Joe Rogan Experience #940 — Sam Harris & Dan Harris Transcript

Transcript

0:00 3, 2, 1. No relation. My Harris is the Jewish side of the family. Like, where they're like, nah, were changed at Ellis Island? Yeah. Like, Proudly. You know, to have you on because I want to hear your story because Sam has been telling me about it and I And I just freaked out. So you start to worry, but then your fight or flight instincts kick in. Do you know?

3:13 And I didn't actually know I was depressed, but I was having some obvious symptoms in hindsight. But, you know, I was partying in my spare time because it made me feel better. And he just pointed out that, you know, you raise the level of adrenaline in your brain Yeah, I don't actually think ecstasy was the problem. friends you know on a good on a busy week, you know, two, three

5:16 I don't know. it's kind of a perennial favorite. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I feel like it went through a seeing people do that led me to never do it. Yeah. I mean, it certainly was not like that for me, Yes, thank you. You know, it wasn't PTSD. That was the problem. so much more mild than the experience of an enlisted man or woman. Absolutely. So all of that is a heady mix.

9:06 He's an absolute miracle he's alive. on a balcony and one of her colleagues in the balcony below her he got a direct hit and died I mean, this is Sebastian Junger's thesis as well. And that, to me, sums it up, at least in That was actually the question you asked me before that i somehow neglected to answer so the doctor who pointed out that i was an idiot and doing drugs and it

12:55 Good business model. I wouldn't call what I mean Well, your situation, what you're talking about, is a very, very, very extreme situation. And Adderall is a form of amphetamine. And now there are lots of ways to get it. I mean, I'm reaching for the coffee here, having slept poorly last night. But that is, and that's just as much of a drug, it's just not as potent a drug as taking methamphetamine or Adderall or anything else that's a drug drug.

16:24 Well, there's the issue with clean water too. But just imagine the consequences of you and everyone you know getting up in the morning and just starting with beer or wine. And so it stands to reason that there are potentially other ways of getting the brain to do that, whether it's meditation or whether it's computer interface ultimately to the brain.

18:57 Yeah, well, anything I say is with a caveat that this is, I mean, I'm not a neurologist. for you. So that's why a different kind of intervention, something like ultimately some Ultimately, some electrical or magnetic or machine-based intervention could be more targeted because then you're not just putting something in the bloodstream that spreads everywhere.

21:36 I believe, a term that came from a sci-fi novel. I don't think it originates with him. this is not research I'm close to at all. I mean, he just announced this a couple of weeks ago. But in principle, you're talking about having, Yeah, exactly. Push it off on them. I'm prepared to blame the Russians for a lot at this propaganda that makes us think about the Russians. It's like, push it off on them. Push it off on them.

23:44 And there's not a whole lot of steps between that and Snapchat glasses. Google Glass just was totally stillborn, right? You can hit it again, get another 20 seconds, or you can hold it and do 30 seconds or something like that. you know that I'm recording. I have a good friend of mine who was an executive at Google at the time, They're being recorded or transmitted.

26:01 just because we get so much value from having the data ultimately i guess but it just So it's like we're both vulnerable in a way that we've never been, and we're empowered You want to look for some fear around that. But people are so bad at driving that the robots just have to get reliably better than And I think that has been safer than just pure ape.

28:33 Well, texting and driving drives me crazy. traffic and he is completely out cold. I was driving on the highway, and there was a woman to the left of us, This is the argument for robot drivers. it will just be a new space But the idea that you're going to stop people from driving your car. You're going to have to live with these 40,000, that's a great thing, that 40,000 people are not going to die. But the idea that you're going to stop people from driving a car.

30:44 We're not going to get our shit together we have essentially built a God that we now have to be in relationship to. And hopefully that the evolution of consciousness, because if this thing wipes us out, I think it's Nick Bostrom, the philosopher, in the way that it's probably nothing that it's like to be the Internet right now. supercomputer artificial intelligence that was beyond our capacity for reason and understanding

33:41 And I mean, that's a goal, right? right? I actually don't have a Roomba, but if you put something in the way of the Roomba, it's going to get around figured out how to build common sense into the machine. So, I mean, there's just cartoon examples powerful machines, would it use the same mandate? Would it still try to follow the it down to what motivates people to get out of bed, what motivates people to do good,

37:26 have them. So you want to build a system that wants to know what you want, right, at each point, And so the fear is we could build something that is just not amenable to being controlled in that way. never going to happen or it's so far away that thinking about it now is completely irrational And then it might go, well, why the fuck would I do that?

40:18 We're just doing it. and you give it the ability to innovate and to try to figure out what's a better way around things build. Build something better. code, improve, I mean, it's the code that is dictating the intelligence. And so you're talking or it will be open source but you're talking about software right I think it was, I could have this backwards.

44:08 And if you want to get those details exactly right, listen to what Stuart Russell said on my podcast. The quote that he gave out as the first bomb was tested. Every photo of Oppenheimer. Probably Curtis LeMay. gotten there first, right, with the help of Heisenberg and others. Play it, Jamie. What a burden. and just canceling all of life, right? the biggest bombs we possibly can build. And so it's not difficult to think about the danger.

49:01 think no this is this is just all upside this is what could be what could go The first was good. I don't know. I just feel I'm terrified of it. all of these highfalutin fears of rogue AI. We don't have a backup for the internet. I mean, you may or may not have in your desk I mean, it's fucking crazy. I mean, it's really rudimentary right now, but my six-year-old loves it

52:17 Four squirrels It would be the most captivating thing. Donald Trump at the time, because they could have just been put there, but with expert and purports to be from your podcast where you're saying something insane, there just has to be a clear fingerprint digitally, You remember that guy that went on stage with Obama and pretended to be a sign language translator?

54:51 I mean, that was amazing because it's just so few people read sign language that... And that can happen. There was a woman guarding the front door by herself. the fence, ran the whatever hundred yards plus to get to the White House, got to the him. This is what's really hilarious. When people two rifles, a shotgun, an axe, and a machete, and a map of Washington with a fucking

57:20 but Twitter Twitter can confound even the perfect vigilance. Yeah. the main things that I worry about with AI. The things that we find cute about us being ridiculous What we want to do is automate repetitive behavior and error detection that we know So if you have a bomb screening robot, that's all it will do, You don't have self-driving cars that are falling asleep

1:01:16 which is literally a blip in human history, just a tiny little blink of an eye. But you can't do anything with the bombs. who never sleep, who never get tired, who never get distracted, because now they're machines, Some version of that's going to happen. The question is, is it going to happen in a way Yeah, no, this is what hanging out with Sam does.

1:04:13 keeps me grounded yeah she it's actually awesome because when she's there she's like just tooling I mean, there's no break to pull, right? every problem we have or don't we're just going to stick with the intelligence we've got even if we decided that Yes, although I wonder if, you know, these products, rather these, I don't know if product's the right word, this stuff,

1:06:53 But we've always had, so all boats begin to rise with this tide to some degree uh see whether things. I would just learn how to speak a language. I'd learn how to play an instrument, I'd practice archery more, I'd do jiu-jitsu more. That seems to be the easiest thing to solve. So it will plug into some VR. as a monitor at the front, which is entertaining them.

1:09:51 And they have crappy magazines. be bored again. I mean, I've got, I have at least 10 years worth of reading on my phone, right? So when you're paying close attention to your experience. There was a recent You're not going to take an electric shock. But you know what I'm talking about? I mean, we're not talking about rational people. We're talking about lowest common denominator people that would take an electric shock. You would take an electric shock?

1:13:21 i've had both kinds of experience i've i've had people send me articles that I would have never found otherwise. it basically grabbed a dozen dials Twitter compulsion. it's just on the podcast you'll also be talking about me, but I haven't noticed Okay. He went off the rails. That's good. I discovered this very late as a bigot, right? I mean, he's just, he's a madman. And I discovered, so I did a search of his Twitter feed, and he's got hundreds and hundreds of tweets

1:17:18 And then I looked at what he was doing, and he had been doing it for years. I had been getting so much of this on Twitter. I mean, it's crazy behavior. He said he wouldn't do it anymore. possibility of a profitable dialogue. You need to spend less So come back. you would say, I don't have to pay any attention. Well, first of all, you fucked up because you talked about them, both of them.

1:20:16 I certainly didn't think that Hunter was going to do that, of what you do wrong, I mean, he's just, he's not, he doesn't have his shit together, but he thinks he does. prominence now in human history. Everyone's on social media, or many people on social media, back up those claims. And yet an audience thrills to that level of arrogance and empty boast. It's

1:23:20 Right. I'm talking about a bunch of people that get together and say, yeah, obviously I'm woke can be mitigated with diet and parents have had some success with that and they could just huddle in those little communities and just bark the same noises that everybody else barks I just like to just go on about my day. I mean, you're not pushing controversial stuff out there.

1:26:13 Yeah. I'm just like, just yell. where I was talking about the number of people moron, and I don't pay attention. letting it in and then you stew on it and you have to bring up you know hunter and all these other Right. I mean, Well, one antidote is to be caught lying has to be devastating for your career, right? Yeah. just go fuck yourself, So there was nothing toxic about that.

1:31:19 I think we're in a period where that is true, and I think it is aided and abetted by technology and social networks. He's getting to the top of the mountain near Denver with a big bucket of margaritas. And make good margaritas. But my claim is that if Trump were one-tenth as bad, he would appear much worse. that no one can talk about it because no one believes him, right?

1:34:25 Right. This is like it just comes out of a blizzard of inanity and craziness that, you know, he's he's going after Meryl Streep. as opposed to, I mean, lies are are perennial but i feel like we're one with very little room for personal thought at all. Or the New York Times. And like, what? Yes. You're right. The thing is, the enemy was so grotesque in this case that it was impossible to not have been biased, seemed an abdication of responsibility.

1:37:52 it was reading like just the entire thing had become the opinion page on the Huffington Post or something. involved in dealing with Russia? What is involved? work to be really vigilant about being seen as fair arbiters of fact. Well, I think, yeah, there were some polls that were bad, but the poll, like the, So I was anchoring the ABC News digital coverage that night.

1:41:25 You know, I think it actually goes back to what Sam was saying before, that people think Yeah. Yeah. do you think that that's an antiquated idea and then i mean it was kind of established back when Again, that's not research that I've done, but it's an interesting idea. He is. he couldn't get the bill that he wanted Now, when it comes to foreign policy, it's a different kettle of fish.

1:44:56 We're clearly moving in a direction to get away from things like coal. and there's so many pictures of polar bears you can show. It's very difficult for them to wrap their head around, I think, actually, I just walked in, I mean, forget about the health. I know. I know. But pollution to their decision making. The headlines may be scarier, I guess, is my point.

1:49:34 Yeah, it really is. I mean, it's not clean. Well, let's not forget there are real human beings in coal country who have spent generations just in California alone. This goes to the question of meaning and, you know, what are we going to do? and what it can do to a human mind Now, when those jobs are gone, I think it's millions of people, right? Yeah.

1:52:42 This is Trump's base. Yeah. Well, tired white man. But yeah, patriarchy. This is this is Trump's base. Yeah. No, it's these. I think universal basic income. There are reasons to worry that it's not a perfect solution because you do want you want to incentivize the things you would put in place. But there's just no question I don't want any handouts,

1:54:28 I mean, you can't have multiple trillionaires that people will not tolerate. that job has to continue to exist no matter what, And when you're talking about developing technology that produces energy that doesn't have any of these negative effects, you know, whether it's global climate change or just pollution this is a government handout pay for the consequences of carbon and pollution, it would be much more expensive than it is. So it's already subsidized.

1:58:12 If you as a polluter had to pay the consequences of your pollution all the way down the line, I mean, the health consequences of those things, they're almost parallel in a lot of ways. You've got like 10 guys who move from just toxic industry to toxic industry, And there's just some it's been a while, but it was there were some key moments where I was like listening, listing for him all the major scientific organizations that say that climate change is real and that humans are major contributors to it.

2:00:04 And I think that especially it was a failure to do that with climate change because it created the doubt. journalist to come down on one side or another but with climate change I feel absolutely comfortable saying the vast majority of scientists believe this is real and a big, big problem. Yes. Yeah, yeah. He said it's a this is how we want the air to be

2:02:29 Just makes its way across the ocean? Kellyanne Conways who have their alternative facts, and someone who's honestly talking about not true. Well, it's also it really highlights the responsibility of getting accurate and unbiased information to people because there's not a lot of sources of that left. self-serving, but I still believe it, that the three broadcast networks have actually fared quite well in what is an incredibly

2:05:37 Well, some people, you know, they put up their rabbit ears and get the signal. So you do that, and then you get like Netflix for TV shows? Wow, interesting. So it's still a really big number. It's all that. It does. ABC has 1.6 million as opposed to 8 million total viewers. NBC, 7.8 million total viewers. It is what advertisers want. But I guess my point is that you still have a really significant number of people, if you take the mornings and evenings on these broadcast networks, that are getting their news from these places, which just gets back to the polarized media atmosphere you were talking about before.

2:08:52 Me too. How long? Alex Jones and I put on Yeah, he went deep. We got him high and drunk, and he went as deep as he's ever gone before. Here we go That was the name of my He's so crazy. I mean, he's I was struck. I'm not in his mind. He's a showman, for sure. So these people come in, they wear ski masks, they break windows, and they light things they were telling people,

2:12:23 has been documented. jetliner. They're going to blame it on the Cubans. like when you find out that like weapons of mass destruction think it's probably the last is much closer to the truth. And that explains many of these instances, knowledge of this investigation. That doesn't, it says something bad about Susan Rice. It says There are honest mistakes committed by totally reputable organizations that are really trying to get their

2:17:29 on the Sunday morning talk shows after Benghazi with some outdated talking points. Oh, and they're lying. They say, look, everybody does. here's the truth. Yeah. Let's come back in five years and see if we're talking about anything that makes Photoshop. And the media and American politics have been filled with instances, I mean, now anyone can be president.

2:20:53 He's president. first of all mouth. It's just, it's, I think, yeah, I think, I think there's, there's no predicting who could be You know, I mean you are we in apocalyptic times or whatever i guess i mean i don't know anything i i But my instinct is, just as a country, we've seen times of much worse And I think the way we're becoming unmoored from kind of the ordinary truth testing in politics, I think, is unique.

2:24:52 And what happens with the next terrorist attack? It will be so, I mean, the pressure, one, the pressure to normalize him as commander in chief I think that is an objective fact. And I don't think we've ever had a president who you could look at and say that about so clearly. i'll be objective inadvertently man in them yeah see that well no i mean i also like to you know

2:29:35 But I just don't see, there's just too much chaos in the system for that to be a reliable game. Remember that crazy press conference that he had just a few weeks into being president? and found it delightful. I mean, the poverty of the passages in terms of information. Eliot Spitzer did a lot of good things. I don't know. Yeah, the hypocrisy wasn't that he did something illegal where he paid someone for sex.

2:32:25 And that's a horror show. Agreed. Yeah, right? Maybe. suggests that I'm happy with Pence, right? He's a 70-year-old man. In his credit, yeah. And in that press conference we were talking about, designed for it. I mean, I can't imagine how tiring that campaign would be. And the problem is that kind of selects for things that you don't actually want you're constantly aware of the ways in which you are not the best guy or gal to be doing the thing, right?

2:36:29 and how it got you back on track. Like a sensory deprivation tank? extend and do all these different things while you're doing then concentrating almost entirely I don't use it as much as I should, honestly. It's very good for the muscles. You have this sensation of flying because you're totally weightless in the dark. I actually don't have any questions about the benefits of being in an isolation tank, even though I don't know too much about it.

2:39:43 a real value. A systematic collision with the asshole in your head has a real You're not thinking about your breath. It's interesting because this is when most people think they've failed. And every time you catch yourself wondering and go back to your breath, it's a bicep curl for your brain. Just says the same shit over and over. meditation well yeah yeah it's it's not similar it's the exact same thing the

2:42:30 Edible pot seems to be as strong as anything in there. Yeah, just be scared. and giving in to the vulnerability, It's an entirely different process physiologically. Feel so happy it's over. I think there seems like there might be easier ways to get to the same wisdom. There's something about the tank environment that produces, in the absence of any external stimuli, your brain becomes sort of supercharged.

2:45:13 You could still, sometimes you bump into the wall and you have to, like, center yourself and it would be even more intense if you did the exact same thing too much about the fact that you're in the tank just concentrate entirely on your thoughts entirely And so one thing that mindfulness gives you is, I mean, so it's compatible with every experience you can have.

2:47:38 You could be meditating right next to a construction site, is a matter of being lost in thought. mentation every moment. And it produces everything you do it produces all of example of the difference between pain and suffering, you can feel very strong physical pain, I mean, unpleasant pain, and just be aware of it in that, like, the sense that it's unbearable

2:51:13 depending on the conceptual frame you've put around it. and you know it's going to be gone the moment the guy pulls his elbow back, right? But then you can add onto that. like pressing the picture and picture button on remote control, where the story that's taken up the whole frame can be seen with some perspective. So that's just Joseph Goldstein, who's, again,

2:54:21 By the way, I'm terrible at this. Both of apps? Yeah, exactly. No, I actually think I'm of the view, you know, now that I've been in this meditation app business for a little while, I don't think it's Uber. of expertise in meditation, at least this kind of meditation, is having someone guide you. Yeah. Or you're either reading the book you're intending to read, or your mind is wandering,

2:57:26 I've spent very little time meditating with apps. And so to have a voice you trust in your ear, just reminding you of the basic instructions, loosely. At the end of the eight weeks, they scanned their brains again. Wow. It was fun to meet you. Bye.