Joe Rogan Experience #2193 - Jack Symes

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. JSJack Symes0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) What's up, Joe? How are you, man?

   3. JSJack Symes0:13

      How's it going, Joe? Yeah, I'm very well.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      Nice to meet you.

   5. JSJack Symes0:14

      Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      So I got the r- request to be on when, when it said multiverse and new atheism.

   7. JSJack Symes0:22

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      I'm like, what a combination that is. Let's talk.

   9. JSJack Symes0:24

      Nice.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       (laughs)

   11. JSJack Symes0:25

       Yeah, so I think, like, it's interesting to think why philosophers need to think about the multiverse, right? Uh, it tends to be, like, a theory thrown about by physicists and, and stuff. But I think there's a... At the moment, we don't wanna be talking about philosophy as a society. We're, like, stuck in this idea of scientism, the view that science can solve all of these problems and questions. So you've probably heard people like Lawrence Krauss or Dawkins, um, Stephen Hawking, uh, Brian Cox, they all say something along the lines of, like, "Philosophy is dead." So just before we get into the multiverse, it's probably best to say, like, what philosophy is and sort of-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01

       Yeah, let- please.

   13. JSJack Symes1:02

       ... what the point of, of-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:03

       Yeah.

   15. JSJack Symes1:03

       ... talking about the multiverse is. So this is something I ask every philosopher I speak to, like, what they take philosophy to be 'cause it's really interesting to see how all the ideas they discuss fall into their wider projects. And one of the ideas that I love is this one by, uh, the late great British philosopher, Mary Midgley. She likens philosophy to a kind of plumbing, right? So, like, we have these conversations in our societies, and, like, these conversations are flowing around. And likewise, we have these pipes l- running underneath our houses, keeping the water flowing. But occasionally, it gets clogged, and so the philosopher needs to pull up the floorboards, see what the clog is, and help the conversation move along again. So these are things like what it is to be a woman, or what it is to have free speech, or what it means to say that a gene is selfish. So that's, I see, like the primary job of the philosopher, something we're all doing every day, like, trying to understand the concepts we're using. But then also there's this bigger aspect to philosophy, which is, like, how it all hangs together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Like, let's put all of the pieces of the puzzle together from physics, biology, and, and the arts, and let's try and get a big picture of the world. And if we're missing a piece of the puzzle, let's have our best guess about what that piece could be. So I take that to be the project. And so the questions that come out of that, the questions that philosophy asks are things like, why is there something, a universe, rather than nothing, no universe? Like, why are, are the laws of nature fine-tuned for the existence of life? Where does consciousness come from? Like, when I make a moral statement like, "The Holocaust is bad," is it the same as me saying that Jonah Hill's movies are bad? Like, are they the same kind of statement? Is that the same bad I'm using?

   16. JRJoe Rogan2:45

       Right.

   17. JSJack Symes2:45

       But the big question, and to get to the multiverse now, is... The big question for me and how all of my work seems to explore this fundamental question, the French Algerian al- uh, the French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus said, "The fundamental question of philosophy is whether life is or is not worth living." Like, so my question is-

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:05

       (laughs) .

   19. JSJack Symes3:05

       ... what's the point of all this?

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:07

       Right.

   21. JSJack Symes3:07

       Is existence on the whole a good thing? Should we be happy and pleased to be alive? And what's the purpose of life? And so that's where the multiverse, new atheism, and, um, these arguments for, for theism all come in, in, into the project.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:21

       I think it's ridiculous to dismiss philosophy because you are a proponent of science. (laughs)

   23. JSJack Symes3:27

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan3:27

       Like just that reductionist perspective, the idea that thinking about things and developing, for lack of a better term, a philosophy, dev- dev- developing your own personal philosophy, uh, t- taking from the accounts of others and their perspectives and their interesting unique view of the world that we live in, the idea that that's not significant or important-

   25. JSJack Symes3:48

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan3:48

       ... to me seems pretty silly.

   27. JSJack Symes3:50

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:50

       It's silly. Like, we use it-

   29. JSJack Symes3:51

       But, uh, I don't know how they get away with saying these things, uh, like... I think... Y- you get it though, right? Like, science splits the atom. It puts the man on the moon.

   30. JRJoe Rogan3:58

       Sure.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      we really just ... we don't have the capacity to really put it into perspective. We don't, we don't know.

   2. JSJack Symes15:08

      Mm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      There's just too much we don't know.

   4. JSJack Symes15:09

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      They're, they're starting to think now that the universe is quite a bit older than in, they thought it was before, because of the observations of these galaxies by the James Webb, uh, Telescope.

   6. JSJack Symes15:17

      Mm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:18

      So that now, there's, there's certain, uh, p- people that are, uh, these controversial ideas they're throwing around about, like, 22 billion years old or 23 billion years old.

   8. JSJack Symes15:30

      23. Oh, wow. No, it, it's interesting what you say, first of all, like, about, uh, us being, like, so involved with our egos in terms of these arguments. I've always baffled me that people can care about their, like, their views or their philosophies to such an extent that they're, like, they're willing to die on these hills.

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:45

      Yeah.

   10. JSJack Symes15:45

       And refusing to ... they're counting their, their wins and not their losses. I just had a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with, uh, Jordan Peterson on his podcast about, you know, his motivations for being religious. You know, I ... and so, you know, I basically sketched out the, my broad argument, which is atheism's shortcomings are it can't answer the two problems we just spoke about, why there's something rather than nothing, fine tuning. But then the problem with theism is that no perfectly good god would allow for evolution by natural selection. Like, what a wicked thing to do, to-

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:17

       Yeah.

   12. JSJack Symes16:17

       ... cre- create the rules of the game to be that to have intelligent life, it necessitates the pain and suffering of countless sentient creatures over billions of years.

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:26

       Mm.

   14. JSJack Symes16:27

       Like, if God exists, then, like, God's a psychopath, right?

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:30

       Yeah.

   16. JSJack Symes16:30

       If, if that's what ... God didn't have to do that. It's logically and metaphysically possible for God to create it as the Christians thought God did, in the Garden of Eden 5,000 years ago. That is way more compatible with the perfectly good god hypothesis, right?

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:44

       Then what we're currently experiencing.

   18. JSJack Symes16:45

       Yeah, but then when I asked Jordan about this, again, I, I don't think he's, he's serious, again, about, you know, following the evidence and argument. You know, he, he, he just digs down. He, he, he builds a trench. He, uh, he says ... Like I said, "What do you think of the, what's called the systemic problem of evil?"

   19. JRJoe Rogan17:01

       Right.

   20. JSJack Symes17:01

       "Why would God create this system?" And he goes, "We just need to keep working on it." It's like, no, you need to suspend belief in something.

   21. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       What, what did he mean by that?

   22. JSJack Symes17:08

       If you don't have the evidence.

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:08

       You need to keep working on it?

   24. JSJack Symes17:09

       Like, we just need to crack on with the problem.

   25. JRJoe Rogan17:12

       Oh, and try to solve it?

   26. JSJack Symes17:14

       Yeah, but like-

   27. JRJoe Rogan17:14

       (laughs)

   28. JSJack Symes17:14

       ... you know, we've been trying to solve it ... I- in between 1960 and 1998, 3,600 articles and books were published on the problem of evil. Like, people are working on it, and it's not going anywhere.

   29. JRJoe Rogan17:26

       Right. (laughs)

   30. JSJack Symes17:26

       (laughs) Like, the systemic problem of evil-
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

   2. JSJack Symes30:00

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      You ever see... They, they kind of... Like you know how pigs, they go through a metamorphosis-

   4. JSJack Symes30:04

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:04

      ... when they go feral? Do you know that process?

   6. JSJack Symes30:06

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:06

      It's really quick. It's like six weeks.

   8. JSJack Symes30:08

      Oh, that's-

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:08

      Once a pig is feral for six weeks and just running wild in the woods, they start changing. Their snout extends-

   10. JSJack Symes30:15

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:15

       ... their, their tusks grow, their hair gets thicker. They become boars.

   12. JSJack Symes30:19

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:19

       They become what we think of as a classic wild boar.

   14. JSJack Symes30:22

       Yeah, to-

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:22

       And those are-

   16. JSJack Symes30:22

       ... defend themselves.

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:23

       ... the same species of animal, which is very bizarre.

   18. JSJack Symes30:26

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan30:26

       That happens with bulls too.

   20. JSJack Symes30:27

       Well, especially in the factory farms as well. They're n- they're definitely not gonna live much longer there, are they? 'Cause of the-

   21. JRJoe Rogan30:33

       No.

   22. JSJack Symes30:33

       ... out, outdoors. They just-

   23. JRJoe Rogan30:33

       Well, they kill them quicker too because they plump them up fast with antibiotics-

   24. JSJack Symes30:38

       Yeah, they just-

   25. JRJoe Rogan30:38

       ... and they get them fat with grain.

   26. JSJack Symes30:38

       Just more, like, chronically obese basically, aren't they?

   27. JRJoe Rogan30:41

       Yep. It totally ill, and that's the best stuff. The best stuff is the super ill cow.

   28. JSJack Symes30:45

       You got, uh-

   29. JRJoe Rogan30:45

       What does it say? 15 to 20 years.

   30. JSJack Symes30:47

       Oh, there you go.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JSJack Symes45:00

      it, and how it's trying to move the person that's killing another person further away from the act, so-

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:05

      Yeah.

   3. JSJack Symes45:06

      ... more killings when using guns than when it's hand-to-hand combat.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:09

      Right.

   5. JSJack Symes45:09

      And even in the Second World War, like, um, the fieldwork showed that it was about-

   6. NANarrator45:13

      It's a little more complicated.

   7. JSJack Symes45:14

      ... 20 or 30% of people were actually-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:16

      Oh, so it's got a little joystick.

   9. JSJack Symes45:16

      ... firing the weapons.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:17

       So it's a little more complicated than a PS4 or a PS5 thing, but it does have-

   11. NANarrator45:22

       A lot, yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:22

       ... like, a joystick, just like a simulator.

   13. JSJack Symes45:24

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:24

       Like a flight simulator is what it looks like.

   15. JSJack Symes45:27

       But there's a-

   16. JRJoe Rogan45:28

       That's the view.

   17. JSJack Symes45:29

       Intensive-

   18. JRJoe Rogan45:29

       And how, but how nutty is that? What, what does that feel like when you're in Nevada and you're operating something that's in Iraq or wherever, in Yemen, and you're, you've got a drone flying over some compound and you're just shooting hellfire missiles into human beings-

   19. JSJack Symes45:44

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan45:45

       ... based on metadata?

   21. JSJack Symes45:46

       Yeah. I'd be interested to know how much, like, how severe their PTSD is in comparison.

   22. JRJoe Rogan45:50

       See if you can find an article on it, because there was something that I read about it really recently.

   23. JSJack Symes45:54

       'Cause there's a thought, right, which is w- we seem to be outraged at the use of drones, but it takes one less person out of the fight. And so it seems, if you're doing, like, a utilitarian calculation, that it's gonna be better on the whole.

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:08

       No. No, it's not, because the amount of civilians that die are very high. It's, uh, it's-

   25. JSJack Symes46:13

       In comparison to not using a drone?

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:14

       Yeah. It's somewhere in compare ... It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-plus percent, some estimations-

   27. JSJack Symes46:19

       Right, okay.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:19

       ... are 90% of civi- ... It's hard to tell-

   29. JSJack Symes46:21

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:21

       ... 'cause what's been explained to me by people in the military is that the people ... First of all, the government will undercut the number.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:09:56

   Well, th- d- ...…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

   2. JSJack Symes1:00:00

      Well, th- d- ... Okay, this is good. I think, uh, Martha Nussbaum, in, like, her new book, Justice for Animals, she, she argues that, like, these things, as you say, are a problem. You can't avoid suffering in these cases, 'cause you need to keep populations in control. And she thinks that we need to embark on a research project which simulates hunting, and, and keeps down populations in, like, animal sanctuaries, if you like. And I was thinking recently, like, there's a lot of arguments for human, like, reparations. Like, when a full group is harmed by another group, that we think that they're owed something, um, w- whether it's, like, people who were subject to slavery in, uh, in Northwest Africa, you know, we think that those communities have been harmed in the past, and that we should right that wrong. Uh, just not ... I don't know the, you know, the details. I don't consider myself, like, a r- reparations philosopher, but let's say that's a view that people hold is they do. Well, if you take non-human animals to be, like, these subjects which you can stop their flourishing, cause them harm, bring them pleasure or happiness, then it seems that they also are a part of a group. And so, you might run an argument to say that if all of these creatures were-... subject to such suffering and torture and death for so long for the benefit of this other group, then that group owes them-

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:01:18

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JSJack Symes1:01:18

      ... some, like, the research, the time, the money, to make their lives as good as possible. Now it might be, just like in our lives, we can't avoid pain and suffering in the day-to-day of it. It's not something we can eliminate entirely. But we should be doing everything we can, says the argument, to reduce it as much as possible. If that ends up being, like having to add predators so, to a sort of, um, you know, into that situation, then, then so be it. But i- perhaps there's a, you know, with the right time and money, you can find a way of doing it without as much suffering, so to speak.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:01:49

      So if the goal is just completely to eliminate suffering, why don't we kill all the predators?

   6. JSJack Symes1:01:54

      Yeah. So it doesn't-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:01:55

      'Cause they're, they're gonna make all these animals suffer. And if you get killed by wolves-

   8. JSJack Symes1:01:59

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:01:59

      Oh, that's a rough one. That's a rough... The worst is killed by bears 'cause they just eat you. They just hold you down and start pulling you apart like a salmon.

   10. JSJack Symes1:02:07

       (laughs) That's it. So-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:02:08

       So if we wanna really eliminate suffering, perhaps we should eliminate all of the predators or just put them in zoos, where they'll suffer-

   12. JSJack Symes1:02:15

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:02:15

       ... but they're evil, and then, 'cause they just kill and eat. That's all they do.

   14. JSJack Symes1:02:19

       Well, there's a, there's a question of, like, what's wrong with death, which is at the heart of this. So it might not just be, like, the hedonistic properties I've just listed. But it might be that when you stop some conscious creature from fulfilling their ends, from fulfilling their project-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:02:35

       Right.

   16. JSJack Symes1:02:35

       ... you're somehow wronging them. So, like, if I was to, hypothetically, you know, if th- we had this random person again that we had on the boat earlier, and I put a bullet in the back of their head, this person had no friends, family, no one will remember them, and I can erase the thing I did from my memory, you might still think what I did was wrong because that person saw themselves as having a future, had projects they were working on, and I stopped their flourishing in some sense, like that.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:03:00

       Unless they're Hitler.

   18. JSJack Symes1:03:01

       Unless they're Hitler.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:03:02

       (laughs)

   20. JSJack Symes1:03:02

       Then it's a good one to stop.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:03:04

       But again, you probably would want to bring them back.

   22. JSJack Symes1:03:06

       And, and then when it comes to non-human animals, the same is true, right? The dog looks forward to their dinner in the evening.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:03:11

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JSJack Symes1:03:12

       They look forward to the walk. They bury their bone.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:03:14

       Yep.

   26. JSJack Symes1:03:14

       These are creatures with complex inner lives which see their futures or know that they will exist in the future. I think the same is true of the creatures which are hunted or in the farms. And so simply painless killing might not be everything there. Removing the potential for future happiness and pleasure also seems to be morally relevant.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:03:35

       Well, you know, when you hunt animals, you hunt mature animals. One, one of the things that-

   28. JSJack Symes1:03:39

       Yeah. So you check the a- like how do you know the age of like a-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:03:42

       You can see, you can tell by the way they look.

   30. JSJack Symes1:03:44

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:57:21