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Joe Rogan Experience #1456 - Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic. His new book “Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist” is available now. https://amzn.to/2XmplJY @skepticmagazine

Joe RoganhostMichael Shermerguest
Apr 9, 20201h 53mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:03 – 2:18

    Pandemic-driven shifts in social life, remote work, and at-home entertainment

    1. JR

      Okay, here we go. Three, two, one, boom, and we're live. Mr. Shermer, how are you, sir?

    2. MS

      I'm fine, thank you. I'm, I'm still breathing. (laughs)

    3. JR

      It's good to see you again.

    4. MS

      Likewise.

    5. JR

      We were just saying before we got started that the last time we saw each other was we went to dinner about six weeks ago.

    6. MS

      Uh-huh.

    7. JR

      And you're thinking that that might be the end of that kind of stuff.

    8. MS

      (laughs) That was my last time I've been in a restaurant, actually. And, uh... Well, I, you know, I think restaurants, of course, will reopen, but I think the kind of social distancing we're seeing now, it's not gonna go all the way back to, to the way it used to be. I think, uh, we may quit shaking hands and hugging to the extent that we used to, although I don't think we'll ever, ever go all the way to the, say, the Japanese model of social distancing. But I think there'll be modifications like that. The other thing I've been thinking about is the change of remote, say, meetings and education. Uh, I mean, I'm in the studio here in Santa Barbara, where I've been recording lectures for my Chapman University class, Skepticism 101. And, uh, I just upload them and share them with the students, and, and then they watch them, and then I send them a quiz. They take the quiz. They send them back. Now, that's not a, a complete, uh, replacement of a brick and mortar building with a small class seminar discussion, say. But, but it does, you know, uh, adequately replace a lot of traditional education that you don't really need to be in a classroom for.

    9. JR

      Do you think that this is preparing us for the ultimate, where we, we, we embrace the symbiotic relationship that we have with computers and become one with the machine? I mean, it seems like we're becoming-

    10. MS

      The Borg. (laughs)

    11. JR

      Yeah, we're becoming closer and closer to some sort of a, uh, an electronic community. It's weird.

    12. MS

      Yeah, I think it was, I think it was happening slowly already, and this is kind of a jump starting it. I mean, already tech companies like Zoom are having to, you know, ramp up their game because, you know, the systems are crashing because pretty much everybody's doing Zoom meetings now.

    13. JR

      Yeah.

    14. MS

      And then they have to, and they have to adjust to Zoombombing because, of course, there's, you know, people like that out there that just wanna screw with you. And, uh, so I... Uh, and, and then I was also thinking about, um, things like theaters, you know. To what... Why do we need to go to theaters anymore? I mean, I love watching a movie on a big screen, but, you know, the, the screens we have at home now, big television screens, super high def, um, you know, why not just watch movies at home? <|agent|><|en|>

  2. 2:18 – 3:39

    Economic shockwaves: small businesses, rent chains, and stimulus skepticism

    1. JR

      Well, I don't think we're gonna have much of a choice. I was reading an article this morning about AMC Theaters might, they might have to go under because of this.

    2. MS

      Really? Wow.

    3. JR

      Yeah, it's not good. I mean, you gotta think, these companies are accustomed to having a certain amount of money come in every month, and they never, no one anticipated anything like this, where all businesses are just gonna shut down. Gyms, I mean, how many gyms are gonna go under? How many yoga studios? How many...

    4. MS

      Right.

    5. JR

      I mean, it's a, it's a strange and trying time for people who have small businesses, for sure.

    6. MS

      Yeah, one of my cycling buddies owns the, uh, La Cañada Theater Complex, and, uh, and of course rents out the, the space to different retailers, including the, the theater own- uh, theater managers. And anyway, he was telling me that, um, you know, they normally pay $93,000 a month in rent, but, you know, they bring in, like, seven and a half million dollars a year or something, so it, it all balances out. But they just told him, "Uh, we're not gonna make our, uh, rent this month." So he has to go to his mortgage company, you know, the bank that where he gets, pays off his mortgage and say, "Well, I can't pay you this month because these guys can't pay me." And okay, so multiply that by, you know, 10 million or 100 million or something, and that's kind of what we've been going through.

    7. JR

      Yeah, and I don't really understand the economics of this stimulus package, of how they're gonna be able to distribute it and sort of balance people out. It seems like it's just a small Band-Aid on a very large wound.

  3. 3:39 – 5:35

    The uncomfortable trade-off: saving lives vs reopening society

    1. MS

      Yeah, well, y- of course, the government can't just print money, uh-

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. MS

      ... indefinite- indefinitely. Then we're gonna get huge inflation, and then... And that could be catastrophic. You know, so this conversation that people have been wanting to have but they get hammered every time they bring it up, I think at some point we're gonna have to have in the next few weeks, is the economic trade-off and costs to people's lives, uh, compared to what we're doing with social i- social isolation to save people's lives.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. MS

      And at the, at the moment, we're in the mode of, um, there's no dollar amount you can put on a human life. Therefore, total soc- social isolation, no matter what it does to the economy, is what we're gonna do now. Well, but at some point, you know, th- you know, there's a economic calculation. Like, how many people are gonna die, say, in the next year, if we never open the economy? Of course we will, but, you know, at what point do you do that?

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. MS

      Um, you know, the supply chain dries up. You can't get not just toilet paper, but, you know, food supplies start to dry up, and then you get social unrest. And you know, there, there's risks there too.

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. MS

      And, and the idea of putting a dollar figure on a human life is repulsive to most of us, I think, intuitively, in this context, but in fact, we do it all the time. You know, in terms of, like, an automobile company has to pay off the family of somebody who died in their car. Well, there are people who do those calculations. Like, what's the value of a human life?

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. MS

      Um, and, uh, the figure is... Well, the high end figure is about $10 million. And after 9/11, the families got paid off, uh, I think it was $250,000 a person times the 3,000 something. And, uh, you know, so it sounds so cold. Like, who does those calculations?

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. MS

      Well, statisticians do that sort of thing, and, and attorneys and accountants work on that, and judges and juries have to face it. Um, and, you know, that's kind of a normal part of other a- aspects of life that we're not used to thinking about. Most of us don't think about it, uh, but, you know, at some point, that's the kind of calculation we're gonna have to do for what we're in now.

  4. 5:35 – 8:40

    Targeted isolation and why some countries performed better (South Korea, Germany)

    1. JR

      Do you think that there is another way to do this? There's, there's been some talk of isolating the people that are high risk, isolating the people with underlying conditions, people that are elderly, things of that nature. Do, do you think that that's a way that they can move forward?

    2. MS

      Yeah, for sure, uh, uh, but again, people... We're, we're, you know, we have this egalitarian mode. Like, that doesn't sound right. Sounds like a death panel, you know.

    3. JR

      Yeah. Right.

    4. MS

      Some group of peop- some group of government agents are gonna tell us who, uh, who's gonna live and who's gonna die, and that feels like, uh, we're sliding into conspira- conspiracy mongering. But in fact, that, that is what y- you have to do, is a kind of a triage.And, uh, you know, South Korea's, uh, has been pretty good about this. You know, testing everybody. They jumped on it right away. They did that, uh, uh, track and trace. Um, they, you know, they got it right down to, I think it was the 31st patient they found who had gone to two church services, and then she was in a car accident and taken to the hospital. And, and that's when it spread from there. That, that one day, I think it was in Feb- late February where that... when that happened, and they just jumped, jumped all over it. Total deaths in South Korea, I think, is like just a couple hundred compared to most other countries. So there's a way to-

    5. JR

      That's pretty impressive.

    6. MS

      It is. And they've been, you know, super careful about isolating people and targeting the people that most need the tests and so on, and you know, that's just the kind of thing I think we have to do.

    7. JR

      What do you think about what's going on in Germany? 'Cause Germany's very fascinating, right? It's... I mean, so many of these European countries, particularly Italy, are experiencing this very high death rate. But Germany, uh, I mean, they must have exemplary healthcare. They must be doing something right or be robust and healthy individuals. Is it a genetic thing, you think? Is it a healthcare thing?

    8. MS

      I think it's-

    9. JR

      'Cause they have a very low death rate.

    10. MS

      Uh, I think they have a high tight culture, a very tight culture. That is when... My wife's from Cologne, Germany, so I, I know this from personal experience, but also their studies. Um, uh, Michele Gelfand does these studies on, uh, loose and tight cultures, and that Germany is a very tight culture. That is to say, very law and order, law-abiding, and, you know, when the German government says, "All right, this is what we're gonna do," people do it. Uh, a- and Americans are not that. We're m- we're a much looser culture, more, more freedom-oriented, and if the government says, "You can't go to the beach," uh, like, "Well, to the hell with it, I'm going to the beach anyway." Germans just don't do that. And they do have a really good healthcare system, and they jump right on it, and I, I, I think that's one explanation. You know, we've seen yesterday this rise in, uh, deaths of African Americans versus, you know, white Americans an- and having to do with income, but it... Of course, money is just a proxy for something else, which has to do with the quality of the healthcare they get, the food that they eat, you know, how, how, how much, um, how healthy and, uh, uh, exercise-prone they are or not, you know, diabetes, obesity. These sorts of things, you know, down the line, when you're attacked by a virus like that can have an effect on your immune system and therefore the response to the disease. So I t- think those are the kinds of, um, cohorts we're gonna have to target, uh, to save lives, and I, I think coun- countries like South, uh, Korea and Germany have been doing that pretty well without pushback.

  5. 8:40 – 13:18

    Health as risk reduction: fitness, fasting, and practical at-home exercise

    1. JR

      Yeah, I'm hoping... My, my best hope out of this is that it's a wake-up call for people that don't take care of their bodies. The people that get through this-

    2. MS

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      ... like, you, you dodged the bullet. Now let's clean that diet up. Let's get you moving. Let's start some exercise or- on a regular weekly basis. Get some nutrients into your system. Eliminate all the sugar and bullshit that people eat and, you know, and take care of your body and take care of your immune system. Let's pump everything back up to-

    4. MS

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      ... sustainable levels. And I mean, that very well could be the difference between people who contract this virus and survive versus people who contract this virus and don't.

    6. MS

      Absolutely. I mean, how c- how could it not hurt to be healthy, fit, and have a good immune system? Uh, even if, for some reason, we can't find the exact connection to this particular virus, just as a global thing, even if you do all that a- and, and it turns out there's no connection to this particular virus, this is still a good thing to do.

    7. JR

      Yeah. You've been-

    8. MS

      Uh-

    9. JR

      ... cycling, right? I know you're a cycler. And so you were actually riding your bike today, right?

    10. MS

      Yeah, this morning. Uh, actually (laughs) it's really funny, this kind of world we live in. There's no more group rides, of course.

    11. JR

      Right. (laughs)

    12. MS

      And, uh, you know, m- a- and all the, the big tours, like the Tour de France, have been canceled. So there, I'm riding along this morning, and I see up ahead of me, um, Tejay van Garderen, who's the top American pro right now. And apparently, he lives over in the kind of, uh, Santa Ynez Valley area. And, and here he is cycling along in Santa Barbara by himself. So I'm chasing along to see how long I can stay up with this guy.

    13. JR

      (laughs)

    14. MS

      (laughs) And of course, he's much younger and faster than me. But all of a sudden, he just stops, and he picks something up from the ground. So I pull up and, and, and he holds up a $5 bill and he goes, "Look, I found five bucks."

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. MS

      I'm like, man, it's the little things in life, (laughs) that just kinda make your day. So-

    17. JR

      (laughs)

    18. MS

      ... he was happy with the five bucks, and I got to say hi to, to the great Tejay van Garderen, so that was kind of funny.

    19. JR

      That's awesome.

    20. MS

      (laughs)

    21. JR

      I don't follow professional cycling, but I can, uh, you know, understand your enthusiasm if he's the top guy. That's pretty cool.

    22. MS

      Yeah, it was. So, um, yeah, so I think, you know, just working out every day, uh... And you mentioned every week, I think people should/need to work out every day.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. MS

      And-

    25. JR

      For sure.

    26. MS

      ... and I find the more you work out, the... Y- you know, you don't have to eat as much, because your body becomes more efficient at processing fuel. So I have less desire to eat, uh-

    27. JR

      Really?

    28. MS

      ... especially... Uh, y- yeah.

    29. JR

      Not me, baby. (laughs)

    30. MS

      (laughs) You, you-

  6. 13:18 – 15:10

    What we know (and don’t) about the virus: asymptomatic spread, origins, and "lab" claims

    1. JR

      This is, uh, it's such a strange virus, isn't it? In terms of let, the way so many people are asymptomatic.

    2. MS

      Yeah, so I, uh, this idea that it came to America, what, January 28th or something in Seattle. I have a feeling it's gonna turn out to have been earlier, like in December. Uh, I was just reading this Nature paper on the origins of the virus. They, they were sort of debunking the myth that it was a, uh, creation of a, you know, bio-weapons lab in China.

    3. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MS

      There is that conspiracy theory, which is not completely crazy-

    5. JR

      Right.

    6. MS

      ... 'cause of course there are, there are bio-weapon labs that do this kind of stuff. There was that one in Russia a few decades ago w- where they had a leakage. Um, but, but it looked like ... I read this article twice. I don't understand it 'cause this isn't what I do. But, you know, they, they really showed that, uh, it very, very likely made the leap from probably bats. Uh, you know, bats are mammals. Bats are very respon- r- r- respiratory. They're, they're very, uh, social. You know, there's this cave in Texas where there's like 20 million bats that live in this cave. I mean, they are just pressed in. It's like the same population of Mexico City. And they come out at night and so on. And, you know, these wet markets in Wuhan, China, um, it's, it's not that wet markets by themselves are bad, but, you know, say you have dead fish. It's a wet market. But live animals, and particularly mammals like bats, then it's easy to make that, that leap. So, you know, the coronavirus, it's, you know, it's a, it's a ... They call it a novel coronavirus for a reason. It's novel. The, there ... You mean, there's other coronaviruses around. Yeah. Common cold is a coronavirus and, you know, so there's ... I have a, I have a feeling, Joe, we're gonna have this virus with us permanently. I mean, this is what Fauci's been saying, that it's not gonna just go away and then we're done. I think we're gonna have probably a mutated, uh, more modest strain of it forever, and we'll just have to get our flu shots for that one every year and, and, you know, just kind of mitigate it that way.

  7. 15:10 – 17:13

    Hydroxychloroquine hype vs reality: Shermer’s brief trial and risk framing

    1. JR

      Yeah. Have you been paying attention to this, these potential remedies like hydroxychloroquine-

    2. MS

      Yeah. Yeah.

    3. JR

      ... mixed with Z-paks and, and, and zinc? What, what are your thoughts on that?

    4. MS

      I t- I took it for two days (laughs) .

    5. JR

      Did you?

    6. MS

      Yeah, I did. Yeah. Well, a couple, I don't know, maybe a month ago now, my doc, uh, who's also a good friend and a fellow cyclist, he, he's the guy that did my neck surgery. You know, I had a fusion on my neck after I had a bad bike crash last year. And, uh, so he's a good friend and, and, and so he just texts me out of the blue and goes, "Hey, have you heard about this hydroxychl- chloroquine?" I'm, "No, I never heard of it." "Oh, yeah. The, you know, the malaria drug." "Okay. All right." So, you know, now he works at a big hospital in, in LA, Huntington Hospital, and, you know, so I, I could, I could understand why he, um, you know, was doing it as a precautionary thing, as, as a prophylactic against it. And there's some evidence, anecdotal, that, you know ... But, y- uh, anyway. So I tried ... He, he wrote me a script and I tried it for two days. It's pretty toxic. You know, if you, if you follow the, um, the prescription exactly, uh, you know, the, the chances of having, um, bad side effects are pretty low. So when Trump says, you know, "What have you got to lose?" Of course, nothing's risk-free. But if you follow the, uh, the exact prescription, then the chances of having bad effects are, are, are pretty low. Unlike that guy in Arizona that, that found it in his fish tank cleaner.

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MS

      Or he had some ... It was some fish anti-fungal chemical and he drank it and died. Okay. You know, you can't do that kind of stuff. But that would apply to any kind of medication (laughs) .

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. MS

      Right? Anyway, so I tried it for two days and, uh, I, you know, I didn't feel good. You know, I work out and then I came back one day and my wife says, "You know, you stink like a toxin. Like, like poison." I'm like, "Ooh. Okay. Yeah."

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. MS

      I think as (laughs) -

    13. JR

      That's not good.

    14. MS

      No, no, it's like-

    15. JR

      Well, you're not supposed to take it unless you get i- in contact, right? Or you would think you, that you could have been in contact?

    16. MS

      Well, the ... ye- ... Well, I, you know, I don't know. Um, a- again, it could be that lots of us have it and be-

    17. JR

      That's the weird part, right? The I don't know.

    18. MS

      ... symptom-free. The I don't know, right?

    19. JR

      The I don't, the I don't know. The, that's what keeps people up at night.

    20. MS

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      You're lying in bed. You're like, "What about that guy? Well, he was close to me. What about this?"

    22. MS

      Right.

    23. JR

      "What about that? What if someone-"

    24. MS

      Right.

    25. JR

      "... someone at the grocery stores got it and I touched the cart?"

  8. 17:13 – 18:49

    Antibody testing and the true denominator: measuring infection rates and immunity benefits

    1. MS

      Two of my cycling buddies had really bad colds in December. Dry cough, fever. You know, all the symptoms, and they're now saying, "Huh. I wonder if I had it in December."

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. MS

      And the reason this is important to know is because th- that would increase the size of the denominator of the equation where you have the number of deaths divided by the number of people that got it, and it's that bottom number we just don't know 'cause the testing's just been ramped up, so there might be lots of people that had it in January and February and they got better and we, you know, we just don't know, or they were symptom-free and they didn't know they had it, or maybe even earlier, say, December. That Nature paper I referenced, they, they trace it back, you know, how they do this genetically with mutations or whatever, but to, to say mid November in China.

    4. JR

      Hmm.

    5. MS

      So, you know, people were coming from China to the United States in, throughout November and December, so it's entirely possible it's been here longer, and therefore the death rate is not nearly as catastrophic as it, a- as it seems like it could be.

    6. JR

      Is, uh, is there a way to test whether or not you've had it be- for antibodies?

    7. MS

      ... uh, I think there's a test now. I don't think it's in the United States. Where was this? Maybe it was... Maybe it was South Korea. But just a pinprick, and they can tell if you've already had it based on the antibodies in your blood that would only be there if you had the coronavirus. I think it... Uh, I think it was South Korea that was doing that, and that absolutely has to be done because we have to know what the number is.

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. MS

      And, and also, if you've had it and you have the antibodies in your blood, then you can donate your blood-

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. MS

      ... and give it to somebody and... Then they... That would s- be something like a vaccine.

    12. JR

      Yeah, that's al-

    13. MS

      That's the whole point.

  9. 18:49 – 23:58

    Pandemic politics and emergency power: polarization, autocrats, and rallying during crisis

    1. JR

      ... that's all very promising. You know, it's, it's really interesting too because this has become such a, a hot political topic. You know, there's so many people that are angry at Trump, but they were angry at Trump back when he was closing the travel from China.

    2. MS

      Yes, they-

    3. JR

      Which turned out to be a great idea. And, you know-

    4. MS

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      ... Donald Trump Jr. tweeted today a c- a compilation of CNN and all these other different networks giving out bad information way back in January. Bad information saying, "This is gonna be fine. Don't worry." You know, "It's not as deadly as the flu. You should worry about the flu." You know, "Don't change your plans. Don't do anything." So a lot of people got this wrong and... But so many people are trying to make this a, a political point right now and it's really... It's so, so useless. It's... Th- You know, uh, pointing fingers and everything at this point in time.

    6. MS

      Yeah. Yeah.

    7. JR

      It's like, what they need to concentrate on now is just getting masks, getting PPE equipment, keeping people healthy if they can, and then educating people on how to keep your immune system strong and let's... You know, let's try to... Let's try to g- get people to understand the consequences of not taking care of your body.

    8. MS

      This has to be the worst job in the world, president.

    9. JR

      Oh, my God.

    10. MS

      I mean, no matter what, no matter what you do, everyone's gonna... Half the people are gonna hate you.

    11. JR

      Who would want-

    12. MS

      And-

    13. JR

      ... that job?

    14. MS

      Uh, I don't (laughs) know because it doesn't even pay that well compared to other professions (laughs) , a- at the top end of other professions. You know, there, there's a, a lot of articles now about, um, how autocrats around the world have been taking advantage of the, of the pandemic to increase their power-

    15. JR

      Yes.

    16. MS

      ... and to squelch civil liberties, you know, in Hungary and, and, um, and, and Turkey, even Israel, China of course, Putin in Russia, and so on, and, and Trump usually gets lumped in there like he's an autocrat like Orbán and, and Erdoğan and, and, and Netanyahu and, and so forth. Okay. So then... So had he closed... Let's say... Do the counterfactual. Let's say he closed the borders in, um, late January or early February or something like this. I mean, he just, just, just clamped down on, on, on all travel and so on. He would have been totally accused of being an autocrat. He's... You know, he wants to be a dictator and look what he's doing.

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. MS

      Okay. So he, he doesn't do that and then he's accused of, you know, not doing enough when it looks like we should have done more. And then, you know, the other day when he said, "Well, I'm not gonna... I'm not gonna tell all the governors what to do. You know, I'm gonna honor states' rights for now." And of course, he gets hammered for that. It's like... But, you know, but that's actually, y- y- y-... You know, that's not-

    19. JR

      What he's supposed to do.

    20. MS

      That's not what an autocrat would do.

    21. JR

      Right.

    22. MS

      An autocrat would say, "Yeah, I'm telling everybody what to do." (laughs)

    23. JR

      Right. Exactly. Exactly.

    24. MS

      So, you know... Uh, you know, I, I think maybe we should, you know, drop all the, the polarization politically, rally around the president, even if you hate him.

    25. JR

      Yes.

    26. MS

      Just look what happened after 9/11. You know, I mean, Bush was p- pretty hated by the left and, and most liberals came around and said, "All right. You know what? We're gonna support this guy at least for a few months until, you know, we figure out what's going on here." And most of the liberal Democratic, uh, congressmen and senators voted for, um, the war in... Uh, you know, for the invasion of Afghanistan and including Iraq, including Hillary. Right? So, um, (sighs) you know, maybe we ought to do that. I know people just can't stand Trump and, and it's just the idea like saying something nice or supportive or not being critical seems hard to do. But, you know, maybe... And this is way worse than 9/11.

    27. JR

      Yeah. It... And it, it's... It... You're... What you're saying is totally correct. It's, it seems like the polarization is even worse though than when it was in 2001. It seems like it just keeps ramping up and Trump is such a naturally polarizing figure that it's gotten... You know, the, the left versus right has gotten so extreme right now. It's almost impossible for rational discourse, and this is one of the reasons why it's a good time now to talk about your book-

    28. MS

      Yeah. I was just-

    29. JR

      ... giving the Devil his due. (laughs)

    30. MS

      I was just showing this, uh, graph of the, uh, people that self-identify as centrist versus now, which is more polarized. You have this-

  10. 23:58 – 27:30

    Contact-tracing tech vs civil liberties: Snowden, surveillance creep, and hard-to-reverse powers

    1. JR

      No. No, it's not. You know, another thing I wanted to talk to you about, Michael, is there's an article today in The Atlantic which is really interesting. It's about technology. Um, it's, uh...... contact tracking technology. And this, there's a real concern about this stuff. First of all, the idea is great that if you... That this could free America from quarantine. So this is always the risk, right? The risk is, just give up a little bit of your civil liberties, give up a little bit of your freedom, and, uh, we're gonna keep you safe. And, you know, it brings you to the old Benjamin Franklin quote. You know, "He who would give up liberty for freedom deserves neiver- neither." Uh, l- l- liberty for safety. Um, I- I'm sure I fucked up that quote. But this, this-

    2. MS

      (laughs) Close enough.

    3. JR

      ... technology is very interesting, because they're using it in South Korea and they're using it in Singapore. And, uh, I, the, the title of the, uh, article in The Atlantic is The Technology That Could Free America from Quarantine, and it's out today. And, um, they bring up this conundrum. I mean, nobody wants to give up civil liberties, and civil liberties lost are rarely regained. And this is the real concern here, that if you do allow people to track who you're in contact with and make sure that, okay, you're testing negative and you're in contact with people that also test negative, so you're okay. You're- you're okay to travel now. Like, this is-

    4. MS

      You know.

    5. JR

      ... this is a very weird thing. And it gets us-

    6. MS

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      ... into very gray area. How do you feel about this?

    8. MS

      Uh, I feel about it this way. I, I, I... In general, I, I'm against that sort of thing. I like the idea of privacy, um, and that I do have a right to, to not be tracked and, uh, you know, you can't have cameras in my home or my yard and, and so on. In general, I think across the board that's a good principle, uh, and it, and it follows the Constitution. I think there are times, say, national emergency like this, of course there's always the risk that, you know, any autocrat can dec- declare a national emergency, grab the power and never give it back, and I mentioned examples of this before in Turkey, say. Uh, but the difference here, I think is, you know, we do have a Constitution, we do have states' rights, we do have courts that litigate these sorts of things. I could see a reasonable measure being taken for, let's say, we're gonna do the following for six months until we see what happens with this pandemic, and then once that's over then we're gonna revert back. Now, let's say the governor or the president says, "Well, I'm not going back." Well, then you have courts. Then we... And you, and you sue the state or you sue the federal government for violations of civil liberties, and then you can get them back. We do have that.

    9. JR

      Right, but that's never happened. We've never got them back. Like what,what happened with the NSA when Edward Snowden r- revealed how much tracking is actually going on. I mean, that's never been reversed.

    10. MS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know, yeah, I know. It was very... I watched that show you had- when you had him on and oh boy, that was pretty disturbing. Um-

    11. JR

      Very disturbing. And what was also disturbing was that now it's been proven that the Obama administration lied. They lied about what, you know, it was like, "It's just metadata. There's no, no concern." That... It was not just metadata.

    12. MS

      Right.

    13. JR

      Th- they were, they were able to read people's emails.

    14. MS

      Right. Yes, and you know, these, this program was started under Bush, and so supposedly when Obama, uh, became president, it's like, you know, the transparent president, so we're gonna, we're gonna stop doing that. Well, that- that's not the case. So here's a good argument for, you know, WikiLeaks and, and the Pentagon Papers that I, I, I recognize as valuable, that we wouldn't have known that without Snowden, uh, or the, or the Pentagon Papers, and, you know, it's good to know what, you know, what your government is up to.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

  11. 27:30 – 37:47

    When conspiracy theories are partly true: government secrecy, false flags, and the Epstein question

    1. MS

      And, you know, and our, our mutual favorite subjects of conspiracy theories, you know, we didn't know about a lot of the things Kennedy was doing, and Johnson, you know, all the way back to Eisenhower lying about the Vietnam War, for example, until the Pentagon Papers came out. And then in the '90s the Church Committee on conspiracies from the '70s, a- a lot of those documents were released and there was that, that business about the Operation Northwoods-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MS

      ... where Kennedy administration people brought to him this idea of a false flag operation over Cuba, make it look like, um, the, the Russians were harassing our aircraft or airports as an excuse to invading Cuba or assassinating Castro and so on. It's like, you know, when you had Alex Jones on, he talks about false flag operations and most of us skeptics go, "Oh, that's a bunch of nonsense." And then you, you read this- these documents that are revealed in the, in these, um, released secret documents. Like, wow, okay, so we did do that. And then-

    4. JR

      Not just that, signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    5. MS

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Vetoed by Kennedy who was like, "What the hell are you doing?" You know, and then finds himself dead less than a year later.

    7. MS

      Right. And then all the shenanigans of, um, American intelligence agents, um, manipulating elections in South American, uh, democracies.

    8. JR

      Yeah.

    9. MS

      I- i- in the, in the model of, well, he may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch.

    10. JR

      Yeah. Oof.

    11. MS

      Right? So we'd rather, we would rather support the fascist dictator rather than the communist dictator. It's like, wh- what are we doing, doing that anyway?

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. MS

      Well, that's what we do. It's like, wait a minute, does the public know about this? Did Congress approve this? No. Okay. So, you know, this is one reason people believe conspiracy theories, is because a lot of them are true.

    14. JR

      Yeah. That's what scary.

    15. MS

      Not all of them.

    16. JR

      (laughs)

    17. MS

      Not all of them, but I, I point to with you, um, with the Epstein case. Like, you were one of the first people... I mean, as a... Literally you're a professional skeptic. (laughs) .

    18. JR

      And you looked at some of the evidence and you're like, "Oh, well, you know what? This might be a conspiracy." You know? And when I said when Michael Shermer thinks it might be a conspiracy, it's probably a goddamn conspiracy.

    19. MS

      (laughs) . There's been enough of them. I'm still not sure about that one because after I posted something about the, you know, the two cameras broke or whatever-

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    21. MS

      ... somebody wrote me from that prison saying, "Oh, those cameras are always breaking." Like, oh, all right.

    22. JR

      It's a little convenient though that he, you know, he winds up strangling himself in a way that Michael Baden, the, the famous autopsy doctor says is completely inconsistent with hanging and much more consistent with someone strangling you, includ- including the actual area where he was hanging from supposedly.

    23. MS

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      Like it's consistent with someone strangling you from behind, not consistent with you hanging by your own weight.

    25. MS

      Yeah, after Weinstein got his, his, um, Harvey Weinstein got his conviction, I thought, "Oh, boy, bet, they better have a real suicide watch on this guy."

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. MS

      'Cause he's, he surely has a black book just as big as, uh, Epstein's.

    28. JR

      Oh, I'm sure. Well, I think what, what he's got is probably more incriminating to him, though. You know?

    29. MS

      Hmm.

    30. JR

      I think what he's got is probably, "Hey, I had sex with all these starlets and turned them into big celebrities." And-

  12. 37:47 – 48:17

    Why Shermer wrote 'Giving the Devil His Due': steelmanning opponents and defending free speech

    1. JR

      Now what... This book that you wrote, Giving the Devil His Due, the, the idea is talking to people whose opinions you disagree with and that there's a lot of value in that. Why, why did you write that and what, what were you trying to get out of this?

    2. MS

      Um, well, in general I've been kind of a civil libertarian most of my life in that respect, but, but I... To be honest I was kind of inspired after the, uh, episode we did of your podcast with Graham Hancock. And I've since gotten to know him and I thought, "You know, I, I, I was not really fair to that guy. I really didn't give him a fair shake." Um, and there's value in people like him who challenge the mainstream. Now, it's not that outsiders, um, can't make contributions, they can. And we generally tend to be skeptical of outsiders because th- they're mostly wrong most of the time, but so are scientists wrong about most of their hypotheses. So I, I do think if you apply, uh, the principles of free speech as, as originally laid out by John Stuart Mill in 1859, his book On Liberty, where he said, uh, "Okay, look, you might be completely right but by listening to somebody else it strengthens your own arguments." So like for example I have my mostly pro-choice students watch Ben Shapiro videos defending the pro-life position on abortion because if they can't articulate his position, his arguments and then debunk them, then their pro-life, pro-choice position is not all that strong. Okay, that's the first one.

    3. JR

      Hmm.

    4. MS

      Second one, you might be, you might be partially right and partially wrong and by listening to somebody you disagree with you improve your arguments. Or you might be completely wrong and, and then you've, you've had an opportunity to change your mind. Uh, but, but more im- still, importantly still if you silence people, you refuse to listen to them, then what, what happens when you take up a contrary position? You come up with some idea that goes against the grain and the norms or worse laws are in place to silence you. Now you've just given up your opportunity to be heard because you've previously endorsed the idea of silencing people. And, and I don't just mean legally like passing laws although that's disturbing enough, like in many countries like Canada, Austria, Germany, um, Switzerland, France, uh, Australia, and New Zealand it's illegal to deny the Holocaust. By, by which I mean if you say, "Well, I think one million Jews died not six million, therefore I don't think the gas chambers were used the way we think they were, therefore I don't think the Nazis had an, uh, an intentional plan to exterminate European Jewry." Okay, that's now illegal to say that. And, uh, now I've debunked all those claims, I think they're completely wrong and, and even if the people who claim it are themselves anti-Semites, you know I don't know if it's in somebody's heart or minds but, you know, let's, let's assume the worst just for the sake of our argument, I would still defend their right to say it because let's say by a- analogy, you know, I'm in the middle of a debate about how many Native Americans died since Columbus came here and... Now the figure is, you know, I don't know 90 million, 70 million, 50 million, you know it's debatable. But let's say I'm a historian and I say, "I think it was 10 million and I think it was mostly by germs not by guns and steel." Am I a Holocaust denier and therefore I should be silenced or worse jailed for my illegal hate speech? You know?

    5. JR

      Hmm.

    6. MS

      And, uh, so this is why I wrote a letter to the judge in David Irving's case in Austria. David Irving is a notorious Holocaust denier in England. So he flew to, uh, Vienna from London to give a speech at one of these kind of far right groups in a hotel somewhere and he got flagged at the airport. You know they scan the passport and boom he's arrested and he was put on trial and convicted and sent to jail. Not... He didn't even speak. He was just going to speak.

    7. JR

      Hmm.

    8. MS

      And that, so that essentially is a thought crime and so even though I completely disagree w- with their arguments and I, maybe I don't, I don't even want to like these guys 'cause of their attitudes about Jews, I don't like that but still I would defend them. So I would apply that to, um, pretty much anybody who's out there like that because that's the only way we can really improve how we think about things to understand the truth about the real world is to listen to people that disagree with you. Those are the ones that, (laughs) that the Second Amendment or the First Amendment free speech in general is for and, um, so-

    9. JR

      I, I agree with that but can I give you the counterargument?

    10. MS

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      The counterargument particularly online is that people develop these bubbles, they develop these bu- bubbles where you... There's...... everyone agrees with your perspective, you isolate or self-isolate in these bubbles. And, uh, you know, there's this theory that you can indoctrinate young, impressionable people into hateful or, uh, racist or, you know, uh, ideologically disturbing ideas by finding them isolated in these thought bubbles. If they, they get onto particular message boards or a particular website where they subscribe to a YouTube channel or some video channel, then they all meet up in the comments and they agree with each other, but they're all wrong. But they-

    12. MS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      ... can find confirmation bias in these, these large groups of people that are also wrong, and they feed off of each other. What do you-

    14. MS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... what do you think about that?

    16. MS

      It does happen, for sure, and, you know, my, my res- first response is to encourage people to get out of their bubble, so if you read the New York Times you should read the Wall Street Journal, and vice versa. Uh, now of course that doesn't, uh, apply to, to, to most people online, but there's new research now since the 2016 election by a number of political scientists and cognitive scientists, nicely summarized in Hugo Mercier's book called Not Born Yesterday. And he shows that, um, those, those Facebook and online bubbles, uh, against Hillary, say, or for Trump or, or vice versa, probably had next to no effect on the actual election. That is to say, if you believe that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria, it, whether you're, uh, y- whether I convince you that that's not true, you, you, you're very likely not gonna vote for Hillary no matter what.

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. MS

      You know, somebody that believes that's already so far down the rabbit hole of, uh, say, say, down the spectrum of where they are politically, they're never gonna switch positions. And e- even the idea of just sort of slightly negative stories about Hillary or slightly negative stories about Trump that might nudge people, uh, it doesn't look like it had much effect at all. In fact, Hugo shows that l- most political advertising is a complete waste of money. It does nothing. Doesn't change people's votes. All's it does is reinforce to your team, say in the primaries, that you're the best candidate, so it might work for that. But in terms of getting Republicans to vote, you know, say centrist or Republicans to vote Democrat, you know, the, the advertising probably have no, uh, no, no effect at all. And the same thing with corporate advertising and things like that. It probably doesn't really work. And so I've been thinking about this with the Nazis, 'cause I've, I've written a lot about that, you know, how do you... The problem to explain is how do you convert a, a, a, an entire nation of people, um, from this, you know, highly cultured, educated, intelligent, you know, Western civilization-leading, um, uh, culture into Nazis that are willing to exterminate Jews and, and other people? And the answer, I think, is now, y- you don't. You have to. You don't have to. Most of 'em didn't endorse the Nazi ideology. They liked some of the economic policies in the '30s that got Germany out of the Depression. You know, Hitler had that, you know, built the Autobahn and, you know, all that stuff, trains ran on time, whatnot. But the exterminationist ideology that the Nazis had, most Germans did not go that far. Now, antisemitism was rampant in Europe, including Germany and Poland and Russia especially, uh, but most of the people that held antisemitic views about Jews were not exterminationists. They didn't think the Jews should be hauled out and sent to camps and exterminated. That was very much a Hitlerian thing. So I've, I've now g- gotten to the point where I think no Hitler, no Holocaust. Probably even no Hitler, no World War II. Most German people did not want war. They, they were, you know, begging him to stop after he annexed Austria, for example. It's like, "That's enough. Eh, eh, at some point these other countries are gonna go to war with us and we don't want that." But, you know, Hitler... So the way the state, the way this thing hovers in midair for 13 years in that case was, um, was pluralistic ignorance, or the spiral of silence, where everybody thinks everybody else thinks something, but they don't. (laughs) And then the, um, punishment of dissenters. Anyone who dissents, uh, dissents, who, uh, speaks out e- either in the press or just, uh, p- privately, we're gonna jail them, silence them, censor them, you know, send them off to camps or whatever. So the KL system in Germany and the gulag system in Soviet, uh, Stalinist Russia silenced people who would have dissented that would tell the rest of us who, who think everybody else thinks this is the way everybody believes but they don't. We'll never know because we don't hear those voices. They're silenced.

    19. JR

      Mm.

    20. MS

      So it, so with those two things, pluralistic ignorance and the punishment of dissenters, you can have this Nazi ideology or Stalinist ideology hover in midair even though no one really believes it. (laughs) And, and it's just, think of like North Korea where, when Kim Jong-un's father died, Kim Jong-il, and, you know, you s- you saw those videos of people just weeping in the streets for days on end, y- mostly these women. It's just like, who actually believes that they feel this way? Well, y- y- we don't believe it. They are obviously faking. Does the regime believe that they are, y- you know, in, in mourning over the loss of the, the dear leader? No, because they maintain the concentration camp system and they lock everybody up who dissents even a little bit. That tells us they don't actually believe people feel that way about their regime. So, um-

    21. JR

      They didn't care if people believed, they just wanted compliance, right?

    22. MS

      Right.

    23. JR

      They wanted to make sure that people... I mean, they had a long period of time where they forced people to mourn. They wanted them to weep in the streets and they jailed people for as much as six months for not mourning enough. (laughs)

    24. MS

      Yeah, it's crazy. (laughs) Yeah, there's-

    25. JR

      Yeah, it's horrific. But that's, that's how you run a dictatorship, right? Under fear.

    26. MS

      There's a story of wh- where, um, Stalin gave a speech and then, um, you know, got a standing ovation that went on for, like, three minutes and then six minutes and eight minutes, nine minutes, 10 minutes, 11 minutes. Everybody's going, "Oh, crap. Please, somebody sit down." Finally some apparatchik sat down, and he was promptly arrested the next day and sent off to the gul- uh, to, to the, the gulag.

    27. JR

      Really?

    28. MS

      Yeah. Yeah.

    29. JR

      Wow, 11 minutes, not enough. (laughs)

    30. MS

      Now... Now, it's not just him they wanna silence, of course, it's a signal. Like-

  13. 48:17 – 1:10:02

    Cancel culture, identity politics, and the Jordan Peterson controversy as a case study

    1. JR

      Isn't that... That is an issue with social media, right? I mean, there's, there's people that are writing hateful things on social media, but then there's people that are writing things that are just disagreeable. And when they get silenced, this is oftentimes something that sends a signal to other people to not say disagreeable things, not say questionable things, not say things that, that is contrary to the orthodoxy.

    2. MS

      Right. That's right. So, even though we, we don't have censorship laws like other countries we've been discussing, there is this self-censorship that happens out of fear of being canceled, in the so-called cancel culture, or, or just squelched by the, you know, the language police-

    3. JR

      Yes.

    4. MS

      ... the politically correct police, or... Right? So, when I ask a show of hands of my students every semester, "How many of you self-censor? That is, y- you wanna say something but you don't, on abortion or immigration or any kind of politically charged issue?" They all raise their hand. "Oh, yeah."

    5. JR

      Yeah, everyone.

    6. MS

      "Oh no, I would never, you know, say something." Not just in class but, you know, in the dorm rooms or just wherever students are gathering. That's the chilling effect. That's what I... So Giving the Devil His Due is, you know, uh, it's pushing back against that. That I know you don't want to give your devil, your devils, whoever... The devil is whoever you disagree with.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. MS

      I know you don't want to, I don't want to either. But, you know, but we have to for our own safety's sake. If I wanna be heard and I want you to take me seriously and listen to what I have to say, I have to respond in kind. I have to practice the principle of (sniffs) kinda reciprocity or, or, or interchangeable perspectives. I have to see it from your perspective and say, "Well, he wants to have his voice so, so do I."

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. MS

      And so as a principle it, uh, it doesn't feel intuitive. Like, no, I don't wanna give everybody a voice. But, you know what? I'm gonna override that impulse and, and, and do it anyway, if nothing else, selfishly, for my own safety's sake. So my other case chapter in the book besides Graham Hancock is Jordan Peterson. Now, you know, after I saw him on your show and then I saw him getting hammered in the media, especially, you know, online, I mean, just w- viciously attacked. It's like, "God, who is this guy?" Anyway, then I met him and got to know him a little bit, it's like he's not at all like what these people are saying.

    11. JR

      He's a wonderful guy. He's the most misrepreten- re-... Excuse me, misrepresented person I've ever met in my life. Willfully, willingly misrepresented. They do it on purpose, they know what they're doing, they wanna paint him out with just a series of very quick easy to use adjectives that turn him into a monster.

    12. MS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      And, and they don't have anything to back that up. Anything.

    14. MS

      No.

    15. JR

      And it's, it's really strange. It's so disturbing. But it's a very strange left-wing characteristic. And again, this is coming from someone who's on the left.

    16. MS

      Yes.

    17. JR

      It's... But it is a left-wing characteristic, this, this need to misrepresent someone, paint them in a straw man fashion as some sort of an evil person so that you can dismiss everything they say that is uncomfortable or that, uh, is contrary to your accepted ideology, the ideology that you subscribe to and that you're defending and that you've identified with. And I think this is a real problem. A real problem that we, we're having is that people identify with their ideas. If their ideas fall apart, somehow or another they're falling apart. They are a part of the ideas. They're not just a person who has a thought and they can... Like, if you and I disagreed on something, I would hope that we could just talk about these ideas as if they are separate from us. But oftentimes-

    18. MS

      Right.

    19. JR

      ... that's not the case. Oftentimes y- people, they so identify with those ideas that when those ideas are challenged, they are challenged. They get emotional, they get angry, and they will lie. They will willfully misrepresent to you in order to strengthen their position. And this is a terrible, terrible thing that I see, and I see it so much from my side. I see so much of this from the left, and it's so discouraging and it's so infuriating.

    20. MS

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      And, um, uh, this is one of the things that I love about the concept of your book and I love about this idea that we need open discourse and discussion. And I think we're dealing with a couple of things here, and one of the things I think we're dealing with is the limited kind of communication that's available through social media. It's very limited. You know, the, the... Writing something in text and someone responds in text, we're missing on so much nuance. We're missing so much of what it means to interact with someone socially. If you and I are sitting across from each other, person to person, if, if I say something insulting to you, I have to see you get upset. I have to feel it. I have to look at you. I have to feel like, "What kind of an asshole am I that I said that to you?" Like, "Why did I hurt your feelings?" Like, there's all these things that happen when people are interacting with each other socially, looking at each other in the eye, these cues-

    22. MS

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      ... these... This is what made us human. This is what...

    24. MS

      Yeah. (laughs)

    25. JR

      I mean, this is what, what found community. I mean, this is, this is one of the basic tenets of rational discourse, is the ability to communicate with each other in a, in a, uh, uh, a comprehensive way, in a nuanced way. And so much of that is eliminated entirely when you put things into 140 or 280 characters.

    26. MS

      Yeah. Yeah, I'll occasionally get really nasty letters, where somebody will email me and... I mean, really nasty, like, "You're a piece of shit, you fucking..."

    27. JR

      Yeah. (laughs)

    28. MS

      And just on and on like this. And I'll... Uh, and sometimes I'll write 'em back and go, "Hey, you know, are, are you having a hard day? 'Cause, you know, I, I, I didn't mean to be offensive, I was just trying to make this point." And they always write back and go, "Oh my God, I, I, I'm so sorry, I didn't know anybody was gonna respond. Oh wow. Uh, yeah. No, I take it back, I didn't mean that." (laughs)

    29. JR

      (laughs) That's such a... That... What you're just saying is so common. I hear that from so many people that are in the public eye that say something back to someone who says something rude to them and the person's sort of like, "Well, I didn't mean it..." Because it's just such a shitty way to communicate.

    30. MS

      Right.

  14. 1:10:02 – 1:34:04

    From hate speech to microaggressions and cultural appropriation: category creep and moral progress debates

    1. MS

      another and here I am in prison." They almost all have good moralistic reasoning, so... The problem is not that we don't have enough morality. Uh, actually, we have too much morality, too much moralizing about other people that are harming us. So, you know, back to the free speech issue. Um, the moment you say, "We're gonna create a category called Hate Speech." Okay, what goes in that bin?

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. MS

      Well, you know, it's, uh... And, uh, and... So I document in the... In the opening page that this really begins in the United States with, in 1919, with the Schenck versus the United States, uh, decision by the United States Supreme Court, uh, to uphold this conviction of this guy named Schenck who was head of the, uh, Socialist Party in Philadelphia. In 1918 he was distributing flyers to draft age men telling them that, um, the conscription is the equivalent of slavery because the 14th Amendment protects your right to bodily autonomy and when the government says, "We're drafting you into the military and we're sending you to Europe," in this case for the European Great War, uh, you know, "We now own your body for the next four years." Okay, so this is what... And s- so here's the famous lines from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Schenck versus the United States, that we're all familiar with: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting 'Fire in a theater and causing a panic.' The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a n- uh, nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right, right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree." So clear and present danger... Okay, so we... You, you might say, "Okay, so somebody incites, uh, a group to riot and cause violence or something like that, so that's going to be called hate speech." But, but, but note what, what he considered at the time a clear and present danger: protesters of the draft?

Episode duration: 1:53:15

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