Joe Rogan Experience #1888 — Michael Shermer Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! Why is that? Yeah. Well, around that time, right, before that, before World War II, really, conspiracy theories were kind of common knowledge. Whereas before that, it wasn't. the twist about it where it seems like there was something up was that President Johnson was worried that if it looks like there's a conspiracy afoot with the Cubans or the Russians, that that could lead to a nuclear exchange.

3:14 Case Closed, about the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and why all the evidence points to him. All the evidence points to him. But wait a minute, it worries you because it makes people suspicious or it worries you because it points to their withholding information because that information looks bad? I would love to see Well, you know the only reason why they had to come up with the theory that that one bullet did all that damage.

5:09 Right. I have a picture of it in there. That indicates even more so that it didn't hit anything. Right. But bullets expand and they break up. right. Exactly. So again, it's a probability argument. It's not black or white. But that, forth, and it does get deformed like that. There's no evidence of bullets hitting bone where they come out looking like that.

8:08 I do not know whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. he turned on them after they got him elected? Because there was a conspiracy to help him but we're talking about a president that was murdered. So interesting experiment if you take subjects and give them two dice and say, We're not talking about trained assassins. was murdered. But she was also in the Manson family.

11:46 Every time he got arrested for violating parole, these cops and these local sheriffs that had caught him were told that it was above their pay grade and they had to release him. That's where they were dosing up Johns when they would go to visit prostitutes box cutters could have taken down the World Trade Center buildings. It just doesn't feel right.

13:27 All right. They tag an actual conspiracy, right? you have conspiracy theories that are not true and you think they are. So that's a false positive, because sometimes they really are out to get you. distress, people and eyewitness testimonies are some of the most unreliable because people are so I don't think they want to let anybody release that stuff.

16:08 Okay. I mean, that guy will talk for days and days about that. Yeah. Okay, so we got somebody. prosecutor, the reclaiming history, the Manson guy, the guy who put Manson away. I just mentioned they released all these top secret documents that Nixon tried to cover up and prevent from being published. There's nothing in there about, you know, the conspiracy to assassinate the CIA.

18:41 Okay. after visiting with Jolly West. Again, this is what's called anomaly hunting. based on a lot of it. Right. Well, and again, it's complicated by the fact that we did try to invade Cuba using Cuban nationalists in the Bay of Pigs. Bay, all to get us to go to war with Cuba. It's pretty wild that that was signed by the What? James Earl Ray. And he said that is one of the weirdest ones because that guy was funded in some strange way.

22:58 Yeah, but WikiLeaks didn't get all of the documents that the government has ever hidden. I think I have been, too. It turned out to be true. For the most part. 50,000 feet above me at 30,000 feet. I go back and forth with it. with a black sphere inside of it. And that when they updated their radar systems in 2014, they started seeing them all over right? So I'm a member of this Galileo project at Harvard run by Avi Loeb, the head of the

26:56 Right. Well, that would be the solution. We just need better data. Right. Probably wouldn't. They either back-engineer it or copy it or steal the secrets and so on. it's not likely they would not know the technology that we know, the physics, the aerodynamics and the engineering and all that, The sphere is probably a balloon. Yeah. kind of gets into the argument of the SETI program. There's so many, there's so much empty

30:34 you could imagine that it would be quite easy for someone to at least send a drone from another planet to visit Earth and observe. Most scientists. Oh, yeah, that's right. Are they out there? No matter how improbable it is you get from bacteria to big brains and civilization, it's going to happen. It's anecdotal. I don't know. But if there was any evidence that pointed to something that operated in a way that we can't comprehend any of the known technologies being able to reproduce.

33:05 when you're talking about people that are the best fighter pilots that we have available, other 5% of anomalies? No theory explains everything. There's always going to be anomalies Could be. He showed that if it was what they thought it was, it would have had a much bigger impact How is that possible? Is it really moving at that speed? good arguments. What do you do with the anomaly?

36:19 That is my day job. But it isn't that I don't believe things. I mean, I believe the theory of evolution. It was the expansion rate changing, right, from the new— the big bang theory needs to be revisited it was based on the james webb yeah i did see that yeah down in another 10 billion years or something and maybe collapse back on itself. And then they

38:41 Now, so when astronomers talk about dark energy and dark matter to explain these two anomalies, that we don't know I can see it, touch it, walk on it. Why is it so much more exciting to think that? and they know we're here, maybe they're even coming. It's like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Yeah, yeah. Well, and then she goes to the robot and says, what you just said, Gort, Klaatu, Barada,

41:32 yeah, we have the power of life and death. Offend. I didn't know that there was a censorship board that would monitor films and say, you can't say these things. But I didn't know that they would have a censorship board that would say you can't offend religious people a million years more advanced than us. Yeah. It's coming. have created model embryos from mouse stem cells

44:35 And it may not happen in our lifetime. Yeah. Or intervening. Got to be skeptical. Well, not in principle just because you're a cynic or, you know, a nihilist. Not You can look at it too. And so this is a – it's hard to know what to believe. Find that, because that's pretty fascinating. drug for Alzheimer's disease called Simifilam. The drug's developer, Casava Sciences, claimed an improved cognition,

48:57 Right. Often these things are exposed through insiders. 50 years we've been prescribing these SSRIs for depression, and they do no better than nothing or just chance or just talking to friends or whatever. Well, this Alzheimer's thing is certainly based on fraud. But it was always scientists that disclosed that the error was made by other scientists.

51:26 They're not interested in that. Is it promotion of these? I remember one of the most interesting podcasts you had with Edward Snowden. And a lot of science works that way. you're at 0.06. You go, well, I got this outlier data point here. So I'm just going to not count Right, who's managing the managers? That got spread around as a meme because it kind of fit the conservative view of liberals and their confusion about gender and sex.

54:29 And he told me this. She contacted the other school. She didn't get a response. in it and willing to entertain it And it was like a get together. saying how crazy it was that these folks were asking for their food to be delivered in bowls So that was all I could find. gender, I do not understand because it seems to be a completely different sort of kink.

57:46 I mean, you can always find somebody. just be freer so maybe they're like very shy you know introverted kids and this allows them like It's like the satanic panic of the 1980s. about the stuff that was going on at the day school. Like, what did they do? And then he's like, okay, he touched me there. There's one of these cults in every city. And then the mutilated cat was found over there.

1:00:48 And the therapists who had bought in all this Freudian stuff that you suppress, you suppress Well, no, that didn't happen to me. and some of these guys were convicted based on nothing other than one of these recovered memories. Because one of the things was like, oh, this is a uniform tale that everyone keeps telling. Second group, how fast would you estimate the cars were traveling when they collided? Second group, how fast would you estimate the cars were traveling when they smashed into each other?

1:03:51 plants and now the memory is corrupted. Now the person thinks the person had a hat. That's the And then I remember hearing the voice of my mom. How does this fit with my life? And so what do we do about it? And so the criminal justice system has the same problem. It's not like something that is absolutely 100% true. Even the polygraph, there's a reason it's

1:06:35 And everyone's response to stimuli and stress, they vary. Well, of course you have knowledge of the crime. Long ways. back. Well, boss, I think he's lying. And he goes, yeah, we know he's lying. They're all lying. Get Yeah. but it wasn't clear that he did anything. But my explanation is that in a way the jury, you know, I think there's some evidence that Furman did plant some evidence.

1:10:23 Americans to be suspicious. Same thing with their higher rates of vaccine hesitancy now, recently anyway, because of the Tuskegee experiments. Most of them died. Her books are just first-class good journalism on that, biological warfare experiments, And, yes, they are Nazis, but they're also very advanced scientists. He was one of the great scientists of all time.

1:12:51 So, again, you think, wait a minute, our government was doing this? And wound up being, you know, a horrible murderer. and they put him in an orphanage or some sort of a children's hospital where, when he was a baby, And, you know, he had, according to his brother, all sorts of real problems with relationships and other human beings, like a real just a really damaged human being overall.

1:14:53 And then like 10 days later, he jumps out of a New York City high-rise window, or did he? The CIA paid him off. And so when you have someone like Alex Jones, when he was on your show, and I show a clip of this to my class actually last night, you know, where he's ranting on about NASA has this headquarters in San Francisco where they're dosing people to talk to the aliens.

1:16:22 And I was talking to Megyn Kelly about this because she went to, she came here to Austin, Well, that's actually true, right? I forget what magazine it was for, but whatever publication it was for, Because Tom O'Neill is a really good journalist, It's all in there, yeah. who met this person Holy crap, guy. Once you go down there, what do I know about explosive devices and how buildings are demolished?

1:19:22 Wow, interesting. that are responsible for making them are skimming. His point was that the World Trade Center buildings I remember I was visiting this guy who was a doctor. And he was like, he goes, yeah, there's no way to turn concrete into dust in the way these buildings. Because this guy like was imploring me to read this book. And he said, let me tell you how it's done.

1:21:42 And it did. So you get extraordinary heat that's weakening the entire structure of this building for hours and hours. And there's evidence that it collapsed at the top. So everyone's like, oh, the way it fell, it was uniformly. Yeah, but it already was falling apart. Like the whole thing was on fire. Yeah. Why aren't they releasing them? Multiple times. Multiple times.

1:23:26 Like, I enjoy a cigar as much as the next guy, but Jesus Christ. But don't worry. No, I didn't know that. Right. I don't think they know, because until you're the nominee, until you're the head nominee and it's close, are you allowed to know what's really going on, right? And it's like, I can't actually do those things because, all right, No, that was it.

1:25:44 If you don't do that, then the Russians are going to do this and so on, back and forth, back and forth. Yeah, so here's where I'm conflicted about. And there are bad people. parody the conservative militarist position. But in fact, it is correct, government? What kind of an economy? How many people are you going to have? Do you have to And we're going to establish this, you know, this land of the free.

1:28:01 It's just, I mean, you can have as many checks and balances as you can just to keep the growth in check, not too much. And we're avarice and, you know, we're greedy and just that's who we are. It might be symbiotic. The fear of artificial intelligence that has become sentient and it has no use for us. on biological needs, like these primate desires that we have to acquire wealth and status and,

1:30:20 and all these needs to acquire things and control things? This is the argument that we shouldn't try to communicate with them or send signals out Yeah, I don't think so either. Arc, or Steve Binker's books, talking about the shift in norms of what is acceptable behavior has been massive in the long run, right? What happened? Because you don't want to take out somebody's sense of, I don't know, pride and avarice,

1:33:37 this sort of social progress movement and social justice social justice movement the reason why i think rape and thievery and all this shit that's going on? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's not a denial of all the horrors and atrocities that exist currently. But if you The Jews, the Catholics, the Mormons, whoever. Yeah. Boom, boom, boom. being is only alive for a hundred years, but during that hundred years, think about how much

1:36:17 And we went from there to Florida, And I remember thinking, why does he give a fuck if these gay people want to get married? want to get married. Pretty quickly. And now nobody, it's not even a discussion. Like the progress is happening rapidly. Yeah, I was reading a review of this book on witches Yeah. Oh, ergot poisoning. these LSD-like effects and they coincide the Salem witch trials. And this is controversial, but there seems to be

1:40:04 adults like oh what's going on here? It's not random. The bumper sticker, shit happens. Right. And there's a lot of research on this also, accusing people who are marginalized, poor people, women, and so on, who didn't have any power. ever existed. And that she would take these beautiful young women and kill them and bathe in their blood and all this.

1:42:58 Sure. Right, right, right. Sure. For sure. Yeah. I'm going to get somebody on my campus and they said the wrong, they used I don't really like it, but I know everybody else likes it. So everybody thinks that everybody else likes binge drinking, but actually individually they really don't like it. And then by the time you get to the point where somebody needs to speak up and say,

1:45:12 It's a guy competing against us. And that's the only way it would stop. male to female trans playing competitive volleyball? And she goes up for the spike and just people that take advantage of the current cultural climate that might be sexual predators. Yeah. You know, that's the case with pool as well. And a lot of them are lesbians. That's not what we're talking about.

1:48:52 Yeah. But in reality, that doesn't really exist very often. Probably lawsuits would end it. Right. That would solve it. like that. Look, for the longest time, they thought there weren't enough women to compete When they first started having women's MMA fights in the UFC, there was only one division. Yes. We never allow someone who is both biologically male and identifies as male to compete against females in sports.

1:52:57 into Colorado. And me and my staff were thinking, maybe we don't need a women's men's division. Maybe we are the sport that can, you know, it's all equal. Right. all those differences even out, but no. Even there, it just wasn't fair to make them compete against the men. I mean, I think Lance said it was like a 10% difference. If you do the drug cocktail,

1:54:43 And the International Swimming Organization finally said, no, that's not enough. Because post-puberty, the changes have already But why are we punishing the outliers when that seems so obvious that it's not fair? Okay, yeah, that's an interesting question. Yes. So he's non-cancelable, right? You see it in comedy clubs that people are taking chances because they're recognizing

1:57:29 Okay, good. So anyway, I think that's part of it. Like, I feel like I did a little something. It's a pendulum. And then overall, through time, we will get moral progress because of that. Yeah. Right. come up almost every week. It came up a lot. And I thought, I wonder if she really wants to be a man content. I think some of it is this kind of a trendy thing to be. Andrew Sullivan writes about

2:01:13 Whether it's really homophobic in their hearts, I don't know. But it has that taint to it. Well, there's a lot of confusion there between gender and sex. Well, this one has five. We know what a woman is. like a billion you know of the third sex yeah if that was a real thing rather than as an anomaly You know, like, that's outrageous. So evolutionary theorists have debates about this.

2:04:19 Because I've heard, well, there's a spectrum of masculine females and feminine men. It seems to be just an aspect of human beings. Right. the population of either your religion or your government, right? I mean, even today, for religious success. You just have a lot of babies. There's only two ways to grow a religion. Unbelievable. That people are literally talking about getting rid of contraception.

2:07:36 Christian nationalism is a thing. It's amazing. And to see what a scam they pulled off and how weird it is that people just hopped on board. It seems like the kind of thing those Democrats would do. Satanists and expose the pedophiles. There's a lot of people that don't have real excitement in their And so she was very successful, intelligent, educated, good looking, married with kids,

2:10:56 I'm out of here. which you can find websites on anything. with all the other conspiracy theories like i was went into a, unfortunately, last night, I went down a rabbit hole of Bigfoot. Oh, yes, of course. He was a guy that said that he would cut off one of his fingers if he could find out that Bigfoot was real. people all believe it and so I'm like how many episodes are there of this

2:13:12 These are not uneducated, stupid people wearing tinfoil hat. So do you know Reinhold Messner, the great alpinist that summited Everest, I think, seven times without oxygen, considered the greatest climber of all time, a German alpinist? I've seen bears walk upright. that the Pacific Northwest is where they sight They're walking upright like that. Yes, yes, yes.

2:15:48 Just show me the body and I'll accept it. for like weeks at a time. Is that it did coincide with the human beings of 100,000 years ago. Would we kill them off? Well, I'm alone in the cave tonight, and there's no Homo sapiens around, but hey, here's a Neanderthal. about an incredibly aggressive time you know how much of that was rape yes you know like a lot of

2:18:52 And cats, you know, when you see cats, were there? is hobbit people. Crazy. They're holed up in some cave. well, Hey hey maybe there yet unrecorded species of ape known to the locals as the Orang Pendek, or short man. Gunung He described it as around three feet tall, but with massive shoulders and chest. Right. Yeah. That's enough. that's a, I'm just kind of asking rhetorically.

2:23:34 Yeah. But their toolkits don't get progressively more complex and their art doesn't get more You probably have, you know, places where dinosaurs just rule and that's it. is a life form on this other spinning body that's circling around a star, we got one. Okay, Evolved on some other planet, and brains on one end, waste disposal system on the other end,

2:26:50 They have very sophisticated social systems. Right. Cetaceans have big brains to their body size. or they're like a dolphin and an orca on this planet. Right. None. This was an interesting group that Sagan was part of, this dolphin. Yeah. Well, he also had that experiment where he had the woman living in the home with a dolphin That's a good question.

2:29:58 studies on psychedelics through dimethyl with dimethyltryptamine where If that is a doorway that opens up in the mind that leads you to another dimension or I don't know about that. And you go, well, how do you know it's true? Well, he has to try it. touch, things that we could put on a scale. And you as the editor of Skeptic Magazine in particular,

2:32:41 like things like creativity and love and emotions, chemistry, but it was super profound. Like he's in a restaurant and the people all have these fly so I read about people who have near-death experiences, It might have been LSD. And here's what I'm worried about, Joe. compound is that uh it's it's endogenous to the human body and it's one of the most transient

2:35:26 who takes it comes back. You've done this. Yes. I've only done DMT, which is the more potent My friend Tom just did, and he said it was all good. Generally. See, I'm kind of locked in the kind of empiricist scientific view of truth. Maybe you're a determinist, but I don't care. And then you come back and you have to sort of come to grips with what you've experienced.

2:38:32 So whether it's real or whether it's an imagination or a hallucination, the profundity, dead. But if you take one, and that's one of the more interesting things about them, Right here. Maybe it's like that. That's right. Yeah. But to somebody who says, I believe it and it makes my life better, that's my truth. When you read things in the Bible that treat women as second class citizens and condone slavery and talk about murdering people for disobeying, clearly the work of man is involved in there somewhere.

2:42:10 And that helps them get by in life. He won't do his homework. You live in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn's not expanding. Yes. this moral scaffolding that is imparted upon us by religion, we'll find it in other things that we have culturally agreed upon. And, and if you challenge me, that may undermine my worldview. because it affirms that their choices were good. Right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Right. So we get,

2:45:13 Where's my moorings? This is my group. And so if you're Catholic, you believe this. If who was crucified and resurrected? There's no experiment you can run. So I do think, again, if you were chronically frozen and came back a thousand years from We just can't know, like, where the universe come from ultimately before the Big Bang. Why is there a universe?

2:47:46 we're going to look back on this as like, what a bunch of goofs. What a bunch of silly, So it's available right now. Michael Shermer, Did you do the audio book? I do, too. You shouldn't do that. Yeah, yeah.