Philosopher on Why Being Nice is Selfish, Is Incest Bad? &, Testing our Ethics! | Alex O'Connor

YERRR – Alex O’Connor joins the boys to break down the wildest moral questions you’ve never wanted to answer. From siblings and animal relationships to split brains and trolley problems, it’s philosophy at its most unhinged. Deep thoughts, dark hypotheticals, and big laughs. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 0:00 Who has the most empathy? 4:08 Incest is ok! Empathy is self-serving 9:14 What are ethics? Finding out about ladyboys 16:29 Caring about holes + God needs priests 22:45 Why is bestiality wrong? Rationalising everything 36:15 Trolley problems + Utilitarianism's limits 46:18 Fat man variance 52:39 Plato, history of philosophy + Turbo losers 55:58 Deeper issues & motivations + Too many voting 1:00:35 Changing political systems + Rule utilitarianism 1:05:46 Brexit & feeling of losing cultural identity 1:10:10 Facts to serve feelings + Split brains 1:16:24 Philosophy of mind + What makes you, you? 1:27:19 What makes you happy? Turning it off 1:39:54 Does Alex have a therapist? Deep self-introspection 1:50:41 Dabbling with substances, Realisations & Demons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 02

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• 1:20Speaker 02

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• 1:30Speaker 03

  You gotta help Alex figure out his moral position through a series of questions to figure out if he's a piece of shit?

• 1:36Speaker 04

  I think I'm the most empathetic out of the four.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  There's no way.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  Out of the four, I'm the most empathetic. This guy's a fucking crazy person.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  He's the most sensitive.

• 1:47Speaker 04

  For people he's never met before?

• 1:49Speaker 03

  I have a switch. Yeah, but like, if they're...

• 1:52Speaker 04

  I love everybody.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  That's not real empathy.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  No, I love everybody.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  That's inperformative.

• 1:57Speaker 04

  You start good and then you gotta fuck it up. Everybody starts bad for you and then they have to like...

• 2:02Speaker 03

  You're a Hare Krishna. You're trying too hard. The people playing the bongos... You're saying you're Hindu? No, Hare Krishnas are not Hindu. Are they? Fucking frauds. They worship Krishna. Yeah, frauds dude. I tried reading one of the like the leaders books and this is why I immediately tapped out. He, the guy interviewing him goes, you preach not having like a material leading a materialistic life, but you will accept like gold gifts from people and whatever. And the guy goes, well, if you're giving me the gift, it's like giving it to God. And I was like, all right, fuck this guy dude. Fuck this guy all the way. I like him now.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  It's a mean thing not to accept the gift.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  They went out there way to. Why do you think you have the most empathy?

• 2:41Speaker 04

  I just hear the way you guys talk sometimes and you guys are.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  What are you performing for? Really?

• 2:50Speaker 04

  I honestly feel that way.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  You think that we lack empathy for whom though?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  No, I don't think you lack empathy. I think I have the most empathy.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  You're the most sensitive.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Okay, let me, okay, ready? Let's just do a test.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  No, we're not starting to pod.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  We're just gonna do a test. Can you just speak in an Indian accent?

• 3:08Speaker 03

  And let's just see how much empathy you have for.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  No, but that's love. He knows I'm not laughing at him.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  No, no, you are. No, you are. He used to make the jokes and it would hurt my feelings more the way you laughed because I was like, oh, he really feels that way. You think they sound funny?

• 3:24Speaker 04

  See, if I knew what your feelings, I wouldn't laugh.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Do you think they sound funny?

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Yes, we all think they sound funny.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  So. Your counterpart honestly. Yeah, that was, that was good. Okay.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  So we think Chinese people sound funny?

• 3:40Speaker 03

  I guarantee you any three syllable word an Indian says better than you. Say perspiration.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  I'm not saying they don't. That's a thing. I just think.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  That would be the word you would ask him.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Listen, we're gonna get to the bottom of it today by the end of this, this podcast. I promise you.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Alex, you didn't know this is why you were gonna be brought here, right? You thought we were gonna talk about the Gnostic Gospels? Yeah, man. I gotta speak to my manager, man. But reality is, is we're gonna talk about Alex Media and his lack of empathy. And there's nothing, there's nothing more annoying than someone who has no empathy.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Thinks they have the most.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Honestly think I have the most. Like, maybe Mark comes close.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Can you, can you help us? Can you figure this out?

• 4:24Speaker 04

  No, like, the least is between you.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  What are you talking about?

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Mark just started having feelings when he was a kid. He, he's told us about this.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  I know about feelings.

• 4:32Speaker 05

  But he could do no wrong.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  He doesn't wanna, like, hurt any pride.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  It doesn't make you a good person. It just ma- he's afraid of going to hell. Everything he does is selfish. He's the most selfish.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  I don't care what's the reasoning.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  There's no selfless deep.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  I don't care what's the reasoning, but he doesn't do anything wrong. You make enemies when no one has done shit to you.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  But it could be justice. It could be justice.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  That is crazy. I know, because I see, I see people. And I see you, you lack empathy. I see you, Doug.

• 4:54Speaker 05

  All right, we agreed to disagree.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  I see you.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  Guys, today, our guest is an Oxford-educated philosopher whose debates have amassed hundreds of millions of views. He argues that incest is fine.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  Alex, this is on your Wikipedia. I just want to put that. That you can kill people if you have a brain tumor. And that democracy is immoral. We have Alex O'Connor on the podcast. We're very excited about this.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  He's struggling through that.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  I mean, the first one hit me hard. This is a real, this is a, this is on your Wikipedia. I just snagged this from your Wikipedia. No big deal, yeah. The pleasure is yours.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  I think something might have got lost in translation there. But, but perhaps we can, we can go through them. Yes, yes, I didn't say you believe it. You seem to bring it up, this, this, you started with what? Incest? Yeah, it's because I've been watching White Lotus, man. You're asking for a mate, is that?

• 5:55Speaker 05

  I do have a brother. Bring, bring me down there, Alex, just, just like.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  I have a brother, but I could do better. I have a brother, but I could do better.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  Um, no, this is obviously some of the debates that you've had, where you are, you're, you're arguing intellectually if these things have, like, what? Negative repercussions in society? What is, what is the idea? Why even entertain this? You're not a comedian like us. This is all we argue all the time. That's, that's right. That's the, that's the, that's the funny thing. And not funny in your sense, is that I'm, I'm not actually making an, an opinion. What I'm basically doing is like throwing out views and ideas. Yeah. If you think there's something up with it. Yeah. And that's gonna help you work out like what you think about the world. Like it doesn't matter whether you're right or wrong. The thing that matters is if you think like incest is wrong, I'm gonna ask why you think that. Yeah. And try to get to the bottom of what's actually motivating your ethics. And most of the time, people are more confused. Define wrong, because one could argue that it would probably fit the most perfect.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  That's right. Use that argument. I haven't actually. I saw a great, I saw a great comment that you look like the kid from adolescence grown up. And now that you're here, and now that you're here, I cannot see it. Why'd you say that? I'm like, well, it worked out for him, a little bullying turned him into a real proper intellectual. You know what I mean? Like this is amazing.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  You're the best case scenario.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  It really is. That is what bullying at school does. It turns you into, turns you into someone like me. But you were never bullied. You're a tall, handsome kid. You're smart. Did you go through any bullying? Well, I, I am now. Yeah, most of it was from the teachers though, unfortunately, because. Oh, you were a pain in the ass. Yeah, but then people, people like really like celebrate this, you know, when people like try to really self-indulgently say like, you know, I was the kid who was always debating the, debating the teachers and giving it back. And it's, it's like, that doesn't make you clever. That just makes you a pedant. It just makes you like this, this annoying ADHD kid that's like holding up the rest of the class. In America, we have a way of getting them out of, out of here. Medicine. School shootings.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, we can talk about the ethics of that too. Have you, have you ever thought about defending that in some way? I haven't thought about the ethics of defending school shooters. However, I have thought about the concept of children as child soldiers. See, I do a, I do a, a series called Philosophical Hot Takes where I get people to submit like their, their philosophical hot takes. And I rank them on a scale that goes from like mild spicy. And I was at an Indian restaurant once and one of the options was Indian spicy. So that's the top option. And the opposite of spicy. I'll behave. I'll behave.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  He is a monster.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  He is a monster. You're legitimately autistic. What are you talking about? You're the most empathetic.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Empathy is essentially self-serving, though. This is the thing, like, if you're the most empathetic, it means that you're the most selfish. What is empathy?

• 8:39Speaker 03

  We knew it. We've been saying this for a decade.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  He is the most selfish. So you are saying I'm the most empathetic? Let's see.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Why does empathy make you the most selfish?

• 8:51Speaker 05

  What is empathy? What do you think empathy is?

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Caring about other people. Yeah, we just call it gay.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  It's that, and that definitely is self-serving to some degree. Caring about other people, like, caring. It's essentially taking suffering in other people's suffering. It's like, if I have empathy for you, it means that when you suffer, I kind of suffer for it, right? I don't want you to suffer.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  I don't believe I suffer for it.

• 9:15Speaker 05

  About me.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  I understand what you're going through, and that must be hard.

• 9:18Speaker 05

  I can understand what you're going through and think that that's great, like, awesome. I'm really happy that you're going through that. So the only thing that makes you empathetic is when you understand what someone else is going through, and you feel bad for it. You get upset about it. Look at, like, when we get heroes, like, imagine somebody like the firefighter who runs into the burning building.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  Al just fixes posture, looks into the distance, and is like, "I don't even know where I am right now."

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Now, I'm starting to selfish thing. I'm like, "It is kind of selfish, because it makes me feel good."

• 9:51Speaker 03

  No, but what he's saying is that you are taking on their struggle, so you actually feel bad for them. So it's about your feelings.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  If the firefighter runs into the burning building, and they come out, and someone says, "Oh, you're such a hero." And the guy says, "I just, I just, I couldn't not. I had to, you know? Like, when I saw someone in there, I just had to do it. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't." It's like, what are you saying, man? You did it for yourself? You did it for your own... So that you can sleep at night? Empathy is essentially self-serving. This is the thing, like...

• 10:16Speaker 03

  But is that necessarily bad?

• 10:18Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  It's a good reward matrix for humanity, right?

• 10:20Speaker 05

  There is no good and bad. I think that morality is all a...

• 10:23Speaker 03

  What I mean good and bad is, like, is it beneficial for society that I get rewarded for doing a quote-unquote benevolent act?

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, but that's why we think it's good, because it's beneficial for society.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  So it's almost like...

• 10:32Speaker 05

  The idea of morality and good and bad, in my view, is all just a smokescreen. It's a fugazi, as they say. Like, seriously, is it just... People talk about ethics as if it's objective, right? So, for example...

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Can you define ethics?

• 10:45Speaker 05

  No.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Usually yes, but just not for you.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  No, but just for everybody watching, like, what exactly is ethics a study of?

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Ethics is broadly the idea of like, right and wrong, like, good and bad. And depending on who you ask, it might be like, human flourishing. So like, what gives you the good life? You know, what is that all about? So for a Christian, it might be living in accordance with God's will. Or for an atheist, it might be what's beneficial to society, right? If you're a moral objectivist and you believe that ethics is like, a real thing, it means you think that there are actually just good and bad things in the world. There's right and there's wrong.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  I don't believe that. Most people's intuitions say that there is such a thing. In my view, it's essentially an evolutionary byproduct. For example, is it just a coincidence that, generally speaking, we think that you have a duty to care for your children, right? You also have a duty to care for your cousin.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  But you probably have less of a duty to care for your cousin than your child. Like, if your child is starving and your cousin is starving, you're gonna help the child over the cousin, right? And we think that that is like, the right thing to do in that circumstance.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:43Speaker 05

  Is it just a coincidence that you happen to share proportionally exactly the same amount of genes with the child versus the cousin? You share more genes with your child than with your cousin. You share more genes with your cousin than with a distant cousin, or a stranger, or then again, even someone in a different country.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  So taking care of your child.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  And it just so happens that how much, like, genetic sharing, how much genetic similarity we have with these people just happens to line up with how much we think we have a moral duty to care about them.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  Isn't that a strange coincidence?

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. But if I saw a starving kid and my cousin, who's 23, couldn't eat, I'd tell my cousin to get a job and I'd give the kid food. I don't need to be related to them. Am I crazy? You might be right, man.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Our guy's got a lack of empathy. That was crazy.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  I forgot we were in America.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  No, no, I understand what you're saying.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  The problem with ethics in America is that if you sort of, if you give some kind of thought experiment about drowning child or someone who's like, in poverty, it's like, well, just get a job, man.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  Get a job.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Bring yourself up by the bootstraps.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  Invest in the S and P and just like, you wait like, 20 years and you'll be able to buy yourself some lunch.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Yes!

• 12:45Speaker 05

  It doesn't...

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Yes!

• 12:47Speaker 05

  I think the problem with...

• 12:47Speaker 03

  That's the idea!

• 12:48Speaker 05

  The problem with thought experiments is that people often pick up on like, totally the wrong thing. My least favorite thing that people do...

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Wait, I don't wanna move on from the thing you just brought up. I thought it was really interesting.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. We'll keep going on that.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  No, specifically, like, okay, let's say humans are bound.

• 13:02Speaker 05

  He's like, back to incest. I just really really need to know. Just please help me out here, man.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  What the motivation for a behavior is doesn't really matter as long as it pushes society forward. Now, what is pushing society forward? I mean, just like propagating the world with more of our DNA? Is that the idea?

• 13:19Speaker 05

  Well, unless you think that having children is immoral. This is the thing like.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  I don't think it's immoral, but is it a bad thing?

• 13:24Speaker 05

  You can just, you can just say like, oh, well, you know, what's good is like what benefits society. And it's like, well, you have to tell me what benefiting society.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  And we have to define society.

• 13:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. There are people in this world who think that the best thing we could do for the planet would just be to destroy all human beings.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 05

  Right? And so for them, better for society means whatever is the most self deleterious behavior that you can possibly commit.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  How much of when you're doing these debates, is it like defining vocabulary?

• 13:45Speaker 05

  All the time. Most conversations that people have is just a matter of

• 13:48Speaker 03

  That's marriage.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  definition.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  It really is. Like, so it's like.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  When you think you're arguing, but you're actually not.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Like, put it this way, right? If I said a sentence and I sincerely meant it, if you understood every single word that I was saying in the same way as I did, like you defined it with this in the same way with the same connotations, I think by definition, you would just agree with me.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 05

  I think there can be no disagreement if you're just saying the same thing.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  So most of the time, it's a, it's a linguistic dispute.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. An emotional reaction to certain words, a perception of what those words mean.

• 14:19Speaker 05

  And so a lot of the time, what we're actually doing is defining terms. So when we're like, oh, is this thing right or wrong?

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Do that before? Like, let's say you're gonna have a big public debate. Will you go be like, hey, let's just decide what these different things mean so we don't get bogged down.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  You have to to some degree, but most of the time, the debate will, will sort of focus on what a word means. So if we're debating whether something is good or bad.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  That's annoying.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  It is. But you're trying to work out what good actually means. Cause you say that, you say that incest is great. I say that incest is terrible.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Why are you putting that part of me? Cause it could have been anything, right? It's a hypothetical. It's a weird way that you position it. What does that have to do? What are the ethics in that?

• 14:50Speaker 05

  Now you know how it feels. I'm gonna put it on your Wikipedia page, right? Any Wikipedia.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  We had to start the episode off with a banger. I had to introduce everybody.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  My whole task now, my whole task now is to like, I wanna box you into an ethical corner where you have to admit that according to your worldview incest is okay, just so I can then go and put it on your Wikipedia page.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Well, let's define what okay is.

• 15:07Speaker 05

  So you know how it feels.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Can we define okay?

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Depends what you mean by okay. I mean.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Yes, does anybody get harmed? I think, I've actually heard the incest argument before, and I think that like.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  You think that incest is wrong?

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I have like a knee jerk reaction to say it's wrong 100%. But if the idea of wrong is like, does it hurt anybody? As long as you're not making a retarded kid, I guess it doesn't hurt anybody. And if both parties are consenting, then it's fine.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Well, this is, but this is part of the problem is.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  This is like, is gay incest wrong?

• 15:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, so people often say like, well, you know, same sex incest. And I'm like, why, why do you specify same sex incest? No, like because well, otherwise there's the risk of having a child and the child will be disabled. And I'm like, what's wrong with having a disabled child?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Well, we know.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  Hold on, suddenly, is that just like, is that just like immoral?

• 15:50Speaker 03

  You have to make them a TikTok. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. And then Hal's gonna jerk off to it. Bro, did you guys watch what I posted? I'm sorry, did you watch what I posted on Instagram the other day about the guy? It's gotta be a TV show or something, but.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Oh, The Specials.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Is that from The Specials?

• 16:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, where they go to the.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  They go to Thailand?

• 16:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  And he doesn't believe in ladyboys, the, his retarded, his special needs or whatever, brother doesn't believe in ladyboys. He goes, listen, they have willies. And he goes, no, they don't. And he goes, I'm not gonna do the accent, but you can imagine it. He goes, but no, they don't. Exactly. He goes, no, they don't. He goes, they have willies. And then they take him to a ladyboy show and he's got like a beer in his hand. And he is having the time of his life. And at the end of the show, this theatrical experience, part of it is the ladyboy exposes her true self. Takes off all her makeup, takes off the wig and then he stands out there on stage. Ta-da. And the audience is going crazy. They're like, what a performance. And then just pats this kid and he's just sitting there going.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  He's absolutely curious.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  Well, we've all been there, haven't we?

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Guys, tour dates. This weekend, I'm gonna be in Cincinnati, Ohio, Liberty Township specifically. I'm gonna be there Thursday through Friday at the Funny Bone. Then September. 11th through the 13th, I'm gonna be in Donia Beach, Florida. That is far from any who wants to blow up Florida. What kind of person would do such a thing? So it's a safe show to come through, be there. September 25th and 27th, I'm rounding out my Ohio tour in Cleveland. October 5th, Dubai, hurry up and buy those tickets. They're selling out, we might have to move to a bigger venue or figure something out. But right now, we're about to sell out. And then, all those dates and more, akashsingh.com. We got big things getting announced soon, guys, big things. Also, Mark has tour dates. You can suck his dick in Montreal, Toronto, or Detroit.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Those dates respectively are August 22nd, August 23rd, and December 6th. Why is there such a big gap? I don't know. Tour bookers, get your shit together. Comedy clubs, get your shit together. This guy got three open months, what is that? September, October, November, book the man, markgadnonlive.com. Can we do some thought experiments and ethical dilemmas to test everyone's internal moral code? Yeah, I love this.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course we can. I mean firstly, like when we do a thought experiment, it's worth pointing out that people often get like really like picky with it. So like if I say, you've heard of the trolley problem, right?

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  Like someone's tied to a track or whatever, and people will always say like, "Well, why can't I just untie them?" Or try and like come up with shit outside.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  This is not that show.

• 18:22Speaker 05

  My least favorite thing that people do is when, like you know if you're watching Star Wars? And there's like a plot hole? And you say, "Well, that doesn't make sense." You know, "Why does he kiss his own sister?" or something. Well.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  This is two for two right now, we're two for two.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  I'm getting a bit of a reputation.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Do you have siblings?

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Uh, I do, I have a brother.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Huh?

• 18:41Speaker 05

  We, um, yeah, we tend not to talk too publicly about that.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Can we just FaceTime him and see what he's wearing?

• 18:52Speaker 03

  He's probably handsome. Let's just see.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  He must be handsome, I mean if he's my brother. Actually, I had a friend once who is a homosexual and he, on two separate occasions.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  He's like, "I need a point out, it only happened..."

• 19:08Speaker 05

  One time. He told me on two separate occasions, on one occasion, he says, you know, Alex, you really look like your brother. And on a separate occasion, without thinking about it, he said, you know, Alex, your brother's quite hot, you know, like, I think I.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  I knew it.

• 19:20Speaker 05

  And I was thinking.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  That's where this comes from. You know. What do you, so what do you think it is that he's not into you, personality, or?

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Well, I was trying to, I was trying to figure between the lines and think that maybe, maybe he was sort of.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Oh. You, your brother in this guy?

• 19:31Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no, not that. I just think, you know, if you sort of independently say that you look like your brother and then on another occasion say like, you know, I kind of fancy your brother, you think.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Oh, here's the thing. You think that gay men care about looks. They just care about holes. So, uh, as long as there was one available. They're men. Yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Well, we haven't all been there, but I'm, I'm.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Wait, you what?

• 19:51Speaker 05

  I guess you know from experience.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  What, what homosexual acts?

• 19:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I, now, if you want to talk about immorality, that's where it really gets off the ground. You know, incest is fine, but homosexuality is.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Why is that such a big deal?

• 20:02Speaker 05

  But this is the thing, right?

• 20:03Speaker 03

  You were gonna give a thought experiment and then we derailed.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Seriously, though.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  About. Yeah. When, when you say, when you say like, oh, like, uh, like, okay, incest, yeah, like, I can't think of a reason it's wrong. I just got this like knee jerk emotional reaction. Yeah.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  A lot of people feel that way about homosexuals, man.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  And so you've, you open the door to condemning basically anything that you think is a little bit icky.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  I think that that, uh, yeah, that makes sense.

• 20:23Speaker 05

  Which is a problem, right?

• 20:24Speaker 03

  But anyway. No, no, it's not a problem. I actually, I think that like, there's probably something biologically wired in to feel that way. Cause when I see like two dudes making out and somebody said, well, maybe it was a Bill Burr, but with like, one of them's got a beard, you're just like, whoa.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, like obviously you're gonna be wired to like, find it kind of gross.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  I also feel that way about like ugly people doing it. So maybe.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  That's the thing. Yeah. But is it immoral? Is it wrong?

• 20:43Speaker 03

  I don't think they should appropriate it.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  If the answer is no, then.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  But I never said there's anything about morality. I just said I had this knee jerk reaction. You put morality into it.

• 20:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, you don't think homosexual people should procreate. I don't think you're gonna have much.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  I think they can.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  Much of a problem getting that, that.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I think that they should appropriate. I mean, how do we get more of them?

• 21:03Speaker 03

  They're sneaking some cum in somebody.

• 21:04Speaker 05

  That's actually, that's actually a really interesting evolutionary question.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Where do they come from? Clearly God wanted them here if he keeps making them, but they can't make more of them.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  That, that might be true.

• 21:12Speaker 03

  They're like gremlins.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  They're made, they're made to, they're made to become priests.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Say again?

• 21:16Speaker 05

  God needs priests.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  God needs priests? Come on. Alex, you are so close.

• 21:22Speaker 05

  So close. He spit.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Some say swallowing.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  Especially in Catholicism where you're not allowed to get married. What do you do if you are a devout Catholic who realizes you're a homosexual? And so has to commit to celibacy as a point of morality? What is your only option? Well, you have to pick something which turns that celibacy into a virtue and that is the priesthood. Hence, ending up with loads of gay priests.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Wow, do you think that's the reason? Mark's mom has a different, more conspiratorial reason.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  You've heard, you know, the two Catholic priests get pulled over by the police. The police walk up to the car and say, "I'm so sorry to disturb you gentlemen. We're out here, we're out here looking for two child molesters." And the priests go, "We'll do it."

• 22:11Speaker 03

  Do they do it in England too?

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Do the priests get after the kids in England as well?

• 22:18Speaker 05

  It has been known to happen, but a lot of my Catholic friends inform me that sort of pederastery is just as much of a problem in other Christian denominations too. And so recently, our Church of England, the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was involved in a scandal, not him doing anything himself, but not responding properly to a scandal involving sexual abuse. And my Catholic friend texts me and was like, "Fine, I'll get somebody else for once." It happens everywhere, but the Catholic priests have more of a reputation for it, I think, because of the institutional nature of it, but also because these priests are forced to be celibate, they're not allowed to marry. It's like, okay, yeah, let's just get a bunch of horny, sexless, like, essentially involuntarily celibate,

• 23:02Speaker 05

  except for the sense that they're voluntarily priests, put them all into a room together and put loads of children under their care and see what happens. What a great, what a great idea that is, you know?

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Just because you're gay doesn't mean you're pedophile.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Just because you're not fucking doesn't mean you want to fuck kids. That's a weird jump. You made a big jump there.

• 23:24Speaker 05

  Nobody's gay, nobody's not having any sex.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but not having sex doesn't make you want to fuck kids.

• 23:30Speaker 05

  Perhaps not.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  We got him.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  But it does mean-

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Now, I will be honest, if I want to be honest, if I'm gonna be honest with you.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  I once didn't have sex for 16 years. And then I had sex with a 16-year-old.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  Whoa!

• 23:46Speaker 03

  So you might be honest-

• 23:48Speaker 05

  You might be honest-

• 23:48Speaker 03

  That's a great point. You might be honest about that, Alex.

• 23:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  When was that? From 0 to 16. We gotta clear that up.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  But yeah, there is a little bit of a lead there. This idea of you don't have sex for a long period of time and then all of a sudden you're attracted to children. You would hope that that's not the reality of the world.

• 24:06Speaker 05

  But the thing is, I think that a lot of strange sexual behavior is-

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Due to repression?

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Opportunistic, let's say. So this is the thing, there's an important distinction to be made here between- There's a great essay that was written by an old tutor of mine called Amira Srinivasan called "What Does Fluffy Think?" And it's about bestiality. And she carefully distinguishes between zoophilia and bestiality. Because zoophilia is sexual attraction to animals. Bestiality is just having sex with an animal. And they're different things. You can be specifically sexually attracted to something and have sex with it for that reason. Or you could be sexually attracted to anything and everything, but you just have sex with this because it's like the opportunity-

• 24:42Speaker 03

  Have you seen the guy fucking the donkeys before?

• 24:45Speaker 05

  I've not seen that, actually. That's- I don't-

• 24:48Speaker 03

  You didn't see that Vice documentary? Casual thing? There's this Vice documentary, back in the day before Vice became what Vice is now. They were into edgy, almost kind of like a British punk culture, I think a lot of it was derived from. You're familiar with Vice?

• 25:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  And he went to Columbia and he was just like videotaping dudes who would get behind donkeys and fuck the shit out of them. Yeah, why is bestiality immoral?

• 25:08Speaker 05

  That's a great question.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Because the beast can't consent.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  Riddle me this, if it's okay to eat animals, why is it not okay to have sex with them?

• 25:15Speaker 03

  I say that too!

• 25:17Speaker 03

  I say that too!

• 25:18Speaker 05

  He's like, "Yeah, what, come on?"

• 25:19Speaker 03

  We're doing something crazier!

• 25:21Speaker 05

  Your honor?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  You're gonna eat it. I can't just tenderize it.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Seriously, I was a vegan for a number of years and I think factory farming is like the greatest moral emergency that we're currently facing. It's absolutely unbelievable what we're doing to animals. But the interesting thing is, people have such a hard line against bestiality. It's like, okay, I can take a pig, I can raise it in a cage, and if it's too sick to be profitable, I can take it by the hind legs and cave in its skull against the bars of the cage that its mother is being held in. I can force that pig into a gas chamber, choking to death on carbon dioxide, but the moment I take my dick out, suddenly.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's fucked up.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  It's like this horrible problem.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  So what is that?

• 26:02Speaker 05

  Well, I think it goes to show that people aren't thinking about ethics in the way that they think they are. Because they'll say like, oh, well, because it harms animal, or the animal can't consent. And it's like, well, okay, but you're okay with eating animals.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Okay, real quick.

• 26:13Speaker 05

  And suddenly the ethical position shifts.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. If we're discussing it in like a thought experiment.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's like hypothetically, if we were having sex with animals.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. I guess what I mean, like, there's this like impulse, this like knee jerk reaction thing I was talking about earlier.

• 26:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, sure.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  And, okay, I guess the base level is, how much do we think that is like learned or taught? And is there any of it that just exists within us?

• 26:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, there's gotta be like an internal biological sense.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  And is it, is it not dissimilar from like, the reaction to like being close to fire? We're like, oh, that burns? Do we have that reaction to having sex with an animal? And is that baked into us so we don't waste our come on animals?

• 26:51Speaker 05

  Is that, is that how you feel when you, when you're near a homosexual?

• 26:55Speaker 03

  You said it, not me, okay?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  It starts to get hot and sweaty and...

• 26:59Speaker 03

  And they're just like, they're so handsome.

• 27:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, it's just like, oh gosh.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  And we have so much in common, we could just talk about things.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, starting to get a bit hot under the collar when you...

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Sex is only 15 minutes a day. What are we gonna do with the rest of the day?

• 27:10Speaker 05

  I think that there is definitely an evolutionary instinct, but the thing is, what ethics probably is, broadly speaking, you asked for a definition, and I think a good definition of ethics is the continual process of trying to overcome our base animalistic material drives to act in accordance with what we sort of rationally think is the right thing to do.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  And why would something rational be better than what our base instinct is?

• 27:36Speaker 05

  Because our base instincts evolved in a totally different kind of organizational structure. We evolved like running around in tribes on the savannah, right? So for example, tribes...

• 27:45Speaker 03

  You didn't have to look at Al for that.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Nah, he was fucked up. Nah, he looked at Mark.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  That was fucking horrible.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  More evolved than others. I just know of the most tribal probably. Mark's gonna walk out of here on his knuckles.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Okay, you were saying, I never say.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  You've noticed that I've been looking at you every time I've said homosexual too.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  It's the mustache.

• 28:06Speaker 05

  The, uh, the, the thing about evolving in that situation is that like, you're gonna be suspicious of anybody from a different tribe, right? And that makes sense. It makes sense to be suspicious of anyone who, who doesn't look like you because there's like no reason to trust them. You're not doing like trade with them, that doesn't exist.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  You're just fighting each other. And so you just evolve this knee jerk reaction to be distrusting of people who don't look like you. Then like, you know, agricultural revolution, boom, all of that kind of stuff. And now we live in a society and everybody is like mingling all together. And we think racism is just awful and terrible and really, really bad.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  So how do we overcome somebody's knee jerk instinct?

• 28:39Speaker 05

  Because of the change of our circumstances, we've, we've developed this thing which like every single, that, that, all of the proud moments of like human history are characterized by like overcoming animalistic baselessness. You know what I mean? Like that's always the case.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  So you call it animalistic baselessness or animal instinct or whatever that is. But let's just use that as like, you know, bare minimum. Now, some of those still apply and are probably good. The ones that don't fit in modern society are the ones, um, I'm attracted to a beautiful woman, we get along, the feeling is great, I want to mate with her and create a family. I want to protect my kids because I have more DNA in those kids than I do my cousins.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Do you also have rational reasons to think those things?

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure, sure.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  So there are, there are still like, it's not like sometimes you are just listening to your base instincts. You, you still are like rationalizing. It's just that sometimes that rationalizing, it links up with what your base desires are and like, thank goodness, this will be an easy one, but sometimes it doesn't. And we're constantly just trying to act in accordance with what we rationalize.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm, I'm not against the rationalization of it, but like sometimes we are putting that rationalization on posthumously, is that the term? After the fact, right? And then like, but it doesn't mean that that knee jerk instinct is still useful in society. There's certain things that, that work.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  If you've, if you've, yeah, like it will still be useful when you've rationalized something and think that this is actually the right thing to do and you happen to still have a knee jerk reaction to do it, that's really helpful, that's great.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  That's helpful, got it.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  But the problem is that we've got knee jerk reactions to all kinds of things. It wasn't that long ago that homosexuality was criminal.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 05

  And you could be thrown in jail for doing so.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  And then what do you get to do? It's kind of like a gift.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  What a punishment with these guys that work out all day.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  And they're locked in a room with me. What if it was benevolent? What if that punishment was like, hey, let's just get them together? Now,

• 30:31Speaker 03

  you're kind of talking that shit, right? Putting them in the jail is much better than like lighting them on a fire or throwing them off a building or these other things.

• 30:40Speaker 05

  That's probably true because some people do that as well. But even the very way that we punish people has evolved, you know, it used to be like if you commit suicide a few hundred years ago, there are places where you would have your body dragged through the street. Your inheritance would not go to your family. You could not be buried in a grave because it was thought immoral because we have a knee jerk reaction to stay alive. Of course we do.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  I don't know if that's the reason why they would punish it.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  Makes perfect evolutionary sense for us to think that whatever is going to cause our own death will be a bad thing.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  But why do you think that they put that punishment on top of it?

• 31:09Speaker 05

  To discourage people from committing suicide.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  And but why? What is like the downstream effect of that?

• 31:14Speaker 05

  Well, because like self preservation is like an evolutionary important thing, right?

• 31:19Speaker 03

  I think maybe it's the numbers of the tribe. You need to protect the tribe. Or like your family is now the burden of the tribe and now they disproportionately have to take care of them.

• 31:27Speaker 05

  All of that kind of stuff.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, there are rational reasons that they put even back in the day.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  But of course, like it's not like we've just worked out in the past like 50 years, all of these rational reasons, but they've always been there. It's just they've they've sort of come up against this moral feeling that people have had.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  So is that why, is that like the justification at the university level for looking into ethics? You're like, we've done so much rationalization of our behavior throughout history. We should continue to do it and then we will continue to, we're not going to evolve at the same rate as society, but we can create behaviors that would be more harmonious with society.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  No, the reason for doing it at an academic level is because there's like no way to make money with a philosophy degree, except for teaching people philosophy. That's it. They just they just invent stuff like this.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  So you think it's self indulgent in a lot of ways?

• 32:19Speaker 05

  It was probably a philosopher who first tied the man to the tracks.

• 32:23Speaker 05

  Essentially keep him in a job, I think. Yeah, like, I think a lot of it is just, as I like to call it, well, people are just sort of arguing for the sake of arguing, philosophical masturbating, you might want to, you might want to call it.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 05

  And it is essentially just this self-indulgent, like, thinking. And a lot of the time, it's kind of useless. Like, there's this whole video, I think, of someone, like, on a plane, and they're like, I don't know, they're choking, or they're having some medical issue, and they're like, is there a doctor on board? And the guy gets up, and he's like, yeah, I'm a doctor of philosophy. I, yeah, and he sort of walks over, and they're like, what should we do? And he's like, well, according to utilitarianism, we should, we should use the resources for this. Deontology says that we can't take their property without, and the guy just dies.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 05

  Because, like, on a real level, like, this, this doesn't make a difference to a lot of people in terms of the way they actually live their lives.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  In the immediate moment.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just, it's just a point, for a lot of people, it's just a point of, like, you're already living how you're living, you already think what's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong. You're not going to change that. We're just trying to work out, like, as a point of interest, what's the, like, foundation for that? But philosophy goes in two ways. It either digs downwards, which is what we do when we try to figure out what good means, and we do these experiments, and it's like, well, let's dig downwards and see what's like in there, what's at the basis.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  There is the philosophy that works upwards, too. It's like, well, what should we do? That's the constructive stuff. That's like, well, here's what I think is good, and here's how it should change your life.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  But it's not always constructive, because, as you said, sometimes it's self-indulgent. That's when I, when I get frustrated, is when it gets, and I understand the reason for it, but when it gets, well, how do you define this? How do you define that? It's like, I think we all have a fairly standard definition of empathy, or whatever the word is. Then, it feels less productive to me.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, and you're just sort of sat around, like, arguing about trolleys on tracks for, like, for, like, no reason. But it is useful to work out, to do the other thing, to go the other way and work out what you think, to then build up.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  C.S. Lewis said that the purpose of philosophy is not to cut down forests, but to irrigate deserts. You know, it was supposed to be actually building something up. That's why I like doing the trolley problem memes, because they help people work out what they actually think, and then you've got some more clarity on that, so then go and take that and build a philosophy out of it, you know? You've got to actually use it to then go and do something.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  So let's do one. What's an? Shipping, let's get back to the show.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Okay, so the classic trolley problem is that a trolley is running down a track, and there are five people either tied to the track, or they're workers, and they don't know the trolley.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Oh, race.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  Jewish.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Run them over.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Five people are tied to the track.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  You've got one on the other side. Or one on another track.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Because the track splits, I presume.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Very clever.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Gotcha, thank you.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  And they've got, they've got a lever that you can, it's kind of next to you and you can pull the lever. And if you pull the lever, five people are saved and the trolley runs over one person.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  And the question is simply, would you pull the lever? I don't know, would you pull the lever?

• 35:04Speaker 04

  I don't think you'd pull it.

• 35:05Speaker 05

  No?

• 35:06Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Because now you're responsible for death.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, because then you are letting five people die rather than making one person die. And I think letting versus actively doing changes it.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Can we ask questions? Okay, go, go. What about you, Alan?

• 35:18Speaker 04

  I don't pull the lever, same reason.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Can we, are we allowed to ask questions about the people or does that destroy the whole?

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Well, you can.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Like, age, for example, might be important.

• 35:28Speaker 05

  In this circumstance, you don't know, right? Or you assume that they're all like 25.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Got it, they're a big age.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  What you can then do, once you work out whether you pull the lever or not, is then start changing these variables.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Okay. Give me the toughest variable.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  That really helps, yeah. Would you pull the lever?

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Uh, no. Why not? What is it, it's gonna hit five?

• 35:43Speaker 05

  It's gonna hit five and then it could hit one.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  If you don't pull the lever, it hits five. If you pull the lever, it hits one, but you pull the lever.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  Will they all follow me on Instagram?

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think that I could be responsible for it.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  Okay, so then here's the thing, right? So one way you could adapt this is say, because at least the three of you think that you wouldn't pull the lever. What if it was 100 people on that, on that, on that track? What if it was 1,000 people on that track?

• 36:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, eventually you get to the number.

• 36:08Speaker 05

  What if it was like a city? Or what if it was like your own mother? You know, like surely there is, there is some circumstance in which you would kind of be okay with pulling the lever.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  I feel this, uh, this way about abortion.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Right?

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Like, you know, one or two or four is fine, but like a thousand?

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  You gotta pull the lever on that girl, right?

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Like, if one person had 1,000 abortions.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, like eventually there's a lever where you're like, alright, sew it up or something.

• 36:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, but, okay.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  I joke, I'm being hyperbolic, but at the same time, you're like, wait, what is going on here?

• 36:39Speaker 05

  You can work this out, like, like you can figure out what you think about abortion. So take, take a, take a, like a one-year-old child and take like, uh, 1,000 fertilized zygotes and put them on the other side of the track and ask what someone would do, which would they run over?

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Child.

• 36:52Speaker 05

  And I think it's, yeah, well, like, some people actually would say that. And, and that's fine.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, because that's what they believe.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  It helps you to work out what you actually believe. Because a lot of people will look at that and be like, if I'm being honest with myself, what I would probably do is I would probably run over those zygotes. You can't even see them. They're like, they're like dust on the floor. Right? And that's probably what I would do. So you adapted in such a way as to, and you could apply it to specific examples.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  And that doesn't mean that you don't think it's wrong. Those people might, might think it's really wrong.

• 37:16Speaker 05

  But yeah. And you figure out what's, so, so here, what we, what we've just pulled out is the difference between doing and allowing, which is like a really important ethical distinction. Is there a difference between doing and allowing? And it doesn't mean that allowing people to die is always right. It just means that it's less bad than, than proactively killing people, right? So then, okay, so, so take an example where, one of my favorites is the trolley's going down a track and there's one person tied up. And there's another track where there's also just one person tied up. But you think you'll really get a kick out of killing someone. You think it's going to be like great fun. Is it wrong to pull the lever?

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  Why?

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Because wanting to kill people for fun is bad.

• 37:53Speaker 05

  Why?

• 37:56Speaker 03

  I assume this is an impulse set. Once you, once you break that seal, it's quite possible you break it again.

• 38:03Speaker 05

  Suppose we just, suppose we just know that this person like is a perfectly well-integrated member of society who recognizes that this kind of like kick they get out of, out of the thought of killing someone is totally immoral and they'd never act in accordance with it. But, look, I've got this opportunity.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  So this is, to me, doing is worse than allowing.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  To enact upon it.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  What's interesting with the first one, I'm. This is, this is Dexter.

• 38:22Speaker 05

  And be like guilt free.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  Are you familiar with the show?

• 38:24Speaker 05

  I've, I haven't seen it.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  He's a serial killer that like finds a way to kill just bad people.

• 38:29Speaker 05

  Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  But this is the Charlie problem.

• 38:31Speaker 05

  It's not even that they're, they're bad people. It's not like, oh, they deserve this. It's literally like.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Somebody's gotta die.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Somebody's gotta die here.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  I get to scratch my itch.

• 38:38Speaker 05

  Exactly. And here's an interesting consideration is that, have you ever heard of utilitarianism?

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  So the view that.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  The greatest good for the greatest member of people, right?

• 38:44Speaker 05

  And, and that's usually cashed out in terms of maximizing pleasure or minimizing suffering, right? This is, this is what morality is about. That's what it is for the utilitarian. And pleasure is, is defined very broadly there. It doesn't just mean.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. It's not a brothel.

• 38:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. It's like anything which is well-being.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Food, shelter.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  And so here's the thing. If you're a utilitarian, then suppose it's not you suppose that someone else is going to pull that lever and you know for a fact that they that they will get some pleasure out of pulling that lever and killing that person. It might not just be that it's permissible for them to pull the lever. If you're a utilitarian, it might be a duty. They might have to because that will maximize pleasure. Same number of people die, except one extra person is now going to get an equal pleasure.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  You've actually got an obligation to kill them.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  So if we have these people, let's say we have these serial killers, right?

• 39:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  And we are utilitarian in our philosophy.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, right.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I think you know where I'm going. It's like, do we make them be the people that flip the switch for the electric chair?

• 39:35Speaker 05

  There you go, man.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  We can give them jobs.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  And is that what abortion doctors are? No, no, no, now we're getting too crazy.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  I do, no, no, I'm teasing, obviously, but like, I do think these ethical dilemmas present themselves in it's a like even vaccinating your kid, right? And again, I'm not going to talk about like whether vaccines work or don't work or plus or negative for society. But like the fear is apparent when you have a brand new baby you love more than anything. It's so amazing. And like you hear, you watch one video where you're like, this could cause harm to your kid.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  It makes sense to be terrified, yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Because now you have the lever, right? You go, do I want to be the person who takes responsibility for causing the harm? Or do I not pull it? And then God forbid they get measles or mumps or whatever that shit is. And now.

• 40:21Speaker 05

  Not my fault. So, but this is the thing, like a lot of.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Is that parents trying to not be the responsible?

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Exactly. And but a lot of people look at that. A lot of people look at that and they say, but that's bad parenting. And if that's bad parenting, then maybe there's something more going on. It's not just as simple as like, well, doing is bad, but allowing is kind of fine. So no, there's something more complicated going on.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  So how would you handle that? Like, what are the, what are the, what are all the different ways to think about that scenario?

• 40:41Speaker 05

  I think something important there is like the probability because there's no certainty involved. The Charlie problem, you have certainty.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  And so you need a version where you're uncertain. So say, for example, there is a, there is a track that's got one person on it. And there's another track that's got a big sort of box that you can't see. And it's got a 99% chance of having nobody in it, but a 1% chance of having 100 people in it.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  Same expected value, right? Exactly the same expected value. Because you've got a 1% chance of 100. Expected value is 1.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  You've got 100% chance of 1. Expected value is 1. So would you take that chance?

• 41:16Speaker 03

  I might be inclined to pull it. I would probably pull it. And what does that tap into? There's got to be some sort of positive thinking.

• 41:24Speaker 05

  If most people say that they would pull the lever, it tells us that expected value doesn't actually work properly. Because you should, if you're being rational, you should say, "Well, I have no preference whatsoever."

• 41:32Speaker 03

  I bet a poker player would be like, "I don't know what to do." But the rest of us who aren't doing these calculations may be more difficult.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  I think what it shows is that expected value is a bad way of thinking about stuff. Because this is how you work something out. If you've got to gamble, like you sort of do the expected value and work out which is higher. But that's not actually how people think. You know the game Deal or No Deal?

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  My friend Phil Halper pointed this out to me that like, if you're playing Deal or No Deal, and you've got a box, say one of the boxes is like 0 and one of the boxes is like $500,000, right? If you're then offered $150,000.

• 42:06Speaker 05

  Like, are you taking that?

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Fuck no, give me that $500,000.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  The thing is, it probably depends on who you are, right? If you've got a lot of money and that's not life-changing to you, you're going to think, "Oh, expected value."

• 42:16Speaker 03

  And if you have nothing, you're taking that $150,000.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  You're absolutely perfectly rational to take 100.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  I have a different answer than all these guys on everything.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Even though expected value says that you should obviously like take the risk for the $500,000 because the expected value is $250,000. And you've only been offered $150,000.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Wait, can I selfishly? Because I'm the only person that answered the trolley thing that way. I don't look at it as doing and letting. Well, I guess I look at it as doing, but I'd be saving five people. That's the way my brain goes. Oh, that's your do. My doing is I'm saving five people and one person had to die for me to save five people. And I think if I was that one person on the track, I think I would understand. I wouldn't be like, "Hey, let him go. I'm not some fucking saint." What about the fat man variation? Real quick before the fat man, just on that, like I think there are these...

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Hey, that's no way to speak about your friend.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  I forget the type of like hedge fund it is, but essentially what they do is they buy up businesses, they restructure them, they lay off, you know, 10,000 people. But there's still 40,000 people that work there. And I think Mitt Romney was one of the guys who owned Bain Capital. And this is one of the things they did. And he was like a devout religious dude. I think he was Mormon. He was Mormon. But and I think someone asked him is like, "How do you deal with that? Like, how do you handle the fact that you're like letting 10,000 people go?" And his answer was, Akash's answer is like, "I saved 40,000 people's jobs."

• 43:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's literally just a case of how you think about it.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I don't know if what he's done is immoral at all. I think if you're focusing on those 10,000, but he pulled the lever to save 40,000.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  In my view, it depends how you feel.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  How do you feel like outside of the thought experiment? Like, what is your, what did you say, like, basic instinct?

• 43:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  What is yours?

• 43:49Speaker 05

  About what? About like the lever?

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  Like, I think pulling the lever feels right, right? It feels like that's a good thing to do.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Just to save more people.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  Save the five to kill one, but like, it's uncertain, right? And the point is, it's supposed to be difficult. But the real utility in the trolley problem is whatever you say, you then adapt it. So you said you wouldn't pull the lever because, you know, you don't want to kill someone versus five. And then you just up the ante and make it 100,000 people. And suddenly, I didn't actually ask, would you pull the lever then if it were 100,000 people?

• 44:17Speaker 04

  I would pull the lever then.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  It's like the whole city of New York, you know? So at least in your case, it does change the scenario. You said that you would pull the lever, you would kill one person to save five, because you're saving five even though you have to kill one. So, as you point out, a famous sort of next variation of this is like, the trolley is going towards five people, you're stood on a bridge, and there's a fat man on the bridge. And if you push the fat man off the bridge, he'll crash into the train, and the train will stop, and he'll kill the fat man. But it will stop it from running over the five people who are tied to the track. Would you push that fat man to the bridge? You would?

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  So, no, no, good, good. That means you seem to be thinking very rationally about this.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  I'm consistent. You would actually push a fat guy? I don't know if I'm strong enough. I can't really lift much weights, but yeah. I don't get the physics. If you push him off the bridge...

• 45:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, because the train's going under the bridge.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Oh, the train's going under the bridge. I'm like, I thought the train's going over the bridge. I need diagrams for this.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  I thought the train was going over the bridge.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  I thought the train is like, you know, one of the Western movies where the people are running. You've never seen Stand By Me?

• 45:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. I've seen it.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  One of the guys is fat. I'm like, okay, he's gonna stop the train. I'm still saving five people. It's the same thing. But you would kill someone you're with. That's completely... Pulling the lever is killing, so I've made that decision. Now I'm just shoving instead of pulling the lever.

• 45:32Speaker 05

  You would just shove this guy off the bridge?

• 45:34Speaker 03

  I mean, again, I'm not strong, but I would try. But he's on the edge. It's your friend, and he's looking at, he's like, oh my God, these people are gonna die. My friend is different. Friend is different. Why? Because then I am inconsistent. No, then I am inconsistent. If my mom is on the bridge, or five strangers, I'm not pulling the lever, I'm not shoving my mom. That is, now if it's my dad, keep hope.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  But yeah, that's my inconsistency will stop at my wife, my kids, my mom, my best friends. Sure. But in general, if I'm saving five people and they're all strangers, I'm saving five people.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 03

  And I am, I'm not utilitarianism to the absolute. That's crazy at a certain point, but like, I do largely have that idea. Like, it's saving more people. What are we doing?

• 46:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. So here's something funny. They put people in an MRI scanner and ask them about the trolley problem. And the people who said that they would pull the lever, but they wouldn't push the fat man, which is most people, by the way, I think.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  That's weird.

• 46:28Speaker 05

  People who would, who would pull the lever, but wouldn't push the fat man, in the MRI scanner, the part of their brain that like deals with emotion was lighting up. Whereas the people who said that they would pull the lever and push the fat man, the part of their brain that deals with like rational thinking.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  That's me.

• 46:43Speaker 05

  Was lighting up.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  To me, it's just pure logic.

• 46:45Speaker 05

  It was an indication that a lot of people just think emotively about this and don't realize. They think that they're considering an ethical consideration, but really they're just like feeling it out. And so it's interesting. So people like you seem to be thinking like rationally about it. And you're trying to sort of put it in like very, very sort of non-emotive terms. But then you said like you'd be inconsistent when it comes to like your, your family. And the question is like, why? Or is it inconsistent? Or do you just have an ethical worldview which says that it's okay to prioritize your own family?

• 47:15Speaker 03

  I have a love for those people that's overwhelming to the point that ethics is not a concern of mine. Morality is not a concern of mine.

• 47:21Speaker 05

  But maybe that's just what ethics is. Maybe ethics is about like love. And maybe ethics just permits you to care more about your family.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 47:28Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 47:28Speaker 03

  But again, this is where, I'm not saying it's to dismiss what you do. This is where my brain jumps to like, yeah, whatever it is, I'm fine with it. I understand there is inconsistency and I'm okay with that level of inconsistency.

• 47:38Speaker 05

  And that's another thing. When I was saying about like the philosophical masturbating, most people, they have their ideas, but like if you, if you're like, oh, I think torture is always wrong. And I think that, you know, we should minimize suffering and harvest organs in this circumstance. But if someone like holds a gun to your daughter's head.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 05

  That just goes out the window, man. Like nobody is sat, like nobody, except maybe like Peter Singer. He's probably the kind of person that would actually sit there and. Like do a calculation on his little sheet paper, but nobody's thinking in this way, you know? That's not, that's not.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  Have you read that Jonathan Haidt book, The Righteous Mind?

• 48:10Speaker 05

  I haven't actually read it.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  You're familiar with the idea that we're like emotional beings and then we're gonna drift this logic afterwards.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  So that's probably what we're getting to about all this, but maybe his emotion is to protect as many people as possible and our emotion is more selfish.

• 48:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Like maybe you have more altruistic emotions, like you're like, everybody's a stranger, I'll protect those five strangers over that one. And the rest of us are like, I don't want to be a killer. The guilt of letting five people die to me would be overwhelming.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  Okay, so if, so say there's a, there's a, there's a track, this time the track is like a circle. And there's a person tied on that end and you're sitting here with a lever and the trolley's going around and the lever only changes the direction of the trolley. So you can just sort of make it go back and forth. How many times do you pull that lever before you let it run over the guy?

• 48:51Speaker 03

  Oh, I, I would like to think.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  In a vacuum, infinite, but if, if everybody in the train is saying X, Y, Z to me, who knows at a certain point?

• 49:00Speaker 05

  No, on the train, like you're just stood there like and you can just, you're pulling this lever back and forth. I mean, the guy's gonna die, he's just tied to a track, he's just gonna die anyway.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  I wait for him to die and then I go. Once he dies of starvation.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  You would, you would stand there for like a week.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Like staying awake, pulling that lever.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Doing my best, yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  To watch him, to watch him.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  If my body gives out, my body gives out.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  Watch him slowly die of starvation.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  You gotta do a little bit, you gotta do it at least five, 10 times.

• 49:25Speaker 03

  You can't just let it go and then explain. You're gonna run it five times? This is what you would do.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  Why not, man?

• 49:31Speaker 03

  No, no, you would go back and forth, right? I actually understand your logic now that you're saying it.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  I don't know, because like.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  It's euthanasia, basically. Do you allow this guy, do you just take him out of his misery?

• 49:39Speaker 05

  Terrified.

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Oh, he's gonna die no matter what.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  He's gonna die no matter what.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Maybe the ethical thing is just letting him.

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Like, how long are you gonna pull the lever?

• 49:44Speaker 03

  I think you gotta start explaining that to him. How long it took me to realize that, that's how many times I've pulled the lever.

• 49:48Speaker 05

  You just said that you want to watch him like starve to death, which is like a horror, I'd rather be hit by a train.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  He didn't say he wants to watch him starve to death. Well, that's what he would do. That would happen, but that's how many wants.

• 49:57Speaker 05

  That's what, that is what you want to do in that circumstance.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  He wants to not be responsible for his death, him starving.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  Then don't pull the lever at all, because like, remember a moment ago, we were talking about.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  Ah, not pulling the lever at all.

• 50:09Speaker 05

  This is the thing, like, the moment ago, you said, well, if I pull the lever, then I'm involving myself. It's like, well, then don't just leave it.

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Who invented this lever thing? This is great, what did you guys do before trains?

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Travis Thompson, yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  But before trains, what did, what did you have to talk about? Atlantis and shit. Yeah. The fucking, what is it? The green tablets of oath or something. They're running trains on children, that's what they're doing.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  I mean, the invention- Not all philosophers. But the invention of the train really changed your guys' whole life.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Like, what would you talk about before? You're like, "Should we be communists?"

• 50:39Speaker 05

  People-

• 50:40Speaker 03

  "More people need to eat." "People are hungry."

• 50:44Speaker 05

  People would debate-

• 50:45Speaker 03

  And then the fucking train was invented, you're like, "Yeah, this is good."

• 50:47Speaker 05

  People would debate weird and wacky stuff.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Like?

• 50:50Speaker 05

  Like, famously Plato defined a human being as a featherless biped. That was his definition of what a human being is. And then-

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Featherless, what did I miss? Biped. Biped. Walk on two.

• 51:03Speaker 05

  So two, so an animal that's got two feet and doesn't have any feathers, so then I think it was Diogenes who like, took a chicken and plucked all of its feathers and like ran into the, into the room where Plato was teaching and held it up and went, "Behold, Plato's man," you know? And so they would just debate shit like that all the time. And it was just essentially definitional.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  And why was this supported? Like, who was funding this back in the day? Are you, are you-

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Education, I suppose, used to be just a privilege of people who could afford it.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  But, but this could be a job. Like, back in the day, there are people that were just waxing poetic on philosophy and the king was like, "Yeah, keep doing that shit."

• 51:38Speaker 05

  I don't know about like back in ancient times. I don't really know how they were making their money.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  But you'd have students as well, wouldn't they pay?

• 51:43Speaker 05

  But yeah, they would, they'd have like students. But then I think some philosophers would probably have students that didn't pay. They just like had a school of people, a Jesus of Nazareth style.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 05

  But, but yeah, like you'd have students. I mean, famously Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great. You know, like there are, there are some pretty high clientele that, that want some philosophical wisdom. And so they're probably making money through that.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Do we have another thought experiment?

• 52:09Speaker 05

  There are, there are. Endless.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Or even a hot take? How were they viewed societally, real quick? Like, how would Aristotle be viewed societally at the time?

• 52:17Speaker 05

  Depends on what kind of philosopher they were. Like, Socrates was a nuisance. People didn't like him.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Is there some revisionist history? On these people as we look back.

• 52:27Speaker 05

  How do you mean?

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Like, do we look at them as almost deities?

• 52:29Speaker 05

  I mean, it's actually brilliant.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  They're genius.

• 52:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, like, yeah, at the time. A lot of these philosophers, if you like, read their biographies, they're like depressed, miserable people who couldn't get laid. Like, it's, it's, seriously.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  It's like Van Gogh.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's the same kind of thing where like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to be these guys. Like, why do you think, like, Immanuel Kant had the time to, like, sit around writing, like, the longest treatise on, like,

• 52:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 05

  On, like, objective ethics that the world's ever seen? Because he's, he's a loser, you know?

• 52:58Speaker 05

  He's got nothing else, he's got nothing else going on, like, seriously, you know? Like, what, what are you gonna do? Like, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote an essay about women.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 53:06Speaker 05

  Where he just, like, talks about how, how women are just inferior to men. And he just goes on and on and on.

• 53:14Speaker 03

  Can you tell me this guy's name?

• 53:17Speaker 05

  And, and you, you read it and you're sort of like this sort of hyper rational guy. And you're like, but this is clearly just because, like.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  He can't get laid.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  You can't get, apparently, he was like a bit of a womanizer, but I think he might have, like, had some trouble. Like, he, like, people, like, rejected his proposals and stuff. And so, actually, I was speaking, speaking to a friend earlier who said that any idea that anybody has, anytime, like you say, like, a policy is, is come up with by a politician or anything of that sort, they should have to undergo, like, a psychological analysis to find out how much of that is due to the fact that they're like dad didn't care about them as a kid or something. Like, you've got to make sure that there's none of that going on.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  Don't they just with detectives, they're like, you're too close to this case, you knew one of the people that were hurt, you're gonna be too emotional, we take you off of it. This is what they would hope.

• 53:58Speaker 05

  But we should probably do that with, like, politicians too. It's like, you know, you should.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  I think, yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  You shouldn't essentially just be using your, your rage to, to write about this kind of stuff. And I think that's clearly what's happening with Schopenhauer writing about women, for example.

• 54:09Speaker 03

  How many other philosophers you think this is happening to? Like, are there people that you're reading, you're like, oh, you actually have some deep issues that are, you are emotionally reacting to? And then just retrofitting your brilliance onto it?

• 54:20Speaker 05

  That, that, that, that might be true of most philosophers. I mean, most people have motivations that, that aren't always immediately obvious.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  I've heard this about Charles Darwin.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  What about?

• 54:31Speaker 03

  That his brother died of some type of like a malignant cancer or something to that effect. And he was told that he was gonna go to hell. And so he took it upon himself to scientifically prove that God doesn't exist or something like that.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  I think Darwin's child died.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Or maybe that's what it is.

• 54:46Speaker 05

  Darwin's, I think his youngest child might have died and it does seem to sort of have an effect. I'm not sure if that like motivates like the biology of the origin of species, but it will motivate his like religious views. Darwin, actually, interestingly, at the end of The Origin of Species, there's a beautiful little epilogue where he says, there is grandeur in this view of life. It's a famous piece where he talks about from so humble and simple beginnings, endless life and endless forms most beautiful have been and are being evolved. And that's how it ends. It's this beautiful thing. And he talks about how life, having originally been breathed into a few forms or into one. And there was such a backlash from the religious that in the second edition of The Origin of Species, there is an addition.

• 55:28Speaker 05

  It's breathed by the Creator into few forms or into one. Because he felt the need to add in this reference to God and it's probably due to the backlash, but it may also just reflect his own like flip flopping on religion. Because by the third edition, it was gone again. And this happens quite a lot, like people like defacing their, their books. Like Peter Singer recently did this for Animal Liberation, the, the father of the animal rights movement, who wrote in 1975, the greatest defense of animal ethics that has probably ever been written. I mean, it's just phenomenal and very confronting. And he was using all of these arguments that in the most recent updated edition, he had to, he, he felt the need to take out because they were like not politically correct anymore. Even though they were really useful philosophical arguments, he like, he took them out.

• 56:09Speaker 05

  So for example, when he talks about giving animals rights, a lot of people say, well, we can't give animals the same rights as humans. You know, we're not gonna give them the right to vote and stuff like that. And Peter Singer is like, well, to give people equal consideration doesn't mean you would literally give them the same rights. For example, you wouldn't give men abortion rights. And that's not an inequality thing. You give them the same consideration, but it doesn't mean you give them literally the same rights. It just means that you give them the same consideration. So you wouldn't give men abortion rights, you wouldn't give animals voting rights, but you give them same consideration. And special needs people vote. They, they literally can, yeah. They are allowed to vote. Oh, I, I, yeah, I mean, I assume so. I don't know if there are some. Is that a crazy thing to ask? No, but the, the, it's not.

• 56:52Speaker 05

  I'm, I'm asking based on the same, you know, it's the same hypothetical, like if.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  If we deem an adult 18 years old and they have the mental capacity of an 18 year old.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  I don't, I guess we don't do that with IQ.

• 57:04Speaker 05

  That's the thing.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  Voting is not mental capacity.

• 57:06Speaker 05

  It's totally arbitrary because like voting is like the justification for voting is always like, well, you know, like it will lead to a better society and people, but, but really people feel like they have a right to vote. It's not so, voting isn't supposed to be like, this is obviously the best way to always get to the right answer. It's like, no, it's just, it's a point of principle that if you're going to tax me, I have a, I have a say.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  And if they have the wherewithal to register to vote, then.

• 57:30Speaker 05

  Then they should be able to execute. It is completely arbitrary, like the, the age limit on voting is completely arbitrary.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  I feel it's way too loose. We let too many people vote.

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  A lot of people feel that way, man, like, and, and like Aristotle thought the same. John Stuart Mill thought that different people should have different like numbers of votes. So like people out of university education should get more votes than someone who didn't and stuff like this.

• 57:51Speaker 03

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• 58:36Speaker 03

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• 58:46Speaker 05

  Voting systems are never perfect because people have an idea that you just sort of vote and whoever gets the most votes wins and that's what democracy is. But it's never quite like that. I mean, like in the United Kingdom, there's a big debate over whether we should keep our so-called first past the post system of voting. What does that mean? It means that if you get like a majority of, of votes, if you sort of, it's the first person to reach a certain number of votes is why they call it first past the post. First person to get that wins, right? And so if you've got like five different parties and say like 50% of people. Like vote for, vote for one of those parties. They're, they're gonna like win the election, but the rest of the voter base is spread across all these different parties. And so they all just like lose and there's no like proportional representation of the, the different amount of votes the different parties got.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  It's just like, if you get the most, then you win. And because people often like split their votes from different parties, like if you don't wanna vote for the Conservative Party, maybe you'd vote for Labour, or maybe you'd vote for Green, or maybe you'd vote for this. Like you end up sometimes with a party winning who most people actually didn't vote for. And had they run the, had they done it in stages where you sort of knock out the lowest contender and then vote again, they wouldn't have won the election. Because all the people who voted Green, now they're out, would have gone and voted Labour. So Labour would have won the election.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  But what's, what's the cost of that?

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  Well, the cost of that, so people say we should, so you get the smaller parties in the UK saying we should have proportional representation. Because you have like millions and millions of votes, but you get like no seats or two seats in the House of Commons. And so they say we should, we should have it proportional. The problem with that is that nothing gets done. Because you've just got like 15 different parties, all the different ideas, and absolutely nothing gets done. But if, if your view is like, well, okay, sure, it'd be more democratic to have more parties in government, but nothing actually gets done.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  But it's not functional.

• 1:00:27Speaker 05

  Then why bother with a democracy thing at all?

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  So this is, you have two parties, nothing gets done. Is there a, is there like a principle in philosophy where you just reach a limit where you go, we gotta get shit done. So you stop before you extrapolate it to the end of the trolley problem.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's called authoritarianism.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I'm not saying in government, I'm just saying like in philosophy, like do you get to a point where you're like, okay, we all kind of agree on this. Yes, there are some holes in it, but this is 70% or this is 80% that everybody kinds of agree on. Let's just use this as a model for society, but we can have these thought experiments outside of that.

• 1:01:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, you could be like a pragmatist.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  Is that what that's called?

• 1:01:06Speaker 05

  Well, in utilitarianism, there's a, there's a particular sort of version of this called rule utilitarianism. So utilitarianism says that you should, any action, you should basically do a calculus and figure out whether it's gonna have more or less suffering and pleasure for people. But the problem is that doing that every time is itself not maximizing pleasure, right?

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  So now you're not, yes, now you're not being utilitarian.

• 1:01:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, like being utilitarian is not utilitarian, so you sort of undermine yourself. So they come up with this thing called rule utilitarianism. Which broadly is attributed to John Stuart Mill. And he's like, look, okay, we'll come up with these rules. Like broadly speaking, murdering people minimizes pleasure. And sure, there will be circumstances where it doesn't. But like, for the, you know, for the sake of being practical, we'll just call that a rule and we'll abide by that. And so it's still justified by the minimization of suffering. But in practice, we'll just follow these broad rules.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  And that sounds really great, right? Until you realize that sometimes there will be obvious counterexamples. Like if you don't murder this person, New York City is going to get like decimated. You might still think you shouldn't murder the person, but the utilitarian definitely thinks you should kill that person to save New York City. Right?

• 1:02:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  And so there are obvious cases where they would go, okay.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  I'd let New York go. That's one thing.

• 1:02:16Speaker 05

  Actually, yeah, yeah, maybe we should change it up.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. I hear just, this is like the bombing the Yemeni wedding.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Right? There's one terrorist in the Yemeni wedding. Like, do we bomb it? And then we save America from a possible terror attack.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  And if the circumstance is obvious enough, then even the rule utilitarian has to look at it and be like, yeah, okay, in this case, I'll break my rule. But then, then you've got this problem of like, in every circumstance, you've then got to figure out whether it's an obvious enough example to apply the rule or not. And then you're just back to like, to just looking at every single individual circumstance.

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  Like Luigi Manjoni kind of be an example of that or not?

• 1:02:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I mean, you might, you might kind of think that generally speaking, it's bad to murder people, but people are like, oh, but in this case, it's like an exception, like maybe, maybe some people would think that.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that sounds like the cultural response.

• 1:02:59Speaker 05

  But what you're.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  The cultural response is we got more pleasure. Not we, but people got more pleasure. Because they got more pleasure, does it justify the murder?

• 1:03:06Speaker 05

  Why did they, why did they get pleasure out of it?

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Because they think these healthcare companies are evil and all the people involved are complicit. And I think if you do it enough, maybe they'll, they'll.

• 1:03:14Speaker 05

  But specifically evil, evil, why? Like, what is it that they're doing?

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  They're undermining pleasure for the most people.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. So it's kind of, there's this sort of underlying assumption of a utilitarian principle for these people that like, well, okay, it's bad to kill somebody, but if they're going to cause more people to suffer and die, and this is a utilitarian gas.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  This is a justification for war, I imagine.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, sure, yeah, war is, well, at least ostensibly, it'll be like, this will be, this is, this is what's good. But war tends to have a more sort of, like the family thing. It's not just, because if you were utilitarian and like a country declares war on you and you're like, what's their population? Is it bigger than ours? Okay, let them, let them have it, right? That's not what you do. It's more like the family thing. You're like, to hell with that. I'm going to like defend my, my own.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  My home.

• 1:03:54Speaker 05

  My own principles, you know?

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  Okay, so Brexit, for example.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Good?

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  No, this idea that there are people that feel like they're losing their cultural identity, and we don't have to argue whether it's right or wrong, but I'm just saying that idea, if we're taking a utilitarian principle and we're just plastering on top of that, do they feel less pleasure as culture becomes more diverse and then their specific culture becomes, in their perception, diluted?

• 1:04:24Speaker 05

  For sure, yeah. I mean, that seems to be the motivation behind Brexit. It was essentially an immigration vote, in my view. That's...

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  A lot of people seem to feel like...

• 1:04:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, but a lot of people were talking about the economy and sort of they're getting up on their talk shows and they're like, "Well, you know, like Brexit and the GDP and 4.8." It's like, no one cares.

• 1:04:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  Some people care, but you know what I mean. That's not what it was about.

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:04:44Speaker 05

  And yeah, like, the thing is, I mean, I've been talking about utilitarianism. Like, I'm not a utilitarian. Most people aren't utilitarians. They think they are until they come across an example, like where they've got to tie their own child to a trap or something, and they're like, "To hell with that." And it's like, "Okay, well, then you're not actually a utilitarian, like you thought you were."

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  Instead, you're something else. And in my view, people are just emoting. I'm what's called an emotivist about ethics. I think that all ethical statements are just expressions of emotion.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  I think that's accurate.

• 1:05:07Speaker 05

  All I think is going on.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  And so, in this instance, like, if you're a utilitarian, you could say, "Well, it's complicated, because, yeah, more people get pleasure if they can immigrate into a country, but then the amount of suffering that comes with, like, losing your sense of identity, that might balance it out." Or you just be like, "You're just sort of vibing, man. You're just trying to feel it out."

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  I think that there's an emotional reaction to that, too. I mean, they're emotivists, is that what you said?

• 1:05:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  It makes them feel better to have a technical justification for their emotional response.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  And so they're calling it utilitarian, but it's really not that. They're just like, "I'm hurt."

• 1:05:44Speaker 05

  Exactly. People want to stick a label on there. That's what a lot of philosophy is. It is essentially hyper-rationalizing of your emotive feelings.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  That's why you have all of these clever people who agree with each other. It's also why I could say, like, name some of the most famous philosophers in the world, like Nietzsche, or Immanuel Kant, or John Stuart Mill. And a lot of people get this idea that because they're great philosophers, if I just pick one at random and sit down and start reading it, I'll be like, "Wow, this guy's amazing." But if you try that, go into a philosophy department, pick up like Jean-Paul Sartre and just read it, and you'll be like, "What is this?" Because... The great philosophers are people who you kind of already know that you're like on the same wavelength as them. And you read it and they just put it into words and you're like, yes.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, man, that's, that's, that's what it is. That's, that's the feeling of like thinking someone's smart is, is sort of looking at it and going like, yeah, they put that in. But because they've just rationalized what you're already thinking. Education, I think that the, the Greek word that that comes from, I can't remember what the word actually is, like, you know, educatos or some, something like this, means to draw out. Education is not like the so-called bucket theory of the mind, which is like, you're just a bucket and a teacher comes and just chuck stuff in there. It's, it's, it's a more like two-way relationship and to educate someone is to draw out of them. Because there's something already inside them that you are like pulling out. Education has to be something which, I don't mean like as a moral thing, this is how we should be educating them. Because I mean, this is literally what happens in, in many people's view. It's like a two-way relationship.

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  You have to, the, the person who's learning has to sort of take a guess at the world and then like test ideas against the guess that they're making and then the teacher sort of helps them with that. So it's a, it's a, it's a drawing out, you know? That's what philosophers do. So you're reading a text and it's not just like you're getting information. Somebody is, is systematizing the way that you feel.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  You know, like when you reach up and how's essay about women, you'll probably have this experience of, of thinking like, yeah, yeah, that's.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  He gets it.

• 1:07:34Speaker 05

  He gets it, yeah.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  This fucking guy.

• 1:07:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. But, but no, but on a serious level, like if you read that essay, you're like, most people read that and they're sort of like, what the hell is he going on about?

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, you might think he's a maniac.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  And it's like, and it's, it's so, that's a great example to show that like, what you're doing is you're bringing, if you are like a genuine sexist and you read this, you'd be like, yeah, man, oh, he's so smart. And your, your assessment of how like intelligent he is.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  Has to do with how much you agree with him.

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  Will just be basically like how much you sort of already agree with him, you know?

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Speaker 05

  And to what level he sort of resonates with you. Now, sometimes there will be people who come along and, and change your mind, so you don't already agree with them. You know, well, that's really smart, that changes my mind. But it's because you've already got some kind of surface level agreement on something. And they've taken that assumption and said, well, that should lead you here rather than there.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wonder if changing your mind has to do with this feeling of like guilt or shame. Like a lot of times, yeah, I'm sure you've heard like Shapiro go on and on about like facts don't care about your feelings, whatever. We, we spoke a lot about like.

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  I think feelings don't care about your facts.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  We say it all the time. They don't care about your facts at the fuck all. So I wonder if sometimes you're presented with facts. And they make you feel this guilt or shame that you believe this thing that was wrong. And now you feel stupid, now you feel silly, you feel misled. And it's that personal feeling. You're not going, oh, I will follow the facts now. You're like, I don't want to be an idiot. I don't want people to think that I'm an idiot. I've changed my philosophy.

• 1:08:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think a lot of thinking is just feeling. Like, when you become convinced by something, like, for example, what is at the basis of our epistemology? How we know things? Like, I can see a sort of water bottle here, and I think this water bottle exists. That doesn't seem like an emotion. It feels like a rational thing that I believe is like something that's true or false, right? But why do I believe that this water bottle exists? Because I can see it. But why do I believe that because I can see it, it's really there? Or because I think that my sense data is accurate, you know, and I'm not like a brain in a vat somewhere? It's like, well, why do I think that? Because if I didn't, I would just be in this skeptical hellhole, and I wouldn't know anything. So?

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Speaker 05

  So what? At root, you just have these, what we call intuitions, which is the philosopher's fancy word for like, the way you feel, man. It's like, well, I have a very strong intuition that the external world exists. But you just feel that way.

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  It brings us comfort to trust our senses.

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, you just can't help but feel, right?

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Have you ever met somebody with schizophrenia?

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  I don't think so.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  It's really interesting, because the things that they're seeing or hearing

• 1:10:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  do not exist.

• 1:10:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. And they

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  But they feel them.

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  They hold up an important mirror to our own philosophies. It's the same thing with like, a lot of people like to talk about how, you know, the person, if someone who was acting rationally would never like indulge in this behavior, like pulling the lever, that's bad, and everyone knows it's bad. It's like, well, psychopaths exist.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:10:21Speaker 05

  And they're people who just don't care, right? And you have to deal with the fact that not everyone's brain works in the same way that yours does. And they're really interesting test cases. I mean, like, people who have some kind of mental disorder can be really interesting philosophically.

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 05

  Have you heard of split-brain patients? You know, the brain is in two hemispheres. You've got the left and the right brain. Ian McGilchrist writes about this in The Master and His Emissary. It's phenomenal. And they are famously responsible for different things. So like, the right side of the brain moves your left arm, and the left side of your brain moves your right arm, broadly speaking. And this has an effect on behaviour. Like, the eye that animals choose to, like, look at their prey will be determined by which hemisphere they're sort of using. People who have damage to the left hand side of their brain will often have uncontrollable movements in their right arm. And likewise with the right and the left arm. But people who have damage in the right brain, and the right brain broadly speaking is supposed to be like the creative one.

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  I thought that's left.

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  No, the left brain is the sort of maxi autistic kind of brain, so.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  Oh, that's why they say that left-handed people tend to be more creative, because it's right side of the brain is more developed.

• 1:11:30Speaker 05

  They say that. It's unclear whether there's actually a connection there, but that's the kind of thing that people's, that's why they say that, right? And people who have the damage to the right-hand side of their brain, if they have uncontrollable left-hand movements, they tend to be like feeling movements. They'll sort of feel things without being able to control it. Whereas if they've got damage to the left-hand side of the brain, their right hand will grab things. Because the left-hand side of the brain is more like, is more numerical and it's more, it's more like, I guess, precise and practical, so it's more grabby, right? And so the two hemispheres are connected by something called the corpus callosum, which is the connective tissue. And the tissue actually seems to do more to inhibit communication between them than to facilitate it. It's as if there's some evolutionary benefit to kind of having two brains. But some people have what's called a corpus callosumy,

• 1:12:13Speaker 05

  which is where they sever the connection. This used to be a treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy. It was one of the only ways you could treat it. And in these patients, there is this strange phenomenon, which has been observed, called alien hand syndrome. It was first reported when a woman in like the 1800s, her left hand just started attacking her, started trying to choke her to death. And she had to fight off her hand with the rest of her body. And there are people who like, they'll pour a cup of coffee and then their other hand will just pour it out again. People who will get dressed, they'll put their trousers on and then the other hand will take it off again.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  Take a Mr. Bean sketch.

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  And this most, the most common place where this has cropped up is in cases of people who've had a corpus callosumy. And so it seems to suggest that you might literally have sort of two consciousnesses.

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:13:01Speaker 05

  That are like battling it out constantly. So a lot of our decision making, and this might be where like freedom of the will comes in, is like your brain is sort of battling against itself to figure out which one's going to win out or something.

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  You're a determinist, right?

• 1:13:13Speaker 05

  I don't believe in free will, if that's what you mean, yeah. But the thing that terrifies me is to think like, okay, so say you've got this left hand that's trying to kill you. If there is some kind of consciousness attached to it, that's not the consciousness that's attached to your like, your awareness, your eyes, your mouth, your ears and stuff, because otherwise it would say something. And so if there is a separate consciousness that's somewhere trapped inside you with no mouth, no eyes, no ears, the only way it has to communicate is by like controlling the arm. What if it's like trapped in there trying to tell you something? Maybe that's why it's trying to kill you because it wants to.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  Jerking off all the time. Who knows? Who knows what's in there? You got a gay consciousness that's trying to grab my dick all the time.

• 1:13:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe that's what the choking is about.

• 1:13:51Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:13:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's terrifying to think though, right?

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  Is it possible there's not just like a subconscious like feed that's getting put into your muscles that then is giving electrical impulse?

• 1:14:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's possible, but it just seems like a strange coincidence, doesn't it? That like, when you split the two hemispheres of the brain, you increase the probability of like people's limbs acting if they're in accord. You know, it seems to be, and we don't know exactly, but people who undergo these experiences have really interesting like examples of, of how like our philosophy can just completely shift or change based on the way people behave. I mean, your idea about theory of mind and what mind is and whether it's attached to the brain or whatever can be altered by the existence of split brain patients, because what if there are two people? Like in the philosophy of mind, a really important question is, it's called personal identity, like what makes you the same person you were five minutes ago? What is the actual connection?

• 1:14:44Speaker 05

  Like what's going on there? And one important question people ask is like, if I cut your brain in half and I take the two parts of the brain, I put them into new individual bodies and wake them up, like which one is you? And some people say, neither of them, in which case you've just died. That seems a little bit weird. Some people say, well, they're both you. But if they're both you now, then five minutes ago, they must have both been you as well. But like in one person. So it's like for the, for your whole life, you were two people living together. That doesn't seem quite right either.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  Have you seen the show Severance?

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  No, but I've, I've, I've, I've heard about it. I started watching the first.

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  Are you familiar with the premise of the show?

• 1:15:22Speaker 05

  No, I'm actually not really. So no spoilers.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  No, no, I'm not gonna give away, but the idea is, is that you could sever the brain in a way where when you go to work and you enter this space at work.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  You like don't remember or something?

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, you, you, you are you essentially, but you have limited knowledge of things in the outside world.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  You speak, you know, fluently. I think you have like some words you don't know, you don't understand like what Bermuda is or whatever, but like you are you, you kind of have the similar personality, but you have no connection to who you are in the outside world. So the idea is you could just go to work and then clock out.

• 1:15:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  And it sounds good on paper. You're a lot of people have shitty jobs. You're like, I'd like to, you know, for eight hours, not even think about how horrible my fucking job is. And then you leave. And the show is this interesting experiment because it's like, well, how much autonomy and agency do those people have at work? And then once they find out that there's a life outside of work that might be better and they don't have control of existing outside of it, do they fall in love? And what if that person decides to quit their job? They're dead if they quit their job. And yeah, I'm curious and like, how much rights you think those people would have? It still is you, but now they're a completely autonomous human being.

• 1:16:32Speaker 05

  The important question to me is whether that is the same person. And that's when you have to ask, what makes you the same person?

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  I don't want, I don't want to give away anything from the show, but let's continue, let's continue asking.

• 1:16:42Speaker 05

  Like what, literally what makes you the same person that you were when you were a child? Like, like.

• 1:16:46Speaker 03

  It's not collection of memories because your twin might have the exact same experiences.

• 1:16:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. And also you could have false memories. I could, I could take your memories and implant them in someone else and they wouldn't become you. It can't even be the physical matter that you're made out of because like your, the atoms in your body are constantly like replenishing and changing. And after enough time, it's like no physical part of you. So suppose for example.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  That's true. Like your skin isn't you because your skin replaces itself.

• 1:17:07Speaker 05

  Exactly. So like, they say that every seven years, every atom in your body replaces itself. I don't know if that's actually entirely true.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  But let's assume.

• 1:17:14Speaker 05

  But, but yeah, I mean, so, so say, say somehow I took, after seven years, I took all of the atoms, I managed to find all of the atoms that had been part of you, but floated off or changed. And I put them all together again.

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  I made another

• 1:17:25Speaker 05

  I made another version of you, like which one is you in the sense of being continuous with with yourself like 10 minutes ago? I mean, it kind of has to be you now because you've got this continuous

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:17:36Speaker 05

  But then this is the same atoms. This is like the same being. And like, it's actually kind of an impossible question to answer.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 05

  You know, which one, which one is you and which one would you, would you rather be? So say, for example, that like in 10 years from now, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take the atoms that make up you right now, the atoms that are in your body right now. I'm going to collect them in a jar and in 10 years from now, I'm going to reconstruct them next to wherever you are in 10 years and then I'm going to torture one of them. Which one do you want me to torture? Which one, which one do you choose?

• 1:18:07Speaker 03

  That's severance.

• 1:18:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Speaker 03

  Literally, I mean, not exactly, but, but to a certain extent, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 05

  Which one would you want?

• 1:18:13Speaker 03

  That motherfucker. Torture him.

• 1:18:15Speaker 05

  The, the atoms in a jar?

• 1:18:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 05

  Because that's you right now.

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:18:19Speaker 05

  So you're, so you make that decision.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:18:21Speaker 05

  And then like click my fingers and suddenly you're like next to your future self and you're like, wait, I've, I've messed up here.

• 1:18:28Speaker 03

  You know, it wouldn't be my future self because it didn't go through the experiences that I went through, right? Which made me who I am now.

• 1:18:34Speaker 05

  You would just suddenly wake up with all the memories you've got now.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Oh, you're saying in this?

• 1:18:37Speaker 05

  Because look, because look, all the atoms that make up you right now include your brain, include your memories and stuff, right? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  Oh, you recreate them at the exact same time and then let them live their own life?

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  I'm just taking whatever, whatever, whatever atom that you have in your body right now.

• 1:18:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Speaker 05

  I'm just going to like put them back together again in 10 years.

• 1:18:54Speaker 05

  Like exactly

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  But then they haven't went through what I went through over the 10 years.

• 1:18:56Speaker 05

  That's right, but it will for

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  And I have another thing with this.

• 1:18:59Speaker 05

  The experience will feel as if you're talking to me right now and then

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  As, as the exact same person.

• 1:19:04Speaker 05

  Suddenly click.

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 05

  You're now 10 years into the future.

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Speaker 05

  Because I'm just taking all of the atoms that you've got right now, as you are right now, and I'm just, I'm just putting them back together again in 10

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  But it would, they would be devoid of the experiences I had over the last decade.

• 1:19:15Speaker 05

  That's right. From, from the experience of that, that person that I create.

• 1:19:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  They would remember five seconds ago being sat here talking to me.

• 1:19:21Speaker 03

  This is severance, right? To a certain extent.

• 1:19:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, so that's the thing, right? It just feels like it just, it's just suddenly

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  And the reason why I would feel more agency is because, hey, I've had these last 10 years of memories, right? So I believe I should have more agency than you. I've lived my life, but

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  But, but, but, but.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  What if you had a debilitating neurological disorder that stripped you of your ability to create new memories? Dementia, Alzheimer's. Now you're not creating new memories. Now you don't have these experiences. So I can't say I have more agency than that body because we have the same amount of new memories.

• 1:19:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, say, say for example, like.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  I put more work in, bro.

• 1:20:03Speaker 05

  Suppose that like, suppose that you, I'm gonna like, take all of your memories and I'm gonna swap it with a guy over there. It's called Joe. And tomorrow, you're gonna wake up and you're gonna have all of Joe's memories. And Joe's gonna wake up and he's gonna have all of your memories. So you're gonna wake up tomorrow. You're gonna wake up tomorrow and you're literally gonna remember being, being Joe. Go to sleep, waking up and being like, what the flip? I've got this game stash.

• 1:20:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep talking about my mustache. I'm gonna think you're flirting. I am not your brother.

• 1:20:31Speaker 05

  You keep talking.

• 1:20:32Speaker 03

  You do not talk about me like that. Keep going, keep going. So who?

• 1:20:36Speaker 05

  Well, no, but it's more than just who are you? It's, again, because I'm a bit of a sadist here. I'm gonna torture one of these guys tomorrow.

• 1:20:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 05

  After you wake up.

• 1:20:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Speaker 05

  Which one do you want me to torture?

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  Which one has the bigger dick?

• 1:20:52Speaker 03

  Are you, are you subjectively still now working with your own body and perceptions, but with Joe's memories?

• 1:20:58Speaker 05

  That's right. So you would, you would wake up and like, literally like the, the physical being that you are, you're gonna, you're gonna wake up and you're just gonna remember being Joe. Likewise, Joe is gonna wake up and he's gonna remember sat here having this conversation with me. That's what he's gonna remember. Because intuitively to me, I'm like, well, I, I want Joe to be tortured tomorrow.

• 1:21:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:21:15Speaker 05

  Because like, I'm still me and even if I've got all of his memories, I'm still me. But there's this weird feeling that, okay. So, so I say, okay, I'm gonna torture Joe. Then tomorrow, Joe wakes up and he remembers last night making the decision that he was gonna be tortured. Do you know what I mean? Because he's got all of my memories. So he wakes up and he's like. Crap, like, I look, I look a lot like Joe now. And last night, what did I do? Oh, I, I told them to torture Joe. And now I'm Joe. And you'd feel like you'd totally messed up.

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  But you would remember why you'd said that, though.

• 1:21:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you, you would probably feel like you wanted to reverse that decision then, wouldn't you?

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  Afterwards.

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  You'd be like, hold on.

• 1:21:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, before, no, but afterwards, absolutely. And I'd rather experience the remnants of torture than experience torture.

• 1:21:59Speaker 05

  But if you know that you're about to regret a decision, doesn't that tell you the decision's wrong? If you're making a decision and you know for a fact that in one day's time, you're gonna go, damn, I wish I chose the other one.

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  Have you not been to a bachelor party? I don't know if you would regret.

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  I don't know if you would regret the, like, cause you don't have the memory of being experienced. Or, you don't, yeah, you don't have the, the, the memory of the torture.

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, but from your experience, this is the way it would, this is the way it would feel. Is you sat here having this conversation going, let's torture Joe tomorrow. Closing your eyes, waking up as Joe. And being like, crap, why did I tell him to torture me?

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Oh, I see.

• 1:22:34Speaker 05

  You know what I mean?

• 1:22:35Speaker 03

  But I think having the memory of the torture is better than.

• 1:22:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, because it's actually, it's actually Joe that wakes up with your memories. So you wake up with Joe's memories, but the continuity of experience goes from you sat on this chair to waking up as Joe about to be tortured. And you remember, you're like, I, five minutes ago, I was Alex. And I told them to torture me now. Why the hell did I do that? You know? And you'd probably wanna reverse that decision.

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00Speaker 05

  It's just like a bit of, it's a bit of a weird one.

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  Well, let's get back to the show. What makes you happy?

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  This? Yeah. What makes me happy?

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Speaker 03

  What was like the happiest moment you had in the last 12 months?

• 1:23:17Speaker 05

  I, I enjoy discussing theology with people.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  It, it, it brings you joy.

• 1:23:24Speaker 05

  I like debates and discussions about philosophy and theology. My, my, my happiest moments are spent sort of sparring with somebody in a way that a boxer might spar with an opponent, knowing that they're not really trying to kill each other, but they're essentially doing a kind of sport, which does have an undertone of genuine, like.

• 1:23:43Speaker 03

  Have you ever boxed before?

• 1:23:45Speaker 05

  Uh, no, only in a.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  It's not really enjoyable, dude. Sparring is not enjoyable. It's scary, it hurts.

• 1:23:52Speaker 05

  So why do it?

• 1:23:54Speaker 03

  Because you want to get better at something. And it gives you confidence knowing that like the things you practice, you can actually execute.

• 1:24:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's that's true philosophy too.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  But the act thereof, especially if you're losing, and a lot of times we're sparring against like better guys. It's it's costly.

• 1:24:10Speaker 05

  Certainly, some boxers like sparring. Yeah, there must be.

• 1:24:12Speaker 03

  Floyd, but the guy who Floyd is fighting is not like this is the best thing I've ever done in my entire life.

• 1:24:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's not like you enjoy it like you don't like enjoy getting punched in the face, but you enjoy the.

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  The thrill of being in the moment.

• 1:24:24Speaker 05

  The thrill of what you're doing, right? And it's a similar kind of thing.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  The stakes.

• 1:24:27Speaker 05

  With debate and discussion. Yeah, it's great. So I enjoy debates. I enjoy I enjoy discussions. I do think debates are a bit sort of useless. They're kind of just they're just theater. They are just like always compare them to boxing matches where.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Speaker 05

  A boxing match will tell you.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  People who have never boxed often do that. Comedians do that all the time. But like, it's just like boxing. And it's like.

• 1:24:42Speaker 05

  But what I mean, what I mean specifically is that like a boxing match tells you who's the better boxer, but it doesn't tell you who's the better fighter.

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  How so?

• 1:24:50Speaker 05

  Because like.

• 1:24:50Speaker 03

  Oh, do you find fighting is like I could grab a tool and.

• 1:24:53Speaker 05

  Exactly, right. So it's like you could you could outbox somebody because you're a professional boxer. But if you meet them in a bar and they just want and you just want to kill each other.

• 1:25:00Speaker 03

  Totally different scenario.

• 1:25:01Speaker 05

  It's a you you might have slightly like better predictive odds if they're better at boxing, but you don't know that for sure. And it's kind of the same thing with debate. It's like if you have a debate with someone, you're going to find out who's the better debater. Like Ben Shapiro can can crush someone in a debate.

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Speaker 05

  But like, is there actually any substance there? It doesn't mean he's a great thinker, you know?

• 1:25:17Speaker 03

  Maybe. I guess it depends on like what he's talking about.

• 1:25:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so it's not there's not an obvious link. So for me, a debate is essentially like theater.

• 1:25:25Speaker 03

  So you enjoy the stakes of of debate and you get to use the skills that you've worked on.

• 1:25:30Speaker 05

  It's like stand up, to be honest, more like boxing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're probably you're probably right. Yeah.

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, because stand up is really fun.

• 1:25:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Speaker 03

  When it's going well and when it's not going well yet.

• 1:25:38Speaker 05

  What's the worst? What's the worst experience you had? I've had so many.

• 1:25:42Speaker 03

  Infinite.

• 1:25:43Speaker 05

  Part of getting better is just bombing over and over again. His his learning curve is actually shorter than anyone else's I've ever seen. Mine was not. You ever done like a therapy, like rejection therapy sort of thing where you like bomb on purpose just to like toughen yourself up for it? I did that subconsciously. I was.

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  The reason I ask, the reason I ask is because like it so much focus on uh I don't think you're focusing on specifically yourself, but like breaking down like what is life, what is existence, what are the reasons for our behavior? What do they say? The, I think it was Chris Rock was like, um, you know, if ignorance is bliss, I'm the opposite of that. I'm constantly aware and acutely aware of everything I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And like, that's tough. And I imagine like, as you go through these thought experiments, you're definitely reflecting on your own life. And I wonder if there's a moment where like, yeah, you just go get drunk and you're like, I'm not even gonna worry about like, why I'm

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  This is true. It's like, like, I don't have an interesting answer to your question because I'm the same as anybody else. I enjoy spending time with my friends and my family and the people I care about. I enjoy listening to music. I enjoy watching TV. I listen to like sad boy indie music.

• 1:26:52Speaker 03

  It's not working out. No, but like, can you separate? Is there like, is there something? Can you turn it off? Yeah, not even like, yeah, yeah, maybe that is. Yeah, that's, that's the thing. Can you just like, let's say, um, and I'm sure you're able to do this, but like, when you're watching a movie, like if we're watching comedy, it's probably harder for us to turn it off, right? We're like more analyzing it, etc. And I imagine you're doing that with like life, human interaction and decision making. How do you, like, let's say you're talking to a girl at a bar and she starts talking about astrology. Like, can you indulge her as any guy would just meeting a new girl? Or do you have to be like, this girl's retarded? Like, there's nothing about mercury and retrograde and this is a

• 1:27:31Speaker 05

  I, I think that it doesn't make it any more difficult, like, having done philosophy. If you think astrology is bullshit, you think it's bullshit, right? And the, the reason why I, I probably wouldn't like entertain it, isn't because like, I'm a philosopher and I care about what's truth, but just because I don't, I don't like lying in the sense of like, if I know I'm not gonna get on with you. In two weeks, because we're gonna have this different way of viewing the world. Then I'd better just be upfront and be like, actually, I don't believe in any of that.

• 1:27:57Speaker 03

  So that's a deal, that's a deal breaker for you?

• 1:27:59Speaker 05

  It depends how they react to it, right?

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  Also how they look a little bit.

• 1:28:03Speaker 05

  That's also quite important. It's been real for a bit. If they sort of say like, oh, I'm really into astrology, and you're like, well, I think that's bullshit. And they're like, oh, cool. Yeah, I know. A lot of people think that way, but like, here's why I think it's true. Then, then cool, great, we're off to the races.

• 1:28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Speaker 05

  But if it's obviously like a sort of like, oh, you know.

• 1:28:17Speaker 03

  Is there a moment where like you find yourself specifically turning it off? Because it inhibits your joy for that?

• 1:28:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 03

  For that like a bachelor party or that birthday?

• 1:28:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:29Speaker 03

  Or are you analyzing like?

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  Well, it's funny, I don't tend to get invited to many, so I don't know. Jordan, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to gaslighting the party to Michael Jordan, but he, there was an interview with him at 50 where he's like, I, God gave me this gift, which was competitiveness, and I can't turn it off. Now I'm competing in fucking Sudoku or whatever, like, whatever thing he picks up, he is obsessively competitive and he's not that happy about it. He's like, this was awesome, but now I don't need it and I can't turn it off. Can you do that at a birthday party? Can you turn off that party that's like, what is a birthday even or whatever? You know what I mean? Like, not exactly, but in practice, yeah, like I, I'm.

• 1:29:06Speaker 03

  And what is this scenario? Like, is there a concert? Like, what makes you just cry and you're like, I'm not gonna analyze why I'm emotional right now? I'm just gonna let this happen and have this genuine human experience without thinking about it.

• 1:29:17Speaker 05

  I try very hard to allow experiences to be what they are. And I think more than most people who are interested in philosophy, I do kind of see through it a bit. Like, I think that a lot of the syllogistic reasoning and premise this and premise that.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  What's syllogistic reasoning?

• 1:29:35Speaker 05

  Syllogism is like a form of argument that goes premise, premise, conclusion. And like trying to formalize everything into those terms is just not how people like actually interact with the world.

• 1:29:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:45Speaker 05

  Like, and, and philosophy is not how people actually make big life decisions. I used to have this bit where I'd talk about a guy who's about, about to throw himself off a bridge. He's about to kill himself and someone comes up to him and he's like, what are you doing, man? Gosh, like, do you have a family? And the guy's like, oh, yeah, no, I suppose I do have a family, actually. And they care about you, right? It's like, yeah, you know, my wife, she doesn't even know I'm here. It's like, oh, goodness. And he's talking, he's like, you know, I've been in that situation. He starts sharing his experience and all of this kind of stuff. And then he's like, you've got a cross on your neck. Are you a Christian? He's like, yeah. He's like, well, you know, Jesus loves you, and I'm a follower of Christ, too. And talking him around, and he really, like, emotionally finally decides, like, okay, fine, I think I can. And he starts climbing back over the bridge. And then he suddenly remembers that, like, the fourteenth premise of the modal ontological argument fails because of some philosophical, like, logical fallacy. And so he throws himself off the bridge.

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how do you stop yourself from doing that?

• 1:30:31Speaker 05

  It's just like, it's just, but it's, you don't have to, because that's not how people think.

• 1:30:34Speaker 03

  That's not how you operate or anybody else does, right?

• 1:30:36Speaker 05

  If the moment is actually emotional enough like that. I mean, it can be interesting, like, if you, if you've had a music concert and you're, like, getting goosebumps, and instantly you're thinking, like, whoa. And you do think, like, isn't that an interesting evolutionary trait? Like, why do we get goosebumps, whatever? But you're still feeling the goosebumps, man. Like, it's not gonna, and you kind of don't want to switch it off, because you find it, you find it quite fun. Like, you're comedians, right?

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Speaker 05

  So I'm, so I'm told. And you, you, presumably, if I asked you something about, like, your love and your profession, like, do you ever turn off being funny? It's like, well, yeah, I mean, kind of, but like, not, not, it's not like I'm, I like, get home and like, okay, I'm gonna intentionally now turn off being funny.

• 1:31:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:31:11Speaker 05

  It's just, sometimes you're just not in the mood for it. You know, you're tired or whatever, you're not in the mood for it. And then you just, then you don't have to turn it off.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  But there are certain comedians that, yeah, you're like, I wish you would just turn it off. Because it seems like, and I'm sure we've, I'm sure we've done it even on the pod today, but like, you know, you're just trying to have maybe like a thoughtful conversation, and then if something organically becomes funny, you do it, but...

• 1:31:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, you haven't done that at all.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  No, no, no, not a single time. But, but, but meaning more like, maybe like, sometimes you're talking to someone, it's like, it just feels like they're waiting to say the bit, instead of like, actually listening to what you're saying and like, thinking about it.

• 1:31:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  And that is a balance on a comedy pod, for sure.

• 1:31:45Speaker 05

  There'll be times when you do turn off the comedy, and like, if you're at a funeral or something, you're not gonna start cracking jokes.

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  I've found, as I... Got guys I did comedy more got better at it got more acclaim at it. That part of me, the need of that validation is much quieter. So off stage, I don't feel the need to do it. And you can tell when someone wishes they could have done comedy or isn't where they want to be. And then they're really forcing that. And I get a little irritated, but I also have empathy and I'm like, oh, I probably like, we would go to diners early in our career. And make the biggest scenes and it's probably just we needed that attention because we weren't getting it.

• 1:32:16Speaker 05

  And there's the equivalent of that in philosophy when it's like, when you sort of say to somebody like, oh, hey, happy birthday, man. And they're like, birthdays are arbitrary, man, like.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Speaker 05

  So like, even if you actually think that like, yeah, okay, it shouldn't, you shouldn't like be sort of, you can tell when someone's like putting it, not, not even putting it on. But like, they're enjoying the fact that that's who they are, right? But the thing is, when you switch it off, like you're at a funeral, you're not cracking jokes. If, if like, you know, if, if the guy at the, at the front, if the priest or whatever looks at the coffin and says, you know, just looking at her now, you know, like in the coffin. It just, it just makes it so hard. You're not going to not think of the joke, you're not going to not find it, but you're just not going to say it, right? And, and so there are situations in which you turn it off in the sense where you decide, I'm not going to like, start talking about this. But it's still, it's still like there, obviously, it's still like, you're still thinking about.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  You can still process the motion in an authentic way without analyzing the motion.

• 1:33:04Speaker 05

  Like I'm interested in, in philosophy, right? But everybody does this, like you've, you've been at parties and you've suddenly are like, sort of like, man, what's everyone doing? Like you start thinking about like social interactions and how weird it looks like everybody does this, right? Like I'm not some like.

• 1:33:18Speaker 03

  I just, I, I, it's a very normal thing that people do. I feel like you probably just do it more. And then I'm wondering what the emotional cost of that is.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, that's the thing. I mean, it's got, it, it will have an emotional cost to do.

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  I'll give you an example, I have a daughter, right? And I love making her laugh. Definitely makes me feel good.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  And she's just awesome when I make her laugh. And, uh, but I have to remind myself that like, she might get just as much enjoyment of just walking around the house and like playing with things. And me just watching her and me just being around. And I have to constantly remind myself because I have this thing built in where it's like, oh, I'll feel good and they'll feel good if I'm providing some sort of laughter. So I'm like fighting my, my neediness or whatever it is. To just be a better dad, which is sometimes just like being there, supporting and observing. I have to fight it. And I'm out talking to my wife about it. I'm like, yeah, yeah. She and my wife's like, she had a great time and she was bouncing around in gymnastics. I was like, okay. All right. I wasn't like acting like an animal to make her laugh. I was just there supporting to make sure she didn't fall. But I have to work on that.

• 1:34:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:34:20Speaker 03

  Is that something that you you feel like you have to work at?

• 1:34:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  Have normal human interactions with someone who.

• 1:34:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, actually, it comes up a lot when somebody has like a moral dilemma.

• 1:34:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, they come, they really want to share something with you, get your advice.

• 1:34:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  And and you're taking through these thought experiments.

• 1:34:36Speaker 05

  It's like it comes, it kind of comes to mind, like. If somebody is going through something like a personal experience or they don't know what to do, and it can be very serious or something. And and you have just read like fifteen different papers on this. And there are there are thought experiments and there are ways, which actually genuinely could be quite in like, like useful ways to think through. But it just doesn't feel appropriate. But that is the equivalent of, you know, the meme about like. The girlfriend who sort of comes to you and says, I've got this problem. You're like, oh, well, here's how you solve it. And they're like, I don't, I don't want you to give me solutions. I just want you to listen to me. There's a lot of that going on.

• 1:35:09Speaker 03

  That's all humans.

• 1:35:10Speaker 05

  I saw a version of that. There was like a woman who was talking to a boyfriend and it was like on an online video where she's where she's sort of like, you know, I just feel like. She's got this headache all the time and like it just won't go away. And I feel like a lot of pressure and then it cuts out. She's got this like nail in her head. And the guy's like, well, you have got a, she have got a nail stuck into your head. And she's like, oh, you're always looking for solutions, aren't you? You just want to listen to how I feel.

• 1:35:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. But that's all people want, right, is to feel. Yeah.

• 1:35:37Speaker 04

  I asked a question sort of on that whole area. Do you, do you have a therapist or someone that you?

• 1:35:42Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  Like go towards, I imagine, once again, I don't want to over and let you or put you in a position where it's like, I don't know, but.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  I do in his name is Jesus.

• 1:35:52Speaker 04

  Okay, I was just, I was just wondering, do you have someone that you, like, if you have a moral dilemma, do you?

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  Find yourself or a dilemma or any problem in your life, do you find yourself having a hard time over intellectualizing it? And do you go to a therapist?

• 1:36:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I'm incredibly indecisive. I haven't done therapy like not, not, not consistently anyway. Think I probably should. I think everyone should. It's probably a good thing. In some ways, it might be a sort of a perversion of the Catholic confessional, though it's sort of like, you know, let's, let's take this thing, which is rightfully gods and give it to, to human beings. But honestly, this actually is more to the point that like, if I've got some kind of genuine like moral problem, if I've got like an issue with a friend or something like this. I am not gonna go to like my philosophy tutor. I'm gonna like speak to my friends. I'm gonna speak to my mom.

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:36:38Speaker 05

  Because there is something about not being caught up in all of that. Like Thomas Jefferson said, something like, if you've got a moral problem, he'd just as soon give it to the plowman as to the, the academic or the philosopher.

• 1:36:51Speaker 03

  Now you're going to Thomas Jefferson. Yeah.

• 1:36:55Speaker 05

  But you know what I mean? Because they're not gonna, they're not gonna get like.

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  Give us a moral problem. We're gonna help you out.

• 1:36:59Speaker 05

  In artificial, in artificial rules, you know?

• 1:37:01Speaker 03

  Tell us something you're going through.

• 1:37:04Speaker 03

  This is good. We're gonna de-philosophize you.

• 1:37:07Speaker 05

  You're gonna be, you're gonna be the therapist, right?

• 1:37:08Speaker 03

  No, we're gonna be your boys.

• 1:37:09Speaker 05

  Thing is, man, like, I think it's more fun to talk about the sort of weird, wacky, ridiculous, like ethical dilemmas.

• 1:37:17Speaker 03

  You don't like talking about yourself?

• 1:37:18Speaker 05

  No, because then when the real ones come up, like it's, it's, it's.

• 1:37:21Speaker 03

  Why don't you like talking about yourself?

• 1:37:22Speaker 05

  It's easier to work through them. Because I'm like quite uninteresting, you know, I'm, I am a, I am a.

• 1:37:26Speaker 03

  Ooh, now we're getting somewhere, bro.

• 1:37:29Speaker 05

  I am just a, I am just a mouthpiece for other people's ideas. That's what I do on the internet, you know?

• 1:37:34Speaker 03

  You think that reflects a low self-worth?

• 1:37:36Speaker 05

  I don't think so, because I think I know what I'm good at and I stick to it, you know? Like, I don't think.

• 1:37:41Speaker 03

  Would you be worth something if you weren't good at it?

• 1:37:44Speaker 05

  I don't know. I mean, I.

• 1:37:46Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 1:37:47Speaker 05

  Because, because I don't think that worth exists. I'm not an.

• 1:37:51Speaker 05

  Like kind of like no, but trivially no.

• 1:37:53Speaker 03

  So if worth doesn't exist, then you'd be worth just as much as anybody else?

• 1:37:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. That's the thing.

• 1:37:57Speaker 03

  And just as interesting?

• 1:37:59Speaker 05

  Well, maybe, but I mean, like.

• 1:38:01Speaker 03

  Depending on the thing, like clearly you're interesting to us, right?

• 1:38:04Speaker 05

  But the thing is, man, like, like. When I say that that's what I think I'm good at, or that's what I'm interesting, like, or that's what I can talk about. It's not like to doubt, because you say like, "Well, if you didn't have that interesting thing about you, would you still be interesting?" It's like, "Well, no." But in the same way, I could say, "If you weren't funny, would you still be funny?"

• 1:38:21Speaker 03

  Well, it depends who you're talking to, I guess. What I might find the most interesting thing about you is your hesitation to talk about yourself.

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:38:29Speaker 03

  Like, that's what I really want to know about.

• 1:38:31Speaker 05

  But, I mean, like, what do you want to know?

• 1:38:33Speaker 03

  I want to know the last, like, moral dilemma that you've been in.

• 1:38:35Speaker 05

  Well, genuinely, the reason why I hesitate to answer that is just because I struggle to remember exactly, like, the last time I had, like, a serious moral quandary.

• 1:38:46Speaker 03

  What about not serious? What about just, like, a disagreement you got into? Interpersonal conflict. Yeah. Your girl's mom was saying something annoying.

• 1:38:58Speaker 05

  Honestly, man, like, I don't know. You know, like, finish that. What was the last moral conflict you had?

• 1:39:04Speaker 03

  Don't put it on me! Don't you put it on me!

• 1:39:08Speaker 05

  I don't think I can remember. Oh, I think, I think, oh, I remember now. Yeah. So, I was booking a train up to, up to...

• 1:39:14Speaker 03

  It's all about trains, isn't it?

• 1:39:24Speaker 03

  No, talk to us. This is so good. I mean, there's so much analysis of the world.

• 1:39:28Speaker 05

  I was on a train once, and I saw a bunch of, like, workmen, like, on the tracks. And I posted a picture, because I was like, "Man, I have trained for this moment." I'm like, "I am so ready. You know who to call." I was getting on a train, or I was booking a train, and I thought to myself, I was trying to choose between which, like, class of seat.

• 1:39:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:39:45Speaker 05

  Because I wanted to get some work done. I was like, "Should I get the, like, the fancy first-class thing, where you get the space and stuff?"

• 1:39:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  And I was like, "It'd be like an extra, like, 100 or 200 bucks." And I'm thinking, "I could take that 200 bucks, and I could, like, donate it to charity. I could, like, deworm about 15 children somewhere else in the world."

• 1:40:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Speaker 05

  That's a moral dilemma.

• 1:40:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  And that's something that I do actually think about quite a lot.

• 1:40:08Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:09Speaker 03

  Is, in terms of spending money, how you could spend it more?

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  I think about it, and then I spend the money. You know, but I do think, I do think about it.

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  Sometimes that's all we need to be good people, is think about it.

• 1:40:19Speaker 05

  So, yeah, I mean, I really was just struggling to think of something, but that's an example, you know? I will think about that.

• 1:40:23Speaker 03

  Are you a good friend?

• 1:40:26Speaker 05

  I like to think of myself as one. In particular, I have a kind of, I guess I sort of have a philosophy of radical honesty. Like I genuinely, I can't stand when I'm like keeping something from someone.

• 1:40:38Speaker 03

  Does that make it hard to build friendships?

• 1:40:41Speaker 05

  It can do because it's sometimes it's like to a point of pedantry. Like if I feel like I've, I've, I've done something that I shouldn't or like, or something that I like, I will like volunteer this information to people that I care about.

• 1:40:51Speaker 03

  Sometimes selfish, right?

• 1:40:52Speaker 05

  And that's exactly, yeah, that is definitely sometimes selfish.

• 1:40:54Speaker 04

  He's pulling that lever every time.

• 1:40:59Speaker 03

  And maybe, maybe that's what's drawn you to philosophy because it's made you feel more normal. Right? Like.

• 1:41:07Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know.

• 1:41:08Speaker 03

  Maybe you're looking for justification for.

• 1:41:10Speaker 05

  I genuinely just find it interesting.

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, of course, you wouldn't, you wouldn't follow something that you wouldn't dedicate this time.

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  The kind of stuff that's like, like life applicable, stuff about like whether it's always wrong to lie or this kind of, I actually find really uninteresting.

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:41:22Speaker 05

  Like in my, in my personal life, that's the stuff that I, that I wrestle with the most, moments like that. Like, is it okay to lie in this circumstance? But like in like doing academic philosophy or whatever, it's the least interesting thing in the world to me.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  Whether, whether one should lie or shouldn't.

• 1:41:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. I want to talk about trained. It's probably just all autism, isn't it?

• 1:41:40Speaker 05

  Like it's trained and it's, it's like academic, like.

• 1:41:45Speaker 03

  You've dedicated so much time to your life to this and like, you're obviously an expert and masterful in debate and all this stuff and like, is there time? I find myself, even anytime I talk to a therapist, I find myself avoiding talking about myself. And, and I, I'm like, what, what am I doing?

• 1:42:01Speaker 05

  Why do you think that is?

• 1:42:02Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:42:03Speaker 05

  How's that you feel?

• 1:42:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I, I think you're, you're being condescending a little bit right now, but, but there is something that's like, what am I avoiding? Am I like, have I retrofit justifications for all my behaviors? And those are fine to me and it feels good enough. So I don't want to fix it. Or am I scared of what I might find and how that could like shatter my foundation? I don't know, but I find myself doing that. So, but I wonder if you've done so much analysis on the human condition and maybe really just your own and why you don't have like a strong feeling about a certain thing. So you're like, why is that normal? Cause I imagine you could indulge both sides in a lot of these arguments and that's normal for you. Where like the average person is like, you can't pull the lever. What are you, a psychopath? And you were probably made to feel pretty weird that you could indulge both sides. So you're like, I need to find justification for why I can do that.

• 1:42:48Speaker 05

  That's true. I also like, I spent a lot of time like. Like really, really thinking about this before, like really trying to get to know myself in a way like. Spent, spent a long time where I sort of took some time off of making YouTube videos and it's kind of, yeah, everyone has that moment where they're like, they're in the pits for a bit and they don't really know what they're doing and.

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  Like career wise, you didn't know?

• 1:43:09Speaker 05

  Like, like it just in my life, it was just like a bad, it was just like a bad time.

• 1:43:12Speaker 03

  How old were you?

• 1:43:13Speaker 05

  There was lots going on. I was probably like twenty, twenty-one, maybe something, something like that.

• 1:43:18Speaker 03

  Studying at this time?

• 1:43:18Speaker 05

  No, it was just afterwards. I can't, I can't remember the exact, the exact date or whatever, but like it was just like a period of, of just thought, just straight thought. I used to just sit at home and do nothing and I was smoking a lot of cannabis.

• 1:43:34Speaker 03

  That, that will induce thought, yeah.

• 1:43:35Speaker 05

  Just like, just thinking basically. And I would like wake up and I would like watch a TV show and I would, I would, I would, I would just think about it. And I was writing in my diary and that period in my life was this, with this essentially like a, a long period of realization of things that I think about the world. And it was a kind of psychoanalysis. It was a sort of like looking into myself and thinking, why do I think this? What's actually going on? And really, and that's why now I'm much more comfortable saying like, well, I think I have a philosophy of like radical honesty or whatever. Cause I realized that was something that I was doing. I didn't notice it before. So I have like been through, it's just that like right now.

• 1:44:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 05

  I, I don't know.

• 1:44:10Speaker 03

  You're not indulging in that way.

• 1:44:11Speaker 05

  That's something that I, that's something that I've done. That's something that I've explored and I think that maybe in five years I might need to do it again. It's like a little audit, a little philosophical audit, you know, every now and.

• 1:44:19Speaker 03

  You avoid, bro.

• 1:44:20Speaker 05

  But, but right now I'm, I'm really.

• 1:44:22Speaker 03

  You're gonna think about yourself once every five years?

• 1:44:25Speaker 05

  Well, to that level of depth, yeah. Because if you wanna do it properly, it can be soul crushing.

• 1:44:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:44:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  It can be soul crushing.

• 1:44:32Speaker 05

  Cause you, you have to, if you wanna do it, you gotta do it properly.

• 1:44:35Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, a lot of people probably avoid it.

• 1:44:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  And then what if there's societal benefit to kind of avoiding and finding other distractions? And I'm not trying to like make you religious or anything right now. I was raised with no religion, but like, I wonder if that's how some people cope with the potential nothingness of life and what is better?

• 1:44:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, cause a lot of people don't spend enough time thinking about it, like people who, who realize that they're gonna die or whatever. It's like, when was the last time you just stopped and thought? I'm talking like two hours straight, just thinking about the fact you're gonna die until like it clicks, until like you actually like. Recognize it. It's not just an abstract idea. Yeah, I remember like the first, the first time I ever seriously, I remember like being in, in my bed as a, as like a probably like a teenager or a child or something. The first time when I, I was, I thought about, you know, everyone knows that they're gonna die or stuff, but I just seem to remember this one time when I was thinking about death to, and for some reason it just clicked. It was like I got it. It was like the difference between like, you know, people often think about like how, oh, I'd love to be rich one day, right?

• 1:45:32Speaker 05

  And then you win the lottery and you're like, oh, and it's a different feeling. You're like, it's actually happening, right? And I had that kind of feeling.

• 1:45:39Speaker 03

  About death.

• 1:45:40Speaker 05

  About death when I was a teenager.

• 1:45:41Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:45:42Speaker 05

  And I was just like, oh, like I'm, and I was, I was just like overcome with, with sort of, it like shuttered, you know, like the shiver down the spine and everything. I was just like, whoa. Like I suddenly realized what it actually meant to, to, to think that you're gonna, that you're gonna die one day. And even now, like we're talking about death, we're having a discussion about it, but none of us are seriously like clocking it right now.

• 1:45:59Speaker 03

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:46:00Speaker 05

  You have to, you have to seriously sit with it for like a long time and really think about what it means.

• 1:46:05Speaker 03

  Some shit on Instagram, like the amount of time you'll see your parents again.

• 1:46:09Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  Have you seen this?

• 1:46:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you can work it out.

• 1:46:12Speaker 03

  Somebody calculated, it's like.

• 1:46:13Speaker 05

  I think it was Jordan Peterson, who's definitely talked about this. He was like, if I see my grandparents once every two months or something and they're this age, how many, I'm gonna see them 14 more times ever, you know?

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  Shockingly low.

• 1:46:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:46:25Speaker 04

  Have you ever dabbled with like psychedelics?

• 1:46:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:46:28Speaker 04

  And has that changed your thought process or anything like that?

• 1:46:31Speaker 05

  I think yes. I mean, it's, it's hard to say because like my experience with psychedelics came around the time in one's life when they tend to sort of grow up a bit anyway and start like changing the way they see the world. So I'm not sure if it was because of it or if it just coincided with it, but certainly like, literally like my enjoyment of art, for example, I mean, like literally the, the visual arts, like painting and stuff just did not exist.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:46:53Speaker 05

  It just wasn't a thing until.

• 1:46:55Speaker 04

  I feel that way now.

• 1:46:56Speaker 05

  I'd taken some drugs and not just psychedelics, but also cannabis. And it seemed to just open, it seemed to just open something, something up. And I'm not entirely sure what it did. But I think it did something. I think it shows you that your like mode of thinking is that the, the, the, the most interesting thing about taking a psychedelic drug is not what you see. It's the fact that you've seen it. It's the fact that you realize that your brain is so usually. On like guide rails that you didn't know existed. And suddenly you're sort of out of it and now you're back and you can remember how it felt. And it's very sober, you know, it's not like waking up from being drunk and being like, oh man, what happened? That was crazy. Oh, I was so stupid. I said that thing and I didn't mean that. Like you remember and you're like, no, I saw this thing and that's what I felt and I still, I can still like, I can still account for that.

• 1:47:42Speaker 05

  So I was thinking at various times, it depends on the experience. Sometimes it was just like a very emotional experience with like a friend. But other times it's like, I'm thinking about stuff and I start having like realizations. And, and that, that stuff like does stay with you, you know?

• 1:47:56Speaker 04

  Have you ever done ayahuasca?

• 1:47:58Speaker 05

  Never ayahuasca, no.

• 1:47:59Speaker 04

  It's like a lot of people, well, some people take it and they say they see God or now they believe in a higher power or something like that. I'd be curious if.

• 1:48:07Speaker 05

  Have you heard of that kid? Is his name Josh Basset, the Disney star kid? I think he's the guy who became a Christian. He told the story, I think it was ayahuasca where like he's, he's this Disney kid and he went to one of these places and you have to like go somewhere and you're with all the people and there's all the shamans and stuff and you're like out in the rainforest or something. And like, he starts tripping, I guess, and he looks around and he just sees everyone as demons. He sees demons on their faces and he's like, what the hell is going on? So he gets up, he's like, I need to get out of here. And the woman tries to like stop him from going. It's like, you can't, you've got, you've got to stay in here. And he looks at her and just sees a demon. And he's like, and so he like pushes past her and runs outside and he looks up to the sky and he's like, you've got to be fucking kidding me. Cause he looks up and he just like sees Jesus. And he's like, oh, you know, you can't imagine like, like seriously? Like, oh my God.

• 1:48:52Speaker 05

  Oh, come on. This is two on the, that's what happened. And he saw Jesus and now he's a Christian. And it's weird because for people who've done psychedelics, I don't know if you've all done psychedelics before. I don't know how. Yeah, dabbles and mushrooms, but. You ever had any, you ever had like a serious visual? Um, no. So you know how people say like, oh, like dude, I did psychedelics and like, you know, like I saw a chameleon or something? Yeah, yeah. It's not like you're literally seeing like a chameleon run into the room and climb up. It's hard to explain. The best explanation I've ever found of what I experienced at least was, you know how like, when you see something that looks a little bit like a face, but it's not really a face? Yeah. And the human tendency to see faces in things. Yeah. Okay. So when I look at like. You know, two drainpipes and a line underneath. Right. Oh, I saw a face. Yeah. I don't literally think I saw an actual face in the wall.

• 1:49:37Speaker 05

  What I'm trying to say is for some reason, that presented itself to me as a face. Yeah. That was what a lot of the psychedelic visuals were a bit like. Hmm. Like, when I see a chameleon on a tree, I meant to see the tree, in some sense, for some reason, like, presented itself as a chameleon to me. But I wasn't, I was under no confusion about what I was actually seeing.

• 1:49:53Speaker 03

  I felt the same way, like, doing mushrooms, seeing trees move.

• 1:49:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Speaker 03

  It was less the visual of seeing the trees moving and more the feeling that the trees moving made sense.

• 1:50:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, and they're like breathing and shifting.

• 1:50:03Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that I wasn't concerned about it. And that I wasn't like, it's less like, for me at least, psychedelics was less the visual, but it's more the feeling that the visuals made complete sense.

• 1:50:13Speaker 05

  I had the feeling of bliss and like, being thankful to God and then thinking, oh, the closer I get to God, the more I feel this, just generally.

• 1:50:21Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:21Speaker 05

  And then I looked in a mirror, we were at Mercer Labs, which is like this visual place, there's like this wall of mirrors or whatever. I looked into a mirror one time and I was really tripping and I saw myself aging into like a 70-year-old, 80-year-old man.

• 1:50:33Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:50:33Speaker 05

  It was insane.

• 1:50:34Speaker 03

  That's dope.

• 1:50:34Speaker 05

  Like, I saw, my eyes already kind of sunk in, it sunk in more, I saw more grays, I saw more wrinkles.

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  That's wild.

• 1:50:39Speaker 05

  And I remember taking from that, I was like, oh, you're tired, you're not taking good enough care of yourself. This was like six months ago, I'm with Jordan Chal and then, and I was like, I need to take better care of myself.

• 1:50:48Speaker 03

  But it wouldn't be the same as seeing a filter of yourself as an old man, right? Like, if you saw a filter of yourself as an old man.

• 1:50:53Speaker 05

  The Snapchat thing that made you an old man, it wasn't that.

• 1:50:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:50:56Speaker 05

  Crisp, but it wasn't far from it. You like, see it in yourself, right? Oh, yeah, you're looking at a mirror and the mirror's looking at a 70-year-old me. It's funny, I had a similar experience on a drug called 2CB. Yeah. Where I looked into a mirror and I had the exact opposite, where I saw myself as a child. Hmm. I literally like, just saw, and again, it wasn't like I suddenly shrunk, but I just, it's like, sometimes you catch yourself in the mirror and you, and you, and you realize you're the same person, you kind of see your features and how it all resembles. And it was like, it was kind of like that.

• 1:51:22Speaker 03

  You look like the kid from Adolescence.

• 1:51:27Speaker 03

  So what happens? You see yourself as a kid, this innocent kid.

• 1:51:30Speaker 05

  Oh, and I was just sort of like, I think it was just this realization that I'm the same person.

• 1:51:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:34Speaker 05

  So like, I remember like, seeing myself as a kid, and as a kid, like, you know, everyone, everyone goes through a lot as a kid, you're working out the world and stuff, and I kind of, you're kind of just looking at this kid, and it was almost like I could, I couldn't actually communicate with the kid, but it's like I wanted to.

• 1:51:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:48Speaker 05

  Sort of want to look at the kid and be like, it's okay, man, it's gonna be alright.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:51Speaker 05

  Chill.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  So cool. You're gonna figure this shit out.

• 1:51:53Speaker 05

  Very sort of therapeutic moment, but then, I remember just before that, I'd looked in the mirror, and I can't remember this very well, but I'm sure that I like, I looked into the mirror, which you're kind of not supposed to do, and it was like, it can go wrong, but I was like, I was looking at my hair or something, and then I looked down at my eyes, and I saw like a delay, like I looked down at my eyes, and then I saw in the mirror, my eyes come down.

• 1:52:13Speaker 03

  Have you tried MDMA?

• 1:52:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:52:15Speaker 03

  And was it a similar experience? Because when I did MDMA, I did sort of the overanalyzing thing the entire time. Anytime I've ever done any illicit substance, I keep a ledger.

• 1:52:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, you gotta like, write it down.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  I write down the experience as it unfolds, like moment by moment, so I can reflect on it, and then make an assessment if I want to do it again.

• 1:52:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's wise.

• 1:52:32Speaker 03

  What did you find, this is in the Hamptons? Yeah, basically every time I do Molly, I like, keep a ledger. And what did you say? And Mexico City had this, I was talking about, because I was the only one sober. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I just like, check in every like, hour or two. I remember you were like, I feel good, but I can get the same feeling from X, Y, and Z, and I was like, well, you're taken. These guys are having way more fun. Yeah. Well, you gotta follow me in two hours from that moment, because I'd changed my tune. But there's a perfect example of like, that like, hyper-analysis of that moment might restrict the joy, which.

• 1:53:02Speaker 05

  It does and doesn't, it's tricky.

• 1:53:03Speaker 04

  To give you a ton of credit, when we've done Molly together, I was overanalyzing at the beginning, and you said, hey, don't look for it, don't wait for it, like, it's gonna happen, just relax, enjoy, put sunglasses on, and whatever, and I had a way better time because of that. So it's interesting to see that, like, you're able to.

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  Is that life in a micro?

• 1:53:22Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, such is life. Like, stop, stop, overthink, like, it can be interesting, in the same way that you might be interested in drugs, because drugs are fascinating, right? Like, why does taking a tiny little pill or something have this crazy effect on your mental system? That's really interesting, right? But that is a separate kind of fun, the fun of like, looking into the brain chemistry, to the experience of the drug.

• 1:53:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:53:42Speaker 05

  That is a great analogy, you're right, for like, philosophy and life in general. Like, they're enjoyable for two different reasons, but you should not confuse them.

• 1:53:49Speaker 03

  And you should make enough time for both, probably.

• 1:53:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:53:52Speaker 03

  It's really fun to chew on the fat, I love it, but it's also, yeah.

• 1:53:55Speaker 05

  In the same way that you can, you can take MDMA and never be interested in the brain chemistry, but still have a good time.

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:54:01Speaker 05

  You can just like, live your life and still have a really good life by any philosopher's standard of what good means.

• 1:54:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:06Speaker 05

  Without ever like, realising that that's what you're doing, or thinking about it in that way. And I think that's kind of the aim.

• 1:54:10Speaker 03

  That is religion.

• 1:54:11Speaker 05

  Otherwise, you're doing the wrong thing.

• 1:54:13Speaker 03

  That's God, bro.

• 1:54:13Speaker 05

  Otherwise, you're, well, maybe, but God can make people do all kinds of different things.

• 1:54:18Speaker 03

  Smoking drugs. That's what I'm talking about, my boy.

• 1:54:23Speaker 03

  Before wrapping up, I would- No, no, we're not wrapping up, we're not wrapping up. The train, would you pull the lever? I don't know if we got that. Oh yeah, maybe we didn't have.

• 1:54:29Speaker 05

  I think I would probably, well, I don't know if I, because one thing we haven't actually pulled out here is the difference between what you should do and what you would do. Like, I think it's probably permissible to pull the lever, but would I actually do it? It's really difficult to imagine a circumstance in which you are actually certain that you know everything the lever's gonna do, because of course, in practice, like, you have no idea if it's gonna run down a different track and kill more people or whatever, so, like I said earlier, you've got to, in a thought experiment, you've got to assume that. But it's actually very difficult to, to do that, and so I don't know what I would do.

• 1:54:56Speaker 03

  But you should, you think.

• 1:54:57Speaker 05

  With certainty, but I think, I think I'd probably pull the lever.

• 1:55:00Speaker 03

  What about pushing the fat guy?

• 1:55:01Speaker 05

  No. Wouldn't do it. But I recognise that that is just that, in any of these circumstances, I'm just doing what I think feels right. You know? And there's something about like, you know, Michael Sandel has taken people who say, who are in my position, they said, "Okay, what if the fat man's walking across the bridge and you can pull a lever, and the lever like, opens a trap door, and then the man falls down, so you're still like, pulling a lever?"

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:23Speaker 05

  And you can just keep making the situations more and more similar to point out that there's an inconsistency, but I'm happy to just admit that, yeah, I'm, I'm not being rationally inconsistent, because I'm not being rational. Like, I'm an emotivist, I'm just, I'm just feeling a particular way about these, about these trolley problems.

• 1:55:40Speaker 03

  All right, guys, if you enjoyed that episode with Alex O'Connor, you are in- Because we have a second episode coming and it's all about God. Not my God, your cracker ass gods. We're talking about if Jesus was the Messiah, if he was actually John the Baptist. He talks about Joseph Smith and Mormonism and he talks about our boy Wes Huff. It's a little Bible beef going on. What does he really think of Wes Huff and his arguments? I think he thinks they ain't shit. Check it out.

• 1:56:07Speaker 01

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