Joe Rogan Experience #1221 - Jonathan Haidt

Joe Rogan 0:02 In four, three, two, one. Hello.

Jonathan Haidt 0:08 Hello, Joe.

Joe Rogan 0:09 Thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.

Jonathan Haidt 0:10 Oh, this is exciting. I, I don't think I've ever had a conversation as long as we're about to have.

Joe Rogan 0:14 (laughs) I've been listening to The Happiness Hypothesis over the last few days, and I really, really enjoy it. I'm, I'm really enjoying it. And it's really fascinating stuff, man. Um, but one thing I wanted to talk about, because we were talking about it right before we got started, was what's happening with Peter Boghossian-

Jonathan Haidt 0:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:27 ... at Portland State University.

Jonathan Haidt 0:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:29 For folks who don't know the story, he and, um, I forget, his two colleagues, uh, James-

Jonathan Haidt 0:35 Yeah, Helen Plethros, and ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:36 Helen Plethros and James Lindsay?

Jonathan Haidt 0:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:37 Yeah. They, uh, released these fake papers, um, on, uh, like, homoeroticism and rape culture in dog parks and just really preposterous-

Jonathan Haidt 0:48 Yeah, crazy stuff.

Joe Rogan 0:49 ... papers that are almost like an article from The Onion. And some of them, not only did they get peer reviewed and accepted into these journals, but they got lauded as being these amazing pieces of-

Jonathan Haidt 1:00 Yeah, one did. One got an award. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01 Yeah. (laughs) .

Jonathan Haidt 1:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:02 And now, he's getting in trouble.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:04 Yeah. And, um, we were just talking about it, and I just want- would love to know your thoughts as a professor. Like, what-

Jonathan Haidt 1:10 Oh, sure. Yeah. So, you know, for those who don't know, I guess most of your listeners probably do, but, uh, you know, it was called the grievance studies hoax.

Joe Rogan 1:18 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:18 Uh, because ... And, and you know, this is one of the big issues going on in the academy, which I hope we'll talk about, uh, is, um, you know, what does it take to have good scholarship? And, and the argument is that in some fields, as long as you hate the right things and use the right words, you'll get published. And that's not scholarship. That's activism. And so, these three, these three people who did this hoax, um, they were trying to show that that's the case. And so, they wrote these papers. One of them was actually a section of Mein Kampf-

Joe Rogan 1:45 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 1:45 ... and they just substituted in something about feminism for Nazism, something like that. And, um, I don't remember if that, that one actually got pub- ... I think it did. At any rate, the point is, they were trying to show that this is ... Some of these fields in the academy are not really about scholarship. They're just about showing that you hate the right things. They're activism. And so, uh, there's no way to break in within those closed worlds, so they did a time-honored thing. They did a hoax. They published ... They submitted these papers. They made up fake names, and, and a lot of them got accepted. And now, what's happening is that, uh, the univers- uh, Portland State University, which is, uh ... Only one of the three is at a, is a, is a professor. He's a assoc- uh, assistant professor, so he's not tenured. Um, you know, of course, uh, he has a lot of enemies, and, uh, of course, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But it looks like some of them wanted him investigated for violating the IRB, the Internal Review Board, because the claim is they fabricated data. Because one of the papers says, "I inspected the genitals of 10,000 dogs in the dog park."

Joe Rogan 2:45 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 2:45 You know, it's like, obviously absurd.

Joe Rogan 2:47 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 2:47 Uh, and he said, you know, "And 63% of the, uh, of the attempted humping ..." 'Cause the, the thing, the thing of the article was the, the idea that, you know, you go to a dog park and you see dogs humping each other, and they were interpreting this as rape, as doggy rape.

Joe Rogan 2:59 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 2:59 And so, he's got all these num- you know, fake numbers in there.

Joe Rogan 3:02 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 3:02 So, is that fraud?

Joe Rogan 3:03 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 3:03 Is that data fraud? And if you read ... So, I'm, I'm writing a letter, for a lot of us are now writing letters in support of, uh, of Boghossian.

Joe Rogan 3:10 Thank you for doing that.

Jonathan Haidt 3:11 Um, but if you read the, you know, they, they ... At his university, a committee was empaneled. And they looked at the literal definition of data fabrication, and it's possible that he does fall under that. But the point of, of, of this whole thing ... I mean, so, so it's not clear. I can't weigh in on whether or not-

Joe Rogan 3:28 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 3:28 ... technically, um, but, but, uh, these rules are put in place to prevent the corruption of the scientific record. And what he was doing was not going to corrupt the scientific record. It was done to correct it.

Joe Rogan 3:42 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 3:42 They were doing it to show that there's a huge problem, and then they were gonna unveil it. So, the question is, is the university going to interpret it, this in the worst possible way, in the narrowest possible way, and thereby make fools of themselves, look like laughingstocks? Um, or are they going to use some common sense and recognize this for what it was? It wasn't data fabrication. It wasn't a fraud.

Joe Rogan 4:02 Yeah. It was an expose.

Jonathan Haidt 4:03 That's right.

Joe Rogan 4:04 Yeah. And I, I hope that they come to their senses. And they do have a point, if I'm gonna be completely objective, uh, about data fabrication. I mean, technically. I mean, maybe they could've written that paper without saying that they actually tested-

Jonathan Haidt 4:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:18 ... 10,000 genitals of different dogs.

Jonathan Haidt 4:20 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:21 But what's really important, I think, is that they recognize that regular people are paying attention to this now, people that aren't involved in this very insulated world. And they're going, "This is crazy." Like, imagine if your children are going there-

Jonathan Haidt 4:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:35 ... and your children, children are, are being taught at, at this school that's willing to accept this kind of nonsense. Like, this ... What, what happened at Evergreen State University-

Jonathan Haidt 4:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:47 ... is another example of that.

Jonathan Haidt 4:48 That's right.

Joe Rogan 4:49 It's incredibly damaging to them as a university. I mean, their, their, uh, enrollment is significantly down.

Jonathan Haidt 4:56 Censorship is one way to deal with it. That's right.

Joe Rogan 4:57 Their funding is in real big trouble. I mean, they're, they're ... It's a real bad situation for them.

Jonathan Haidt 5:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:01 And if you talk to Bret Weinstein, it was a wonderful place-

Jonathan Haidt 5:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:05 ... just a few years ago when he was teaching there.

Jonathan Haidt 5:06 Yeah. That's right.

Joe Rogan 5:07 And it's gotten crazier and crazier on these campuses, to the point where nonsense is never being, is not being questioned at all. It's just being accepted as just some, some ... It's, it's almost like-... some religious dogma-

Jonathan Haidt 5:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:21 ... that you have to follow.

Jonathan Haidt 5:22 That's right. So, uh, the way... uh, and I think the way to make sense of all of this is you have to always look at what game is being played. So human beings evolved in small scale societies. Uh, we have all kinds of abilities to function in those small scale societies. One of those is religious worship. We're very good at making something sacred and circling around it. Another is war. We're very good at forming teams to fight the other side. And we love that so much we create sports and, you know, video game battles with team versus team. So there's all these different games you can play, and the truth-seeking game is a, is a really special one and a weird one, and we're not very good at it as individuals. And m- in my view, the genius of university is that it takes people and puts them together in ways where each person, each... like, scientists aren't these super rational creatures that are, you know, looking to disconfirm their own ideas. No, we're not looking. We wanna prove our ideas. We love our ideas. But a university puts us together in a way in which you are really motivated to d- to disprove my ideas, and I'm motivated to disprove yours. You put us together, we cancel out each other's confirmation biases. So the truth-seeking game is a very special game that can only be played in a very special institution with special norms. Okay, so we're doing this for, you know, my whole time in academia. I started grad school in 1987 at the University of Pennsylvania. And then just in the last few years, it's like some people are playing this really different game. And it's like if... you know, if I'm playing tennis and I hit the ball to you, like wa- uh, you know, we're in a seminar class.

Joe Rogan 6:53 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 6:53 I give you a question or I challenge you, and you come back, and we go back and forth. And in the process, we learn. So that's like, kinda like playing tennis. So I'm doing this and then suddenly, like, someone tackles me. Like, what? That- you don't do that in tennis. No, no, but they're playing football, you see. And in football, it's a much rougher game, and you're trying to destroy the other side. I mean, not really in football.

Joe Rogan 7:14 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 7:14 But I'm saying-

Joe Rogan 7:14 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 7:14 ... it's, you know, it's a, um... and so as norms of combat come in, and what I mean by that is political combat, uh, as some people i- within universities see that what we're doing here is not seeking truth, we're trying to fight fascism, or we're trying to defeat conservatism, or we're trying to fight racism, or whatever, some sort of, uh, political goal, and these games are completely incompatible. And so that's why this madness has erupted where you see professors saying something, maybe it's a little provocative. I mean, going back to Socrates, that was kind of the point was to provoke, um, and you see these bizarre reactions, emotional reactions, m- uh, uh, groups organize to demand that a professor be fired, because we're playing different games.

Joe Rogan 7:59 Yeah. How did this start?

Jonathan Haidt 8:01 How did it start? Um-

Joe Rogan 8:03 'Cause it seems like there, there has to be an event or something.

Jonathan Haidt 8:06 It's... yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:07 Or a, a trend.

Jonathan Haidt 8:08 Well, so, so the, you know, the book that, uh, um, the book that I just put out in September, uh, with Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind, um-

Joe Rogan 8:17 Yeah. I read the first chapter of that as well.

Jonathan Haidt 8:19 Okay. Well, thank you-

Joe Rogan 8:19 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 8:19 ... for admitting that it was only one chapter. Usually-

Joe Rogan 8:21 Well, I-

Jonathan Haidt 8:21 ... uh, you know, when you're-

Joe Rogan 8:22 ... I- I dove into that one, because, uh, the... uh, unfortunately, uh, I was, I was reading that and then I got on a flight and I just wanted to zone out, and so I listened to this one on tape.

Jonathan Haidt 8:31 Okay. All right. Well, I'll tell you all about it. Uh, but the key thing is that that book, The Coddling of the American Mind, was something that we wrote because Greg began observing this weird stuff happening in universities in 2014. It all starts in 2014. Um, most of your listeners have heard about safe spaces, microaggressions, bias response teams, trigger warnings, all that stuff. That stuff pr- didn't exist before 2014. It just begins creeping in then, and then it kinda blows up in 2015. And so our whole book is an exploration of why. Why did this happen? And so to your question about was there an event, our answer is, there are six different causal threads, there's like all these social trends, some going back to the '80s and '90s, that came together around 2014 so that students are a little different, and then there are certain forces acting on them that are different. And so you get this weird new game, you get this explosive mix, you get some students who are actually very drawn to grievance studies. Uh, and so, um, very briefly, like, the... it's things like, um, rising political polarization. So left and right never particularly liked each other, but in the '70s and '80s, if you look at surveys done of how much you hate people on the other side, it's not that intense. It begins going up in the, in the '80s, and then especially after 2000, it's gone up very steeply. Uh, at the same time, university faculty, who have always leaned left throughout the 20th century, uh, but it was only a lean, and in the '90s, it begins shifting much further left, so that now faculties, especially in the social sciences and humanities, are pretty purified. They're overwhelmingly on the left. So you have a more left-leaning university at a time when left-right hostility is getting more and more intense, and so any question that has a political valence, now there's a lot more people who want to do the football game, not the truth-seeking game-

Joe Rogan 10:24 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 10:24 ... but the we got to defeat the other side, don't give me nuance, don't give me data. We know what we believe, and damn it, we're gonna... you know.

Joe Rogan 10:31 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 10:31 So you got this, uh, changing political situation, and then you've got a couple of threads about what we've done to kids. So, um, uh, and I've got... this is a whole nother area of conversation for us, but we basically took away free play and gave them social media. The same- basically kids who were born in 1995 and after, Gen Z, they had really different childhoods, and they're not as prepared for conflict and, and college. We'll get into that later. But you put all these things together, you get kids who are much more anxious and fragile, much more depressed, um, coming onto campus at a time of much greater political activism, and now these grievance studies ideas about America's a matrix of oppression, and, and look at the world in terms of good versus evil, it's more appealing to them. And it's that minority of students, they're the ones who are initiating a lot of the movements.

Joe Rogan 11:21 It's such a strange time to be on the outside and watch this, because...... a person like myself has always counted on intellectuals and professors and people like yourself to sort of make sense of things. And to, uh, reinforce the idea that freedom of speech and free debate are critical aspects to knowledge. And one of the things that's most disturbing when you- you see in schools is people that are even marginally right-leaning or centrist-

Jonathan Haidt 11:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:51 ... being called Nazis-

Jonathan Haidt 11:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:53 ... and being silenced and they're pulling fire alarms when they're speaking. And even people like Christina Hoff Sommers, who's a, a feminist-

Jonathan Haidt 11:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:00 ... gets shouted down and, and people are yelling at her-

Jonathan Haidt 12:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:02 ... and calling her a fascist.

Jonathan Haidt 12:03 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:03 It's just very strange. It's very strange-

Jonathan Haidt 12:05 That's right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:06 ... to watch from the outside, and it's also very strange to not see any pushback by the professors.

Jonathan Haidt 12:10 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:10 So sitting here and seeing this happen and thinking, "But these poor kids, they're, they're gonna have to go into the workplace. They're gonna have to ... They, they ... Right now-"

Jonathan Haidt 12:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:18 "... they're in this very insulated environment. They're gonna escape that environment when they graduate-"

Jonathan Haidt 12:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:22 "... and then they're either gonna push this ideology, uh, into the workforce," which you do see now-

Jonathan Haidt 12:27 That's ex- exactly.

Joe Rogan 12:28 ... especially with tech companies.

Jonathan Haidt 12:28 In the last year.

Joe Rogan 12:29 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 12:30 That's right. That's right. No, that's right. It, I, I, I know it's strange to look at it from the outside. And believe me, it's stranger from the inside.

Joe Rogan 12:35 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 12:36 Um, but one thing I can say that, um, that might be helpful here is that from the outside, what you see is the news reports. And the news reports are going to be very selective. And so especially what happens is because, you know, universities have always leaned left and so the right-leaning media have always been suspicious. So the right-leaning media has huge coverage of every little thing. And sometimes it's, it's exaggerated. Sometimes it's misinterpreted. Um, but for the most time there was something there. Left-leaning media tends to ignore it. And so I go around the country and, you know, people on the right expect that, "Oh my god, it's chaos and mob violence on campus," which isn't true. That's an exaggeration. And the left is like, "Problem? What problem? There's nothing changing."

Joe Rogan 13:17 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 13:18 Um, and so I think the key thing to keep in mind here is that there's about 4,500 institutions of higher education in this country. Most of them are not selective schools. They'll take anyone who comes. Um, and in those schools not much is happening. Um, but if you go to the elite liberal arts colleges in the Northeast and the West Coast, then usually something is happening. And so, uh, at Heterodox Academy, it's a group that I co-founded of professors that are pushing back. It's bipartisan. We have as many people on the, on the left as on the right. Um, we created a map of where all the shout downs have taken place. And they're all right in the Northeast or along the Pacific Coast, like from, you know, Evergreen s- you know, down to, you know, Berkeley and all that. Uh, and then a couple in Chicago. So from, in most of the country, this stuff is not happening. Most schools, the culture hasn't really changed much. But at the top schools in general, it has. Um, so that's one thing to just keep in mind. There is a moral panic on the right about this, which doesn't mean that there's not something real. There really is a, a huge problem, but it's not as pervasive as it's sometimes made out to be.

Joe Rogan 14:19 So is it a- akin to looking at violence in the news media? Like, you, you're, when you read about violence in terms of robberies and murders, in general, you're not gonna encounter much in your life. The, the, the world is a large place.

Jonathan Haidt 14:33 (clears throat) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:33 But we concentrate on these really bad moments.

Jonathan Haidt 14:36 Yeah. It's a little bit like that, except that, um, you know, um, one of the reasons that we took child- ... we took free play away from kids is that we were afraid that they'd be abducted. And that almost ne- ... That was so rare. Uh, and, uh, but we got a lot of coverage of that in the '80s and '90s. And we changed our behavior because of that, and that was a gross overreaction. The situation on campuses is not like that. It's, it's, your odds of being nailed are much higher than that. Um, and so, you know, I hear every day, or at least every week I get an email from a professor who says, "You know, I, I, I used a metaphor in class and somebody reported me." And like-

Joe Rogan 15:12 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 15:12 ... you know? And so i- once this happens to you, you, you, you pull back. You change your teaching style. What we're seeing on campus is a spectacular collapse of trust between students and professors. And when we don't trust each other, uh, we can't, we can't do our job. We can't, we can't risk provoking, being provocative, raising new ideas-

Joe Rogan 15:33 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 15:33 ... raising uncomfortable ideas. We have to play it safe, and then everybody suffers.

Joe Rogan 15:37 Is social media partially to blame because-

Jonathan Haidt 15:39 Oh, my ... It's huge.

Joe Rogan 15:39 Huge. Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 15:40 Social media is a huge part of this problem. So, um, uh, in a couple ways. Um, so one is the generational thing, that we have, uh, um, uh, kids born after 1995 got this in middle school. It had a variety of effects on them. So kids coming in are more conversant with call-out culture, and so that's a big part of this. Um, the other thing, though, is that we used to have what you would call a reasonable person standard. So, uh, you know, so, um, you know, if a professor, uh ... What's one? Oh, so a professor just wrote to me recently. He said he, you know, he got frustrated while trying to explain something and he said, "Ugh, shoot me now." Um, and a student was offended by this because, "Are you making fun of people committing suicide?" And okay, you know, had she come to him and said, "You know, Professor, I know you didn't mean anything, but that was kind of insensitive." Okay. That would have been great. Like, that's the way to handle it. But for this generation raised with call-out culture and social media, you almost never hear of a student coming to someone else in private because you don't get credit for that.

Joe Rogan 16:41 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 16:41 So you only get credit when you call them out publicly.

Joe Rogan 16:44 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 16:44 And so that's why we're all walking on eggshells, 'cause most of our students are great. Most of them are fine. But if I have a class of 300 students, a lecture class, I know that some of them subscribe to this new call-out culture, safetyism morality. And so if I say one thing, it's not a reasonable person standard. It's a most sensitive person standard. I have to teach to the most sensitive person in the class.

Joe Rogan 17:06 It's also that person has the opportunity to score, right? They have-

Jonathan Haidt 17:10 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 17:10 They throw up that virtue flag, like, "I've got one on the board here. Look what I did. I nailed the professor on saying, 'Shoot me now.' And, uh, now I'm a hero."

Jonathan Haidt 17:18 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 17:18 "And I've made this a safer space for everybody else."

Jonathan Haidt 17:21 Yeah. Tha- that's right. And so, and so that's really what is messing us up at so many levels of society. And the fact that a lot of these problems, the, the m- difficulties of democracy, the rise of authoritarian populism, the ... There, there are a lot of weird trends that are happening in multiple countries, and I think it's the rise of, of devices and social media is the main way we can explain why it's so similar across countries.

Joe Rogan 17:44 Do you think that this is ...... a sh- is- is this some sort of a trend that will eventually correct itself when these kids get out into the real world and then go through a whole generation of that, and then people realize the error of their ways and the disastrous results of having-

Jonathan Haidt 17:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:58 ... these unprepared or emotionally unprepared kids?

Jonathan Haidt 18:01 Yeah. No, I'm-

Joe Rogan 18:02 No?

Jonathan Haidt 18:02 ... pretty confident that it will not correct itself. I think that o- once we understand it, I think there are a variety of things we can do to change it. But I think here's the way to understand it and why it's not gonna change itself. So, so I'm a, I'm a social psychologist, is my main, my main area. Um, but I, I love all of the social sciences. I love thinking about complex systems. And systems composed of people are really different from systems composed of stars or, or neutrons, or anything else. And so, um, if you have a complex system composed of people, these people are primarily working to increase their prestige. So I mean, once we have, our needs for, you know, food and things like that are set, we're, we're always interacting in ways to make ourselves look good, uh, and to protect ourselves from being nailed, you know, or accused of something. So we're always doing reputation management. Now, um, think about w- a- in any group, what gives you prestige? And so if you look in a group of teenagers, you might have a group, uh, in which it's athletics. And so if that's how you get prestige, then all the kids are gonna be working out and training and practicing, and that doesn't hurt anybody. That doesn't impose an external cost on anyone else. But you could have some really sick prestige economies. Uh, and so there's, uh, there's an ethnography about a Ph- uh, uh, um, a- an indigenous population in the Philippines, uh, by Sh- Shelly Rosaldo, is the anthropologist. I think it's called Knowledge and Passion, about the Ilongot, which is a name for a, a tribe in the Philippines. And in this tribe, it's a headhunting tribe. They, they find people and cut off their heads. Not just for fun, for prestige. So in a lot of societies, um, you have a lot of male initiation. Boys have to do something to become a man. And if the thing you have to do to become a man is you have to cut off someone's head-

Joe Rogan 19:50 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 19:51 ... okay, so that imposes rather a heavy cost on outsiders. All right? So this is a sick culture. This is not one where we can say, "Oh, well, that's just the way they do things." Okay?

Joe Rogan 20:00 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 20:00 This has to stop. Um, and e- ideally, they would cut off a stranger's head, like they find someone from another tribe or someone, you know, from, you know, a government agency. They'll just cut, cut off his head. Um, uh, but if, if necessary, if there's a fight or if there's somebody within their larger community, that can also get you points. So this is a really sick culture. Now, head, uh, now, um, call-out culture is not quite that bad, but it's the same logic. Okay? So if you have a group of teenagers or college students who are all struggling for prestige, as we all are, and if you get a subculture in which the way you get prestige is by calling someone out, showing that they're racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, whatever it is, if you can catch them, you get the points. What you're doing here is you are imposing an external cost on others. And that's what makes you so insufferable, because you are playing your game, but I'm paying the cost of your game. And so that, I think, it, it's hard to, people aren't gonna break out of that themselves. But once we understand what's happening, I think, in a sense, we can all come together and call out call-out culture and say, "Stop. Stop imposing these costs on us."

Joe Rogan 21:09 How, but how are we gonna reach those kids if professors are so terrified to speak out and to cause controversy in class and no one wants to criticize them? Because if you do, you risk your job.

Jonathan Haidt 21:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:19 You risk them organizing against you.

Jonathan Haidt 21:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:21 I mean, how does this shift?

Jonathan Haidt 21:23 So the, so I'm hopeful that we can shift it because most people hate it. So even the people who do it-

Joe Rogan 21:30 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 21:30 ... recognize that they're always on eggshells. They can be next. Um, there's the tendency of people in this culture to, you know, as we say, they eat their own.

Joe Rogan 21:38 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 21:38 They eventually turn on each other. Um, and the mental health costs of it, I mean, there are a number of essays that have been written by people who, who've sort of left that. And it sounds miserable to be inside it.

Joe Rogan 21:49 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 21:49 You're always, you're, you know, you, there's no humor. There's no fun. It's always, you know, hyper serious, angry.

Joe Rogan 21:56 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 21:56 Um, and so, um, so I think that, I think if we can, uh, if we can raise kids or encourage them to see the games that social media makes them do and give them a vocabulary. I don't know, we should come up with some catchy terms for it, but give them a vocabulary so they can s- they can, uh, like, "Oh, you're, you know, you're a calling-outter." I don't know. That's clunky.

Joe Rogan 22:16 Mm-hmm. Right, right, yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 22:16 But, you know, we, we can help them label this behavior as-

Joe Rogan 22:20 Mock it.

Jonathan Haidt 22:20 Yeah, mock it. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 22:21 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 22:22 That's right.

Joe Rogan 22:22 Yeah. There's patterns that you see in, in people that, uh, from a distance, like, uh, if I look at it, when I look at them objectively, there's, like, these, these patterns. So I go, "Oh, that's one of those MAGA guys."

Jonathan Haidt 22:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 22:34 "He's one of those, uh, you know, he's got an American flag with an eagle in his avatar on Twitter."

Jonathan Haidt 22:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 22:38 And if you go through his page, it's all, like, talking great about POTUS and criticizing anyone who talks about, about Trump. It's, it's strange. It's like these patterns of behavior, these predetermined patterns.

Jonathan Haidt 22:51 It's almost like there are stereotypes.

Joe Rogan 22:52 W- not just stereotypes, like, they've fallen into a well-oiled, slick groove that's very easy-

Jonathan Haidt 23:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:00 ... to predict. If, if you are one of those people, it's, it's super easy to predict that you're gonna be pro-Second Amendment.

Jonathan Haidt 23:07 Yep.

Joe Rogan 23:07 It's super easy to predict that you're probably gonna be skeptical about climate change. There's all these different things that go along with these patterns of behavior. And you see 'em on the right, you see 'em on the left, and the, the, it's, it's weird to watch. It's weird to watch on the outside. It's like, well, this is such a, an easy pattern to slip into.

Jonathan Haidt 23:26 Yeah. Well, that's right. Um, so, uh, there's data from the Pew surveys. They've been measuring attitudes of Americans since the '80s or '90s. Uh, but they've been publishing this series on polarization in which they show that in the '90s, if you knew somebody's attitude on, say, gun control, that would only predict their attitude on abortion a certain percent. And a lot of people on the left, let's say, would hold six of the 10 leftist attitudes, and same on the right. But gradually, by the time you get to around 2010-... it's like if you know one attitude, you know 'em all.

Joe Rogan 23:58 Mm.

Jonathan Haidt 23:58 And that's in part just because if you turn up the volume. So we evolved to do us versus them. And the more we see ... You know, if it's us, America, versus them, Communist Russia or Nazi Germany, well then, you know, then we all come together and that's great for social cohesion and trust. Um, but as that fades away, and as us versus them became increasingly Left versus Right, and as we lost the liberal Republicans and the conservative Democrats ... those used to exist-

Joe Rogan 24:25 Mm.

Jonathan Haidt 24:25 ... until the '80s or '90s. Um, as we lost them, once it becomes us versus them, as Left versus Right, now if you only hold your team's position on six out of 10 items, you're a traitor. And so you better get with the program. And so the pressures for conformity, the pressures to agree with your team on everything have been steadily rising. And that means there's no nuance, and we can't do higher education without nuance. We can't do college without free thinking and the ability to say, "Well, you know what? Wait a second. Maybe they do have a point on this, on this thing." And that's one of the reasons why it looks so weird from the outside, and why it's getting so unpleasant from the inside.

Joe Rogan 25:02 When you're teaching classes, uh, uh, and a, a subject comes up that may be controversial, d- do you, do you have, like, this overwhelming feeling that y- you're treading on dangerous ground?

Jonathan Haidt 25:18 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:19 Do you-

Jonathan Haidt 25:19 Yeah. So, um, I, I taught Psych 101 at the University of Virginia, and I would do all k- ... I would take them into, you know, sex differences, the origin of sex- sexual orientation. I would even do race differences. Um, and, uh, you know, because there was a reasonable person standard, and I trusted my students and they trusted me, and we had a great time and we covered a lot, a lot of stuff. Um, but now ... And then I moved to New York University in 2011, um, uh, when my last b- previous book, The Righteous Mind, came out. And it's not a- ... It's not about UVA versus NYU, it's just about the changing time. Um, now, uh, as I said, I have to teach to the most sensitive students, so I teach a course on business ethics, on professional responsibility, and we have a section on, um, uh, on discrimination and employment law, which is important to cover. We have to cover it. Uh, you know, MBA students have to know where the lines are, what the law is. Um, and yeah, I'm kinda scared when I teach that, uh, because, you know, I'd like to get into all sorts of things. Um, I'd like to get into, well, you know, what do numerical disparities mean? If there's a gender difference in, you know, in the percentage of tech, uh, uh, but not in the percentage of non-tech, uh, employees in Silicon Valley, w- what does that mean? I would like to talk about that. But if a single student thinks that I am denying the existence of sexism, they could be offended by that. And in every bathroom at NYU, there's a sign telling them how to report me anonymously, and they put these up in 2016 in response to student requests.

Joe Rogan 26:47 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 26:47 Um, and it means that all professors are on notice that they can be reported anonymously at any moment.

Joe Rogan 26:52 By children.

Jonathan Haidt 26:53 Well, these are ... Well-

Joe Rogan 26:54 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 26:55 ... uh, uh, I'm not gonna call them children. I mean, my students are MBA students.

Joe Rogan 26:58 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 26:58 But, uh ... But the undergrads, yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:59 Barely-

Jonathan Haidt 26:59 They're 17, 17 to 21 year olds-

Joe Rogan 27:01 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 27:01 ... for the undergrads. Yes, that's right.

Joe Rogan 27:02 Barely not children anymore.

Jonathan Haidt 27:04 That's right.

Joe Rogan 27:04 And there's an incentive to this, this ... what we were talking about before, this, th- e- uh, this incentive that gives them attention. They get prestige, they get value from it, and this, th- this culture encourages these things.

Jonathan Haidt 27:18 Mm-hmm. That's right. And this is a terrible lesson to teach them, um, so, you know, the subtitle of our book is called The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. And so these microaggression reporting systems ... That's basically what it is, um, a microaggression reporting system ha- uh, has a good intention behind it. Um, there are cases of professors who make ethnic jokes. Okay, they should stop doing that. I mean, maybe that was okay 30 years ago. You know, there are, there are, there are legitimate complaints and-

Joe Rogan 27:49 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 27:49 ... and, and faculty do ... There should be some accountability, some responsibility. So there's a good intention behind it, but it's usually based on no empirical evidence. And because it's based on pressure applied to a bureaucracy, not by a committee thinking, "Hmm, how can we improve the climate for everyone?" No, no, it's like, "We make these demands and we demand 10 things," and the administration says, "Okay, we'll give you five of them." Um, um, th- there's not thought put into, "What would happen if we give the students an East German-style anonymous reporting system, and so everybody's on notice that they can be reported at any point? What might happen to the social dynamics?" Like, nobody thought that through.

Joe Rogan 28:25 Mm.

Jonathan Haidt 28:25 Um, so the net e- eh, the net effect, again, is the spectacular collapse of trust on campus.

Joe Rogan 28:31 God, to be in the middle of that has gotta be so bizarre, th- having taught for so many years-

Jonathan Haidt 28:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:36 ... before that, and to watch almost like this virus-

Jonathan Haidt 28:39 Mm.

Joe Rogan 28:39 ... overtake the institutions.

Jonathan Haidt 28:41 That's what it felt like, um, and that's why ... So, uh, you know, Greg Lukianoff came to me in 2014 ... So Greg ... I'll just t- briefly tell the story of the book. Um, Greg is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, um, he at FIRE. And they defend free speech rights on campus, and they were always, um, pushing back against administrators who would say, "Oh, you know, we need a free speech zone," and they were always afraid of liability. And so ... But sudden- uh, suddenly in 2014, Greg starts seeing students pushing back on, on speech rights, saying, "We want ... You know, ban that speaker. Do you know ... Uh, uh, uh, we need a, you know, safe space if a debate is gonna be held." Um, n- new stuff, weird stuff. And Greg, who is prone to depression, um, he had a suicidal depression in 2007. He's hospitalized. When he gets out of the hospital, he learns CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and in that you learn these, like, 15 or so cognitive distortions like catastrophizing, um, um, over-generalizing, Black and white thinking. So Greg learns to not do those himself, and then he goes back to work at FIRE. And then in 2014, he sees students saying, "Oh, if, you know, if Christina Hoff Sommers comes to campus, you know, people will die or they'll be, you know, people will be, um, harmed, injured." Um, and so there's this, uh, this n- new way of thinking, and Greg thinks, "Wow!... how are students learning to do this? Like, are, are we teaching them on campus to think in these distorted ways? And if we are, isn't that gonna make them depressed? So, Greg comes to talk to me in May of 2014 to tell me this idea, a- and I think it's really brilliant. I think it's a great idea, 'cause I'd begun to see this, you know, the safe spaces, the microaggressions, the trigger warning requests. Um, so we, we wrote up our, our essay, uh, submitted it to The Atlantic. It came out in August of 2015, and it was like we were just seeing the first outbreaks of a, of a virus. And then in the fall of 2015, it, it, it becomes an epidemic. And so many of your listeners will have s- heard of or seen the videos of what happened at Yale, um, in, in au- in, uh, November of 2015 when Erika Christakis wrote an email saying that, "Wait a second. Yale is telling you how to do your Halloween costumes. Maybe we should think this through ourselves. Maybe you're old enough to make your own decisions." Some students get very upset. They protest. They bring demands to the president. They were screaming at her husband. Uh, so it was then, when that protest was successful, when, uh, the president of Yale basically said, you know, "We, we're wrong. You're right. We validate your narrative. We'll give you as much as we can of your demands," um, when, when that happened, then the protest went national. And so throughout 2016, you have, um, you have groups of students making these demands, demanding microaggression reporting systems. So that's when NYU put in its systems, its microaggression reporting systems.

Joe Rogan 31:31 So that Yale event wasn't just an isolated incident. It really was the spark.

Jonathan Haidt 31:36 I think so. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:37 Wow.

Jonathan Haidt 31:37 Yeah. So there's all these tr- threads coming together. It didn't come out of nowhere. All these things are happening. It's almost like the, you know, the whole, the whole room is, like, almost at combustion temperature, and then Yale was the spark that sent it national.

Joe Rogan 31:49 What's crazy about Yale is anybody that's objective that's watching from the outside is like, "These students are out of control. They're screaming at this professor." Like, "This is supposed to be a safe place, and-"

Jonathan Haidt 31:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:58 ... you know, "You fucked this up." And they, they're, they're being incredibly hostile and aggressive towards him and surrounding him.

Jonathan Haidt 32:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 32:05 And when, when you watch that from the outside, you think, "Well, obviously they've gotta punish these, these students."

Jonathan Haidt 32:11 Right. But no.

Joe Rogan 32:11 I mean, they, they, they did the opposite.

Jonathan Haidt 32:13 Yeah. That's right. The main-

Joe Rogan 32:15 That doesn't make sense.

Jonathan Haidt 32:15 That's... Well, well, it doesn't make sense from the outside, but again, you have to look at the-

Joe Rogan 32:18 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 32:18 ... different games being played. So, um, so I went to Yale. I graduated from there in 1985. I loved it. I was in Davenport College. It's one of the 12 residential colleges. And there were a lot of intellectual events that would happen in the colleges. Like, the master of the college or the dean of the college would bring in all kinds of people to speak. So they were intellectual spaces as well as sort of home-like, or not exactly home-like. Like transitional places where, they were, they were places that you lived. (clears throat) So the Yale that I knew was a place that taught me to think in lots of different ways, and it just was constantly blowing my mind. Like when I took my first economics course, it was like, "Wow, here's a new pair of, of spectacles that I can put on." And suddenly, I see all these, you know, prices and supply and, like, I never, I never s- learned to think that way.

Joe Rogan 33:06 Mm.

Jonathan Haidt 33:06 Or I learned about Freud in psychology or sociology. So a good education is one that lets you look at our complicated world through multiple perspectives, and that makes you smart. That's what a liberal arts education should do. But what I see increasingly happening, especially at elite schools, is the dominance of a single story. And that single story is life is a battle between good people and evil people, um, or rather good groups and evil groups, um, and, uh, it's a zero-sum game. And so if the bad groups have more, it's 'cause they took it from the, the good groups. And so the point of everything is to fight the bad groups, bring them down, create equality, um, and this is a terrible way to think in a free society. I mean, that might have worked, you know, in Biblical days when you got the Moabites killing the Jebusites or whatever. Um, but, you know, we, we live in an era in which we've discovered that, that the pie can be grown a million-fold. And so to teach students to see society as a zero-sum competition between groups is primitive and destructive.

Joe Rogan 34:17 Now, in your book, you, you actually identify the moment where these microaggressions sort of made their appearance, and they were initially a racist thing?

Jonathan Haidt 34:27 (clicks tongue) So yeah, so the idea of a microaggression, (clears throat) it goes back to, um... I forget the schol- It's an African American sociologist in the '70s first coined the term. But it really becomes popular in a 2007 article, uh, by Derald Wing Sue at Teachers College. And so he talks about this concept of microaggressions, and there are two things that are good about the concept that are useful. And so one is, as racism, as explicit racism has clearly gone down, by any measure, explicit racism has plummeted, uh, in America and across the West, um, but, you know, there could still be subtle or veiled, uh, racist claims. So perfectly legitimate point.

Joe Rogan 35:07 How do you define the difference between explicit racism and...

Jonathan Haidt 35:09 Well, explicit racism is, you know, calling someone a racial slur, or, "I hate you because X."

Joe Rogan 35:14 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 35:14 Um, but-

Joe Rogan 35:14 And they're identified because of they've been reported as crimes, or...

Jonathan Haidt 35:18 Well, I would just say that, um, f- if you are a member of a culture, you can tell when someone is saying something to insult, to put down, or to express hostility.

Joe Rogan 35:28 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 35:29 And that's something, a judgment we can make.

Joe Rogan 35:30 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 35:31 And as that's become socially unacceptable in most circles, so explicit racism is way, way down.

Joe Rogan 35:37 Right, but how... uh, I'm, I'm sorry, but my, the, my only question is how are they measuring this?

Jonathan Haidt 35:42 Um, that... Well, how do you measure microaggressions?

Joe Rogan 35:45 Well, how do you measure even explicit racism?

Jonathan Haidt 35:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:48 How, how do you say it's down?

Jonathan Haidt 35:49 (clicks tongue) Um, certainly attitude measures. So there are... so surveys done in private. Uh, um, how would you feel if a, you know, if a, if a Black family moved in next door, if a Filipino family-

Joe Rogan 36:00 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 36:00 ... moved in. So how would you feel if your child married a, you know, a Jew, a Muslim?

Joe Rogan 36:04 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 36:04 So explicit surveys show it. Um, certainly, um, I mean if, if, when you do surveys of people's experience, right? Um, uh, uh, people of, of race, of every race, when they report how often this happens to them every year, the numbers are actually fairly low. So, uh, there are ways of measuring experiences of racism.

Joe Rogan 36:23 Right. Um, how accurate are these? 'Cause like, first of all, (smacks lips) I used to have a joke about this, but the idea is that the problem with surveys is you're only getting information peop- from people so stupid they take surveys. Like, who's taking surveys?

Jonathan Haidt 36:35 Um, so some surveys are subject to that. But-

Joe Rogan 36:38 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 36:38 ... in general, if you, if you approach a question from multiple perspectives, and say in one condition you pay them for an accurate answer or not-

Joe Rogan 36:47 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 36:47 ... or in one condition they're anonymous or they're not. Um, so you can get a sense of how much the answer moves around depending on external conditions. Um, and so anyway, the, the point I just wanted to make is that, um, the acceptability of using the N-word or other things, you know, if a bunch of White people are talking, the acceptability of using the N-word I think has gone way down in general. Would you agree with that?

Joe Rogan 37:08 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 37:08 Okay.

Joe Rogan 37:08 Yes. And tremendously. I mean, I, I, I, I agree with the, the sentiment and I agree with the, um, the trend-

Jonathan Haidt 37:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:16 ... that there is absolutely a trend, uh, away from racism. But I was just curious as how they measured it.

Jonathan Haidt 37:22 Yeah. I'm not an expert in that area, so I'm assuming it's surveys and analysis of discourse.

Joe Rogan 37:27 It's, uh, ultimately, for everyone's sake, I mean, even for the sake of the people that are in- embroiled in all this controversy and chaos, it would be fantastic across the board if there was no more sexism-

Jonathan Haidt 37:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:39 ... there was no more racism, there was no more any of these things.

Jonathan Haidt 37:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:42 I mean, it would be wonderful. Then we could just start treating humans as just humans. Like, this is just who you are.

Jonathan Haidt 37:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:51 You're just a person. No one cares.

Jonathan Haidt 37:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:53 That would be ... What a wonderful world we would live in if this was no longer an issue at all.

Jonathan Haidt 37:58 Beautifully put.

Joe Rogan 37:58 But how does that get ... How does that ever get-

Jonathan Haidt 38:00 Okay.

Joe Rogan 38:00 ... through?

Jonathan Haidt 38:01 So we were getting there.

Joe Rogan 38:02 We're getting there.

Jonathan Haidt 38:02 I mean, that's what the 20 ... No. I mean, that's what the 20th century was about. So you and I are shaped by ... I don't know how old you are, but I'm, I'm-

Joe Rogan 38:09 51.

Jonathan Haidt 38:09 Okay. I'm 55. Um, we were shaped by the late 20th century. And the late 20th century was a time in America in which, you know, earlier on, there was all kinds of prejudice. I mean, when I was ... So when I was born, just right before you were born, it was legal to say, "You can't eat here 'cause you're Black." And so, you know, that changed in 1964, '65. Um, but, um, it used to be that we had legal differentiations by race. And then those were knocked down, but we still had social. And it used to be that if you were gay, there was something humiliating that had to be hidden. And you, you know ... I mean, th- so if you look at where we were in 1960 or '63 when I was born, and then you look at where we got by 2000, I mean, the progress is fantastic on-

Joe Rogan 38:51 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 38:51 ... every front. So, that's all I mean when I say we were moving in that direction. And to your point about, you know, wouldn't it be great if there was none of this, we just treated people like people? Okay. Yeah. That was the 20th century idea, is let's, let's get past these tribal identifications. And what is so alarming to me now is that on campus, it began on campus, but it's spreading elsewhere. There ... And again, it's not everywhere on campus. It's mostly in the grievance studies departments.

Joe Rogan 39:18 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 39:18 Um, they're teaching students the opposite. They're teaching students, "Don't treat everyone like a person. People are their identities. And you can tell some of the identities by looking at people, and so you know if they're good or bad." This, I think, is the opposite of progress.

Joe Rogan 39:33 Well, it's, it's also the differences between us are really fascinating. Uh, the, the differences between men and women, I think, are some of the more interesting explanations for human behavior.

Jonathan Haidt 39:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 39:47 And, and, and, and, uh, and, and not meaning that people must be defined by their gender-

Jonathan Haidt 39:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:53 ... defined by their sex and their d- But it is interesting when you look at these gigantic groups, like why certain people tend to gravitate towards certain occupations-

Jonathan Haidt 40:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:02 ... or certain types of behavior or certain hobbies. It is really fascinating.

Jonathan Haidt 40:06 Yeah. That's right. And if we were playing the truth-seeking game, if all we cared about-

Joe Rogan 40:09 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 40:09 ... is trying to understand things, we would do the research and we'd figure out what do people like. You know, and do left-handers versus right-handers have different preferences? Probably not, as far as I know. Do boys and girls have different preferences? Yeah, they're really big. Uh, do men and women have different ... Do they enjoy different things? Yeah. Um, so we could take that and we could say, "Our goal is to create a free society." This is, this is what the word liberal traditionally meant. A society in which people are free to construct a life that they want to live.

Joe Rogan 40:37 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 40:37 And so if you're born one race or another, that should not in any way be a limitation. And in the 20th century, we made a lot of progress towards that ideal. Same thing for sex.

Joe Rogan 40:45 But, but you keep saying we did.

Jonathan Haidt 40:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:47 Meaning that you, you're implying that it ended, that the progress hit a wall.

Jonathan Haidt 40:52 Um, yeah. I shouldn't imply that, because overall, I think the trends are unstoppable.

Joe Rogan 40:57 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 40:57 So I don't want to say that things are reversing.

Joe Rogan 40:58 Yeah. I agree. But you feel like there's a slowdown or an error-

Jonathan Haidt 41:02 On campus, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:02 ... a glitch.

Jonathan Haidt 41:03 Yeah. I think that ... So, um, so in chapter three of The Coddling, um, Greg and I look at identity politics. And one thing we really try to do is there's all these loaded terms. And, you know, s- if, if somebody says social justice warrior, okay, you know a lot about them if they said that. Like, they're gonna come at it and say, "Oh, those SJWs." And-

Joe Rogan 41:21 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 41:21 And we don't do any of that. We, we say, um, um, there are people on campus who are very focused on identity issues and on injustices based on identity. And that's great. And there's a lot to be concerned about and, and they're right to do that. Now, how do they do it? And there's two different ways. You can either do what we call common enemy identity politics, which is where you say, "Life is a battle between good groups and evil groups. Let's divide people by, you know, by race." So, so it's basically s- you know, straight versus everyone else, men versus all the other genders, um, and, uh, White versus everybody else. And so you look at, you know, the straight White men, they're the problem. All the other groups must unite to fight the straight White men. So, that's-

Joe Rogan 42:04 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 42:04 ... one of the core ideas of intersectionality. And so what we say in the book is-... that leads to eternal conflict. Much better is to, is an identity politics based on common humanity. So we don't say, "Oh, you know, to hell with identity politics." We say, "You have to have identity politics until you have perfect justice and equality. You have to have a way for groups to organize, to push back on things, to demand just ... That's fine." But if you do it by first emphasizing common humanity, that's what Martin Luther King did, that's what Pauli Murray did, that's what Nelson Mandela did. This ... So it w- uh, uh, this w- wonderful woman, Pauli Murray, she was a, a gay, Black, um, possibly trans, uh, civil rights leader, uh, in beginning of the '40s. She says, "When my, uh, you know, when my opponents, uh, draw a small circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. I shall shout for the rights of all mankind." And this is, again, what Martin Luther King did. He's relentlessly-

Joe Rogan 42:57 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 42:57 ... appealing to our White brothers and sisters. He's using the language of America, of Christianity. Start by saying what we have in common, and then people's hearts are open, we're within a community, now we can talk about our difficulties. So, it's the c- the rise of common enemy identity politics on campus, in the grievance studies departments especially, that I think is an alarming trend.

Joe Rogan 43:21 Another thing that's alarming to me is the redefining of terms like sexism and racism. Um, where sexism against men is impossible, racism against White people's impossible.

Jonathan Haidt 43:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:31 There's redefining as these prejudices only exist if you're coming from a position of power. That's really weird.

Jonathan Haidt 43:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:39 And it also, i- i- it opens up the door to treating people as an other. Literally, the people that are the victims of racism are now using racism against other people-

Jonathan Haidt 43:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:52 ... and feeling justified because of it. And i- and having a bunch of people that will agree with them, that this is in fact not racism, and this is pushing back on White privilege and saying all these-

Jonathan Haidt 44:03 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 44:03 ... different, weird things that ... You know, and, and they feel really comfortable in saying-

Jonathan Haidt 44:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:08 ... these open, racist, generalizing things about White people or about White men, or about, you know, fill in the blank, but whatever group-

Jonathan Haidt 44:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:18 ... that you're, you're attacking. And it's, it's really strange. It's really strange to see.

Jonathan Haidt 44:22 Yeah. But again, it makes sense if you look at the different games.

Joe Rogan 44:24 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 44:24 So if you're on a university and you think you're playing the truth game, and philosophers are great at this, they're always unpacking terms. And so you might try to define racism or, or any sort of ISM and y- a common sense view would be an expression of hostility or, or resentment-

Joe Rogan 44:40 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 44:40 ... or limitation on a group based on their identity. Um, but that's if you're playing the truth seeking game. If you're playing the, the politics game or the warfare game, um, you wanna define the terms to give your side maximum advantage. So there's a wonderful social psychologist named Phil Tetlock at Penn, at Wharton, and, and he talks about these different mindsets we get into, and one of them he calls the intuitive prosecutor. So if, if I'm ... If my goal as a scholar is to prosecute my enemies and maximally convict them, and I am always trying to defend, you know, seven different identity groups against the straight, White men, they're the, the, they're the accused, I want to define my terms to make it maximally easy to convict. And so I'm going to say, "Racism and, uh, you know, microaggressions, it doesn't matter what the intent was, all that matters is the impact. All that matters is what the person felt." That way, as long as someone's offended, I get to charge you with a crime.

Joe Rogan 45:37 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 45:38 So, uh, and also on racism, um, you can say, as, as, you know, a lot of kids are learning in high school the- these days, "Racism is prejudice plus power." So by definition, a Black person or a gay person or whatever, any, you know, cannot be racist or whatever other term, because they don't have power, regardless of their social class. So-

Joe Rogan 45:58 This is actually being taught?

Jonathan Haidt 46:00 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:01 The- So the professors are ... This is coming-

Jonathan Haidt 46:03 Um-

Joe Rogan 46:03 ... out of their mouth? Teachers are saying this?

Jonathan Haidt 46:04 Well, this is ... So, uh, this is taught in a number of high schools. Uh, my, uh, nephews went to Andover. Uh, they learned this.

Joe Rogan 46:11 That's an offensive thing-

Jonathan Haidt 46:13 Yes, it's deeply offensive, and-

Joe Rogan 46:13 ... to be teaching children-

Jonathan Haidt 46:14 And it's not just that it's offensive and obviously hypocritical, it's that it's crippling.

Joe Rogan 46:19 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 46:19 I mean, can you imagine ... Can you ... So look, you've got, you've got kids, right? You have two-

Joe Rogan 46:23 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 46:23 ... two daughters now?

Joe Rogan 46:23 Three.

Jonathan Haidt 46:24 Okay. So you have three daughters. Can you imagine giving your daughters a cloak of invulnerability-

Joe Rogan 46:29 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 46:29 ... where you say, "You put this on. Now, you get to attack others, but no one can touch you."

Joe Rogan 46:36 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 46:36 Like, this is gonna warp their development. Power corrupts, and even moral or rhetorical power corrupts as well.

Joe Rogan 46:42 Yeah, but how is this being taught though? I mean, how, how is this being justified?

Jonathan Haidt 46:45 Because the g- yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:45 How is this accepted as a part of a curriculum?

Jonathan Haidt 46:48 So, um, because the goal is not truth, the goal is victory over racism, let's say. And so if that's the case, you're gonna focus on educating kids about their White privilege and, um, making ... And so that's what a lot of these privilege exercises are. You know, you line kids up by their privilege and you, and your, your goal is to make the, the straight, White boys feel bad about their privilege, and therefore talk less, take up less space.

Joe Rogan 47:13 But their privi- this is what we were talking about earlier about the goal is no racism. The privilege only exists if there's racism. Like, instead of concentrating on the privilege, it only exists if people do preferentially treat certain p- with a ... Preferential treatment towards certain races. If that doesn't exist at all, then White privilege doesn't exist.

Jonathan Haidt 47:33 Well, I'm not sure, I'm not sure I'd agree with you on that. So we, we had a-

Joe Rogan 47:36 Why so?

Jonathan Haidt 47:36 Well, so we had a funny episode, uh, last night in ... So my wife and I, um, were out in LA. We were invited to the Golden Globes by, by a friend.

Joe Rogan 47:44 Woo.

Jonathan Haidt 47:44 And so we're here in LA. Uh, so we, we, um, uh, we go to bed in the hotel room. And at 2:00 in the morning, the guy's pounding on the door saying, "Come on, let me in. It's me. It's me." And you know, I wake up and I go to the door, and I, and I say, "Wrong room," but he can't hear me. So I open the door a crack and, uh, to show him, you know, like, "Look, I don't kn- I don't know who you are."

Joe Rogan 48:05 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 48:06 And you know, some drunk, some drunk guy. And, uh, I, and I said, you know, "You've got the wrong room." And I went back to bed. And then at breakfast this morning, my wife says-"Why did you open the door? Like, how could you have done that?" I said, "I, you know, we're in a nice hotel. I mean, what's, you know, what's gonna happen?" And she made it clear, like, "A woman would never have done that." Like-

Joe Rogan 48:23 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 48:23 ... she said, "You as a man, you have the ability to go out in the world and engage with in a certain way that I don't have as a woman."

Joe Rogan 48:28 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 48:29 And that's a great example. So there is-

Joe Rogan 48:31 That is-

Jonathan Haidt 48:31 ... a kind of male privilege.

Joe Rogan 48:33 Sure.

Jonathan Haidt 48:33 E- it exists even if there's no sexism.

Joe Rogan 48:35 Yeah, that's an interesting, that's an interesting example. Um, that's a, that's a sexism one, but that's also a physical danger one.

Jonathan Haidt 48:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:43 That's a, there's a, there is a difference between just the way women have to go out into the world being vulnerable and also being the target of, of just w- a male sexual attention.

Jonathan Haidt 48:57 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:57 It's a very different thing.

Jonathan Haidt 48:58 That's right. Okay.

Joe Rogan 48:58 It's an aggressive per- and dangerous thing.

Jonathan Haidt 49:00 Yeah. But I, I think you could say the same thing about race in this way. So, um-

Joe Rogan 49:04 Because there's racism, though.

Jonathan Haidt 49:06 Well, okay. Okay, you're right. If, if there was absolute zero racism-

Joe Rogan 49:11 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 49:11 ... anywhere, but we're never gonna get to that.

Joe Rogan 49:13 But, but the thing that we're worried about is the racism. So like if you worried about a c- if someone's, if you say you have white privilege-

Jonathan Haidt 49:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:20 Well, that only exists if you're being dealt with in a racist manner. So if you're a Black person and there is racism that's being directed towards you and it's not being directed towards me, then you can say, "Well, I have white privilege." But if there's no racism directed towards anybody-

Jonathan Haidt 49:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:37 ... that doesn't exist anymore.

Jonathan Haidt 49:38 Right. But, okay, but no, but-

Joe Rogan 49:38 So the, the issue is racism.

Jonathan Haidt 49:40 Y- yes.

Joe Rogan 49:41 Right?

Jonathan Haidt 49:41 But, okay, but... So look, I think it's, it, it's helpful to always try to look at it from the other person's point of view, right?

Joe Rogan 49:46 Sure.

Jonathan Haidt 49:47 And to listen their arguments. And so for example, when you and I go into any social encounter, it never occurs to me that something, you know, something's gonna come up and someone's gonna call me a kike, let's say.

Joe Rogan 49:58 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 49:58 You know, 'cause I'm, I'm Jewish. And it just, it just f- it never crosses my mind that someone's gonna humiliate me because I'm Jewish. Um, um, but if you're Black, even if you're in a very tolerant society, at some point someone is going to make an assumption. It might not be-

Joe Rogan 50:11 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 50:11 ... hostile. It might be. So all I'm saying is you and I don't... There are certain things we don't have to think about. And that, uh, whereas if we were Black or other identities or visibly gay or, you know, uh, there would be the risk of spoiling of a social interaction. So I'm totally comfortable saying we should be telling our kids about this, but what follows from it? What follows from it? Should we therefore be telling kids, "Okay, so, you know, um, you know, i- i- judge people based on their appearance. Um, be suspicious of people based on their race and gender." That's where, that's where I get off the bu- the bus.

Joe Rogan 50:45 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 50:45 That's where I say now we're really hurting kids. We should be turning down the moralism and we're turning it up.

Joe Rogan 50:50 Right. But what I'm getting at is pointing at someone and saying, "You have white privilege," if they are not racist, you're, you're, you're, you're giving this person... You're, you're putting these p- this person in a category that really only exists i- in the face of racism-

Jonathan Haidt 51:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:08 ... where the real problem is racism.

Jonathan Haidt 51:10 Yes.

Joe Rogan 51:10 But the male-female thing is a very different thing.

Jonathan Haidt 51:12 Yeah. I agree. That, yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 51:13 Male privilege I think is way more slippery, and way... because it's-

Jonathan Haidt 51:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:16 ... biologically based. There's a creepiness to men. And-

Jonathan Haidt 51:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:20 ... just-

Jonathan Haidt 51:20 That's right.

Joe Rogan 51:20 ... there is.

Jonathan Haidt 51:21 That's right.

Joe Rogan 51:21 I mean, as much as a nice guy-

Jonathan Haidt 51:22 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:22 ... as I'm sure you are and I try very hard-

Jonathan Haidt 51:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:24 ... to be a nice guy-

Jonathan Haidt 51:24 No, every woman-

Joe Rogan 51:26 ... Jim's a little slippery.

Jonathan Haidt 51:26 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:26 We'll get him over there. Just kidding. But-

Jonathan Haidt 51:27 Yeah, every woman's encountered creeps. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:29 Yes. It's, it's inevitable because it's-

Jonathan Haidt 51:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:30 ... there's a, a game being played-

Jonathan Haidt 51:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:32 ... that is pursuing of sexual pleasure or of, of, of sexual-

Jonathan Haidt 51:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:36 ... encounters. This is, doesn't exist or shouldn't exist with races.

Jonathan Haidt 51:40 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:40 The, just the, the, the real problem in my eyes is racism.

Jonathan Haidt 51:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:45 And if we could figure out a way to just complete... Obviously it's not gonna... Look, people are flawed. They're, they're going to be... Un- until there's some sort of new way that we interface with each other-

Jonathan Haidt 51:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:55 ... that eliminates lies and deception and allows each other to completely understand each other's feelings and, and appreciate them, which may happen someday, probably technologically driven, until that happens, there's gonna be a certain amount of it.

Jonathan Haidt 52:06 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 52:07 But the real enemy is racism. It's not white people just getting lucky.

Jonathan Haidt 52:11 Yeah. Um, okay. But I, I would say...

Joe Rogan 52:14 Not that we shouldn't acknowledge it.

Jonathan Haidt 52:15 Yeah, yeah. So y- you said earlier about how definitions change.

Joe Rogan 52:20 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 52:21 So we are evolving as a society. We're getting less sexist and racist. And so our threshold for what counts as sexist and racist is going down, and that's a good thing. That should happen.

Joe Rogan 52:29 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 52:29 Um, but I think what we need to call attention to is that when you... if you lower the threshold faster than the reality changes, then you make progress, but yet people feel worse and worse.

Joe Rogan 52:39 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 52:39 And so, um, and so I think that's part of what's happening on campus. Um-

Joe Rogan 52:43 That makes sense.

Jonathan Haidt 52:43 The, the, the prog- so the, the, the loudest protests tend to happen at the most progressive schools. It's places like Middlebury and Yale and Berkeley. Um, and, you know, so I think that we are, we are... I- if you bring in a diverse student body, and we're all trying to diversify. We're all... E- every school I know of is trying very hard to create a very diverse student body. So if we do that and we bring people in and we give them a common humanity approach, it's gonna work great. Diversity c- if you handle it well, i- i- you, it can confer many benefits. But if you handle it wrong, if you try to make people see race and other groups more and you attach moral valences to it and you give them a lot of the stuff that they get in the grievance studies, of course they're gonna be angry and of course they're gonna feel like people hate them. It's a terrible thing to bring people into a university and to teach them, "You know what? This institution is white supremacist. People have implicit bias against you. Wherever you go, people are gonna hate you." Like, no, this is a really bad thing to do to create an open, trusting, inclusive, diverse environment.

Joe Rogan 53:43 Right. The right thing to do would be to emphasize how foolish racism really is and about how damaging it is not just to our culture but to you as an individual to look at people in that way and not open your heart and your mind-

Jonathan Haidt 53:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:55 ... to all these different races. And I think one of the worst examples of modern racism that's gone unchecked is what's going on at Harvard with Asian students-

Jonathan Haidt 54:04 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:05 ... where Asian students are... Instead of...... instead of being completely neutral in terms of how they approach all these races, Asian students actually have to try harder-

Jonathan Haidt 54:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:16 ... to get into Harvard and they're-

Jonathan Haidt 54:17 That's right.

Joe Rogan 54:17 ... because there's so many of them, and they're doing so well. (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 54:20 Yep.

Joe Rogan 54:20 They're being punished for excelling, which is really racist.

Jonathan Haidt 54:24 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:24 I mean, you're, it's, it's racist against the people that are doing the best, which is really crazy. And they're a minority, which is even more crazy.

Jonathan Haidt 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:32 And because of their culture, because they're so hardworking and they're not, uh, in general, they're, they're not the type to be really loud and protest these things-

Jonathan Haidt 54:42 Right, right. It's an easy target, yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:44 ... it's gone on to the point where now they've had to have a class action lawsuit.

Jonathan Haidt 54:47 Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, you know, my, my hope ... A- again, I'm a 20th century person, my hope is that as time goes on we'll get past all this.

Joe Rogan 54:54 Well, you have to be a 21st century person now. You have to, or we have to.

Jonathan Haidt 54:56 No, no, I think that you have to ... Well, okay. But you know what?

Joe Rogan 54:59 (laughs)

Jonathan Haidt 54:59 The, there are ... Okay, wait. Moral cultures evolve, and they don't always evolve in a positive way.

Joe Rogan 55:05 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 55:06 And so I think the evolution of the late 20th century was incredibly positive, um, and I think we are, I think young people are losing touch with some of the hard won lessons of the past. Um, so I'm not gonna say, "Oh, we have to just accept whatever morality is here." I still am ultimately a liberal in the sense that what I dream of is a society in which people are free to create lives that they wanna live, and they're not forced to do things, they're not shamed, um, there's a minimum of conflict, and we make room for each other. If we're gonna have a diverse society, we've really gotta be tolerant and make room for each other. That's my dream. Um, and I think in the last five or 10 years, we've gotten really far from that. Um, I mean, the, you know, my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, was about 10 ancient ideas, um, and, you know, one is that we're too judgmental. You know, judge not, lest ye be judged, uh, but I think the new version of that, if there was a 21st century Jesus, he'd say, "Judge a lot more, judge all the time, judge harshly, don't give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and don't let anyone judge you." Like, that is not gonna be a recipe for a functioning society.

Joe Rogan 56:08 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 56:08 So no, I, I do not accept this aspect of 21st century morality.

Joe Rogan 56:12 Well, you're, you're obviously much more entrenched in it than I am. Um, my hope, and this might be naive, is that what these far left and far, like, the, the real extreme, what it represents is the, the, the extreme poles of this shifting thing, so that the whole thing is gonna move closer to a better place, and you're always gonna have really extreme-

Jonathan Haidt 56:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:35 But you're always gonna have white supremacy and you're always gonna have extreme social justice people.

Jonathan Haidt 56:41 Well, you're suggesting it's a pendulum, then.

Joe Rogan 56:42 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 56:43 Uh, some things are pendulums, some are not.

Joe Rogan 56:45 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 56:45 Okay? So there are problems of progress. Um, there are some things that are kinda one way. So, um, you know, so I'm k- I'm often pessimistic about certain social trends, but I'm very influenced by Steve Pinker, who I know you've had on the show.

Joe Rogan 56:58 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 56:59 Uh, and, uh, Matt Ridley and others who say, "Look, the arc of progress is amazingly rapid."

Joe Rogan 57:03 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 57:03 "It's all good." And, you know, a- and Nick Kristof just had a column that last year was the best year in human history if you look at overall human welfare. So that's all true. Um, but there are certain things that happen with progress that lead to certain countervailing trends that are not like pendula. Uh, and so for example, um, okay, here's one. Um, uh, kids, it's, it seems pretty clear that, that human beings need a certain amount of hardship, stress, and challenge in order to develop basic human abilities. Um, kids who are neglected and abused are, are damaged. I mean, if, if, if it goes beyond certain limits, uh, you, you have chronic stress, you can have brain damage. So we, as we've, as we've gotten rid of a lot of the worst things, that's great, but as we're making life better and better and s- and easier and easier for kids, as we're protecting them from more and more, we're, we're preventing them from basically expanding their abilities. And so it's possible that as we, as we get wealthier and safer and more humane and more caring, and as we have smaller and smaller families, as we get richer all over the world, so that you have two parents spending all this time with one kid, it's possible that we are interfering with kids' development to the point where we might have an epidemic of anxiety and depression. That could happen. Oh, wait a second, it has.

Joe Rogan 58:29 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 58:29 So, you know, I think that there are certain problems of progress that are not pendula. They change things, and those changes have some negative repercussions that we're gonna have to actively fix. It's not gonna swing back by itself.

Joe Rogan 58:43 What concerns me when you're talking about all these ideas is that there's a restriction on how you are able to communicate to children, or to students I should say, to young people, um, how their minds work and how their, their, how these patterns can form and how, uh, you know, this, this pattern can be ultimately damaging to them, but yet it feels rewarding in the act of doing it, and that their own patterns that they're involved in right now might be incredibly problematic for them in the future-

Jonathan Haidt 59:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:18 ... but if you bring it up, you're criticizing who they a- who they are as a human, you're disregarding your white privilege, you're doing all these different things that you can't really do. You, you, you're doing all these things that y- could run into these problems with this sort of new paradigm.

Jonathan Haidt 59:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:32 And w- what, what, how do you, how do you mitigate that when you're teaching kids? Like, how do you, how do you talk to them about the way the mind works-

Jonathan Haidt 59:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 59:41 ... when it's involving these critical things that are, like, incredibly sensitive to discuss today?

Jonathan Haidt 59:45 Mm-hmm. Um, okay, so let's ... Uh, you might be talking about, like, issues like race and sex?

Joe Rogan 59:50 Yes.

Jonathan Haidt 59:50 Like-

Joe Rogan 59:50 Race and sex-

Jonathan Haidt 59:51 Okay.

Joe Rogan 59:51 ... gender and-

Jonathan Haidt 59:52 Let's, okay, but let's, let's, okay, let's go back to the beginning. Let's start with child development.

Joe Rogan 59:55 Okay.

Jonathan Haidt 59:55 And let's, let's, let's start with, um, what should we be doing with kids to make them tougher so that, you know, as they live in a, the world's safer and safer.

Joe Rogan 1:00:05 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:00:05 Cars are safer. The death rate for kids is, has been plummeting for all, uh, all causes other than suicide, which has gone up. Um, so as kids live in a safer and safer world-... they also have the internet, which is gonna expose them to virtual insults forever and ever. So, how are we gonna raise kids to be maximally effective in this new 21st century world? Which is physically very safe, but virtually unsafe. Okay? How are we gonna do that? Um, and I think the key idea that we need to put on the table here, and that I think everybody who works with kids needs to keep in mind every day, is antifragility. I know you've talked about that on this show before-

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:00:43 ... uh, but I'll just, I should, uh, I can just give a very brief, you know, explanation of it, 'cause it's such an important concept. Um, so, uh, antifragility, a lot of listeners will know, is a word coined by Nassim Taleb, the guy who wrote The Black Swan, um, because there are certain systems ... And he was, I think he was motivated by the collapse of the banking system. So, he had predicted the collapse because he said, "The banking system is really convoluted and it's never been tested. A system needs to be tested, challenged, shocked in order to then develop defenses against it. And our system has not been tested, so if anything goes wrong, it's all going down." All right. So-

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 Yeah, you reference him quite a few times.

Jonathan Haidt 1:01:17 Yes, that's right. He's really-

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 In the concept of antifragile.

Jonathan Haidt 1:01:20 Yeah. That's right, it's a key idea in, in our book. And it's, I find as I talk about this around the country, once you explain this to people who work with kids, like everybody gets it right away. All right. So, so Taleb says there's no word for this property. He says, "We, we, we know that some things are fragile." And so, like if you have a glass, you know, if you have a wine glass on the table and you knock it over, it breaks. Okay? It doesn't get better in any way. And so, uh, you know, you don't give kids a wine glass. You give them a plastic sippy cup, 'cause plastic is resilient. But if a kid knocks over a sippy cup, it doesn't get better in any way. And Taleb wanted to know, what's the word for things that do get better when you knock them over? And the classic example is the immune system.

Joe Rogan 1:02:00 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:02:00 So, the immune system is an incomplete system. It's a miracle of evolution that we have this system for making, you know, antibodies. Um, but it doesn't know exactly what to be reactive to. That has to be set by childhood experience. And so, if you keep your kids in a bubble and you use bacterial wipes and you don't let them be exposed to bacteria, you're crippling the system. The system has to get knocked over. It has to get challenged, threatened. It has to have, um, it has to learn how to, uh, expand its abilities. And so, um, so this is why peanut allergies are going up.

Joe Rogan 1:02:32 Yeah, that was a really shocking part of your book.

Jonathan Haidt 1:02:34 That's right. It's stunning how fast this happened.

Joe Rogan 1:02:36 Ple- could you please explain that to people?

Jonathan Haidt 1:02:37 Sure.

Joe Rogan 1:02:38 The whole peanut allergy thing? Um-

Jonathan Haidt 1:02:40 Yeah. Yeah, so peanut allergies used to be really rare. And most of us, you know, older folk, we brought peanut butter sandwiches to school. Uh, and when my son, Max, started, um, preschool in, uh, 2008, uh, you know, they went on and on about no nuts, nothing that touched a nut, nothing that looks like a nut, nothing that has the word nut in it. I mean, it was crazy how defensive they were about nuts. And as we were writing the book, I thought back on that and I said, "Wait a second. Like, why ... You know, we're freaking out about nuts and the more we freak out about it, the higher the allergy rate goes." And it turns out, there was a study done and published in 2015 where, um, the, the researchers noticed that the allergy to nuts is only going up in countries that tell pregnant women to avoid nuts. And they thought, "Well, maybe that's why." And so, they did a controlled experiment. They got about 600 women who had given birth recently, and ha- um, and whose kids were at higher risk of an allergy. 'Cause they had eczema or some other, you know, immune system sort of issue. So, uh, about 300 of them are told standard advice. "Your kid's at risk of a peanut allergy, so y- you should not eat peanuts while you're lactating and keep peanuts away from your kid." And the other half were told, "Here is an Israeli snack food. It's a puffed corn with a peanut, uh, uh, peanut powder dusting on the outside. Give it to your kids starting at, you know, three or four months, whenever they're ready to, to eat." And so ... And they monitored them. They made sure that there weren't, you know, fatal reactions or s- or, or strong reactions. And then, uh, at the age of five, they gave them all a very thorough immunological test and, of the ones who followed the standard advice, 17% had a peanut allergy. They would have to watch out for peanuts for the rest of their lives. And-

Joe Rogan 1:04:19 That's such a high number.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:20 Because these were, because these were-

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:22 ... kids were already predisposed.

Joe Rogan 1:04:23 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:23 Um, and but the half that were predisposed but given peanut powder, 3%. Just 3% had a peanut allergy at age five. In other words, we could almost wipe out peanut allergies by giving peanut powder to kids. And sci- uh, just a few months ago in Science, the front page article was on doing that. And so again, good intentions and bad ideas. We're trying to protect our kids so, "Oh, keep them away from peanuts."

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:47 But that's exactly the wrong advice, because kids are antifragile. And so, we're doing the same thing, I think.

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 Most of them. The p- the real issue is the people that have an actual severe allergy.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:56 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 If that's your child.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:57 Uh, yes. But that's what the Science article-

Joe Rogan 1:04:59 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:04:59 ... was about, was that, uh, exposure therapies are being tested and they are the most effective. So, if you-

Joe Rogan 1:05:05 Even with people with ex-

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:06 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 ... extreme allergies.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:06 You just, you just have to start slow. So-

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 So, you just give 'em a very small amount.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:09 Very small, exactly. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 Yeah. 'Cause I, I was on a plane once and they informed us that they didn't want us to even eat peanuts on the plane, 'cause there was someone on the plane that was so allergic-

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 ... that if you eat peanuts and you chew it and it's in the air, it could adversely affect that person.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:24 Yeah. Yeah, and that could well be true, so I have no objection to that. But the reason we got to that point is because-

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:29 ... we started banning peanuts long ago. So, this is one of these pro- uh, uh, well, I'm not sure if it's a problem of progress, but as we, um ... No, it's not necessarily. But, um, but it's an example of antifragility.

Joe Rogan 1:05:39 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:39 Okay, so now let's bring this to the playground. All right. So, um, you know, when, when you and I were kids, you know, boys and girls have different social interactions. But boys tease each other, right? Insult each other.

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:49 They throw around insults, right?

Joe Rogan 1:05:50 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:05:51 And that's part of developing to be a boy. Now, if it turns into bullying, like a bunch of kids are want- you know, is, uh, are, are after one kid day after day, okay, that's terrible. We have to do something about that. I'm not saying bullying is okay. But as we've cracked down on bullying and as we've gotten more and more sensitive about harm in general, we're cracking down on any kind of teasing, cruelty, exclusion. So, my kids go to New York City public schools.... uh, which are generally pretty good. Um, but on the playground, you know, there's a monitor and the playground monitor lo- you know, if there's conflict, he comes and checks it out. If a kid is crying, he checks it out. Um, you know, seems like a good thing to do, but it's like treating kids like they're allergic to peanuts.

Joe Rogan 1:06:33 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:06:33 Kids have to have thousands and thousands of conflicts. They have to be exposed to insults and exclusion and teasing. And if you can imagine, if you could keep your daughter in a protective tank where nobody would tease her or insult her or hurt her feelings for 18 years, would you do it?

Joe Rogan 1:06:48 Absolutely not. Yeah. It's not imp- it's, it's important that they do experience some assholes.

Jonathan Haidt 1:06:53 Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:06:53 They j- they just have to know. But the, the, on the flip side, there are certain people that are damaged for the rest of their life by bullies. And some-

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:01 Like I have a friend, um, and his brother used to beat him up when, when they lived together, and it still fucks with him to this day.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:08 And he's in his 50s.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 Like I h- I think he has a certain level of depression-

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:12 ... that's directly correlated.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:13 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:14 And, uh, I mean, I can't say about your friend, but the research shows-

Joe Rogan 1:07:17 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:17 ... the research does show that, um, bullying can leave permanent scars.

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:22 Um, so there are a couple things we have to, uh, uh, keep our eye on. Kids are anti-fragile, yes.

Joe Rogan 1:07:27 But?

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:27 But, um, two things. One is they need challenges that are graded to their level of ability.

Joe Rogan 1:07:33 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:07:34 So if they're overwhelmed and if the suffering goes on day after day, so if kids are bathed ... if their brain is bathed in cortisol, so cortisol is a normal stress hormone. You have to ha- experience stress, you have to have cortisol and then it drops. It goes up and down, up and down. But kids who are raised either in an environment where they're bullied or they're abused at home, they don't have a secure attachment relationship, then they get brain damage. Then you, you, you're hurting kids if it's chronic.

Joe Rogan 1:08:00 Hm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:08:00 So I'm in no way saying bullying is okay.

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 Oh, no, no. Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:08:03 So you gotta keep, you gotta keep the line.

Joe Rogan 1:08:04 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 1:08:04 Uh, but, but again, you have to look at each institution. So each school is not thinking, "Hmm, how can we carefully draw the line between bullying and valuable sorts of conflict?" No. They're thinking, "W- if we do this, will we get sued?"

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 Right. Oh.

Jonathan Haidt 1:08:21 "And if we're not really careful at bullying, we're gonna get sued. And so let's overreact, let's go this way."

Joe Rogan 1:08:26 Yeah. Yeah. That's unfortunate, really. Um, but how do you decide how much bullying is accept- like, uh, it's almost like snake venom-

Jonathan Haidt 1:08:34 No, no. Once you c- no, no, no.

Joe Rogan 1:08:35 ... like giving them a little bit so they develop a tolerance?

Jonathan Haidt 1:08:37 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so there's, um, y- so we did some research on bullying. We didn't put it in the book, because while we suspect that anti-bullying policies that, that go too far and that ban conflict, while we suspect that those are harmful, we couldn't prove that. So we didn't put this in the book. But the, the traditional definitions of bullying are actually pretty reasonable. Uh, I'm, I hope I can remember it exactly. It's like there's a, uh, there's like a, a power differential and it's, uh, chronic, you know, goes on for, you know, multiple, multiple days. Um, and originally there was a f- actually a threat of violence, um, that had, had to be at least a threat of violence. I think that was the original definition. Uh, and then that was expanded gradually. Um, um, so that doesn't have to be necessarily a threat of violence, but it, it, it has expanded so far that like my kids use the term, if, if one kid is mean to another, they'll call that bullying. And that's too far. So I think you have to keep your eye on the, the key feature-

Joe Rogan 1:09:33 It's too far if a kid is mean?

Jonathan Haidt 1:09:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:35 How so?

Jonathan Haidt 1:09:36 You, you can't call ... So, um, so, uh, like on the, on the playground for my daughter, the girls, uh, would form these clubs.

Joe Rogan 1:09:44 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:09:44 And so my daughter was in the Kittycat Club. Like, that's what three girls called themselves. And they'd be in a corner and they'd say, "Oh, you can't, you know, you can't join us. You're not in the Kittycat Club." Um ...

Joe Rogan 1:09:54 That's mean.

Jonathan Haidt 1:09:55 That's exclusion.

Joe Rogan 1:09:57 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 1:09:57 We can't have that.

Joe Rogan 1:09:58 Right.

Jonathan Haidt 1:09:59 So the-

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 So you'd have to like allow everyone in your group?

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:02 Because you don't want to be a bully?

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:03 W- uh, that's right. So I don't know-

Joe Rogan 1:10:04 That's where you're saying it goes too far.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:05 I don't know that ... Yeah. I don't know they called that bullying, but her teacher had a conversation with them. Now, she didn't ... I don't think she exactly ordered them never exclude, so I mean, it'd be okay if you use it as a grounds for discussion.

Joe Rogan 1:10:15 Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:15 But increased ... But some schools have even tried to discourage the existence of best friends because if you have best friends-

Joe Rogan 1:10:21 (gasps)

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:21 ... you're excluding others.

Joe Rogan 1:10:22 That's hilarious.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:23 It is hilarious. But again, it's ... If you fail to understand that kids are anti-fragile-

Joe Rogan 1:10:27 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:27 ... and you think, "Oh my, you know, there's a rise of anxiety and depression and girls are cutting themselves at such high rates, you know, we've gotta, we've gotta relieve them of stress," like, no. That's, that's not the right way to go about it.

Joe Rogan 1:10:37 And there really is an epidemic of, of kids that grew up in that era of participation trophies, where everyone won.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:45 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:10:45 And there, there, there's a lot of parents that don't want to see their children lose.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:51 But that's a giant learning opportunity.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:53 And again, if ... Exactly. If you think the goal is to cultivate self-esteem directly-

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 Yeah.

Jonathan Haidt 1:10:58 ... you're crippling the kid. Um, giving your kid self-esteem is not beneficial. Um, in fact, if kids have high self-esteem, but it's unstable, then they're actually more likely to be violent. They have more problems. You don't want to build self-esteem.

Joe Rogan 1:11:12 Hm.

Jonathan Haidt 1:11:12 What you want to build is capacities. You want to give them abilities and skills so they do things that then indirectly give them self-esteem.

Joe Rogan 1:11:20 And compassion, right? I mean, how do you, how do you teach that?

Jonathan Haidt 1:11:24 How do you