Joe Rogan Experience #2193 - Jack Symes

Jack Symes is a public philosopher, writer, and producer of the "Panpsycast" podcast. A researcher at Durham University, he’s the author of "Defeating the Evil-God Challenge" and editor of the "Talking About Philosophy" series. www.jacksymes.co.uk

Jack SymesguestJoe RoganhostKenneth CopelandguestMegyn KellyguestDonald TrumpguestLisa Guerreroguest

Aug 22, 20242h 57mWatch on YouTube ↗

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150 min read · 30,022 words

0:00 – 0:25
Multiverse + New Atheism as a philosophical project
1. JSJack Symes
  (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) What's up, Joe? How are you, man?
3. JSJack Symes
  How's it going, Joe? Yeah, I'm very well.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Nice to meet you.
5. JSJack Symes
  Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  So I got the r- request to be on when, when it said multiverse and new atheism.
7. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  I'm like, what a combination that is. Let's talk.
9. JSJack Symes
  Nice.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
0:25 – 2:45
What philosophy is: Mary Midgley’s “plumbing” metaphor
1. JSJack Symes
  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-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, let- please.
3. JSJack Symes
  ... what the point of, of-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. JSJack Symes
  ... 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?
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
2:45 – 5:12
The fundamental question: is life worth living?
1. JSJack Symes
  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-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) .
3. JSJack Symes
  ... what's the point of all this?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
5. JSJack Symes
  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.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  I think it's ridiculous to dismiss philosophy because you are a proponent of science. (laughs)
7. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  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-
9. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to me seems pretty silly.
11. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  It's silly. Like, we use it-
13. JSJack Symes
  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.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
15. JSJack Symes
  Like... So it seems like it's gonna solve all these problems, but...
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Right. But the human beings that took place in the experiments that led to the splitting of the atom all had to have some sort of a philosophy that they managed their life by.
17. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  They had to have something that allowed them to have the discipline, the discipline to commit, to commit to their schooling-
19. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to follow through with the project. Their, uh, e- especially, think about Oppenheimer's struggle that he had-
21. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  ... with this thing that he had created that was ultimately gonna lead to destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives, if not the entire human race itself.
23. JSJack Symes
  Right. Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Which was very deeply based-
25. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  ... in philosophy, like his perspective and his struggles with it. I mean, if he was just, like, an automaton, like some, you know, sociopathic, just super Alzheimer's guy-
27. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... or, you know, that di- didn't... Not Alz- uh, aut- autism guy, rather, that didn't think at all about, uh, no concept at all about empathy, no concept at all about our perspective-
29. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and, and, you know, he would just plow forth ahead and just launch bombs.
5:12 – 6:35
New Atheism’s rise and why it feels incomplete
1. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm. And how does that not come out of philosophy? Well, that seems to be, like, the failure of new atheism fundamentally, right? We've got this movement in the early 2000s, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, uh, Hitchens, who were all being critical of religion in the light of, like, the September 11th terrorist attack. And people thinking that religion thinks as if it's though it's beyond, like, criticism.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
3. JSJack Symes
  But then once that project em- Like, once they embark on that project and they criticize religion, there isn't really anything left there. Like, they don't do the project of philosophy of finding the meaning and the ethics. And when they try to do it, it's lacking, something's missing. So I, I see that as, like, the reason why new atheism is going out of favor, why it's becoming unfashionable, because it can't answer those questions.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, I think it becomes almost as dogmatic as-
5. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  ... th- uh, as religion itself. Like, atheism in a lot of ways is kind of re- They're committed to this idea that there is nothing else.
7. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  You know, I just don't understand how you could do that without enough... If you're a person who...... you view the world based in... He is so fucking loud, dude.
9. KCKenneth Copeland
  Yeah, I'll cut off the microphone.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) He, he, he just like, he d-
11. JSJack Symes
  (laughs)
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... Marshall and, uh, and Carl were having a wrestling match for about 15 minutes, and poor little Carl over there, panting.
13. JSJack Symes
  It's, it's also one of the hottest days of the year without air con, so the-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, our air conditioning's fucked in here too.
15. JSJack Symes
  ... his hair is really going, uh, really going hard for the panting.
6:35 – 10:09
Limits of certainty: God, mystery, and near-death accounts
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, I was, where I was I before I got distracted. Uh, so I just think that the, these people sort of looked at this as religion is all this superstitious nonsense that these people have concocted and, and put together over years to keep people in line.
2. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  And science is something that we can prove and see, and, you know, there is no God, there is no... Which is, how do you know? You do not know.
4. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  It's a crazy thing to say. You have such a limited perspective just in terms of the universe itself. We only see what we see on our planet, and the tiny amount that we can reach out into the... And, you know, they can look back 13 billion years, but like, what are they looking at?
6. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  They're looking at like bright lights, like little dots, and they understand this is the galaxy, and-
8. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  But it's like, how big is this fucking thing? Where did it come from? What's going on?
10. JSJack Symes
  Yeah, because-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  You don't know. What is the purpo- is this a grand test? Are you a part of some very bizarre journey that the soul has to go through in this environment before it expands and goes into the next dimension, the next phase of existence? Who fucking knows? You don't know.
12. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  We do know that people die, we do know that people have near-death experiences, and these very bizarre, uh, moments where they come back from the dead and have very similar accounts of something happening, about encountering... Like I, I had Sebastian Junger, uh, on the, the podcast the other day, and he was, uh, Sebastian Junger, and he was explaining, um, how when he almost died, he had a, an internal bleeding.
14. JSJack Symes
  Mm.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  And, uh, he saw his father. His father came to the bed with him and was talking to him.
16. JSJack Symes
  Wow.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  It was like this very bizarre thing, like-
18. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  ... we don't really know, we, we really don't know what life is. We don't know what consciousness is. We don't-
20. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  So, we're being arrogant. And I think, unfortunately, brilliant people that are so used to schooling people in debates-
22. JSJack Symes
  Mm.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  ... like Christopher Hitchens, like Sam Harris. These guys are so good at making religious zealots look like buffoons.
24. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? And you get real good at that, and you just sort of think that, "Look, I got it down. These fucking religious people, they don't know what the fuck is going on."
26. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  But you're, you're involved in a religion, as bizarre as it seems. Just like wokeism is a religion, just like far-right ideology is a religion.
28. JSJack Symes
  Mm. I'm, I'm not sure about putting, like, religion on those things in particular, but-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Cult.
30. JSJack Symes
  Like, yeah, cult. Like, they might be cult. They might have some aspects which are cult-like.
10:09 – 15:45
Serious arguments for theism: Kalam and fine-tuning
1. JSJack Symes
  That's fine. But I think in terms of like philosophical arguments for thinking it's true, like the one you mentioned a moment ago, like where this all came from, like science can't get to that question.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
3. JSJack Symes
  Like the, the Kalam cosmological argument in philosophy is really popular. It just goes everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore it needs a cause. And then you do this deduction to figure out what kind of cause that could be, and it would have to be something outside of time and space with power and knowledge to bring this into being. And that, that might not be... That might not get you all the way to God. That's a really strong reason for believing in God, and the answers the atheists give in place of it are nowhere near as strong. And likewise, like the argument from fine-tuning, which is gaining traction again. Uh, the physicist Sir Roger Penrose said that the fundamental laws of nature, like 26 of them, they have to be delicately balanced perfectly to allow planets and, uh, intelligent life to form. He calculates that the initial low entropy point of the universe had to be one in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123, which means if you sat there writing out that number for the law of entropy and the condition when the universe first started expanding, and you wrote down one digit every second, you'd still be writing out that number now. Like, that number is so astronomically huge-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. JSJack Symes
  ... that the odds of us being here are incredible. And when we're thinking of probability theory, if we're looking at the best explanation for that, then I think, you know, those that posit the existence of God have the better hand. Like, I'm not religious, but I think we have to put our hands up and go, "No, to those two problems, they've got really strong arguments for believing in God." But, you know, people like, like Dawkins, uh, people like Hitchens and the like, uh, even Dennett. I think Harris is a little bit more, uh, I guess sympathetic to those arguments than the other three. But, you know, they're not serious about following the arguments. They're not serious about going wherever they take them. Like you say, there, there's a, there's a, there is a dogmatism there.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7. JSJack Symes
  Th- th- they're, they're not open-minded enough on these points.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, I think the dogmatism...... a lot of it is, like the, the, all the public discourse that we've seen that you can watch on YouTube between, um, atheists and religious scholars, it generally turns into a debate.
9. JSJack Symes
  Mm.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  They're, they're almost all debates, and almost all of these debates are, in a sense, intellectual competitions.
11. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? And so it's like, if you give a cop an incentive to arrest people, he's gonna find reasons to arrest people.
13. JSJack Symes
  Yeah, yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? And if you have a person that is getting, uh, social credit, you're getting notoriety, ad- adulation from schooling-
15. JSJack Symes
  Mm.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  ... these religious people, from mocking what you think are ridiculous ideas that are superstitious, you, you ... that, that de- part- it becomes a part of yourself.
17. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? It becomes a part of your identity. And then I think your unwillingness to engage in the mystery of all this, it speaks to that.
19. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  I think that's, that's the origin of it. I think it becomes a competition with people, that their ideas are correct, and that these ideas that they've held for a long time, they wanna defend those ideas.
21. JSJack Symes
  Mm.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Instead of going, "Huh." I, I am of the opinion that I am not my ideas, and I think it's a really important thing to say, because I think more people should try this out. Uh, m- m- maybe it's not for you, but it's m- my personal philosophy.
23. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  I am not married to my ideas.
25. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  They are just ideas.
27. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  And they come in my head and they go, and a lot of times, while I'm saying them ... I do it on the podcast all the time, I go, "Wait a minute. That doesn't make sense, because of this."
29. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  I don't want to be that buffoon that's connected-
15:45 – 17:47
Theism’s major problem: evolution, suffering, and the systemic problem of evil
1. JSJack Symes
  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-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. JSJack Symes
  ... 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.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
5. JSJack Symes
  Like, if God exists, then, like, God's a psychopath, right?
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7. JSJack Symes
  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?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Then what we're currently experiencing.
9. JSJack Symes
  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?"
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
11. JSJack Symes
  "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.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  What, what did he mean by that?
13. JSJack Symes
  If you don't have the evidence.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  You need to keep working on it?
15. JSJack Symes
  Like, we just need to crack on with the problem.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, and try to solve it?
17. JSJack Symes
  Yeah, but like-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
19. JSJack Symes
  ... 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.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Right. (laughs)
21. JSJack Symes
  (laughs) Like, the systemic problem of evil-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. JSJack Symes
  ... undercuts the god hypothesis. But then it's this weird place, right? 'Cause you've got these strong arguments that an atheistic view can't solve, but then you've got this big problem for belief in God. And like you say, this is moving philosophers of religion to this really interesting space where they ask, "Well, maybe we need a different concept of God, like the universe."
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
17:47 – 18:29
Pantheism, panentheism, and the idea that the universe is God
1. JSJack Symes
  So this is, uh, pantheism, the idea that God and the universe are identical.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
3. JSJack Symes
  And panentheism is the view where the universe is in God, but there's this extra layer of God which is like heaven, or the thing that brought it into being.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  I'm glad there's a word for it, 'cause I'd just been saying the universe is God.
5. JSJack Symes
  Yeah. Pantheism.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  So pantheism.
7. JSJack Symes
  So-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  I'll go with that now.
9. JSJack Symes
  You know, the interesting thing about pantheism is, like, is it worthy of the name God, like the universe? 'Cause if it's just nature-loving atheism, then that doesn't get you far. But I think if you believe that the universe is fundamentally conscious, like there is some will or agency underlying the, the things that we interact with, then I think that gets you pretty close to a, a concept of God.
18:29 – 26:35
Is consciousness everywhere? Haunted places, panpsychism, and sacred vibes
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Do you think, uh, there's ...... we have an egocentric perspective of consciousness that it only applies to things that move, and that things-
2. JSJack Symes
  Hmm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that can express themselves.
4. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Like perha- like, there's a reason why I think people don't want to buy houses where people were murdered. Right? Like-
6. JSJack Symes
  Because, because they think the consciousness is still like lingering.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. Like, there's something there. There's something there.
8. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  There's a memory in that house of a horrible thing. Like, if you bought a house from a horrible person, when you kind of... Like, I almost bought a, um, a building that was run by a cult.
10. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  And, uh, I did, I knew it was run by a cult be- because my friend told me about it.
12. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  It was like y- My friend Ron... I was building a comedy club and, uh, my friend Ron White, who's a hilarious comedian, he told me about this great theater that was for sale, I should buy that theater.
14. JSJack Symes
  Hmm.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  And so I went, "Oh, okay." And I look into it, yeah, it used to be owned by a cult. Oh, great. I go sign all this paperwork, and then my friend Adam calls me up, he goes, "Hey, did you watch the documentary on that cult?" I'm like, "Oh, God."
16. JSJack Symes
  (laughs)
17. JRJoe Rogan
  There was a documentary? And in watching the documentary, it was so sad to me to watch these people that for decades were deceived-
18. JSJack Symes
  Hmm.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and led-
20. JSJack Symes
  Of course, yeah.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  ... by this person, and at the end of it, they're weeping and crying. They've lost their life. Their life, like 20 plus-
22. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  ... years of their life have been dedicated to this charlatan who was, uh, he was a hypnotist and a gay porn star-
24. JSJack Symes
  Hmm.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... who was teaching yoga in West Hollywood and convinced all these people to do this. I had to get out of that building.
26. JSJack Symes
  Jesus Christ.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  I'm like, there is no way. There's not enough sage in the world that I can like s- s- get rid-
28. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  ... of all the demons. I mean, how much-
30. JSJack Symes
  You need all the vicars around.
26:35 – 44:54
Animal ethics: factory farming, hunting, euthanasia, and moral tradeoffs
1. JSJack Symes
  Yeah. Well, this ties in. Like I think people think this though, that the problem cuts deep. Like when you ask people, like 90% of people in the UK think that keeping animals in cages is cruel, 50% of people in the US think that. Yet 98.5% of chickens, turkeys, and pigs are kept in factory farms.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Is that r- that's the real number?
3. JSJack Symes
  70% of cows.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  It's 98%?
5. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
7. JSJack Symes
  90- it's 99% of chickens and, um-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Holy shit.
9. JSJack Symes
  ... and 98% of turkeys. Um, and it's about the same for pigs. Like people, people are... But y- you see the juxtaposition there, right? You've got people that think it's wrong, but they're doing otherwise.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, it's not that they're doing otherwise, they can compartmentalize because factory farming, we- we talked about this yesterday, they have ag-gag laws-
11. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... well, a couple days ago with Russell Crowe, rather. Um, ag-gag laws prevent people from detailing the horrific conditions-
13. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  ... which these animals live in. If you film it, if you're a worker there and you're like, "This is horrific, I'm gonna film this-"
15. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  "... and out this place," you'll go to jail.
17. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Which is insane.
19. JSJack Symes
  Yeah, it's-
20. JRJoe Rogan
  'Cause it should, it should be a crime. It should be like animal cruelty. Like Russell Crowe was in here the other day and he keeps 200 head of cattle-
21. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  ... on his, he has a ranch in the, the bush in Australia. And the way he described the way he takes care of these animals-
23. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  ... the way, you know, they gently move them into new pastures-
25. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  ... they live this b- idyllic life until... And he's like, "And the meat is better, you feel better about the whole thing."
27. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  It's like-
29. JSJack Symes
  I've heard him say something about this before where he goes, like, "But ultimately, it's because it tastes better." So although, like, I'm happy he's doing it, right? This is a, this is no comparison to factory farming. And if all the farming that was out there in the world was like Russell Crowe's, then I-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  It's not just because it tastes better. That's not his-
44:54 – 1:04:40
War, distance-killing, drones, and moral injury
1. JSJack Symes
  Well, it seems like ... And it's an interesting one, right? We just did a, a big podcast series on the philosophy of war and the history of it, and how it's trying to move the person that's killing another person further away from the act, so-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. JSJack Symes
  ... more killings when using guns than when it's hand-to-hand combat.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
5. JSJack Symes
  And even in the Second World War, like, um, the fieldwork showed that it was about-
6. NANarrator
  It's a little more complicated.
7. JSJack Symes
  ... 20 or 30% of people were actually-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, so it's got a little joystick.
9. JSJack Symes
  ... firing the weapons.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  So it's a little more complicated than a PS4 or a PS5 thing, but it does have-
11. NANarrator
  A lot, yeah.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... like, a joystick, just like a simulator.
13. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Like a flight simulator is what it looks like.
15. JSJack Symes
  But there's a-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  That's the view.
17. JSJack Symes
  Intensive-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  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 Symes
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  ... based on metadata?
21. JSJack Symes
  Yeah. I'd be interested to know how much, like, how severe their PTSD is in comparison.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  See if you can find an article on it, because there was something that I read about it really recently.
23. JSJack Symes
  '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 Rogan
  No. No, it's not, because the amount of civilians that die are very high. It's, uh, it's-
25. JSJack Symes
  In comparison to not using a drone?
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. It's somewhere in compare ... It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-plus percent, some estimations-
27. JSJack Symes
  Right, okay.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... are 90% of civi- ... It's hard to tell-
29. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  ... '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.
1:04:40 – 2:00:27
Agnostic meaning-making: Camus, the absurd, and ‘Meaning’ vs meanings
1. JSJack Symes
  Yeah. Uh, to bring this back to like, uh, you know, that fundamental question we began with, like, on the whole, is existence a good thing? Should we be happy and pleased with this world, and-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
3. JSJack Symes
  ... it seems like the perfectly good god hypothesis goes out the window or, you know, especially if we're forced to do these things. Like, if we have to introduce predators to maintain populations and things like that, again, like, this doesn't seem like the thing a perfectly good god would do. So if you're an atheist and you l-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  But why not? Isn't that th- this is the process. The reason why the elk is so fast and strong is 'cause it's been avoiding mountain lions for hundreds of thousands of years.
5. JSJack Symes
  But it's the process which, according to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, that God created, and-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
7. JSJack Symes
  ... God can do anything with the following qualifier. It has to be logically or metaphysically possible. So there are possible worlds without evolution by natural selection. Like-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
9. JSJack Symes
  ... those things-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  It's possible.
11. JSJack Symes
  ... are entirely possible.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
13. JSJack Symes
  And a perfectly good god would have to bring about the best possible state of affairs.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  But maybe this is the best possible state of affairs-
15. JSJack Symes
  I certainly hope not.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to achieve a desired goal.
17. JSJack Symes
  What's it they say? That the optimist says this is the best possible world and the pessimist hopes it's not the case.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I think e- even the evils of this world exist to incite outrage and for us to do better. I, I think this constant struggle of good and evil is maybe even necessary for us to keep moving in the right general direction through rigorous debate and deceit and lies and propaganda-
19. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and having your dreams shattered and figuring it out and-
21. JSJack Symes
  Yeah. But that's the, that's us, right? Not the-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  But that's us and animals. That's the reason why the fucking elk is 900 pounds and built like a super athlete.
23. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  It's 'cause it has to get the fuck away from mountain lions. If it didn't, it would never look like that.
25. JSJack Symes
  Yeah.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  It would never become an elk. It would not become this majestic thing with horns growing out of its fucking head. It's got literal weapons growing out of its head, and they're competing with each other with these weapons and killing each other. We find dead elk all the time. They find them every year. Th- They're stabbed in the ribcage by other elk and they die a horrible death-
27. JSJack Symes
  Mm-hmm.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and they get torn apart by coyotes and bears when they're down. W- You find th- their bones scattered all over the place where they've been killed and ripped apart.
29. JSJack Symes
  Yeah, I mean, I th- there's still a sense in which they're, like, doing good, like when a, a non-human animal, like, sacrifices themself or their young or something.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh-huh.