Joe Rogan Experience #1743 - Stephen Pinker

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. SPSteven Pinker0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      So I was saying, I had, uh, you, we were talking about phones and cameras and the fact that compact cameras are essentially dead. I had an Apple camera, I don't know if you remember them.

   5. SPSteven Pinker0:21

      No.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      But it was a, I think it was one megapixel, and it was about the size of this book, County Mon- Count of Monty Christo book. That's it right there.

   7. SPSteven Pinker0:32

      Oh, okay, I don't remember that.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:33

      How many megapixels was that?

   9. NANarrator0:34

      There's two of them there. One's flat, like that.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       I didn't have that one. I had the one on the right.

   11. NANarrator0:40

       This one?

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:40

       Yeah, that's the one I had.

   13. NANarrator0:41

       Okay. Quick, take 200.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Yeah. I think it used floppy disks, if I remember. I'm trying to remember what you put in there. This was in the '90s-

   15. SPSteven Pinker0:51

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:51

       ... I wanna say. Yeah. And that was a big deal. (laughs) I mean, I don't know what the megapixels were, but I, I seem to remember it was, like, one.

   17. SPSteven Pinker1:04

       Could've been one, yeah, I think that makes sense.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:06

       Yeah, it was a big deal. Like you could take some good-ass pictures with that one. Okay, so it is some sort of an SD card. So. Are you, uh, an amateur photographer?

   19. SPSteven Pinker1:18

       I am, yes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18

       Yeah.

   21. SPSteven Pinker1:19

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:19

       Do you use actual pho- photography? Do you do, like, do you develop your own photographs?

   23. SPSteven Pinker1:24

       No longer. So I am digital-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:26

       Ah.

   25. SPSteven Pinker1:26

       ... as most pe- most photographers are these days, except for, uh, people into nostalgia and, you know, retro and-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:34

       Yeah.

   27. SPSteven Pinker1:34

       ... and hipster stuff. Uh, but I, I do have a manual focus camera, so I am old school in, in that way.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:41

       Oh.

   29. SPSteven Pinker1:42

       And, uh, I set my own aperture. I use a tripod when I can. So, uh, and I, I do take it seriously. I love the gadgets, but I also love thinking about visual experience. Uh, I started off as a psychologist studying visual cognition.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:58

       Ah.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   But if you ask…

   1. SPSteven Pinker15:00

      amounts of energy with pretty much no emissions.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      But if you ask people, the average person who hasn't really looked into this would say, "Oh, you know, wind and solar." But if... I flew into Hawaii last week when on vacation with the family, and when we flew into Hawaii, there's these, uh, they have those wind turbines that are sitting on the island of Maui, and, uh, they weren't moving. (laughs)

   3. SPSteven Pinker15:21

      Yeah. (laughs)

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      I go see that... The kids, I was pointing to it out the window. I go, "That's a spectacular failure." I go, "It doesn't generate that much energy anyway." They kill a lot of birds. Those poor birds don't know what's going on. They fly right into those, those propellers and get chopped up.

   5. SPSteven Pinker15:36

      Yeah, I mean, I think we, uh, wind energy is gonna be part of the mix, but you just can't power an entire city from -

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:42

      Yeah.

   7. SPSteven Pinker15:42

      ... climate change.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:42

      Well, it's also, they're ugly.

   9. SPSteven Pinker15:43

      (laughs) Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       There's so many of them. They, they litter the, the side of a, a mountain or a countryside. It's just, I think it's gross.

   11. SPSteven Pinker15:50

       Well, it's not a taste. I, I, I, I, I actually find them beautiful.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:52

       Really?

   13. SPSteven Pinker15:52

       I, uh... Yeah, I like them, but, uh-

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:53

       Oh, my God, there's a, there's one in California. There's like a wind... See if you can find this 'cause it looks so gross. It's a, uh... What do they call them? Wind turbines?

   15. SPSteven Pinker16:02

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       What's the f-

   17. SPSteven Pinker16:03

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       It's like a wind turbine field.

   19. SPSteven Pinker16:05

       Arm. Yeah, right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:06

       Ever seen it? It's enormous. Yeah, there it is. You don't think that looks gross?

   21. SPSteven Pinker16:10

       No, that looks pretty gross. But on the other hand, that is pretty, you know, bad and deadly.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:12

       That's disgusting.

   23. SPSteven Pinker16:13

       (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:13

       That, to me-

   25. SPSteven Pinker16:14

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       ... looks like a funeral, like, like a graveyard rather. That's like a horrific graveyard of good ideas.

   27. SPSteven Pinker16:20

       But, you know, if, if it would s- I- if it would prevent a climate catastrophe-

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:24

       Yes.

   29. SPSteven Pinker16:24

       ... I could live with it.

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:25

       Right.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Right. …

   1. SPSteven Pinker30:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Right.

   3. SPSteven Pinker30:00

      But it's another problem.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:01

      It's a different kind of pollution.

   5. SPSteven Pinker30:01

      But yeah, but going back to what we were talking about, you know, I- it's, uh, one, one of the big conclusions of Rationality is that a lot of what we deplore now as, you know, just crazy, uh, stuff, conspiracy theories and the fake news and the, uh, a lot of it comes from one bias, the my-side bias-

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:18

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SPSteven Pinker30:18

      ... which you kind of already alluded to.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:20

      Yeah.

   9. SPSteven Pinker30:20

      Namely, you, um, you believe in the sacred, uh, beliefs of your own clique, your own political party, your own coalition, your own tribe, uh, your own sect, and you, um, (clears throat) uh, paint the other side as stupid and evil for having different beliefs. And there's a, a perverse kind of rationality in being a champion for your cause because, you know-

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:45

       Mm-hmm.

   11. SPSteven Pinker30:45

       ... you get brownie points from all your friends. And if you were to defy them, if you were to, to accept climate change in a hardcore r- right-wing circle, you'd, you know, you'd be a, a pariah. You'd be-

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:56

       Yeah.

   13. SPSteven Pinker30:56

       ... it'd be social death. So there's a perverse kind of rationality in championing the beliefs of your side. It isn't so good for whole democracy when everyone is just promoting the beliefs that, that, you know, get them prestige within their own coalition rather than the beliefs that are actually true.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:13

       Yeah, it's, uh, it's strangely prevalent, right? Like, it's so common that people have this ideology, they subscribe to the belief system that is attached to that ideology and w- whatever, whether it's left-wing or right-wing, and they just adopt a conglomeration of ideas. Instead of having these things where they've thought them through rationally and really, like, looked at it, instead they, they have an ideology and w- whether it's left or right-wing. And it seems, uh, to me, it's... It's a real shame that we only have two choices in this country politically. Like, if you look at Holland, if you look at... There's a l- lot of countries that have many, many choices. And I think if we had many, many choices, you would have...You still have p- tribalism, but at least you'd probably have a more varied idea of what it is. We have a- a- a very polarizing perspectives. We have a left and a right, and each side thinks the other side are morons and are ruining the country.

   15. SPSteven Pinker32:10

       Absolutely. There has been a rise in negative polarization-

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:13

       Yeah.

   17. SPSteven Pinker32:14

       ... that is in the sense that the people you disagree with, uh, aren't just mistaken, they don't just have a different opinion, but they are evil and stupid. So that has risen, especially at the extremes. It's still true that a majority of Americans call themselves moderate, but the extremes hate each other more. And it's interesting, you know, why that's happened. It's, uh, you know, the common explanation is you blame it on social media and people being in filter bubbles. You know, that might be part of it, but part of it may also be, uh, people segregate themselves in terms of where they live more, so that you get kind of educated, um, uh, you know, uh, hipsters and knowledge workers in cities, and you get less-educated people moving out to the outer suburbs and rural ar- or staying in rural areas. So people just don't meet people who disagree with them, uh, anymore or have come from different backgrounds or l- less than they used to. And then some of the inst- organizations and institutions that used to bring people from different walks of life together, um, you know, churches, service organizations, like, you know, the Elks, the Rotary Club and so on are, are declining. So we tend to hang out more with people like ourselves.

   18. JRJoe Rogan33:25

       Well, even in universities, which used to be a place where people on the left and people on the right could debate. Y- I mean, in high schools even, like I remember when I was in high school, Barney Frank-

   19. SPSteven Pinker33:36

       Oh, yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:36

       ... uh, debated someone from the Moral Majority, and, uh, I remember, um, watching it. I think I was 16, and we went and sat and watched this debate and watched Barney Frank trounce this guy-

   21. SPSteven Pinker33:49

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:50

       ... and, and mock him, and it was pretty fun. Uh, but it was l- it was interesting 'cause we got to s- to hear two very different perspectives, but one, at the, at the time, Barney Frank, who's just better at it and had better points, was, uh, more articulate and had a better argument. And we walked away from that having heard both sides and but having heard one side argued more effectively, and you don't get that anymore. Instead now, you get one side, and when someone tries to bring someone in that is of a differing opinion to debate this person, that person gets silenced, they try pulling alarms in buildings, and they shout and blow blow horns and call everyone a Nazi. And it's unfortunate because you, you miss the opportunity like I got to see when I was 16, where I got to see a more articulate person with better points of view, better perspectives argue more effectively that their perspective was m- w- was more rational.

   23. SPSteven Pinker34:49

       Yeah. No, I think that, that, that's vital. Now, y- y- there is, uh, (clears throat) some evidence that people who are, have really hardcore beliefs can't be talked out of them with any amount of evidence.

   24. JRJoe Rogan35:00

       Some people.

   25. SPSteven Pinker35:00

       Just... Yeah, some people, but exactly.

   26. JRJoe Rogan35:02

       Right.

   27. SPSteven Pinker35:02

       So, you know, people ask me... Uh, it's a question I get asked a lot in, in, uh, when I talk about r- rationality. They say, "Well, how do you, you know, convince a real QAnon believer that there isn't a cabal of, of, uh, Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles-"

   28. JRJoe Rogan35:18

       (laughs)

   29. SPSteven Pinker35:18

       "... in the, in the, the Democratic Party and, and Hollywood?"

   30. JRJoe Rogan35:21

       In the basement of a pizza house.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   (laughs) …

   1. SPSteven Pinker45:00

      committed most of them are. I, I take, took an example from another cognitive psychologist, uh, Hugo Mercier, who noted that one reaction of a Pizzagate believer was to leave a one-star Google review to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. (laughs)

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:15

      (laughs)

   3. SPSteven Pinker45:15

      He said, "The pizza was c- incredibly underbaked, and there were some men looking suspiciously at my, my son." (laughs) Now, that's not the kind of thing you would do if you literally thought that children were being raped in the basement. You know, you'd call the police. (laughs) You know, he, and you know, there was one guy, Edgar Welch, who did, you know, come into the pizzeria with his guns blazing in a heroic attempt to, to rescue the children.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:37

      Yeah.

   5. SPSteven Pinker45:38

      You know, at least he really did believe it. Uh, he then, you know, recanted. He realized that he had been, been duped. But the most people who say they believe it, they believe it in a kind of different sense than we believe that there's, you know, coffee in that cup, or, or, or that it's gonna rain today. It's a whole different mindset of belief. It's belief for the purpose of expressing the right moral values.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:01

      Yes.

   7. SPSteven Pinker46:01

      And you know, did it happen, did it not happen? Eh, what, you know, no one knows.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:06

      Expressing the beliefs of the tribe.

   9. SPSteven Pinker46:08

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:08

       Yeah.

   11. SPSteven Pinker46:08

       Espressing the, and exp- and expressing the moral values of the tribe.

   12. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       Yeah. And that, that tribe in particular is, uh, it, it's extremely exciting to a lot of the people that are a part of it. And one of the things that you see in the documentary is like, people got their families involved. Like, their, one, one couple, their, their child was like, chanting like, "Build that wall."

   13. SPSteven Pinker46:29

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:30

       Like, they, they had this, uh, idea that what they were doing was the right thing, and that what they were doing was, you know, really gonna save the world, and it was very exciting. It's the same thing that I always say about UFOs and Bigfoot. It's that like, the belief that it's real is so interesting. It's so fun. It's so fun to believe-

   15. SPSteven Pinker46:50

       Absolutely.

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:50

       ... that it's real.

   17. SPSteven Pinker46:50

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       And what you said about QAnon is that it's kind of an online game, and I think that was part of the fun of it. It's like, if Q really had information, well, fuckin' say it, man.

   19. SPSteven Pinker47:00

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:00

       Tell, tell us what's going on. Why, why are you, what's with these cryptic drops?

   21. SPSteven Pinker47:04

       Well, it's just like the, that those Hollywood movies where you've got the serial killer who deliberately leaves tantalizing clues to the police, like little mysteries.

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:10

       But what about a real killer? The Zodiac Killer did that for real.

   23. SPSteven Pinker47:13

       Well, I guess then that's one of the-

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:14

       And they never caught him.

   25. SPSteven Pinker47:15

       That's true, but, uh, but you know, mo- most of them don't deliberately-

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:18

       Right.

   27. SPSteven Pinker47:18

       ... leave little clues, you know, and-

   28. JRJoe Rogan47:21

       Quite a few of them do. Quite a few serial killers do deliberately-

   29. SPSteven Pinker47:25

       Deliberately leave misleading clues-

   30. JRJoe Rogan47:26

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Uh, you know, the…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

   2. SPSteven Pinker1:00:00

      Uh, you know, the number of people that would have to be, to maintain like the equivalent of a nondisclosure agreement-

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

      (laughs)

   4. SPSteven Pinker1:00:07

      ... you know, for decades-

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

      Yeah.

   6. SPSteven Pinker1:00:08

      ... with no one leaking it, uh, and everyone being perfectly silent, perfectly coordinated. You know, that's, that kind of defies common sense.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      Well, there's also a lack of understanding of eyewitness accounts of things too. Like, people say, "Eyewitness people said that they saw this and heard that." The problem with any traumatic experience is eyewitness accounts are often highly inaccurate.

   8. SPSteven Pinker1:00:29

      Oh, tell me about it.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:30

      Yeah.

   10. SPSteven Pinker1:00:30

       I mean, that's, that's one of the main findings in cognitive psychology from Elizabeth Loftus at, uh, UC Irvine, who, uh, who has shown in, in experiments that people confidently remember seeing things that never happened.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:42

       Yes.

   12. SPSteven Pinker1:00:43

       And-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

       Well, they're very easily convinced. Like, it's one of the problems with, uh, eyewitness, uh, testimony. It's, uh, one of the-

   14. SPSteven Pinker1:00:50

       That's her-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

       Yeah.

   16. SPSteven Pinker1:00:51

       I mean, that is her discovery, absolutely.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:53

       Yeah.

   18. SPSteven Pinker1:00:53

       That a lot of innocent people have been convicted based on eyewitness testimony, especially not only when they're coached, but especially after the fact. The more often they're asked to affirm what they saw, the more confident they get whether it was true or not.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:06

       Yeah.

   20. SPSteven Pinker1:01:07

       And the, the fact that we de-... I, you know, distinctly remember this, I saw it with my own eyes, means nothing in terms of whether it really happened, because we can confidently remember things that, that never took place.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

       That's the thing too, the coaching. The coaching aspect of it is very disturbing because you can plant memories in a person's head that were not real.

   22. SPSteven Pinker1:01:26

       Oh, easily. Yes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:27

       It's so... The f- the mind is so fucked. Like, I, I've talked to people about this before. I've said, like, "How much of your childhood do you re- how good is your memory?" And people go, "Oh, my memory's great." I'm going, "Let, let me tell you something. You think your memory's great." I go, "My memory's pretty good. It's really good when it comes to, like, I can say things that I remember and quote things and remember numbers and stuff like that. But if you ask me..."... could I give you a detailed account of yesterday? Yesterday is a blurry slideshow to me.

   24. SPSteven Pinker1:01:57

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:58

       Like, I kinda, like, I've got a few images. I think I remember where I parked my car. I think I went in that door.

   26. SPSteven Pinker1:02:05

       Right. (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:05

       I think my dog was there. I remember petting him, kinda. I remember a few things. But I don't have, like, a, like, an HD video that I can roll of my entire day-

   28. SPSteven Pinker1:02:16

       Oh, no way.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:16

       ... and back it up to the. But some people like to pretend that they do.

   30. SPSteven Pinker1:02:20

       Right. And we know that they don't. And there, there are certain tricks that we know our memory plays on us, such as we tend to kind of retrospectively edit our memories to make a, a good story. Often that puts-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:16:25

   Yeah. I mean, you…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

   2. SPSteven Pinker1:15:00

      Yeah. I mean, you know, I think he could, uh, you know, he could al- if, if the father wrote a lot, like wrote a lot of correspondence, you know, we already have AI that can kind of fake, uh, new text in the style of existing text.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:15

      That's weird, man.

   4. SPSteven Pinker1:15:17

      Um, but, uh, although, you know, I think it's pretty un- uh, unsatisfying, I, I would not, uh, consider that to be having a conversation with my dead father.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:23

      No. If I had, I mean, I had-

   6. SPSteven Pinker1:15:25

      I wouldn't want to, for one thing. I wouldn't wanna be fooled in that way.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:28

      No. I'd just, like ... I, I would find no comfort in that. Like, I have very good friends that have died, and if I had the ability to email a fake version of my very good friend that died and get, like, a response that's very similar to what they would say, that would mean nothing to me.

   8. SPSteven Pinker1:15:44

      Exactly. No, that's really right. See, that, it's another interesting part of our psychology. We have this sense of, you know, is, is something real or not? That sometimes, is it really connected to the person that we, you know, know and love? And it makes a big psychological difference, even if you can't tell the difference. Uh, it's like, there's lots of examples, and this is from, from, uh, my former collaborator, Paul Bloom. You know, someone paid a lot of money for John F. Kennedy's golf clubs. Now, if it turned out that they weren't John F. Kennedy's golf clubs, if they were just some other guy's golf clubs from the l- you know, late '50s and early '60s, it would be worth a fraction of the amount and it would be emotionally much less satisfying.

Episode duration: 2:40:30