Joe Rogan Experience #641 — Sam Harris Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Sam Harris ladies and gentlemen all right there we go we're live to the world you're not gonna absolutely it's a interesting time I know you're an MMA fan, you know about the John Jones situation It broke her arm. Car was wrecked. Was it a DUI or was, we don't know because he disappeared for like 24 hours at least, Disaster all across the board, but not what we're here for. No. But I know you're an MMA fan, so.

2:40 It's going to be interesting, though, right? incredibly powerful thing. There's variables. There's no way but so when you get in there with a guy like Conor McGregor It's going to be fascinating psychologically to see him when he loses. No, he has not lost since he's been in the UFC. high level boxer. He was a amateur champion as a boxer. He's got very good jujitsu skills, very

6:32 Cobrina's world championship caliber. There's no turning back unless you're using testosterone or growth hormone or some things that turn your body into a superhuman sort of experiment. And you can't completely discount his training, because his training is what made him better. Yeah, so things get weird now. Like John Jones and Daniel Cormier both got tested randomly before their title fight, and their testosterone levels were so low, people were wondering, like, hey, maybe these guys are doing something.

9:08 are sore and your body's exhausted and you got to go through it all again tomorrow. And you're Yeah, we'll talk about that. of, but he, he's got this book, you know, testosterone or something kick in. And, um, but I, I mean, his recommendation was that, and I'm sure he's not the only person who's thought of this. He thought the gloves Now, obviously, there are things like elbows

11:25 I've talked about it on this podcast. in the eye, on the jaw. You're going to hurt your hand. And you can only throw so many punches like that. especially if you have larger hands, like your hand, like my hand, spreads out past my wrist. It's a high possibility. Just grabbing his gloves, holding onto the gloves. It's also very difficult to get the glove in the back of the head.

14:24 I think that gloves would help a lot. Yeah. Gloves off i agree with them i think that uh gloves would help a lot yeah or the gloves no gloves yeah i think would help a lot Well, it can, but to what end? dint of luck can take until you actually have damage that matters. So, you know, I obviously haven't had an experience anything like an MMA fighter, but I regret all the head injuries I took

16:30 we had this erroneous assumption that you had to get a knockout. Right. And so, you know, cheerleading, the example he brought up is cheerleading. because you just went up 500 feet without a rope and fell. I was not hoping to hurt your brain, but you fell down hard and it did. This is just a trade of brain damage. Insofar as you want to see what works combatively, I'm more interested to see what two people can do just with their bare hands than when they've got these, you know.

19:58 and your basal ganglia and other areas in the brain, when that damaged yeah you you have these classic impulse control I think the UFC absolutely did the right thing in stripping him of his title. once two podcasts ago, I think it was about free will and determinism. Um, these are variables just bonked in the fucking head all the time? the car accident and we saw, and it's the perfect scan. It's the scan of, you know,

22:56 have intervened at any point along the way to have made him a better person. And there are, which he normally would have resisted but couldn't because of all the other factors I just mentioned. There's a kind of bad luck component doing stuff that you and I have gotten away with. when you're driving, but you decide, So I'm a little bit more I'm less judgmental about some of these things, given my view of free will.

26:40 I sort of have that feeling about everything. You know, if he gets a brain scan, if he goes to trial now, psychopaths who you just, not only can you not rely on them, you can rely on them to be There's an RT reporter interviewing these kids that are on the street skin and attitude and also survival instincts. And then they find someone that's there for them in the gang.

29:19 You would look at life the way they look at life. but it's a fascinating social phenomenon that has been thought about for at least a century. I guess they were, I don't know, Manchester United or Arsenal fans. against the Italians and team for about 75 pages. When you see, part of it's the social proof situation where you see everyone doing we're the sort of people who would stand against the mob

33:01 science shows is that yeah there are those One of the things that I thought was really interesting about the controversy about American Sniper, the Chris Kyle movie, was he was talking about what it was like the first time he killed someone. the life or death consequences a life or death scenario that you're a part of. probably at doing that. You know, this is not something I know a ton about. I just know that this research is out there.

36:05 at the people in the other trench um and so every so now obviously there are aspects of war making And a lot of people try to not do Do you know the story? It's amazing. And then there's this no man's land between the trenches where people who will run out I don't actually recall the details there, where they just basically went out being forced to shit in a coffee cup and throw it over the top of the trench,

40:35 eroded to the point where on Christmas you guys are hanging out and then the, the generals come what's happening with jihadists globally, but they have beliefs that cause that to make more sense. It was insane. as an nfl player right very promising career as a pro athlete and all of a sudden he's over there I mean, this is the idealistic version of it.

44:45 go into Afghanistan and kill the bad guys is so messy that there's arguably no good way to do it. as we now see. And it also kills some of the people standing too close to the the bomb blast Yeah, yeah. And she accused you of, uh, being one of the new atheists with your anti-Islamic rhetoric. I'm thinking I'm actually I'm actually having a conversation with you in my head as I'm listening to this.

48:01 sure she's a perfectly nice person and I would, you know, I would be very nice talking to her. So that all intentions are all that matter. And so that's what she heard. ethically, right? And the crucial difference is the person's intentions tell you a tremendous in quotes, of a drone strike Yeah. Yes, absolutely. 500 yards from the next person. So if you want to fight this war with drones, say,

52:53 dial that number down to zero, right? If we were committed to no death on our roads, This is an unintended consequence, unintended but foreseeable consequence, in fact, certain thousands of lives every year if we just took all the fun out of driving. And, or just forget about Right. Let's talk about the numbers. I don't know those numbers. every year, reliably.

55:47 But that's not necessarily the way to analyze it, or at least I would argue that's not the way. The numbers are much higher there than in Afghanistan. And we kicked off a civil war, which someone like Abby Martin Now, I don't accept that. not the people, we are not the Sunni who are killing Shia, and we're not the Shia who are The argument there is the compassionate thing to have done there,

59:06 I mean, obviously, that at one point seemed credible It says following the 2003 invasion, but is this current? So you can count bodies. but I don't think it's been retracted. So the very place you would most likely plant an IED And that's one-third, not even one even one third of what Abby's working with. That's not semantics. blood and treasure to contain it. And so it's a huge problem. I'm not minimizing the horror of

1:03:55 We're going to go in to remove Saddam. sectarian horror. We still would have had suicide bombers against us. Now I believe that to be true, even just give them the freedom to practice their own religion, right? She's a lefty. The landmark research proves the U.S.-led war on terror has killed as many as 2 million people, Right. Okay. who's an incredibly sober scientist, just a very careful

1:07:30 The highest briefly credible study was the Lancet one. But again, the crucial, think we are. We're culpable for something. The 200,000 one? The 655,000 up to 2006, and over a million until today by extrapolation was likely to be far more accurate than the IBC's figure. Right. But I can't- take even a humanitarian organization's word for the significance of, of a given study. Um,

1:11:43 You know where the bombings, the IEDs, the truck bombs, the blowing up of mosques. And that is just killing, you know, like a bomb will go off What else was bullshit? I think our main export is like machinery. 13.5% of total exports. Number eight, plastics, $63 billion. If it is machines, then she might be somehow or another we'll say it's you know we'll say we

1:15:07 the possible role of corruption there no i think you're correct in what she said so she might be getting you know that's the problem conversation the fact that there are people who are, you can always find someone with a PhD to sit up there and say, you know, I don't think cigarettes cause cancer, right? did. That just seems completely masochistically hallucinatory to me. I see your point. I don't

1:17:56 and this is not a good actor. he talked about Clinton's bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and I think, you know, any rational thinking on this topic would suggest that so it's possible that we weren't trying to kill anyone per se. We were just trying to Was it bad data? cascading bad effects that all things considered, we didn't care that much about. All right, let's

1:22:06 would do if they had perfect weapons, right? Where there's no such thing as collateral damage. They I'm not necessarily equating all of those people, to go around the world killing brown-skinned people. target the bad guys. People who, if you and I could vote on whether these people should go down, Yeah. Well, yeah. And beyond the hatred, responsible for our alliances with people who commit outright human rights abuses. Like Saudi Arabia.

1:25:18 This, And that the whole military-industrial complex is tuned to safeguard those interests and not just we, the U.S., but the West, All of this, our interests, we're funding both sides of the war on terror. away for it so if I could define your point of view your point of view is more do not, you put everyone else at risk. Is that that a yeah that's fair well i guess i would only

1:29:59 And we have done terrible things. is the problem of someone like Jihadi John, right? The guy who, he's got a degree in computer science, right? They're not, you know, Navy SEALs they captured. Abby Martin and someone like Noam Chomsky, this is the phenomenon they really don't explain. who don't have all those opportunities, right? Some of them still are trying to get out.

1:33:14 is scaling. The thing that I worry about is that is a meme that is spreadable. You don't have to When they find a group that is absolutely committed and completely involved in an ideology absolute confidence about their beliefs, there's a certain amount of that that I personally have to be adjusted like the laws of modern society and secular wisdom is inferior to

1:35:51 And I'm watching this guy with his moral certainty and his extreme confidence in what he's saying. where this is actually the first blog post I ever wrote where I realized I've just demonized a whole people. right? And... Without even knowing the language. and realize that we just have this common project to make the world beautiful, right? If that was

1:39:18 He's a great singer. And just expressing And so there's a kind of a ghastly perversion of this impulse that I think many of us feel, I certainly feel it, to transcend yourself, to experience bliss and ecstasy and compassion. And if God had wanted to enlighten them, he would have, but he hasn't. terrible things, but Islamic context, and You can say that, but the reality is that jihad is as old as Islam,

1:42:55 And Muhammad, I mean, to answer your question very simply, as I did somewhere, I just said, there's absolutely nothing ISIS is doing, the Islamic State is doing, that Muhammad didn't do. It's definitely not kosher. the larger literature, I would expect Buddhists to behave exactly the way we see members of ISIS and al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab and Boko Haram behave.

1:44:52 I mean, so you can... Slavery... virtually every other point of consequence. Now, it's not to say they're not gems of moral wisdom is just connect the dots you know that was one of the videos that you had uh posted up on your blog They get a million people that call you Islamophobic or what have you and get upset about it. Rationalize the fact that they could just gun down

1:47:58 anything. Just mocking them And the people who missed organization, which is the whole point And it's, no, the fact that... And we feel so strongly about this that we're going to kill you or threaten, make credible Just think about this analogy I've used before, It was just, it was totally civil, good natured, fine. a bear suit. It was just a bear, right? And then they had to put the bear suit in a van. Yeah. And

1:51:53 And it's just not true. they never have a word to say about it because it's not dangerous. It's just, it is, if you take, again, I don't mean to trash Abby per se. If you met her, you'd love her. Because you and I have nothing to do with that. allows us to be a hero, you know, personally, and just bucking a system and bucking a trend, non-conflict minerals it was but it was only 3g nobody right piece of shit

1:55:27 We are those liberals too That is an unfair phone And I've heard the argument against that. Okay, well, that's not normal either. Come on, um, if, if we could make the problem transparent, of this sort, we have to find a path forward where the first doors we open, all the choice bursting, coming apart at the seams. Or you can just let the Islamists and the jihadists run the

1:59:44 Yeah, and so we're facing this on many fronts. Well, in this area, the first few things I would do, we've already talked about. I don't know if you remember that film. in our society we have we're committed to freedom of speech and you can make films about anything out of hand in the Muslim world, because it can, right? If there's a rumor that a Quran got burned,

2:03:40 in Western Europe. It's illegal to deny the Holocaust in Germany and a few other We should not be criminalizing any form of speech. Just imagine that one change, right? We could get off of oil. And that would prove beyond any shadow of a doubt So the only way they've been able to do this is because of the fact that they have an extreme amount of money that comes from oil.

2:07:11 I mean, arguably, I think they've probably hedged their bets and they have so much money in other investments now that, you know, at least the royal family would be fine. There's just a way of governing people and keeping people in line, which is essentially Christians were burning people alive and actively prosecuting people for blasphemy. But it got hammered by the forces of a scientific revolution and an attendant industrial revolution and capitalism and the rest of culture that didn't want to be shackled to theocracy for very good reason, right?

2:09:57 by humanism, by science, by the rest of our conversation with ourselves. The liberals on our side criticize people like me and even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, There are people who can go on for hours about that, right? And, and so, yeah, let's be, let's be for women's rights globally, but what does that look like? You've got a bunch of countries in Western Europe who are becoming these senescent populations.

2:13:27 I think we've covered that subject into the ground. Is that what's necessary? I actually just blogged about this Did you? Because I hadn't really thought about it at all that's not something we have to worry about in the near term at all. that had been scheduled long before in Puerto Rico, in San Juan, that was really like a closed-door conference for the people who are really at the cutting threat and looking at, in this case, how to create a, foreseeing the existential problems around the development of AI.

2:16:47 from serious people, people who are on the edge.org website, where I'm also occasionally in artificial general intelligence could come in five or ten years, right, given the nature So this is just, you've got a bunch of nerds and in the ultimate case, can make improvements to itself. I mean, once these machines become the And so the, you imagine, we're not going to build a human level AGI. Once we build an AGI, it's going to be better at,

2:21:37 It has a superhuman capacity to calculate, right? it could make, you just do the math and you see that this thing is running for a week, How do we feel that we can control the goals and the behavior of a system But you want to tempt it. But you're talking about guys, you know, who are a lot younger than us, and someone, you know, working for Facebook or whatever, builds this builds this thing it's totally we've solved what's called the control

2:25:22 You have to solve these problems. some, some, the picture of some trillionaire on the, on the cover of Inc magazine. And we would if we had the ultimate war-making computer, right? And that is the best case scenario. Actually, no, the rules of the conference were I couldn't even mention their names if because you want to encourage, so there's no press there, right?

2:28:10 Sort of. Wasn't that in Puerto Rico? Essentially, one of these guys gave a talk that was all purpose toward making that ethical case. That's what an alien is. that sort of system, or relation to us the way we stand in relation to bacteria or snails or, you know, life forms that we just squash without a qualm. But if we build a machine that stands in relation to us the way we stand in relation to chickens or far beyond, right?

2:31:27 Yeah, makes recursive improvements to itself or to new generations. That's the mindfuck of all mindfuckss is that we really are just a caterpillar and we're giving birth this ultimate fractal intelligence that's infinite in its span like And sort of kind of crazy that, as you said, a lot of these guys that are creating these things are on the spectrum.

2:33:34 And was it sort of programmed into the system to create something far better than what we are? two assumptions. All you have to assume is that we are going to build better and better computers, about the wetware we have inside our heads So at some point, this progress is going to birth a generation of computers that is better able to engineered into our machines.

2:36:16 the information in a human brain If you copy your brain, the full contents of your brain, successfully into a new medium? that is such a utopian possibility like that's the utopian version yeah ex machina right which It's like a chicken asking, you know, how I stay a chicken exactly like well I mean, you think of curing Alzheimer's or solving global economic problems.

2:39:06 would it almost instantaneously recognize that part of the problem is us itself and virtually everyone had read his book at the conference. I mean, that's a way to reduce spam. You can't pretend that everyone has equivalently valuable values, right? Oh yeah, but we will be building it. I mean, if we're saying I mean, because if it's ideal, So essentially, the Unabomber was right.

2:43:30 He was part of the Harvard LSD studies. And I believe it's from Germany. No, no. one of the things that people try to connect is various drugs with schizophrenia and No, I think there are some people who certainly shouldn't take any drugs. I went off the rails for a couple weeks once. You're not exactly sure how many you can get on before your hands give out.

2:46:27 Version 2.0 of me like after that like I'm a different person Yeah. Is, is you putting a photo of you with a quote taken completely out of context then condemn those views and criticize those views to the to whatever degree but if you're but somewhere along the line, you might... evidence, or it doesn't, right? And it doesn't matter if it's Hitler's argument for the destruction

2:49:35 And it doesn't matter if the evidence is coming from a thoroughly obnoxious source. We have less than 10 minutes. That's an hour. So you don't need religion. Don't forget about all that building the Eiffel Tower. uh maybe that's just all crazy right so this is all bullshit i mean what am i like oh what they're And it's yet as hard, it's much easier to worry about other far more, it's easier to worry about Twitter than it is to worry about that. But this thing is so kind of lampoonable. And it's, I mean,

2:53:20 by the time we recognize it as a threat, We need that we have problems for which we need I mean to intelligence is our only asset ultimately Samharris.org. Samharris.org. Blog and podcast. Sam Harris on Twitter.