Joe Rogan Experience #897 — Hunter Maats Transcript

Transcript

0:00 What's up Hunter? And that was fine. York Times bestselling author, you usually have an audience of three. And so if you have a chance callan's mind dark dark place yeah are you ready to go there yeah i've been there for 20 years He's not – he doesn't – you know what I mean? these 200 episodes is I think that Brian Callen is growing up. And part of it is just sort of having actually talked to some of the smartest people in the world.

3:16 but there are weird words that come out like vitamin and bean. And so sometimes people think british and he like proceeds to like do all of these tests to basically spot my accent sixth sixth there's no s it's not oh 10 years. And then when you started speaking in England, did you sense that you were shifting over to English? could, these words that like bean and vitamin and medicine and sick that I wasn't watching for that

6:02 you get on the highway it's right over here and we see our landscape and we see our cityscapes and we see it as being That's just the way things are done. And so for the last, you know, and then we moved around and we moved to different places. response was like, oh, well, there must be science of this, right? Why not go and look at that There's some sort of interaction, but with these people, there's none.

9:07 sitting around in Europe. They've never met somebody from the Amazon or someone from Papua village, shit, paranoia was just misplaced, that it was inappropriate. But then he had this experience And the water kept sloshing over the side in the high waves. And a certain point, Like, you know, there are all these things that can actually kill me in my environment that I sort of take for granted because my world seems so safe.

11:48 Most of their body is exposed and they're around all sorts of different poisonous things Right. Like we, you know, a strong sense of community, a group of people that you belong with, you know, you're in it together, all of that sort of stuff. You know, they don't have that sense of belonging, that sense of purpose late in life. in your apartment building, you never even talked to that dude because there's a thousand people in

13:59 Like you may have 4000 friends on Facebook, but then you constantly find like, who the fuck are these people that I friended in some sort of like friending frenzy. Right. Yeah. there's a real limit to like how many people We can all go hang out. Yeah. There's also like a nosiness. And what about that Brian Callen? those people. So it becomes too many people to physically groom. So essentially, the idea is,

17:37 whereas men really appreciate quiet and then get upset if people are too flashy. The real function of teasing is that, you know, if you look at these hunter-gatherer tribes, they have all these mechanisms for making sure that And it's a sort of it's proto democracy. It's a way of like keeping him his ego in check. There's a guy at UC Berkeley, Dacher Keltner, who's also awesome, who's studied power. And

19:41 I'm giving away all my fucking money, right? If they found out that no one has to pay taxes, Yep. and you go to jail. That's fascinating because you can't just pay it off. It's not like, oh, P.S. odds, especially if it's tech-related, that anything you learn is going to be applicable Yeah. In this march against discrimination. Women's March on Washington opens contentious dialogues about race.

23:01 That is power. Like, I'm all down with you. Just because we disagree on things, I'm a bigot? Right. you see the early stone tools, they're shit, Oh, shit. That's what we have to do. You're like one of those hippies that always wants Was like three million dollars in the world and we all said well And there's going to be some people that are upset that people are ahead.

26:39 They didn't steal from anybody. So when everybody says capitalism is evil and it's the problem, man. But also in the defense of the people that are anti-corporate or anti-corporation, there is an issue when these gigantic groups get together and their only their only motivation is acquiring more money every year. Stupid fucking seals covered up with oil.

28:14 And that's a problem, too. Well, the problem is not power per se. And the check on government is the people, and that's broken down. you'll find, oh, you know your subdiscipline of psychology, of biology, of chemistry, of whatever, Across the board. much of what corporations are doing. And then that's how you start to figure out reality is away more and more and more of that bad thing, right? So you look at the obvious example is Islamic fundamentalism.

31:35 And, you know, I'm not a dentist, but I think that an oral bee is better than a stick toothbrush. Wow. And then there's people that go whole hog. if you've seen them, but they're Kirk Cameron's on VHS. I saw it at Yes! What's that? Two guys it's amazing. Yeah. What's that? Don't get mad. You know, I'm going to never forget some of Kirk Cameron's best work.

33:57 that's really impressive. It's a wonderful video, and that's his right-hand man. You should eat like one of them in a day. Well, there's some people that believe bananas are like super good. Yeah. 150 people die every year because coconuts fall on their head. You're like, what? and the kids pull it out. That's two a month. We should have an arm toddler app where you get a notification every time an armed

36:43 Make that app. It says that 13 had inadvertently killed themselves. But how many did they kill? okay so when you're not the same armed toddlers Well, I think about a dude in his 50s who marries an escort like oh he might there's a 50-50 chance So Snopes might be a little wacky. to the statistics, they do solid work. Maybe they're having a good time.

39:25 Like, don't you want somebody who has some experience? Yeah. It's kind of the same thing. Until he casts you as a model. You know, those super rich dudes. Yes, he can. It's not just that he doesn't represent a lot of people that wanted to lean more right. I don't remember seeing that from any other candidate ever. just knows to do what she's told and just to obey the Donald and just to take care of

41:52 Then went Marlowe maple maples. She's super hot and then this one is even more super hot. Yeah, this one's off the charts Are you a racist? in terms of cultural evolution, the way that cultural evolution works is we all have certain I mean, honestly, like, because their optimism has certain benefits, which is that it makes you super productive, right, super happy.

43:55 But then what happens is that a lot of them end up sort of sitting in optimism. And then like, oh, shit, I'm 70. They are rough to be around. It hasn't panned out the way that it was supposed to. So you find that, you know, for example, what's happened in Middle America is there's a lot of substance abuse going on, all these opioid addictions, all that sort of stuff.

45:58 Of course that's a factor. Skin-rotting shit. Yeah, exactly.narly yeah exactly you see their exposed bones and they're they're periodically there's all this weird stuff that of things that will kill you. And so the Eastern European mindset tends towards this massive, the optimist is like you're fucking delusional dude like you got to get real you got to understand

48:26 Right. They didn't take this comment very seriously. And that's a lot of what the tension that boiled up between Russia and America was about. But that's because the dictators are godfathers. Who is Saddam Hussein? Prepare for an onslaught of dick pics. Never know when you want to send them back. They'll kill them down to the last man. They cooperate, all this sort of stuff.

51:44 you know, suddenly that becomes the target group. And death mode means you kill other people quickly. things come from being realistic. When we're realistic about how disease works, we get to Well, it's, you know, so John Haidt, who, you know, is at NYU, he has what's called moral foundations theory. But we have these notions of fairness play out in different ways as we're adults. But different political groups

54:09 So on abortion, it's about freedom. That's right. Unless you're talking about war. Republicans are pro-choice when it comes to guns. And they just, if it wasn't for the conservatives, these fucking people would be speaking German, And then the liberal story is like we're fighting racism and sexism. People got so mad. Ricky, get your gun or whatever the fuck that is?

56:48 It's Ricky Flash get the fuck out of here she does these emotionally difficult without disparaging I mean, this is an incredibly diverse lineup of people from all over the world. And I think in many ways competition in performance, like gymnastics, is also an art. It's glorious. Well, someone has to suffer. work of art. Because she They care about protecting children, toddlers from dangerous guns, right?

1:00:44 Why do you think though, that is, why do you think going down the caring it up. And then you make sure that you give it to everybody else first and then you take the last going to be an um there is always going to be an unh. There is always going to be an unh. You ate all of it, you Take him over the fucking cliff. Toddler with a bow and arrow? Yeah.

1:03:21 Right. It's just this old, I think so, I don't know. And there's 75 So do you think that that's happening at all now? Get your ideas challenged. Well, when you talk about science, you run into a real issue when it comes to gender. We're into the world of social constructs and read-upon behavior. And they go and see Dr. Money. and you know uh is forcing him to wear women's clothing,

1:07:30 Brenda's hitting things with sticks. And at some point, you know, when the kid is like 13, 14, the jig is up. now the point is is that i think that if you really want to talk about gender reality is that a lot of gender is genetic, and the science is there, and you're not going year olds that are on hormones. And I'm like, this seems crazy. Like if this kid really thinks

1:10:26 Yeah. David Reimer's original doctor who were proclaiming it was such a success, and it's horseshit. Or tens, hundreds of thousands of years. using an electrocautery needle to do circumcision? Who the fuck knows, right? Like it's a dumb choice And we've now got a lot more data. And so, again, again, we don't let children vote. We don't let children drive.

1:13:45 And we recognize that. Gay people are wonderful. doctor, first decide that it was in my best interest to call you Jesus Christ. So I have to Like, you're ruining the whole thing with this kind of short-sighted, shitty thinking. Thomas Sowell is a big, famous conservative. oh, that person's fucking amazing, that rock star, that sports star, whatever. And you start

1:16:53 she's thinking. But in a large scale society like ours, I don't meet Michael Jordan, right? So we have this tendency to blindly copy anything we can. It's a good question. Yeah. we're speaking broadly here, right? But this is for the purposes of communication. to say, you know, when liberals look at the people in ghettos, they say, ah, racism, that's why

1:19:58 And if you look at the white redneck culture and the black redneck culture, they have a lot of the same values. So it's actually this... But they do say things like, I be doing that, and we be doing this, and you be doing that, and they be doing that. And so Now, if you, if you look at the experience of African Americans after slavery, after slavery,

1:22:08 in a salt mine, which is literally the worst job ever. And in Booker T. Washington's Up From All of these sorts of things that, you know, are now supposedly a problem. Like that doesn't destroy racism. Right. Well, in general, for humanity, I mean, this is sort of a big problem for humanity in general, this leaf, right? They crush it up, and this milky substance runs into the water. And then all of a

1:25:39 adapted to a particular environment. So if you know, if you like, we talked about American culture, The like old animated movie from like the, must be the 90s or whatever? And right there on that trunk, there's Fievel Mouskovitz. Yeah, tail, like rat tail. Right, exactly. squeeze and have the anesthetic in them and all that sort of stuff you can't survive right and what they called in velocity of z all the explorers they called it

1:29:04 So raising sheep, raising goats, and all that sort of stuff. Because most of the people who are in the South originally came from the Scots-Irish. walk the boundary stones and we make sure that none of those boundary stones had moved. You touch my sheep or my women, I fucking kill you. And if you look at, let's look at a couple of herder cultures. But periodically a charismatic figure emerges who unites the clans.

1:31:42 And the gentle farmers of Persia aren't prepared for that. And in many ways, that is what Donald Trump is. They've been you know, the rednecks have been fighting amongst themselves for a long time. And then Donald Trump, the Genghis Khan of America, the Mohammed of America has succeeded in uniting the clans. And you know, in our time, you don't do it by going out and like raping and pillaging. You go and you seize the ballot box and you vote and, you know, you really like take back power.

1:32:59 It's rednecks. And that I'm not a part of that tribe that, you know, Americans owe a tremendous debt to the hillbilly culture. Well, then there you go. You mean pull a George W. Bush, be from Connecticut, but dress like a cowboy? Maine is filled with French folks. Maine's a fascinating place because it's entirely abandoned. Did you ever hear there's a

1:35:11 Wow. Yeah. that's the big irony is, is that you're not saying that it's about black people. It's about rednecks, who immigrated to America, like from Ethiopia or Kenya They fucking hate it. Categorize them. And we do that. And you know, that's the point. The listeners are going to be hard and we all do this sort of stuff, and the world, you fuckheads. Nope. Totally different headgear.

1:38:29 You know, there's a lot of violence, not a lot of education. But it doesn't work so well in Africa where there are still tribes or Southeast Asia where in particular i mean you cross a state line you go from being someone who is innocent 100% to Yeah. You could just have a gun on you everywhere you go. which is Richard Nisbet's book, J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and then a book called The

1:41:16 What about white racism? Racism only works when someone has power well when you're racist to someone you have power over period have to say bad things about it. So what does Richard Nisbet do? He says, oh, I know one culture Right. But so what what Nisbet is doing is, is that he's charming the liberals. Right. Which Is it really only 70? Maybe I'm wrong.

1:44:29 I love that expression. Who wreak their own vengeance or wreck their own vengeance. Now you go to jail for six months. They're trying to get rich. But if it was more violent, then they would be forced to adapt to the new culture. forced to become even more vicious about your protecting your boundaries and your property So it's that answer of why it's storytelling.

1:46:55 and your first impulse is not to go grab your shotgun and kill them, right? And it's the same thing with, you know, white rednecks, white southerners. Well, that's because if you've been to Delaware, there's... And Stephen King. It's in many ways And, you know, it opens up this weird can of worms where people are not willing to discuss Pride is the feeling of that, you know, it all that you have nothing to learn.

1:49:06 Is there a Siberian candidate? Intel chiefs present Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him. Did you read the thing by- Hold on a second. Scroll back up to his ego. Wow. Look at his eyebrows. Did you read the thing by... What's happening here? The allegations came in part from memos compiled by former British intelligence operative whose past work U.S. intelligence officials consider credible.

1:50:59 Through the entire Bush administration, non-issue. journalistic integrity, right? Don Lemon? No? It was like people talking sexist or something like that. He was just telling people he had to check people. I've had to check some people in my life. It was like people talking sexist or something like that. Report Trump allegedly hired prostitutes for a golden shower party

1:52:39 personal obsessions with sexual perversion the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform golden But the Ritz-Carlton? You'd have to put a blanket over everything because there are going to be a lot of cameras in that room. Well, that was the things that the Soviet Union did well, right? But it sounds like something someone would say, but the quote is not, though, right?

1:55:04 I'll show you the thing here. This is the report here. It's like a Intel. Oh, shit. Not the CIA, but Australia. U.S. presidential election. Okay, we know. Of course. Would the CIA have any motivation to be 100% accurate about it? Why? We live in, you know, the old Chinese curse. We live in interesting times. I'll tell you one thing, though. And that's because, again, it's clan.

1:57:40 the Republicans and the Democrats work like mommy and daddy. Right. this makes sense but it's also it's good for Putin, King George III was this awful, vicious dictator. And then we kick the dictator out and then Vacuum. is that they were actually at two different stages of development. That's how freedom fries. that is around us. That's right. Cultures can gain it and cultures can lose it.

2:02:48 That's what the internet is, right? fundamentally generates wealth and prosperity and all that sort of stuff. But corporations can do They're the most annoying people. No laws at all? Yeah, I've had him on. that was going on in science or anything like that sort of like meryl streep doesn't understand mma it mean? Like, what should we do? How should we live our lives? How do we solve the problems of

2:06:12 chain, where you're supposed to take science, all of this research, and supposed to turn it and i was like what the fuck is that math gene because i was a biochemistry major so i'm like That's right. side by side on the issue of learning languages my dad is dutch okay now when you're dutch you People from Southeast Asia routinely learn a lot of languages. And again, it's that environment.

2:09:07 So for example, he ended up taking Swedish, Because they were like, okay, you need me to take another class. And so there would be this experience of like, you know, I took Japanese in high school. is from New England. And, you know, the New England is that Puritan culture, right? It's, And we're like, we're the outsiders. So, you know, I watched Triggered last night, and I agree with you that California is the best place on Earth.

2:11:46 And I love that. well, I fucking love Hawaii. But also, I think also it's important to talk about like how do humans actually work. sort of fantasy version it is the fievel mouskovitz effect where you're like you know you you think Right. oftentimes you're dealing with a form of greatness, and that requires massive tunnel vision. And if you look at the behavior of the Greeks, right, the ancient Greeks, they were constantly picking everything apart, right, because they were pirates.

2:15:49 leisure time they would go and see who could throw shit furthest right like who could run fastest Renaissance. France. Well, whatever you want to fucking call it. lot of the spirit of the West, right? Is this real atomistic culture? Meanwhile, over in Asia, and complementing it all being part of a larger system. And Confucianism was all about the family

2:18:20 doubling down on those intuitions. And they're now breaking up those disciplines into sub-disciplines and smaller disciplines and smaller disciplines. They don't know it's an elephant. So the first one comes up and he feels the tail and he feels the end of it and he feels the little hairs at the like genetics, and they should be looking at, you know, chromosomes, and they should be looking at

2:20:32 And so now we're no longer grounded in reality. And what we can do is we can take that tail Well, I can tell you. So in general, what you're going to find is that there's, in a lot of 1970s, who started to study human rationality, and, you know, I'm sure this will come as a huge They can't solve that in the context of academia, right? People are like, hey, new evidence came out.

2:23:25 And so if you look at, for example, that rational agent theory dispute, there's one of the big founders of behavioral economics, this guy Richard Thaler. no sense because she's worried about dinging it, but she's already paid for the car. She should I'm going to throw out 30, 40 years of work on a bad idea. Scientists rationalize. Well, so there's, you know, the intellectual dispute is this.

2:26:09 sister. But we can make sense of that at the level of genes, because essentially, you know, That's right. Well, he said that The Selfish Gene was his favorite book. science right when they not do that i right? What science do they point to? like he thought you could literally shock and electrocute seeds to make them do didn't exist. There were no beliefs and all that stuff. And a lot of the way that education,

2:29:10 if the public wants its experts and its leaders to make the right decision, then it has to hold them accountable on their ideas. And so, you know, if you have, you know, science also has to police different disciplines that have these ideas. But when you put all of these ideas together, So if you want to get ahead, right, you can get ahead by being a selfish asshole

2:31:22 which you can read about in Creativity Inc., They're just fucking each other. is that, you know, I don't have the authority because I'm a nobody, right, in terms of corporations not engaging that sort of toxic behavior, is that, you know, So they're not denying Dawkins' work, right? Well, ultimately, what I would like, Joe, and the reason why I call them a Scientologist,

2:33:55 And in general, that's a big recurring problem in science. intelligence whatever those beliefs may be as of today will have a huge effect on the choices they at some things and not good at other things? Well, there have been debates. And what has happened is that, for example, what the debate And if you look across the science, I think this is what's supported is that thinking and feeling are always linked. So we're always being driven by these intuitions, even if we don't always understand that.

2:36:21 So while there's—Descartes' error specifically comes from— But then what happens is they come to find out that all of a sudden, Elliot has all these problems. But, you know, his business decision-making falls apart. bit of the brain that was removed, turns out, is what links thinking and feeling. It's your ventromedial And his theory of the brain of this idea of reason and emotion, which has floated around in the West for ages and ages and ages, it doesn't fit the evidence.

2:39:23 that's for me, the heart is that that's the problem Yeah. We need to change the culture fast and we need to change the culture intentionally. the nuances of all this sort of stuff, you should get on either David Sloan Wilson or John Hyde or You can also go to David Sloan Wilson because he has also seen practically how much of these with David Sloan Wilson, John Haidt, Carol Dweck's work,

2:42:15 people will. books are written to adults and you write the book to the adult the adult And the reason why we called it The Straight A Conspiracy is because we at the time were working with the son of a guy named Stan Rogo, who was the executive producer Stan said, listen, I've been making kids TV for a long time. all the things that they believed about math genes, is that really true?

2:44:59 People called him the iGod and the cult of Mac. And what is the effect of awe? The effect of awe The light bulb was around 45 years before he was even born. trapped in our heads for hundreds and hundreds of years. knew that they couldn't sell the ideas of gravity. So they sold Newton as the man, this guy who had Now, the point is, you go and you talk to physicists and they'll tell you, well, it's

2:47:09 there are these big public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins, right? challenge anything about the new atheists and i have you know i like the the whole rationalist But what do you understand your argument? His man. moved out to LA and I was in an acting class. And I moved from an environment that worshipped reason did I do? I went off and I read The Scientist

2:49:49 They're being indulgent and they're not managing their emotions, which is what you're supposed to do. it's the feeling of shame, right? And so- Or, and also being ineffective in your or any other subject, what you should be doing is getting out your mistakes, analyzing your mistakes, that thinking and feeling are always linked, so that his brain is all... Do you know this for a

2:52:00 I know that you have a relationship with Sam, right? So what is that thinking about? What is that psychology about? past, right? And that it's, you know, that religion has, you know, in terms of the history of violence, And particularly Dawkins, because he's the most militant of them, right? Yeah. And thinking. Exactly. And so if you if, you know, Dawkins and Sam Harris, their stated objective, right, is they want to promote evolution.

2:54:34 And all they could talk about was Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Right. So they are essentially for a lot of people forming the stereotype of science. they were like well there are four different theories of the origins of life, right? After telling you the evils of isms. And they're also ideologies that are strictly enforced. Well, like everything, right? So, you know, rule 34, right? Right. So rule 34, if you can imagine

2:57:37 And I had, because I was working with these students, right? to like not just spend another 150 years, you know, having a fight between science and religion You can see that if we have a conversation as humanity that sort of stuff and that Sam Harris is not on board with. Because of the way he's presenting them. Do you think he seems aggressive? How many people believe in evolution?

3:01:02 Well, exactly. So, you know, you, the, you know, Martin Luther triggers this, this reformation with the Catholic So, and part of the problem is that left to their own devices, they will continue to remain in their driving his thinking and whether his feelings about religion are appropriate in light of the from thousands of years ago and extreme ignorance.

3:03:41 right? He comes on my show, he comes on your show, and we all cheer him on. We're like, that's so fucking great, right? That's right. as they currently stand, are easy. There's a lot of material to track, right? And, you know, I understand because of the very approach that they're taking. And if you look at someone like John Haidt, part of the reason why John Haidt and Sam Harris have fought is because John Haidt doesn't have a problem with religion.

3:06:21 same thing with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, right? They're super into, like, breaking apart what does the Quran say, what does the Bible say, and all this sort of stuff. The issue is what does the person feel about the thing, right? Well... I mean, if the text promotes violence against women or against any particular group that doesn't believe what you believe, it's discussed because it's problematic, right?

3:08:09 But so the real thing that if you want to fix Islam, and again, like, you know, was the most intellectually advanced place on the planet, let's put these people side by side. John Haidt has a following of essentially zero, right? And wasn't that already solved with the diffusion of innovations? And you can see from people's behavior whether they understand certain things or not. Or whether they agree with certain things.

3:12:02 It's moving right now. You just suck on a lime. don't you think that directly coincides with the lack of ability to express that information? Well, what, 1847? Right. The human mind hasn't changed really in 10,000 years. Do they? when a student gets a Why do you think that Asian cultures do better in school than American culture? Americans don't have that culture today.

3:16:21 America is a massive hotbed of innovation and creativity and arts. Which part of America in particular is a massive hotbed of innovation and creativity and arts. Massive amounts of writing, literature, fiction. Well, yeah, that too. It's the cornerstone value of Silicon Valley. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Sorry, dude. See you.