has a very particular definition that is, essentially it's not

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Speaker 4: saying you're a jerk.

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Speaker 2: It's saying, I know.

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Speaker 4: For a fact this person's a pedophile, right, you know,

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Speaker 4: It's an accusation of something serious, and it's a factual accusation,

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Speaker 4: not opinion. And of course, the protections that we have

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Speaker 4: in place to make sure that it's very hard to

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Speaker 4: get sued for defamation if you're defaming, say the President

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Speaker 4: of the United States, is one of the reasons why

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Speaker 4: I'm okay with the defamation as a category of unprotected speech,

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Speaker 4: because we have very good protections to keep it from

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Speaker 4: getting out of hand. Obscenity is not protected, but that

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Speaker 4: doesn't mean it's normal, meaning in regular human English, it

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Speaker 4: basically means hardcore porn, so that's not protected. But most places,

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Speaker 4: you know, a lot as long as it's like kind

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Speaker 4: of like controlled, as long as they can keep kids

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Speaker 4: off of it. For example, child pornography is never protected

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Speaker 4: under any circumstance.

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Speaker 2: Has got no issue with that.

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Speaker 4: So basically, like as a rule of thumb, the things

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Speaker 4: that make speech unprotected are things that start to look

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Speaker 4: a lot more like parts of crimes, for example, like

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Speaker 4: incidental parts of crimes, the fact they use words to

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Speaker 4: say your money or your life, who cares? You know,

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Speaker 4: like like that doesn't give a First Amendment person at

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Speaker 4: the second's pause. But things that tend to look more

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Speaker 4: like patterns of behavior, like harassment for example. Which is

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Speaker 4: why I make the distinction of being an opinion absolutist,

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Speaker 4: which is essentially I think there's value in knowing what

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Speaker 4: people's opinions are always full stop, right.

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Speaker 1: Because otherwise you don't know who you're hanging out with

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Speaker 1: in your community or your university or in your population

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Speaker 1: in terms of what they really think.

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Speaker 4: But also from a scientific standpoint, it is valuable to know.

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Speaker 4: You know, the example that I gave in my talk

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Speaker 4: was that no lizard people who live under the Denver

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Speaker 4: Airport do not in fact control the world. But knowing

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Speaker 4: that your future husband thinks they do, knowing that your

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Speaker 4: congressman thinks they do, or every single person in your

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Speaker 4: new city thinks they do, is really important information.

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Speaker 2: To have about your world. Exactly right.

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Speaker 1: And so you made the argument that free speech makes

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Speaker 1: you safer. Yes, so give us a sense of that.

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Speaker 1: So free speech makes you safer?

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Speaker 4: Is this idea that you're not safer for knowing less

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Speaker 4: about what people really think. It can give you the

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Speaker 4: illusion of safety that essentially people nobody's saying Nazi things

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Speaker 4: around me. But if it's illegal to say that, here's

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Speaker 4: what you actually do. And this goes a little deeper

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Speaker 4: than I had time to go on my ted talk group.

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Speaker 4: Polarization is about one of the best documented, you know,

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Speaker 4: findings and social science is if you get people who

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Speaker 4: politically agree with each other to talk to just each other,

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Speaker 4: they become back, they come back more radicalized in the

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Speaker 4: direction of the group. And this is you can simulate this.

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Speaker 4: It replicates easily take you know, a dozen people, figure

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Speaker 4: out where they are politically, split them right down the middle,

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Speaker 4: have them go talk about a hot button issue that

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Speaker 4: they agree on. They will come back much more radicalized

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Speaker 4: in the direction of the group. And we end up

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Speaker 4: doing that in censorship because essentially censorship means and I

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Speaker 4: said this on the Bill Maher show, you know, we

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Speaker 4: don't have laws against anti Semitic speech in the United States,

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Speaker 4: but they have had them in Europe for decades. And

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Speaker 4: anti Semitism, you know, has really increased in Europe over

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Speaker 4: those same decades in a way that it hasn't.

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Speaker 2: I mean, more.

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Speaker 4: Recently it's a streintly it seems to be going up,

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Speaker 4: but over the past several decades it hasn't had the

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Speaker 4: same kind of curve. And my point where there was

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Speaker 4: in America, but as in Europe, it's gotten really bad

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Speaker 4: in Europe. And what I said was, it's like you

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Speaker 4: passed a law that basically said anti Semites can only

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Speaker 4: talk to other anti Semites.

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Speaker 2: So what did you expect to happen?

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Speaker 1: Okay, So the first one is if people are putting

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Speaker 1: all their cards on the table, you have more knowledge

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Speaker 1: about what's going on.

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Speaker 2: Yep, okay.

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Speaker 1: And the reason this makes a lot of sense is

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Speaker 1: because we have these very limited internal models which we

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Speaker 1: take to be the truth.

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Speaker 2: We say, like, here's my view of the world.

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Speaker 1: I know that's truth, I know that's correct, and I

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Speaker 1: don't know what all those other idiots and trolls are

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Speaker 1: doing out there, but I know that I have the

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Speaker 1: right answer.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it's only when you're exposed to those other points

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Speaker 1: of view that you might even scratch at the fence

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Speaker 1: lines of your internal model and start pushing it around

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Speaker 1: and seeing what else is happening there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So it makes you smarter as well as safer,

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Speaker 1: just to be able to understand.

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Speaker 2: Ah, there's very different views here on this. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Well, and I mean most discussions aren't truth seeking discussions.

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Speaker 4: A lot of times when people defend free speech, they

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Speaker 4: only talk about the situation in which you're trying to.

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Speaker 2: Figure out what the world actually looks like.

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Speaker 4: And I'm trying to make the point that even when

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Speaker 4: you say things just about preference, you're saying something important

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Speaker 4: about the world, like, you know, like that I'm willing

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Speaker 4: to pay a billion dollars for a really good wine

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Speaker 4: is very important permission to have if you're if you're

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Speaker 4: selling wine, for example. But when it comes to truth

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Speaker 4: seeking arguments, this is one of the reasons why. I

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Speaker 4: mean John Stuart Mill, the guy was a freaking genius,

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Speaker 4: you know, like he was speaking Greek at three, like

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Speaker 4: he was off the charts. And I coined this term

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Speaker 4: called Mills trident because he makes this argument and on

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Speaker 4: Liberty eighteen fifty nine, same year as Origin of speechies

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Speaker 4: very clear, nice and the three things are that in

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Speaker 4: a truth seeking argument, there are only two three possibilities.

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Speaker 4: One you're wrong, two you're partially right partially wrong, and

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Speaker 4: three you're completely right. And he makes the point that

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Speaker 4: free speech matters in all three circumstances. Obviously, if you're wrong,

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Speaker 4: the much more you're not going to know you're wrong

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Speaker 4: until someone can challenge it. A second, if you're partially right,

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Speaker 4: then even you know, even more so because then you'll

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Speaker 4: actually get you'll actually refine your opinion. And people have

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Speaker 4: this experience every day where you're like, oh yeah, yeah, okay, right, right, okay,

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Speaker 4: you change yourself a little bit on that. But even

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Speaker 4: if God forbid, you're entirely right, it's because you don't

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Speaker 4: understand why you believe it in the first place until

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Speaker 4: you have to defend this. And I see this all

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Speaker 4: the time on college campuses. These people who I agree

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Speaker 4: with politically, I'm a political liberal, but they don't know

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Speaker 4: how to defend a lot of what they believe because

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Speaker 4: they hold them as mill referred to it as the

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Speaker 4: way people hold prejudices. They know they believe the right things,

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Speaker 4: but they don't really know why because they've never had

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Speaker 4: to defend it.

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Speaker 1: So your second argument was that free speech actually protects

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Speaker 1: you from violence.

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Speaker 2: Unpack that us.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so free speech is an alternative to violence. So

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Speaker 4: most of human history was spent in a there's this

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Speaker 4: idea of different sort of moral cultures, and one of

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Speaker 4: the most ancient forms of a moral culture is something

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Speaker 4: called a culture of honor, where essentially the idea is

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Speaker 4: that to a degree, it's up to you to protect

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Speaker 4: your property, to protect your family, and to protect your reputation.

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Speaker 4: And that's a serious sort of property interest you have

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Speaker 4: in that, but also a serious moral obligation you have

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Speaker 4: now in societies where can.

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Speaker 1: I just get some you mean moral in the sense

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Speaker 1: that because you need to protect these things and you're

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Speaker 1: on your own that gets written into what you believe

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Speaker 1: equals morality, as in, if I'm a moral person, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to defend my sister's reputation to the death.

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Speaker 2: Is that was what you mean by it? Well, I

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Speaker 2: think both.

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Speaker 4: I think that in more ancient societies, essentially, like this

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Speaker 4: idea that essentially like an eye and eye kind of idea,

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Speaker 4: was actually an idea of sort of limiting the damage.

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Speaker 4: And people forget this about eye and eye, like it

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Speaker 4: sounds so horrible, but really what they're saying is, listen,

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Speaker 4: if someone wrongs you and they take your eye out,

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Speaker 4: you can only get one eye back.

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Speaker 2: You can't destroy their entire village.

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Speaker 4: And because that's how brutal, you know, it was in

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Speaker 4: some of the older times. So this idea of a

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Speaker 4: culture of honor, you know, like is still pretty typical

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Speaker 4: in a lot of a lot of societies, but that

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Speaker 4: is often resorting to violence in response to defending yourself.

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Speaker 4: Cultures of dignity are ideas that actually came sort of

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Speaker 4: right around the time of the Enlightenment, and with democratic societies,

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Speaker 4: where essentially the rules are there is a legitimate authority,

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Speaker 4: there's a legitimate use of force out there, and it's

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Speaker 4: up to you to be able to handle some amount

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Speaker 4: of insult, some amount of abrasion, and hold on to

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Speaker 4: your own dignity, and you are not allowed to resort

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Speaker 4: to violence. So when on campus and I ran into this,

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Speaker 4: it's it's gotten a little bit better, but definitely over

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Speaker 4: the last ten years, I've seen this a lot, this

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Speaker 4: argument that essentially, if you're saying something really offensive, that's

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Speaker 4: a form of violence. So like, for example, at Cornell

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Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, and Culture was.

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Speaker 2: Invited to speak. Now, I don't.

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Speaker 4: Agree with her politics, but and Culture is trying to

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Speaker 4: shock and annoy you, like she makes she cracks jokes

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Speaker 4: about being like I couldn't believe I can make money

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Speaker 4: just by you know, spewing right wing vitriol, Like that's

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Speaker 4: her stick. She's going to try to anger you if

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Speaker 4: you're on the left. And students showed up though they

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Speaker 4: shouted her down, they wouldn't let her talk and they said,

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Speaker 4: your words are violence. And this is something I've heard

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Speaker 4: over and over again, Like in response to the Mile

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Speaker 4: Napolist riots, how many articles were written at Berkeley by

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Speaker 4: students saying, well, his speech was violence. Give us background

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Speaker 4: on that real fasts, not a nice Millianapolis was a

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Speaker 4: right wing provocateur and he was going to speak at

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Speaker 4: Berkeley and then an angry mob showed up Antifa, and

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Speaker 4: they started a riot and they and it did something

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Speaker 4: like half a million dollars of damage. You know, they

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Speaker 4: burned things, like people. There was one guy who really

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Speaker 4: should have died because they hit him with a flagpole.

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Speaker 2: Like it was. It was bad. Now, to be.

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Speaker 4: Clear, a lot of the people who were hurt weren't

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Speaker 4: even fans of my Leanopolis. They were bystanders who were

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Speaker 4: just there during this, during this riot, and you know,

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Speaker 4: things like this happen on campus. They're they're shameful in

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Speaker 4: my opinion. But what was really different about this was

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Speaker 4: after those riots, students wrote pieces justifying the student violence

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Speaker 4: as saying, well, Milo's speech was violence, so our violence

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Speaker 4: was self defense. And I make the point it's like, well,

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Speaker 4: welcome back to the thirteenth century, Like this is not

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Speaker 4: a new idea. This is an ancient idea and an

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Speaker 4: ancient bad idea that leads to a spiral of violence

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Speaker 4: a La Romeo and Juliet. I mean, like like it's

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Speaker 4: it's one of those things. It's a very bad ancient idea.

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Speaker 4: So I made the point also of this metaphor of

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Speaker 4: speech being like violence. I talk about I've been I

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Speaker 4: got punched out randomly at a party. I had done

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Speaker 4: nothing and I got assaulted and I was so badly

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Speaker 4: hurt I couldn't stay out of this eye for a month.

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Speaker 4: I got a concussion, and I had a friend stabbed

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Speaker 4: in the chest. I'm like right right here, you know,

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Speaker 4: and so like also at a moral.

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Speaker 1: Level, so you're saying that's real violence, and that's words

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Speaker 1: are not real violence.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, words not.

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Speaker 4: Real and words are our best replacement for violence because

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Speaker 4: you have to have a system for resolving conflict. No

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Speaker 4: conflict is totalitarianism, you know, the uh, you have to

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Speaker 4: have a system for resolving conflict the way we used

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Speaker 4: to do it, overly threats of violence or actual violence.

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Speaker 2: Harsh words.

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Speaker 4: Words being harsh sometimes should be expected when you're replacing

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Speaker 4: actual violence.

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Speaker 1: So let me connect this issue of totalaitaranism, because it

439
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:13,800
Speaker 1: feels to me like the at the heart of the

440
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:17,160
Speaker 1: problem is the fact that a lot of people feel

441
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:18,879
Speaker 1: if you were to really push them, they feel like,

442
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,480
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we should have a totaliaitarianism in the.

443
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 2: Sense that everyone should agree with me. I know that

444
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 2: I'm right. Yeah.

445
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: So if I have a government structure in place that says, look,

446
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,399
Speaker 1: everyone do my opinion on this, then that would be

447
00:24:32,480 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: a great That would be a great government.

448
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:36,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. So do you find that part of your job.

449
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:40,919
Speaker 1: Is changing people's opinion about that issue of wouldn't it

450
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: be great if the whole world agreed with me and

451
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: we had a totalitarian government that just put that into place?

452
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:51,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's my Sisyphian job is to roll that ball

453
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 4: up the hill every day and be like, listen, there

454
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 4: are ridiculous advantages to free societies. And of course I

455
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 4: could just go with the argument essentially like freedom is

456
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:04,879
Speaker 4: good just because it's good, And that's a little bit

457
00:25:04,920 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 4: of the natural law argument essentially, like the idea of

458
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:10,119
Speaker 4: the human rights argument that essentially we just need to

459
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:11,680
Speaker 4: take for granted that this is a good thing.

460
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 3: Okay, but you're saying that's not the good argument. What's

461
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 3: the good argument.

462
00:25:14,960 --> 00:25:18,320
Speaker 4: The good argument is that free societies are better by

463
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 4: virtually every measure, and that human diversity is something that

464
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 4: actually has huge benefits and you mean diversity in terms

465
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,960
Speaker 4: of opinion in this case, Yes, yea, all sorts of diversity. Yeah,

466
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 4: that's right, you know, but also diversity in terms of opinions,

467
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 4: but also norms, also culture, also preference all the personality

468
00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:41,159
Speaker 4: you know, like having the Big five personality traits be

469
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 4: distributed throughout society, I think is actually a wonderful thing.

470
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 4: But there can be this and this, This is the

471
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 4: totalitarian temptation that essentially, yeah, if everybody thought like me,

472
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 4: everything would be fine. And this is why I wrote

473
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 4: I wrote a talk called Fight the Guardians because I'm

474
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,919
Speaker 4: pretty hard on Plato's Republic, like because I think Plato

475
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 4: was really actually it wasn't a metaphor for the soul.

476
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:07,119
Speaker 4: He was actually talking about if clever people like me

477
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 4: were in charge, human evil would.

478
00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 2: Just go away. Everything would be a swell.

479
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,920
Speaker 4: And I'm a little bit like, when clever people get

480
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 4: a lot of power, the track record has not been

481
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:22,199
Speaker 4: so great. You know, give us some examples, Lenin, you know,

482
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 4: like I think about why my family had to flee

483
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:27,160
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union, you know, like I think about Lenin Stalin.

484
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly the Nazis.

485
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 4: Thought they were clever, and they were obviously some of

486
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 4: the greatest monsters in human history. So I think that

487
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 4: there's something to be said for systems that actually allow

488
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 4: regular people of voice, that protect human freedom, that make

489
00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 4: it very hard to vote away human rights.

490
00:26:46,680 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: And I imagine you'd argue that the study of history

491
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:51,919
Speaker 1: is part of what teaches us this, because both on

492
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 1: the left and the right, communists on the one hand.

493
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 2: Fascist Nazis on the other hand.

494
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:58,600
Speaker 1: You know, you got people who say, look, here's my

495
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: really good argument why eyone should listen to me, and

496
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: that always ends up in disaster. Yeah, And I assume

497
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,400
Speaker 1: you would argue that when you look at democratic societies

498
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 1: with lots of fighting about opinion, despite all the disadvantages, they.

499
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 2: End up faring better.

500
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 4: They end up faring well, They have better wealth, innovation, happiness,

501
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 4: all of all of these things. And we have this

502
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:22,360
Speaker 4: and and unfortunately we have to learn this lesson over

503
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 4: and over again, like reading like some of the literature

504
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,959
Speaker 4: from World War One, for example, there was skepticism about liberalism,

505
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 4: you know, going into World War One, and liberal societies

506
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 4: did much better in World War One than people expected.

507
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,199
Speaker 4: They thought that they thought a monarchical system was going

508
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:39,360
Speaker 4: to have this huge advantage.

509
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:41,000
Speaker 2: So it is large advantage in the war.

510
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 3: In the war, I see what you're saying.

511
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 1: Okay, but in fact, the liberal societies did finding the

512
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:46,360
Speaker 1: war in fact won the war.

513
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, oh, PARTI, because they were more innovative, they're

514
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 4: more prosperous, they had actual genuine advantages. But that was

515
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 4: more from a material kind of standpoint. The liberalism one.

516
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 4: It was after World War Two that you had this

517
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 4: and it's weird reading Supreme Court opinions from after World

518
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:07,560
Speaker 4: War Two. There's this idea that liberalism was dying and

519
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:11,199
Speaker 4: that the future may belong to communism, for example, like

520
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:15,400
Speaker 4: some kind of totalitarian ideology might actually win in the end.

521
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:20,760
Speaker 4: There was tremendous pessimism about liberal and free societies actually succeeding.

522
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 4: But then we had nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety one,

523
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:26,239
Speaker 4: you know that the fall of the Soviet Union, we

524
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 4: had the fall of Eastern Europe. We got to see

525
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:34,399
Speaker 4: that essentially once again liberalism, you know, emphasizing you know, freedom, individuality,

526
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:35,199
Speaker 4: all these things.

527
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:37,919
Speaker 2: It's a very powerful system.

528
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 4: It's a more robust system than we sometimes give it

529
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 4: credit for.

530
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 2: But does that mean that's always going to be the case.

531
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 2: I don't know.

532
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 4: And you know, my job is to be the person

533
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 4: defending it.

534
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 2: You know, for the rest of my life.

535
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: If you and I were to have this conversation a

536
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: thousand years from now, we might look back and say, Wow,

537
00:28:57,360 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: the American experiment failed and it turns out some other

538
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: thing worked better.

539
00:29:00,800 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, But as far as we can tell right now, you're.

540
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:04,520
Speaker 1: Going to take this position of saying, I'm going to

541
00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: defend free speech and all the rest of what goes

542
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: into having a free society, and I'm going to assume

543
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: for the moment that this is the best case because

544
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: historically it seems to have proven itself.

545
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:18,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, historically it seems to have proven itself.

546
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 4: I think that it but you know, I do believe

547
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 4: in the moral argument for it, that that essentially it's

548
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 4: a good idea to think that anybody who has like

549
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 4: a mind or a soul should have some certain rights

550
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 4: attached that essentially, you should not be able to torture them,

551
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 4: They should be allowed to say what they think, They

552
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 4: should not be deprived of things without actually some kind

553
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 4: of process in place, so it can't just be arbitrarily taken.

554
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 2: Away from them.

555
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 4: All of these, you know, And I picked on natural

556
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 4: rights a little bit, but I always point out that

557
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 4: natural rights are human rights like that. Essentially this theory

558
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 4: and it was an idea of trying to figure out,

559
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 4: if God is rational, what rights would he have naturally

560
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 4: attached to us. And it's it. It's a persuasive argument

561
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 4: from a moral standpoint that essentially everybody has owed these

562
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 4: things as a society. Now, is it a societal agreement?

563
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 2: Yeah?

564
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 4: I don't believe in God, you know, like, so I

565
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 4: don't believe there is someone actually deciding this, but I

566
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 4: do believe it's a good and smart societal agreement to

567
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 4: have a more just society.

568
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: Okay, So your third argument in your Ted talk was

569
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: that free speech defends the powerless. Yeah, so unpack that

570
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 1: for us.

571
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 4: Now this is I open up by talking about my

572
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,400
Speaker 4: frustration with the younger crop of students I've been dealing with,

573
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 4: because keep in mind, I've been doing this. I'm old,

574
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 4: like I've been defending free speech, you know, at fire

575
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 4: for twenty three years now.

576
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 2: I did it. I started right after I got out

577
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 2: of law.

578
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 4: School, and I started running into students, you know, who

579
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 4: increasingly seemed to believe that free speech was the argument

580
00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 4: of the three bees, the bully, the bigot, and the robber.

581
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 4: Baron and I had to explain, you know, like that's

582
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,560
Speaker 4: bad history, because here's the thing, the robber baron. The

583
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 4: rich and powerful don't need special protections for free speech

584
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 4: because they have wealth and power, you know, like they

585
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 4: do okay. A lot of representative government was the king

586
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 4: asking the merchant class for money, you know, like like

587
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 4: the rich and powerful did, okay. And when it comes

588
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 4: to democratic societies, if you're a bully or a bigot

589
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 4: and your society is bullied, bullying and bigoted, if you

590
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 4: have enough votes though, you still got to call the shots.

591
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 4: And so literally, literally the only people who need the

592
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 4: special protections of something like the First Amendment or freedom

593
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 4: of speech are people who are either unpopular with power

594
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 4: or unpopular with the majority. And this is why you know,

595
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 4: people like Frederick Douglass, Gandhi Nelson, Mandela id to be wells.

596
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 4: They all were champions of freedom of speech because they

597
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 4: realized that minority rights, whether you mean that in numerical

598
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 4: minority or racial minority or opinion minority for that matter,

599
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 4: they're the ones who need freedom of speech. And I

600
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 4: think this lessons gets lost in the monoculture of campuses,

601
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:11,400
Speaker 4: where essentially it is it tends to be so sort

602
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 4: of politically shifted that you can actually convince yourself of

603
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 4: free speech, is the argument of those of the bad guys.

604
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 4: But that's a very typical thing that people tend to

605
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 4: think once they have a lot of power, is it

606
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 4: essentially well, yeah, I believe in free speech when I

607
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:28,719
Speaker 4: wasn't powerful, But I don't know.

608
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: Before we get onto the fourth one, you have seen

609
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: a shift in what's happening on college campus. Is over

610
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 1: the course of time that you've been running Fire, what happened?

611
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, Now that was well, First of all, when I

612
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 4: started in two thousand and one, it was easier to

613
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 4: get in trouble for what you said than I expected

614
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,520
Speaker 4: on campus Like that was a genuine surprise because I

615
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 4: was dealing with a backlog of case submissions that came

616
00:32:57,120 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 4: in from years before when the founders of Fire had

617
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 4: actually wrote a book on the situation on campus. But

618
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 4: mostly it was administrators who were sort of pushing people around,

619
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 4: but in truly ridiculous cases, like an early case, for example,

620
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 4: was this case of Keith John Samson at Indiana University

621
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 4: Perdue University in Indianapolis. He was a working class dude.

622
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 4: He was working his way through school as a janitor,

623
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:28,479
Speaker 4: and he was reading a book called Notre Dame Versus

624
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 4: the Klan. This is a book about the fact that

625
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 4: the Klan marched on Notre Dame because they were also

626
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:38,960
Speaker 4: anti Catholic in the nineteen twenties, and that Notre Dame

627
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 4: students got together and kicked their hasses like it celebrates

628
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 4: the defeat of the Klan in a giant street fight.

629
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 4: But because it had pictures of that actual rally, you know,

630
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 4: on the cover, and an employee saw the pictures, he

631
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 4: was found guilty without a hearing, without knowing who was

632
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 4: charging him. He was guilty of racial harassment because it

633
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 4: made an employee feel uncomfortable. Now would people are always

634
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 4: like point out its kind of like, well, you'd be

635
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 4: saying another tune if you saw someone reading mindkom or something,

636
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:15,040
Speaker 4: and I'm like, okay, listen, it's protected to read offensive books,

637
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 4: and it should be. It's just more ironic that he

638
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 4: was reading anti racist book. It makes it that much

639
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 4: more are like, are.

640
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 2: You kidding me? They got kind of thing.

641
00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 4: But those were always administrators over enforcing sometimes really really

642
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 4: stupidly some.

643
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 2: Of these rules.

644
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:35,359
Speaker 4: It was only around when I started working with Height

645
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 4: that I started noticing large numbers of students having this

646
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 4: attitude about free speech as well. And that was around

647
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, and that's when I got together

648
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:49,719
Speaker 4: with HEIGHT and I had issues with anxiety and depression.

649
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 4: I studied cognitive behavioral therapy. I had a breakdown in

650
00:34:55,080 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 4: two thousand and seven, and as I was recovering and

651
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,799
Speaker 4: earning all these tactics for talking back to the exaggerations

652
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,720
Speaker 4: in your brain, I'm watching what's going on on campus

653
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 4: and being like, why are the adults seemingly telling all

654
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:14,640
Speaker 4: the young people to overgeneralize, to catastrophize, to engage in

655
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:17,080
Speaker 4: all these cognitive distortions. That I knew that if you

656
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 4: didn't talk back to them and talk them down rather

657
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:22,440
Speaker 4: than talking them up, you will be anxious and depressed,

658
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:26,319
Speaker 4: even if you're not prone to it. But it was

659
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:29,320
Speaker 4: only around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen that I started noticing

660
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 4: students showing up on campus actually thinking like this, and

661
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:37,319
Speaker 4: I approached HEIGHT thinking like what, thinking that, essentially, if

662
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:40,799
Speaker 4: this person speaks on my campus, it's going to be

663
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:45,399
Speaker 4: psychologically harmful, usually not to me, but to some huge

664
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:48,280
Speaker 4: portion of the it's going to be a catastrophe. Oh

665
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:50,920
Speaker 4: and that essentially, if I feel aversion to it, this

666
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 4: is emotional reasoning, that must mean that something has to

667
00:35:53,880 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 4: be done about it, That there's fortune telling that essentially

668
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:00,000
Speaker 4: will it will result in some kind of permanent psychological

669
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,720
Speaker 4: harm to people. All of this kind of distorted thinking.

670
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:07,320
Speaker 4: And I went to John and I was like, listen,

671
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:10,280
Speaker 4: if this is true, two things are going to happen.

672
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 2: It's going to be a disaster for acking.

673
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 4: I'm freedom, free speech, because it's going to be an

674
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 4: environment where it's just too easy for people to get

675
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,000
Speaker 4: in trouble. Then they're going to clam up. And Two,

676
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 4: it's going to be disaster for the mental health of

677
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 4: the young people who believe this stuff, because if you

678
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:29,479
Speaker 4: actually believe that that essentially you're constantly in danger. You're

679
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 4: easily harmed by words or ideas.

680
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:32,760
Speaker 2: That's a very.

681
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 4: Cruel thing to teach somebody because it's setting them up

682
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:37,839
Speaker 4: for pain, more pain than they would have if they

683
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,080
Speaker 4: just kind of accepted the idea that yeah, okay, you know,

684
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 4: there's going to be the tricks in the world. And unfortunately,

685
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,279
Speaker 4: and this is the fifth year anniversary, so sorry, the

686
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,959
Speaker 4: tenth year anniversary of the article Coddling the American Mind

687
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 4: that I wrote with Height back in twenty fifteen. And

688
00:36:52,480 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 4: things did get a lot worse on campus.

689
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 2: So what happened? Why did they get so much worse?

690
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think many of us in the

691
00:37:16,320 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: early twenty twenties felt like, Wow, things are really insane.

692
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I saw it coming a long way out,

693
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 4: because you could kind of see some of this coming

694
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 4: when he saw what was happening on campus.

695
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 2: You know.

696
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 4: I think there are a lot of factors going on.

697
00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:32,120
Speaker 4: I think that some of it are kind of like

698
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 4: natural progression that essentially, if something becomes more politically homogeneous,

699
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 4: it tends to actually get more radicalized. But I definitely

700
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:42,880
Speaker 4: think the thing that sped everything up was social media.

701
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 4: Those students who were showing up on campus in twenty

702
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 4: thirteen twenty fourteen were the first generation of students to

703
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,160
Speaker 4: grow up with smartphones in their pockets, and they'd kind

704
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 4: of perfected this way of arguing in junior high school,

705
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:58,440
Speaker 4: you know, where essentially it was very moralistic, but it

706
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 4: was also very essentially like I can make I can

707
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 4: defeat you.

708
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:07,399
Speaker 2: I can cancel you. You know, it would be you know.

709
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:09,879
Speaker 1: Oh, gave them a new tool, Yeah, to be able

710
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:10,919
Speaker 1: to cancel somebody I see.

711
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 4: And those students met a cohort of administrators who were

712
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 4: already there, who'd been the people I've been fighting before.

713
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 4: So it wasn't just the students showed up, it was

714
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:23,359
Speaker 4: the students met this bureaucratic middle middle management level that

715
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:27,680
Speaker 4: kind of saw its job as policing offense on campus.

716
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:31,920
Speaker 4: And that's partially encouraged by some some poorly written laws

717
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:34,399
Speaker 4: that come out of the Department Education. There's a lot

718
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 4: of things meeting at once, but as far and so

719
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:40,359
Speaker 4: coddling in the American mind. That whole book is what

720
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 4: was so different about the students Hitding Campus in twenty fourteen,

721
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:46,160
Speaker 4: and we called a social science detective story. There's even

722
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 4: things about you know, parenting in there. Those are some

723
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 4: of my favorite chapters in the book. We talk about

724
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,439
Speaker 4: polarization and about lack of viewpoint diversity can.

725
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 2: Make that worse.

726
00:38:55,480 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 4: But we also talk about the peculiarity of campuses as megabusinesses,

727
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,319
Speaker 4: you know, and the customer is always right mentality that

728
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:07,839
Speaker 4: makes that worse to a degree, but also ideological assumptions,

729
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 4: you know that that are very much the very very

730
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 4: black or white morality. You know, when I talk about

731
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 4: we talk about intersectionality. For example, in the book Perfectly

732
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:23,359
Speaker 4: Fine idea from Kimberly Crenshaw, if you understand it as

733
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:27,560
Speaker 4: just being this simple idea, the oppression faced by someone

734
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 4: who has, you know, multiple axes of oppression, what the

735
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 4: or more simply, the problems that they face are probably

736
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 4: going to be different than the problem that someone who

737
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 4: was And the way she described this is the problems

738
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 4: faced by black women on the job are different than

739
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 4: the one of those faced by black men, no question accurate.

740
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 4: But when it starts taking on a sort of moral idea,

741
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 4: when you start actually seeing life just split into a

742
00:39:55,239 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 4: simple moral dey tale of good good a pressed versus

743
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:06,759
Speaker 4: bad oppressors, and that's really based in immutable characteristics, that's

744
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 4: you know, I'm not very complimentary towards this idea. I

745
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 4: think this is a wild overs implication of very much

746
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 4: more complicated realities about human nature, about what society.

747
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 2: Is actually like.

748
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 4: But I think if you have that kind of like

749
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 4: good versus evil kind of mentality, you do end up

750
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 4: in a place where that's not that conducive for knowledge, creation,

751
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:31,560
Speaker 4: for debate, for discussion, etc. If you know for a

752
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:34,880
Speaker 4: fact that that person who disagrees with you, they're not

753
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 4: just wrong, they're bad people. Yeah, we're so hardwired for

754
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 4: this sort of thing. In terms of good and evil.

755
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: I mean all our stories, all the fairy tales, all

756
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: the Star Wars movies, everything is about good versus evil.

757
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: Every way that we tell stories about wars that our

758
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 1: country has fought in whichever country we're in, we tell

759
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 1: the story of the bad guys.

760
00:40:57,160 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 2: On the other side of the good guys on our side.

761
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:01,400
Speaker 2: So how do we escape that? It's not easy.

762
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:04,239
Speaker 4: It's one of those things, just like knowledge creation and

763
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 4: knowing the world as it is, it is an arduous,

764
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 4: never ending process of revision and relearning. And I think

765
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 4: that one of the best things you can do for this.

766
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 4: And I wrote a book as a follow up to

767
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 4: Calling the American Mind with this brilliant young woman named

768
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 4: Ricky Schlott, called Canceling the American Mind, and we talked

769
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:26,799
Speaker 4: about the antidote for cancel culture is basically what we call.

770
00:41:26,719 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 2: Free speech culture.

771
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 4: And trying to sort of like put to simply explain

772
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 4: what it means to have a free speech culture. I

773
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 4: realized that a lot of the idioms that we would

774
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 4: have grown up with, but younger people haven't so much

775
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 4: grown up with.

776
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 2: And we just did a survey on this.

777
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 4: By the way, I'm writing something about this for my substack,

778
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 4: called the Eternally Radical Idea, about how often people use

779
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 4: things like to each their own you know, not my

780
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:56,920
Speaker 4: cup of tea, don't judge a book by its cover.

781
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:00,359
Speaker 4: Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. All these we said

782
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 4: a lot as a kid, and we all we we

783
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:03,879
Speaker 4: we we thought they were just.

784
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,240
Speaker 2: Everybody agreed on that right. Everyone's tell their opinion.

785
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:08,839
Speaker 4: I don't have to like it, but I haven't walked,

786
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 4: you know, walked a mile in your shoes, so I

787
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 4: can't really judge you. And I think that those are

788
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:18,720
Speaker 4: great sayings for a culture of dignity, for a culture

789
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 4: in which you actually are expected to listen.

790
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 2: I have to.

791
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 4: I want you to respect my autonomy, but I have

792
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:27,759
Speaker 4: to respect your autonomy to a degree too, And that's

793
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 4: something has to be learned and experienced.

794
00:42:30,680 --> 00:42:32,440
Speaker 1: So do you think those expressions that we grew up

795
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 1: with have changed, have dropped out of the parlance.

796
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:39,840
Speaker 4: According to the survey, at least young people seem to

797
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 4: be familiar with them, they just don't use them very often.

798
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 4: The one that was least well known was judge the

799
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:54,839
Speaker 4: uh judge the argument not the person you know like that.

800
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 4: That was probably the one that they knew the least,

801
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 4: which makes you know, some amout of sense when you

802
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:00,640
Speaker 4: when you see kind of the problems today. But my

803
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 4: co author Ricky, who was twenty when I started working

804
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 4: with her, she said, I didn't hear these at all

805
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,759
Speaker 4: growing up. Wow, And that was really I mean, like

806
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 4: another one is it's a free country, you know, you know,

807
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:14,720
Speaker 4: you know, which was a wise ass often way of saying,

808
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,239
Speaker 4: but it's kind of like I'm I'm allowed to do

809
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 4: what I want to do here, like the it's a

810
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 4: free country, I can wear this hat right right.

811
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: And importantly, we would say that when you see someone

812
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:28,359
Speaker 1: else doing something you think is crazy.

813
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:30,120
Speaker 4: We won't check you because, like so many of that,

814
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 4: what's that what's in those sayings is the most important

815
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,040
Speaker 4: thing that I have to convey. Like so sometimes since

816
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:39,760
Speaker 4: I have a seven and a nine year old, people

817
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:43,279
Speaker 4: will say, okay, mister free speech, like how do you

818
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 4: do that when you have kids? And I'm like, well,

819
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 4: I teach them the most important thing about freedom of speech,

820
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 4: which is epistemic humility, which is knowing that in the

821
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 4: grand scheme.

822
00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:54,760
Speaker 2: Of things, you don't know that much.

823
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 4: And all of these sayings they're about, dude, you're not omniscient.

824
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 2: You don't know everything.

825
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:04,240
Speaker 4: You can't know everything, and it's also not your place

826
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:08,200
Speaker 4: to judge everybody else. And this is so well sort

827
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 4: of like in social science and neuroscience kind of like

828
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:14,719
Speaker 4: like in psychology, like the illusion of explanatory depth, like

829
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,240
Speaker 4: all of these kind of like ideas about like how

830
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:19,439
Speaker 4: much we overestimate, how.

831
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 2: Much we think we actually know and understands. Just for

832
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:22,320
Speaker 2: the listenership.

833
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 1: The illusion of explanatory depth is we think we know

834
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:27,399
Speaker 1: things and we assume we know them all the way down.

835
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:29,880
Speaker 1: So if I say to you, you know, hey, do

836
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: you know how the electoral college works? You say yeah,

837
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:33,239
Speaker 1: And I say, hey, can you explain.

838
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:33,239
Speaker 2: It to me?

839
00:44:33,400 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 3: You say, well, actually, hold on, maybe I'm not.

840
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 2: Clear on this.

841
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,919
Speaker 1: But we do this with everything, where whatever knowledge we have,

842
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 1: it's often like a Potempkin village where we just see

843
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:47,720
Speaker 1: the front piece of the houses and we don't actually

844
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:50,400
Speaker 1: know what's behind it. But it's only when we scratch

845
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:54,040
Speaker 1: the surface that we realize I don't actually know that piece. Yeah,

846
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:55,719
Speaker 1: this to me seems like the heart of it, this

847
00:44:55,760 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: epistemic humility. Yes, because the fact is, for every one

848
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: of us, the most clever person among us, our knowledge

849
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: is a Potemkin village. There are many things we don't know.

850
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: There are many points of view we've never even considered

851
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:15,760
Speaker 1: or thought about, and yet we always have the illusion that, Okay,

852
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: I know the truth.

853
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 2: This is clear to me.

854
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:22,280
Speaker 1: And so this is why, from a neural point of view,

855
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:24,520
Speaker 1: I believe so strongly in free speech.

856
00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 2: It's because of the need.

857
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 1: It's because of the what's the new term I could use,

858
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 1: or the epistemic stretching that's needed all the time, because

859
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:36,879
Speaker 1: you simply can't see all the things that you don't

860
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:39,759
Speaker 1: know until someone challenges you on it. And then, as

861
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,800
Speaker 1: this was Daniel Dafoe and Robinson Crusoe said I'm not

862
00:45:44,800 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 1: gonna get this quite right, but said something like you

863
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 1: can never understand anything except by its contraries. And so

864
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 1: the idea is you need to get to the other

865
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 1: side of something to say, oh, okay, now I understand this,

866
00:45:57,600 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: I see the landscape here.

867
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:00,880
Speaker 2: Now a decision on it.

868
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, eperzefic humility is the whole bowl game. And

869
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:08,480
Speaker 4: I think that it's something that I read this new

870
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 4: of all Harari. He summarized this idea was by saying

871
00:46:11,719 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 4: that essentially we should refer to the Enlightenment as the

872
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 4: discovery of ignorance, because that's what was so brilliant about

873
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 4: it is we started testing all of these folk traditions.

874
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 4: A lot of our intuition are just wrong when you

875
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:27,200
Speaker 4: actually actually test them. And I think that that's one

876
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 4: of the great I mean, I always think the majesty

877
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 4: of Newton admitting he didn't know how gravity worked and

878
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:36,719
Speaker 4: he had no actual explanation for it. Like that's a

879
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 4: moment of sort of like intellectual restraint that we benefited

880
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 4: from for the rest of human history.

881
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: You know, this is what I've always loved about science

882
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: is that everybody, when you write a paper, you say, look,

883
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: I don't know this, this is a hypothesis, so on

884
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: you never scientists never talk about truth.

885
00:46:57,719 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 2: It's just a word that sciences don't use. People often

886
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:00,400
Speaker 2: miss quote.

887
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: Scientists say well it's been scientifically proven right that x

888
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 1: y z or the scientific you know, the truth is

889
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,720
Speaker 1: x y z. But we never use those words because

890
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,640
Speaker 1: all you ever have is the weight of evidence suggesting

891
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 1: A over B and C and D for the moment.

892
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:16,320
Speaker 2: It's provisional.

893
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:20,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so this is a style of learning and

894
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: of discussion I think is massively important, and I'm surprised

895
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:27,160
Speaker 1: often that that hasn't seeped further into culture.

896
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's a hard thing to live with.

897
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember.

898
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:34,800
Speaker 4: Talking to someone who was religious and he couldn't He

899
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:38,359
Speaker 4: actually was genuinely skeptical that I could actually draw great

900
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 4: satisfaction from doubt. And I remember, and it was it

901
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 4: was a beautiful moment. And it's something that someone might

902
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 4: be afraid to say to me in a situation in which,

903
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 4: you know, the speech norms were too much like don't

904
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:51,880
Speaker 4: offend each other, because you know, he might might have

905
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,520
Speaker 4: thought he was offending me. But I was like, oh

906
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 4: my god, that No, I don't think you understand. I mean, like, awe,

907
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:00,719
Speaker 4: Like the experience of not knowing is one of the

908
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 4: most profoundly wonderful experiences sometimes and just give you the chills,

909
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 4: you know, but it's mentality, you know, and it's not

910
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:11,000
Speaker 4: And that's like another reason why I like human diversity.

911
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,320
Speaker 4: There are people look at the sky and feel sad

912
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 4: and small, and there's others of us who feel wonderful

913
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:17,720
Speaker 4: and small.

914
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right.

915
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: What science does is replace the feeling of certainty but

916
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,879
Speaker 1: the feeling of awe. Yeah yeah, because you get to understand, wow,

917
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:29,440
Speaker 1: this is actually much bigger than I am. It's not

918
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:31,879
Speaker 1: that I can just look in this holy book from

919
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: my deity and see this is the answer, that's the answer,

920
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:36,879
Speaker 1: and so on, but instead say, oh boy, yes, well

921
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:37,840
Speaker 1: it's big cosmos.

922
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 4: It's it's funny like when people like just dismiss you know,

923
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 4: they'll talk about kind of like the majesty of like

924
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:46,400
Speaker 4: the way we used to believe the world worked, as

925
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 4: opposed to like this cold scientific thing, you know, like

926
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 4: as if the way we used to explain it.

927
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 2: Wasn't more mind blowing than the way it actually is.

928
00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:57,520
Speaker 1: Lord, Okay, so I want to return to your ted

929
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:00,720
Speaker 1: talk and your fourth argument, which was that even bad

930
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 1: people can have good ideas about that.

931
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's something that when you watch the way people debate,

932
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 4: like on social media, so much of it is to

933
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 4: try to prove that someone else is bad, as if

934
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 4: that was the same thing as proving that they are wrong.

935
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:17,839
Speaker 2: And I really have.

936
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 4: To get people remember these two things are not related.

937
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 4: And I give the example of Verde von Braun, you

938
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:24,880
Speaker 4: know who I'm kind of like, oh yeah, he got

939
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 4: us to the moon. Also, he was a Nazi. You know,

940
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 4: he believed horrible things. You know, I think he recanted

941
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 4: some of it later, but still like the he was

942
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 4: a Nazi. But then there are people like Thomas Malthus,

943
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:43,359
Speaker 4: who was reportedly a very nice man, but Malthusian kind

944
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:48,240
Speaker 4: of ideas of scarcity were used and that an overpopulation

945
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:51,920
Speaker 4: were used to justify mass sterilizations. They're used to justify

946
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 4: mass starvations. Like how the negative effect of Malthusianism on

947
00:49:57,440 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 4: human flourishing is hard to overstate. So being a good

948
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 4: person doesn't mean you're right, and being a bad person

949
00:50:06,600 --> 00:50:07,560
Speaker 4: doesn't mean you're wrong.

950
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 2: And that should sound obvious, but you know, we hate

951
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 2: this fact.

952
00:50:13,239 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 4: There's even that meme of like worst person you know

953
00:50:15,440 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 4: actually right about something.

954
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:18,719
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard that meme.

955
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 1: You know what. This reminds me of his Lord George

956
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: Gordon in England in the seventeen hundreds. He was the

957
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: guy who had a lot of empathy for other people.

958
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 1: He really cared about the rights of the sailors. So

959
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:35,279
Speaker 1: he was born into some level of nobility, but he

960
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: really cared about the sailors and their rights, And when

961
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:43,359
Speaker 1: they took a ship to Jamaica, he berated the governor there,

962
00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: the British governor, about the rights of the locals, because

963
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: he felt like they were getting treated badly.

964
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 2: Stuff like him.

965
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, this is what he was famous for for

966
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:54,280
Speaker 1: a while. But what he's really famous for in history

967
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:58,280
Speaker 1: is that he ended up leading the Gordon Riots because

968
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 1: he hated his Catholic neighbors. He had such antipathy for

969
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: Catholics that he led the largest ever domestic upheaval in

970
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 1: London's history. Where the Gordon Riots were you know, some

971
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: like twenty thousand people who mark the streets and burn

972
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:16,800
Speaker 1: Catholic churches and burn Catholic homes. Wow, people are complex,

973
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 1: and it matters what the particular opinion in question is

974
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 1: as opposed to what else they've done. Yeah, what role

975
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: do you suppose cognitive discomfort plays in intellectual development?

976
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 2: Oh? I think it's essentral.

977
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 4: And this is actually one of the reasons why I'm

978
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:37,919
Speaker 4: worried about the future of freedom of speech. So Steve

979
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 4: Binker is a friend, and I don't know you know

980
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:43,799
Speaker 4: him as well. He's a wonderful, lovely man. And at

981
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 4: the same time I tend to be a little bit

982
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 4: more pessimistic about the future of free speech, and he's

983
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:52,240
Speaker 4: much more sort of optimistic about where you know, society

984
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 4: is heading now. To be clear, Steve is making the

985
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 4: argument with a caveat as long as we don't forget

986
00:51:57,719 --> 00:51:59,800
Speaker 4: what actually works and we don't let ideology get in

987
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 4: the world.

988
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:01,400
Speaker 2: He's very clear about that.

989
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 4: But I make the point that there are certain types

990
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:07,839
Speaker 4: of things that I called in a very short book

991
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 4: that I wrote called Freedom from Speech, called Problems of Comfort,

992
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:15,439
Speaker 4: that there are things that get worse precisely because other

993
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:22,080
Speaker 4: things are getting better, and free speech, inquiry being wrong.

994
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 2: All of these.

995
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 4: Things that are essential for intellectual development, essential for getting

996
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 4: closer to the truth, are unpleasant in a lot of ways,

997
00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 4: particularly if you're not used to them. They can be

998
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:33,319
Speaker 4: highly unpleasant. If you get super used to them, they

999
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 4: can actually be just fine. But that's a mentality you

1000
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:41,439
Speaker 4: have to cultivate. And I think that as societies get

1001
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 4: more comfortable, as it's easier, as we become more affluent,

1002
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:47,800
Speaker 4: and as we're able to surround ourselves with AI voices,

1003
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 4: it tell us we're right about everything and stuck up

1004
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 4: to us all the time. And we live in neighborhoods

1005
00:52:52,560 --> 00:52:56,120
Speaker 4: where people don't disagree all that much. That essentially you

1006
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 4: shouldn't be surprised that people's appreciation for free speech starts

1007
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 4: going down. So I actually think that free speech issues

1008
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 4: are going to get worse over time, precisely because other

1009
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:11,320
Speaker 4: things are getting better. And I think that that's very concerning,

1010
00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:15,359
Speaker 4: particularly at this moment when we're kind of designing what's

1011
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 4: going to be sort of the epistemic operating system for

1012
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:19,680
Speaker 4: the planet.

1013
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:21,920
Speaker 2: This is a time when we need to meeting AI

1014
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:22,319
Speaker 2: in AI.

1015
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:24,880
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, yeah, that we have to be kicking the

1016
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 4: tires on what we think is true harder now more

1017
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:32,839
Speaker 4: than ever, because I think that you need. I think

1018
00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:37,080
Speaker 4: we need more friction and knowledge creation than we currently have.

1019
00:53:37,920 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 2: I'll tell you my take on AI.

1020
00:53:39,239 --> 00:53:40,879
Speaker 1: I feel like we're in a golden age of AI

1021
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:43,400
Speaker 1: right now, which is to say, if you ask, let's say,

1022
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:47,839
Speaker 1: chat shipt some question, like you know, is Donald Trump

1023
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: a good president, what you'll get is pretty new on

1024
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:52,880
Speaker 1: sorryment Like some people think yes, some people think no,

1025
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:55,520
Speaker 1: here's some arguments for and against that sort of thing. Yeah,

1026
00:53:55,680 --> 00:53:57,920
Speaker 1: a lot of people are annoyed by this. The fact

1027
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: is that's great. Yeah, because what we're going to face

1028
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 1: in the future I'm predicting is a Balkanization of AI

1029
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:07,319
Speaker 1: where the liberals say, we don't want any of this

1030
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: literature and there we're just gonna trend on our literature,

1031
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 1: and the conservatives are gonna say, we're gonna get rid

1032
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: of all that stuff. We're gonna just trend on our literature,

1033
00:54:13,560 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 1: and you're gonna start getting AIS that just present a

1034
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: particular point of view.

1035
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 2: And I think that's inevitable.

1036
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:23,440
Speaker 1: That's right around the corner, and that's going to be

1037
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:27,200
Speaker 1: a real loss in terms of this epistemic stretching that

1038
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:28,040
Speaker 1: we're talking about.

1039
00:54:28,120 --> 00:54:29,759
Speaker 3: You just won't even get to hear the other point

1040
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 3: of view.

1041
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:32,479
Speaker 4: Well, then you'll like Actually, a project that fires doing

1042
00:54:32,719 --> 00:54:36,239
Speaker 4: my organization is doing with the Cosmos Institute where we're

1043
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 4: actually put to put a quarter million dollars of our

1044
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:43,320
Speaker 4: own money into a million dollar pool to give spot

1045
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:48,479
Speaker 4: grants for people to develop basically epistemically humble AI things

1046
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:51,240
Speaker 4: that actually promote freedom of speech that promote critical thinking,

1047
00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 4: because we're worried about precisely this this thing too, and

1048
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 4: it comes in part from one idea, like a overly

1049
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:02,680
Speaker 4: broad ideas of AI alignment that are kind of you know,

1050
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 4: if you're basically like this a I must say nothing

1051
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:08,040
Speaker 4: that offends anybody, that's pretty bad. But also the fact

1052
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:10,319
Speaker 4: that it wants to suck up to you in so

1053
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:13,280
Speaker 4: many cases it's like, tell me how I make you happy? Yeah,

1054
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:15,880
Speaker 4: you know, that's a bit of a problem. So so

1055
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:18,040
Speaker 4: believe me. Like, and I make the point, if we

1056
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:20,000
Speaker 4: get the AI thing wrong, that's kind of.

1057
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 1: The whole ball game, oh boy, Because your take is

1058
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 1: if we then have future college students who get a

1059
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:29,800
Speaker 1: sycophantic AI that says, yep, you're exactly writing your opinion

1060
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:32,319
Speaker 1: about that, and does not challenge them, Yeah, that's where

1061
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:40,000
Speaker 1: we really go downhill. That was my interview with Greig Lukianov,

1062
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 1: who by the way, has a new book out called

1063
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: The War on Words, and our conversation gives us insight,

1064
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: i hope, not only into law and politics, but also

1065
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 1: into the relationship between the internal model of the brain

1066
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:56,799
Speaker 1: and how we want to structure our society. At the

1067
00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: heart of the issue is that our inner circuitry would

1068
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:04,880
Speaker 1: WHI has evolved for tribal cohesion and emotional immediacy and

1069
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:10,080
Speaker 1: rapid threat detection. This collides with the demands of a

1070
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:15,040
Speaker 1: pluralistic idea rich culture, and at the center of this

1071
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 1: collision is speech. Now, as I said at the beginning,

1072
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: when I think about free speech, I'm not thinking about

1073
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: the right to speak, but about the importance of hearing.

1074
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:29,880
Speaker 1: Practice with listening to free speech expands the fence lines

1075
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 1: of our internal models. It teaches us to process disagreement

1076
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:38,840
Speaker 1: without falling apart. It teaches us to engage in ideas

1077
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:43,359
Speaker 1: rather than to retreat. It teaches us to hold competing

1078
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:47,200
Speaker 1: ideas in tension. This is, to my mind, probably the

1079
00:56:47,200 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 1: most important thing about going off to college. The details

1080
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: of your classes you're going to forget after a while,

1081
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:56,840
Speaker 1: But the important skill you learn is how to process

1082
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: ideas that challenge and stretch your presumptions. Now, I'm not

1083
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: saying that just because someone has a different idea that

1084
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 1: you'll come to agree with it, but allowing ourselves to

1085
00:57:09,320 --> 00:57:14,319
Speaker 1: be challenged by ideas has the possibility of improving our

1086
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:18,000
Speaker 1: points of view. It can illuminate for each of us

1087
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 1: a different angle on a topic that we've just never

1088
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: thought of, and in the best case, from the point

1089
00:57:23,640 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 1: of view of plasticity, it will ever so slightly change

1090
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: our brains. And even if it doesn't shift your views

1091
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:34,400
Speaker 1: at all, even if you stick with your original position,

1092
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:38,520
Speaker 1: just listening to the genuine but differing beliefs of someone

1093
00:57:38,560 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 1: else is going to sharpen your point of view and

1094
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: make the thing that you believe in more worth believing in.

1095
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:50,080
Speaker 1: If you never challenge your belief system, your opinions will

1096
00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:54,440
Speaker 1: always be lightweight. The challenge, of course, is that disagreement

1097
00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 1: feels dangerous. We want certainty, and when we encounter ideas

1098
00:57:59,760 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 1: that contradict our worldview, our stress hormones rise our prefrontal cortex.

1099
00:58:05,680 --> 00:58:09,800
Speaker 1: The seat of reflection is often bypassed in favor of older,

1100
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 1: faster systems, so being exposed to other viewpoints requires a

1101
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:19,120
Speaker 1: cognitive stretch. It asks us to become aware of our

1102
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:23,280
Speaker 1: own reactivity. It asks us to sit, as Victor Frankel

1103
00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: once said, in the space between stimulus and response and

1104
00:58:29,080 --> 00:58:31,880
Speaker 1: to choose something new. And this is how we build

1105
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 1: meaningful resilience. It comes from experience, with a lot of

1106
00:58:36,280 --> 00:58:41,800
Speaker 1: friction from learning to metabolize difference rather than simply being

1107
00:58:41,840 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: afraid of it. And this is where education enters the picture,

1108
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 1: not just on campuses, but every place we interact with

1109
00:58:48,920 --> 00:58:54,800
Speaker 1: new ideas. Libraries, dinner tables, inboxes. These are the arenas

1110
00:58:55,080 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: where our brains get to practice the art of tolerating

1111
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:03,840
Speaker 1: different and nuance. Greg Lukianov has long argued that if

1112
00:59:03,840 --> 00:59:08,480
Speaker 1: we want a society capable of navigating complexity, we need

1113
00:59:08,520 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 1: to build psychological anti fragility. What that means is that

1114
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:17,959
Speaker 1: challenge strengthens rather than weakens, and neuroscience gives us every

1115
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 1: reason to believe this is possible. The brain is flexible

1116
00:59:21,640 --> 00:59:25,760
Speaker 1: and one can learn to override the deep pathways of

1117
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:32,240
Speaker 1: reactivity in favor of curiosity and patience and discernment. So

1118
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 1: I'd encourage you to find some conversation that you don't

1119
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:38,920
Speaker 1: agree with, or a book that you wouldn't normally read.

1120
00:59:39,160 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: It may or may not change your mind on something,

1121
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 1: even a tiny bit. But every argument we address with

1122
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:50,480
Speaker 1: genuine attention is an opportunity to wire a better brain.

1123
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:59,520
Speaker 1: Go to Eagleman dot com slash podcast for more information

1124
00:59:59,640 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 1: and and further reading. Join the weekly discussions on my substack,

1125
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:07,000
Speaker 1: and check out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube

1126
01:00:07,040 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 1: for videos of each episode and to leave comments until

1127
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:10,520
Speaker 1: next time.

1128
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:13,600
Speaker 3: I'm David Eagleman and this is Inner Cosmos.