Joe Rogan Experience #1456 - Michael Shermer

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Okay, here we go.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

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

   2. MSMichael Shermer0:09

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

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      It's good to see you again.

   4. MSMichael Shermer0:13

      Likewise.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      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. MSMichael Shermer0:20

      Uh-huh.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:20

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

   8. MSMichael Shermer0:24

      (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. JRJoe Rogan1:24

      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. MSMichael Shermer1:34

       The Borg. (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:34

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

   12. MSMichael Shermer1:39

       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. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       Yeah.

   14. MSMichael Shermer1:53

       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|>

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:18

       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.

   16. MSMichael Shermer2:24

       Really? Wow.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:25

       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...

   18. MSMichael Shermer2:43

       Right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:43

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

   20. MSMichael Shermer2:50

       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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:27

       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.

   22. MSMichael Shermer3:39

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

   23. JRJoe Rogan3:41

       Right.

   24. MSMichael Shermer3:42

       ... 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.

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:04

       Yeah.

   26. MSMichael Shermer4:04

       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?

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:26

       Yeah.

   28. MSMichael Shermer4:27

       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.

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:37

       Yeah.

   30. MSMichael Shermer4:37

       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?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yeah. Have you been…

   1. MSMichael Shermer15:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:10

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

   3. MSMichael Shermer15:15

      Yeah. Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:15

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

   5. MSMichael Shermer15:18

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

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:20

      Did you?

   7. MSMichael Shermer15:20

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:24

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MSMichael Shermer16:24

      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) .

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:33

       Yeah.

   11. MSMichael Shermer16:33

       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."

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:43

       (laughs)

   13. MSMichael Shermer16:43

       I think as (laughs) -

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:45

       That's not good.

   15. MSMichael Shermer16:46

       No, no, it's like-

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:46

       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?

   17. MSMichael Shermer16:53

       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-

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:57

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

   19. MSMichael Shermer16:59

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

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:01

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

   21. MSMichael Shermer17:04

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:04

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

   23. MSMichael Shermer17:08

       Right.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:08

       "What about that? What if someone-"

   25. MSMichael Shermer17:10

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:10

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

   27. MSMichael Shermer17:13

       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."

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:23

       Yeah.

   29. MSMichael Shermer17:24

       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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:55

       Hmm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

   2. MSMichael Shermer30:00

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:00

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

   4. MSMichael Shermer30:06

      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."

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:13

      Yeah.

   6. MSMichael Shermer30:13

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

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:17

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

   8. MSMichael Shermer30:23

      Hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:23

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

   10. MSMichael Shermer30:32

       Yes.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:32

       ... this, and... I bet he probably doesn't want that out. Especially-

   12. MSMichael Shermer30:35

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:35

       ... at this stage of the game. Nothing, I don't think anything he's got is gonna make him look good.

   14. MSMichael Shermer30:39

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:39

       And I think with, the thing with Epstein is, he knew way too much about too many powerful people. There's just so, so many connections that could be made with that guy. And that, you know, to this day, people are asking questions that people like Bill Gates don't wanna answer, or Prince Andrew, or any of these people. They're like, "No, I don't wanna talk about this."

   16. MSMichael Shermer31:00

       Yeah. I didn't, I didn't hear the one about Gates, but, but Prince Andrew, of course. Course, Gates is apparently-

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:05

       Gates apparently flew on the Lolita Express-

   18. MSMichael Shermer31:07

       Oh. Oh.

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:07

       ... four years after he was convicted.

   20. MSMichael Shermer31:10

       Oh, okay. Wow. All right. Well-

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:12

       According to The Daily Mirror-

   22. MSMichael Shermer31:13

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan31:13

       ... or whatever the fuck it was. I don't, I would, I would ask Jamie to look that up, but I've got his computer right now (laughs) .

   24. MSMichael Shermer31:20

       Not gonna be able to find it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:20

       Look it up on your iPad. Find out if it's true, if Bill Gates flew on the Lolita Express. 'Cause that's what I was-

   26. MSMichael Shermer31:25

       (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:25

       ... reading today. There, people were trying to ask Bill Gates. But it's so hard to know what's true and what's not true today. That's, the thing is, there's so much data, and so... I mean, one of the things that's really sad about the loss of respect for mainstream journalism and mainstream media is, well, if we count, can't count on them, then who's regulating the independents? Who's regulating these websites? Who's regulating these people that are just, you know, so-called independent journalists that are just tweeting things and finding things-

   28. MSMichael Shermer31:54

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:54

       ... and putting things up on their websites? It's, it's so hard to tell who's telling the truth and who's not, and who's right.

   30. MSMichael Shermer32:00

       Yeah, when I was, when I was working on the, Giving the Devil His Due, I, I had to... This was kind of a challenge to me, because I feel like there's so much fake news, there, real fake news. And, and, you know, and just bogus theories. And particularly in my areas of, uh, you know, quack medicine and ca- cancer cures, and, and now, coronavirus cures. You know, like Jim, you know, the old televangelist Jim Baker was sell, selling those silver pil- pills that you were supposed to take. Silver derivative pills that were supposed to fight the coronavirus, whatever. You know, so a lot of that stuff is dangerous to have out there. But as a civil libertarian, I feel like, well, but I'm a free speech fundamentalist. I really believe, you know, people... Short of just lying about somebody or giving away the nuclear codes or something like that, you know, just let a thousand flowers bloom and just see what, you know, what the, just shine sunlight on all of them and see which ones rise to the top because they're supported by evidence. There's a risk to that. That is to say, you know, people will take bad information and they'll go shoot up a pizzeria or something like that.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm. …

   1. MSMichael Shermer45:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan46:37

      Mm.

   3. MSMichael Shermer46:37

      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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan47:24

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

   5. MSMichael Shermer47:28

      Right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan47:28

      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)

   7. MSMichael Shermer47:40

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

   8. JRJoe Rogan47:41

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

   9. MSMichael Shermer47:45

      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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan48:05

       Really?

   11. MSMichael Shermer48:06

       Yeah. Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan48:06

       Wow, 11 minutes, not enough. (laughs)

   13. MSMichael Shermer48:08

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

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:12

       Of course.

   15. MSMichael Shermer48:12

       ... this is what happens if you don't, you know, maintain this, this char- charade we all know is a charade.

   16. JRJoe Rogan48:17

       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.

   17. MSMichael Shermer48:45

       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-

   18. JRJoe Rogan49:01

       Yes.

   19. MSMichael Shermer49:01

       ... 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."

   20. JRJoe Rogan49:13

       Yeah, everyone.

   21. MSMichael Shermer49:14

       "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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan49:31

       Right.

   23. MSMichael Shermer49:31

       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."

   24. JRJoe Rogan49:50

       Yeah.

   25. MSMichael Shermer49:51

       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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan50:21

       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.

   27. MSMichael Shermer50:41

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan50:41

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

   29. MSMichael Shermer50:45

       No.

   30. JRJoe Rogan50:45

       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.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:03

   Yeah. Well, I think…

   1. MSMichael Shermer1:00:00

      Ben, or whoever is a pro-lifer, but I still hold this position. I think there's a lot of progress that can be made socially (laughs) to kind of reduce the tension when you say, "I acknowledge your position. I understand it." You know, steel manning the argument. A- and then the person on the other side feels like, "Well, at least this guy's listening to me."

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:18

      Yeah. Well, I think that's a ... That is the best...... topic when it comes to that because it's, uh, when you get to, particularly when we get to late term abortions, boy, that's a very hard thing to defend morally and ethically.

   3. MSMichael Shermer1:00:33

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

      And it's also, one of the things about the abortion topic is that it's so uniquely human in that it's such a messy topic. It's not... There's not only... Here's a clear one. Don't murder people, right?

   5. MSMichael Shermer1:00:47

      Yeah, yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

      Don't just go up to people and murder. And everyone's like, "Yeah, yeah." That's clean. That's, that's a, that's a clean subject. Abortion is not that clean. Like, when is it okay? Is it okay when the fetus is not a fetus, when it's just a bundle of cells?

   7. MSMichael Shermer1:01:02

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:01:02

      Most people are like, "Yeah, well, it's not... It's not really anything then." Well, it will become a person, though. When, when do we decide? Well, that's such a messy subject, and it's such a human subject.

   9. MSMichael Shermer1:01:14

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:01:14

       And I, like you, uh, I am on the side of pro-choice, and I think that it is the woman's choice to decide whether or not she wants to keep the baby. But I also recognize at a certain point in time, that choice becomes very different. The choice becomes very different...

   11. MSMichael Shermer1:01:30

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:30

       ... when it's a six-month-old fetus. Like, what is, what are we saying there? If you, if you are just, (snaps fingers) "I am pro-choice, period." Okay, are you pro-choice up until the day of birth?

   13. MSMichael Shermer1:01:41

       Right. (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:41

       Like, when do you back it off? When do you back it off?

   15. MSMichael Shermer1:01:44

       Right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:44

       And it, it is a subject that people do not want to breach. They don't wanna touch it. And, um, particular- particularly people on the left when it comes to deciding when it's okay and when it's not okay, because they feel like this is angling towards an elimination of a woman's right to choose, and it, it angles towards this, this very difficult conversation where you, you recognize that there is a difference between someone who's seven months pregnant and someone who's seven days pregnant. There's a very, very big difference. And if we can't acknowledge that, then we're being tribal. We're being ideologically driven where we're sticking to our position because we feel like if we concede that this is, uh, a complex issue, then we open up the door to possibly losing a woman's right to choose and losing these reproductive rights.

   17. MSMichael Shermer1:02:33

       Yeah, I think part of the problem also is that we tend to dichotomize most moral issues as right or wrong, good or evil, and... A- a- and the problem is that the law has to draw the line somewhere. We have to have a law, and, uh, to get along and so forth, so we have to say, "The drinking age is this instead of that," or, "Driving age is this."

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:53

       Yeah.

   19. MSMichael Shermer1:02:54

       And the, the point at which you can have abortion is right here. But most, uh, most of life is m- much more on a spectrum, a continuum. So here, I make the distinction in the book between binary thinking and continuous thinking. Most moral issues are on a continuum. You know, like immigration. Uh, you know, it's like, "Close the borders." "What, don't let anybody in ever?"

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:03:12

       (laughs)

   21. MSMichael Shermer1:03:12

       "No, no, no, no, we gotta let some in." "Okay, then we should open the borders..." "You mean you just wanna open the borders up and let everybody in?" "No, no. No, I'm not saying everybody." "Okay, where do you draw the line?" Okay.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:03:22

       Right.

   23. MSMichael Shermer1:03:23

       And, and so...

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:03:24

       It's another messy human subject.

   25. MSMichael Shermer1:03:26

       Yeah, yeah. But, but if you think of it like, well, it's a continuum instead of a binary choice, and, you know, whatever answer, it's not just right or wrong, good or evil. There, there's, you know, different places to set the, uh, the, the, the dial. So so- And, and here, the, you know, the comparative method of looking at what different countries do as experiments, thinking of those as experiments, like, the... You know, Japan has a very tight... You know, they, they've slid it way down here. They let almost nobody in. Australia is a little looser, but, but tighter than us, and so on. You can kinda look at the consequences of letting this many people in or that many people and see what it does. Of course, all countries are different. Some are more diverse, some are more homogeneous. You have to account for that, and on and on. So here, I, I think, you know, instead of thinking of it in these kind of polarized black and white, you know, th- the, it's either this or that, and if you're on this side, then you're on the bad side. You know, that, that, that's not helpful. So instead of binary thinking, continuous thinking. Abortion, certainly. Y- you just articulated it perfectly. I mean, seven days? Oh, come on, you know, it's just a, a bundle of cells. But now looks like, you know, by 20 weeks or so, feel pain, you know, the... Some consciousness comes online, you know, around 24 weeks, 25 weeks, you know. At some point, you gotta draw the line somewhere around there. Now, scientists, of course, they don't want to put lines anywhere. It's a, it's a day by... Week by week, day by day, even hour by hour of the development of the connectome that creates thought and so on. There's no good place, but we have to have a line somewhere, so the law has to do that. But that then forces us into that binary thinking, which is not helpful.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:04:59

       And, and it, it creates this... This is like the line in the sand, this polarization line between these two sides. And I think that so much of what people subscribe to when they do choose an ideology, once they choose an ideology, they, they have this conglomeration of ideas that they adopt, and they adopt in order to be accepted by the tribe. And it's... This is also a very unique aspect of human communication and civilization, that we, we have to adhere to the principles and the ideologies of that tribe. So you just take on all these thoughts. And it's one of the real problems with only having two choices y- in this country when it comes to politics and when it comes to just styles of life, you know. And there's so many people that take great relish in switching teams, too-

   27. MSMichael Shermer1:05:48

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:05:48

       ... which is interesting, right? It's like, "I was a liberal my whole life, and then one day, I woke up and realized I was being a moron, you know."

   29. MSMichael Shermer1:05:55

       (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:05:55

       "And now I'm a pro-Second Amendment, pro-Trump, MAGA, make America great, keep America great..." It's interesting, 'cause those are sometimes the most, uh, the most passionate supporters of the new side, whether they're, they're newly liberal or newly conservative or... You know, o- some of the people that are the, the most interesting to talk to are people that used to be vegans and are now carnivore.

Episode duration: 1:53:15