Joe Rogan Experience #1068 - Michael Shermer

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Four, three, two, one.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      Four, three, two, one. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Shermer. And Heavens on Earth.

   2. MSMichael Shermer0:10

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia. Did you find-

   4. MSMichael Shermer0:15

      L- ... anything? (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      (laughs)

   6. MSMichael Shermer0:17

      No. (laughs) Sorry.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      (laughs)

   8. MSMichael Shermer0:18

      Nothing? Well, I found interesting, uh, journeys that people use to try to get there, from both the religious perspective and the scientific perspective. Um, so I do deal with, uh, the monotheism's versions of the afterlife and heaven, you know, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but the core of the book is, you know, the radical life extensionists, the cryonicists, trans-humanists-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:38

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MSMichael Shermer0:38

       ... the extropians, the mind uploaders, the people that take all the supplements and all, all the, the whole range there. I find it incredibly interesting. I call it afterlife for atheists, you know?

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       It is, right?

   12. MSMichael Shermer0:50

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       I mean, when, when you think about some of the people that are really, like, over the top hope... Did you go to that 2045 thing in New York a few years back? There was a futurist convention with all these people that, for whatever reason, they have this arbitrary date of 2045.

   14. MSMichael Shermer1:04

       Yes.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:04

       They decided-

   16. MSMichael Shermer1:05

       Like you s- It's been getting pushed back. This is the-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:07

       (laughs)

   18. MSMichael Shermer1:07

       ... when the singularity come-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:08

       Yeah.

   20. MSMichael Shermer1:08

       ... is gonna co... Was 2030, then 2040, now 2045, um-

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       Yeah.

   22. MSMichael Shermer1:13

       Y-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       Kurzweil is a-

   24. MSMichael Shermer1:14

       Ray Kurzweil, yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       ... big... He's like the, the Grand Poobah-

   26. MSMichael Shermer1:18

       He is. No, a- a- and, uh-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       ... of the download your brain.

   28. MSMichael Shermer1:20

       And when he gets on stage, now he's not preternaturally dynamic like a preacher, but he starts talking about, you know, "We're gonna h- You are gonna live forever, you're gonna have your mind uploaded." And people are just like, "Oh my God, we are the generation that's gonna do it."

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:34

       Hmm.

   30. MSMichael Shermer1:34

       "This is it, first time." And the moment, you know, I used to be religious when, in my youth, and I thought, "Man, this is like being back in church again."
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm. …

   1. MSMichael Shermer15:00

      this, uh, scientist, uh, named Dr. James Whinnery worked for the United States Air Force working with pilots, accelerating them in a centrifuge and they would black out. It was part of their training. You know, 2Gs, 3Gs, 4Gs, boom, out you go at, at some point, like, 10Gs. And most of them have these little dreamlet states that he called them, which are kind of like, "I s- I, I, I saw a tunnel, a white light at the end of the tunnel. I felt myself floating out of the seat," and having these sort of weird experiences. And we kn- know exactly what that is. You know, the, the, the blood is being compressed to the center of the body, including the center of the brain. The last thing to go is your brain stem, of course, to keep you alive. So the cortex is shutting down from the outside in. That would create this kind of tunneling effect on the back of your skull where your visual cortex is. That would create some of that. Uh, open brain surgeries, these are on, um, epileptic patients where they cut them open, uh, and they poke around to see where the seizures are starting, um, and, and so they could, you know, zap those neurons instead of some big crude, uh, attack. A- and anyway, so while they're doing that, they get permission from the patient to wake them up while they're under, uh, and the brain is open and they tap around with electrodes. So, this is one way to map what the brain is doing if, you know, "So what do you report when I tap here?" "Oh, I just had a vision of my tenth birthday," or whatever, and it's like, "Okay, that's where that, that's stored, right there." (laughs) Well, there's another spot right on the, um, the temporal lobes just above your ears where you can tap it and the person says, "Oh, I'm floating out of my body. I'm up by the ceiling now." And you tap a little to the left, "Oh, my left leg is up. My right leg is up. My, my left arm is floating. My right arm is floating. I'm way up here now. Now I'm coming back down," just by, you know, with a rheostat just controlling how much electricity is going into the neurons in that one particular spot. So, we know for sure that the near-death experiences are in the brain. You know, the experiences that the people report are real. They have an experience. Um, but we know it's neurologically based. Now, the counterargument is yes, of course you have to have your brain to have experiences, but it's kind of like a doors of perception opening into this other realm-

   2. JRJoe Rogan17:02

      Mm.

   3. MSMichael Shermer17:02

      ... that these chemicals allow you to do. It's like, it was... A- and by the way, I've been talking with Graham Hancock about ayahuasca.

   4. JRJoe Rogan17:09

      Mm.

   5. MSMichael Shermer17:09

      He's invited me to come join him in, uh, Arrhythmia in Costa Rica to try this. You know, I've never tried this and I'm tempted to go do this, to say, "Okay, let's, if I'm gonna write about these things, I should, you know, experience it." And, but there's a debate amongst people who do this that, you know, is it strictly just in your head and you're not actually going anywhere, or does it open some door to some other dimension? Okay, that's kind of the... And, um, a- and so the near-death experience believers counter that, "Well, yes, it's in your brain, but it still is taking you somewhere else." The problem is is that how you tell the difference between I had a personal experience that the only way you can share it is if you actually go through it yourself. For a sci- scientific community that studies it, well, there has to be some way to test it somehow or tell the difference between that. So for example-

   6. JRJoe Rogan17:57

      Isn't that the limitations of the scientific method, though?

   7. MSMichael Shermer18:00

      Yes, yes, it is.

   8. JRJoe Rogan18:00

      Because when you're dealing with consciousness and you're dealing with memories and dreams and ideas, like, you can't measure those either.

   9. MSMichael Shermer18:07

      That's right. So, um, I, I quote, uh, two other sources. Uh, so first of all, I discuss the most famous example is Eben Alexander's, uh, Trip to Heaven. He wrote a book called Proof of Heaven. Now, this is a Harvard-trained neurologist. He knows more about the brain than I do, and so he knows all the research I'm talking to you about, and there's a lot more. So, but for him, it was so powerful and, okay, what's it like? So he talks about it in his book. You know, he was in a coma in, in a hospital. Okay, so he takes this trip and the colors were unbelievably intense and rich and I felt just deep...... personal love for the people I saw and, and oneness with the cosmos, and all... You know, he goes on and on about this. So then I quote from Oliver Sacks's memoir when he talks about in the '60s when he was dropping acid and, you know, the colors were incredibly intense and I had this incredible feeling of love and connect and... And I quote from Sam Harris's, the opening pages of Waking Up. You know, I took ecstasy and I'm sitting there on the couch with my buddy and all of a sudden I feel this intense love for my friend. In other words, you know, the narratives are indistinguishable to an outsider.

   10. JRJoe Rogan19:09

       Hmm.

   11. MSMichael Shermer19:10

       So how do you know that you're actually going to heaven or you're just having a fantastic trip?

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:14

       Well, it's entirely possible it's both.

   13. MSMichael Shermer19:17

       Well, so how do we know? So this is-

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:19

       Yeah, we don't know. The... I think the real problem is people saying that they know.

   15. MSMichael Shermer19:23

       Right. Right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan19:23

       Saying that "I know that I was in another dimension."

   17. MSMichael Shermer19:26

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan19:26

       You know? I mean, it's entirely possible that your consciousness is capable of going through these chemical doorways that are created by these molecules and that it, it, it experiences some frequency on the s- on the dial, like if there's a radio dial. Maybe we're at 95.5-

   19. MSMichael Shermer19:44

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan19:45

       ... but you can get to 97 if you take, you know, X amount of-

   21. MSMichael Shermer19:48

       Right. Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan19:48

       ... milligrams of dimethyltryptamine, and then you go to this new place. You know-

   23. MSMichael Shermer19:52

       But this is a-

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:52

       ... but you're still physically here.

   25. MSMichael Shermer19:54

       You know, Aldous Huxley's book, The Doors of Perception-

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:56

       Yes.

   27. MSMichael Shermer19:57

       ... which supposedly is where the doors got their name but no. It's a-

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:00

       Oh, really?

   29. MSMichael Shermer20:00

       Somebody told me that, that's, that, that's a meme, that that's not true, but I don't know. Anyway, but that's the idea. Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:05

       Sounds good.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Right. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Qumran is where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls.

   2. MSMichael Shermer30:02

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:02

      It's the oldest version of the Bible, the only one that's written in, in... I think it's the only one that's written in Aramaic.

   4. MSMichael Shermer30:08

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:08

      They, they actually had to do DNA tests because the, the Qumran Scrolls were written on animal skins. So they had to do DNA tests on the skins to-

   6. MSMichael Shermer30:17

      Oh, wow.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:18

      ... so the- when they could match up the pieces to the right animal.

   8. MSMichael Shermer30:22

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:23

      So they had to match up the pieces of the, the scroll when they were trying to piece it all together like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.

   10. MSMichael Shermer30:29

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:30

       It took them forever to do.

   12. MSMichael Shermer30:31

       Right. I do remember a controversy from a few years ago of the, the Dead Sea Scrolls Committee, whoever controls them, were not very forthcoming about, uh, what they were finding and letting-

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:42

       Yeah.

   14. MSMichael Shermer30:42

       ... and letting outsiders look at the originals.

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       Yeah, there's some wacky stuff in there, apparently.

   16. MSMichael Shermer30:47

       Yeah, and also, you know, intellectual groups like that, they tend to circle the wagons and, you know, "We're the elite special, uh-"

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:52

       Yeah.

   18. MSMichael Shermer30:52

       "... experts and you can't look at these things." And-

   19. JRJoe Rogan30:54

       I think there's that, but I think there's also, like, if you're gonna go by the, the way Christianity is set up, those stories...... are, this is what everything's based on.

   20. MSMichael Shermer31:05

       Right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:05

       Adam and Eve.

   22. MSMichael Shermer31:06

       Right.

   23. JRJoe Rogan31:06

       You know, Moses, Joseph, all these different characters.

   24. MSMichael Shermer31:10

       Right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       Th- those stories are completely different, apparently, in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And there's a lot of wacky stuff.

   26. MSMichael Shermer31:14

       They're very good, yes. Right.

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       Things coming from the sky, like alien-type stuff.

   28. MSMichael Shermer31:18

       Right, right.

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:18

       And weird shit.

   30. MSMichael Shermer31:19

       Yeah, right.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Right. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

   2. MSMichael Shermer45:00

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      ... that there's no thing, but there's never a thing.

   4. MSMichael Shermer45:03

      Right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      Right.

   6. MSMichael Shermer45:03

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:04

      But how do we ... Or why, why don't we just say we don't know? Why don't we speculate on the possibility of consciousness being some sort of ethereal thing or something that exists outside of the body, but we don't know. We really don't know, right?

   8. MSMichael Shermer45:22

      That's what I say. I, I conclude in ... you know, that I don't know-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:26

      Yeah.

   10. MSMichael Shermer45:26

       ... if there's an afterlife or not. In the, uh, very end of the book, we can come back to this later, I just say it doesn't really matter whether there's an afterlife or not 'cause we don't live in the afterlife. We live in this life.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:34

       Mm.

   12. MSMichael Shermer45:35

       So this is the time you gotta do whatever you gotta do. I call this Alvy's error. Uh, Alvy is Alvy Singer, Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:43

       Ah.

   14. MSMichael Shermer45:43

       Remember the scene early in the movie where he has a flashback as a young boy and as ... he's in this psychiatrist's office with his mom and, you know, "What's the problem?" "He won't do his homework." "He won't do your homework? Why won't you do your homework, Alvy?" He says, "The universe is expanding." And he says, "The universe is expanding?" He goes, "The universe is everything there is and if it's expanding, one day it's all gonna blow apart, so nothing really matters. I'm not gonna do my homework."

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:04

       (laughs)

   16. MSMichael Shermer46:05

       And his mother yells at him, "What does the universe got to do with this? We live in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is not expanding."

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:10

       (laughs)

   18. MSMichael Shermer46:11

       So that's my sorta take home message there, it ... We don't live in the afterlife.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:15

       Right.

   20. MSMichael Shermer46:16

       Uh, or, or before the universe or after the u- ... None of that matters. I mean, it's interesting to talk about, but we live in this life.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:22

       Yeah.

   22. MSMichael Shermer46:22

       So this is what really counts.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:23

       There are fascinating things to contemplate, but ultimately, you really, for practicality's sake, you really should be paying attention to life.

   24. MSMichael Shermer46:31

       Totally. I mean, this is what I tell Deepak all the time when he says, "Well, you know, Michael, this table is actually made of atoms that are mostly empty space and the quantum physicists blah, blah-"

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:39

       Accordin- according to Sean Carroll, that's not correct.

   26. MSMichael Shermer46:41

       Oh, is that right?

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:42

       Yeah. He explained that. Yeah.

   28. MSMichael Shermer46:43

       Oh, okay.

   29. JRJoe Rogan46:43

       This idea of empty space, he's like, "That's ... No. That's just a poor way of describing it."

   30. MSMichael Shermer46:48

       Oh, okay. All right.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:07:33

   That's if you make…

   1. MSMichael Shermer1:00:00

      this kind of clothes, but, you know, if you have, uh, as Nancy explains it, if you have a certain body type, which twins are gonna have almost the exact same body type, y- certain clothes are gonna look better on you and you're more likely to pick those, so by chance, you're more likely to get similar clothes. There's no genes for clothes, but something like that, body type or temperament, you know. If you have a certain kind of temperament, at least half of which is, is heritable, so you're more likely to choose certain professions or prefer certain h- hobbies or activities or pick spouses that are the kind of, you know, that would gel well with that temperament. So, this-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:33

      That's if you make good decisions, though.

   3. MSMichael Shermer1:00:35

      Well, yeah. There is the, that, that voli- there's the element of volition, the choices you make in life do diverge a little bit, so their twins are a little bit different, you know, from that. But-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

      Yeah.

   5. MSMichael Shermer1:00:44

      ... um, but, so a clone, you know, again, the moment you start leading separate lives, so why the copy o- of you is not gonna be you in heaven. And religions have the same problem. You know, if God is able to reconstruct your body i- in, like, like a transporter, uh, I got into the world of Star Trek when I was writing this book. It's like, oh my God, they have, it's, this whole webpage is devoted to, what does the transporter do? It's like, okay, first of all, you know there's no transporter, right? (laughs) We're just, this, this science fiction. It can be whatever it wants. You know, but is it copy and paste? They just copy you and reconstruct you on so- with atoms on the other side-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:01:15

      Or, is it cut and paste?

   7. MSMichael Shermer1:01:16

      ... or is it they, they actually move the atoms and, and, okay.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:19

      Yeah, reconstruct it.

   9. MSMichael Shermer1:01:20

      Anyway, it's, d- it's-

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:21

       (coughs)

   11. MSMichael Shermer1:01:22

       But it, it does get to the problem of identity. Well, what, what are you really? 'Cause it, you don't have to, it's not the, the, the matter, the material. It's really the pattern, which is why the singularity people focus on the cloud and uploading the mind, 'cause it's the information. But the information is always changing, and how does the point of view go with it? See, with the cryonics, I can at least imagine that if I'm frozen and woken up somehow a thousand years from now, that I'd wake up like, like people after surgery or sleep. I can't see how that would happen if you flip on the switch in the computer or in the cloud or whatever that I, I'd be there going, "Oh, here I am."

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:57

       Well, isn't there also the problem that-... every, what is it? Seven to 10 years, every cell in your body essentially-

   13. MSMichael Shermer1:02:03

       Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:03

       ... is being replaced.

   15. MSMichael Shermer1:02:04

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:04

       Except your neurons.

   17. MSMichael Shermer1:02:05

       There's, yeah, that, r- that's right. Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:08

       So, are we just our neurons?

   19. MSMichael Shermer1:02:09

       That's the idea. That, that, that's what the singularity will be like.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:12

       So you're not your nose job.

   21. MSMichael Shermer1:02:13

       That's right. Right.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:14

       You're, you're not your fake butt or your fake lips.

   23. MSMichael Shermer1:02:16

       Right. That's right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:16

       You're, you're neurons only.

   25. MSMichael Shermer1:02:18

       But even there, see, the transhumanists, they imagine this transitional stage where you start wearing contact lenses, say, that can call up the internet, and-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:25

       Yeah.

   27. MSMichael Shermer1:02:25

       ... and the moment I see you, Joe Rogan, the name pops up, your Wikipedia page pops up-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:29

       Yeah.

   29. MSMichael Shermer1:02:29

       ... and I, you know, now I have this information. So I'm not bionic, uh, but, uh, but I'm also not just human, I'm transhuman. Okay, so then, then who are you? Right? So these are the-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:38

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:21:57