14 Concepts To Understand Human Nature - Gurwinder Bhogal

1. 0:00 – 0:38

   Intro

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:00

      We once used to judge people mostly based on their deeds, but in the age of social media, we judge people mostly based on their opinions. And since we're now defined by our opinions, there is pressure to have an opinion on everything. The problem is, is that people generally don't have the time or the will to research every issue on which they're expected to have an opinion, so they copy the opinions of others, and the result of this is that there are preciously few genuine thinkers out there. The majority of people posting opinions online are just thoughtlessly reposting other people's opinions as their own.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:29

      (wind blowing) So as is tradition, you write these huge threads on Twitter. I fall in love with all of the concepts, and then we get to go through them.

2. 0:38 – 7:35

   How Companies in the West Virtue-Signal

   1. CWChris Williamson0:38

      But before we start on some of the concepts, you put a tweet out about the, uh, pandering and posturing that companies are doing in the West versus what they're doing in the Middle East. What did you learn there?

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:49

      Yeah. So I mean, uh, you know, I thought it was quite interesting, because, uh, you can tell whether a belief is genuine by what people are willing to sacrifice for it. And, uh, corporations love to appear compassionate by claiming to stand for Black Lives Matter or gay pride or trans rights, but they only openly support these rights in countries in which they're already popular. Um, they're not willing to risk or sacrifice anything for their professed beliefs, and the reason for this is that their beliefs are just a charade. Um, so really the point here is just that words are cheap, you know? So if you really want to know if a person's principles are genuine, see what it actually costs them. If it's cost them something, then it's probably a genuine belief. But if it's cost them nothing, then it's just noise. And we see a lot of that today, you know, in this kind of image-oriented age in which we live, um, where corporations feel the need to be part of the conversation and they're constantly putting out these opinions that they think are gonna be popular. But it's all just, it's j- just a show, you know? So I just wanted to draw attention to that.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:56

      We see so much... June 1st is like the, um, Twitter up, profile update photo collage deployment waterfall thing, where Cisco, Mercedes, Lenovo, BMW, Bethesda, Visa, BP, and millions others that we probably haven't got screenshots of, have decided to have their central account with the colors of the rainbow, "We're supporting Pride, we're in support of gay people, uh, around the world." And then the Middle East version hasn't been updated at all. I was trying to come up with a name for it, and I was thinking of something like equality shadowboxing, because that's kind of-

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal2:36

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson2:36

      ... like what they're doing. They're, they're-

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal2:38

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:38

      They're fighting in a, a, an arena that, where the concept's already been won. Corporations support Pride in the West where it's widely accepted, but not in the East, because their activism is not motivated by principles, but by public relations. So fighting-

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal2:52

      Yeah. I mean-

   9. CWChris Williamson2:52

      ... where the battle's already been won and not fighting for equality where it's needed.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal2:56

       Yes, absolutely. I mean, if I had to use a word to describe it, I would just call it pandering, um, really, you know? (laughs) A nice, simple word. Because that's essentially what it is, that they're looking at their target audience, and they're seeing what does this audience want. And at the moment, corporations really wanna pull in the sort of TikTok teens, because they wanna get people when they're young. They wanna establish, you know, brand loyalty to these kids when they're young so that they'll sort of stay with them for life. And so, um, the TikTok generation is kind of quite im- infamous for being quite woke, and, you know, into all this kind of, like, uh, sort of social justice posturing. And as a result of that, I think that's why they've chosen this route. They've chosen to go towards the more kind of, you know, social justice-y kind of thing. You don't really see corporations sort of being based, you know, being, you know, sort of pro sort of Trump or whatever, you know? (laughs) I mean, you've got Elon Musk, who's a, a very rare exception. He's kind of gone towards the base route. But I think he, I think h- that's him as an indivi- individual. Tesla's not doing that. You know, Tesla's sort of quite, still quite on the left, sort of politically.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:06

       I think they're probably desperately trying to hold onto whatever, uh, acceptable face that they can and wrangling, working their way kind of around Elon as this...

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:15

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:15

       He's a bit of a force to be reckoned with on his own. But yeah, I mean, we see this with, um, body positivity websites that are using plus-sized girls, and some use plus-sized guys. But for the most part, you, you don't ever see skinny fat guys, right?

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:30

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:30

       That are, that are pale that look like they spend a ton of time in VR.

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:33

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:33

       Okay, so it's, it's, it's not about bodies of all sizes and making everybody feel represented. It's about pushing a narrative that drives more clicks and means that you can say, "We are part of the virtuous crowd. You do not need to look here. Over there, those are the people that aren't doing it." Uh, I mean, you see it with the, the different races that are used as well.

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:52

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:52

       A lot of them... You know, I mean, ASOS is really bad for this. Tons and tons of their models are now mixed race guys that have got neck tattoos, but there's no Asians.

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:01

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson5:01

       There's basically no Asians on that site. And you go, "Well, okay, like, what, what is it that you're doing?" It's, it's split testing something that mediates between we need to be able to show variety and signal virtue and we still need to drive clicks. So all of that's-

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:17

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson5:17

       ... been split tested as well. If fat Asian lads were selling more ASOS clothes, do you not think that they would be using it?

   24. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:25

       Mm-hmm. Exactly, yeah. I mean, you know, I, I don't see a problem with sort of diversifying sort of models and things like that. I think it's okay, but I think the issue begins when there's, when it's basically sort of done performatively. And an example of this is, um, in, I think there's this... I, I don't really watch Star Wars, so I don't know much about it, but I saw this tweet recently, um, in which the Star Wars official account basically posted their new actress who's gonna be like a main star of one of their upcoming shows or something. I don't really, I don't really know what it is. (laughs) But, uh, it was a Black woman, and they, the tweet was essentially saying like...... this is our new, um, star. She's a black woman. She's a strong, independent Black woman. And they were really, like, highlighting the fact that she's Black, you know? And they were like, you know, sh- "If you have a problem with her, then we don't want you, um, to be one of our fans," and all this... You know, it was a very sort of confrontational tweet, and I was like, "I don't understand the point in it." Because if you look at the previous, the old Star Wars, I mean, I haven't really seen much, but I remember the originals, and there's that Lando Calrissian is a Black guy. There's no mention is made of this guy being a Black guy, 'cause he doesn't, it doesn't need to be made, the point doesn't need to be made that he's a Black guy. He, you know, it doesn't matter that he's a Black guy. So people didn't have a problem with that, and it's when they start forcefully saying, you know, "This is our main star, and this is a Black guy or a Black woman, and you, you, you will enjoy it, or you will, you know, suffer the consequences."

   25. CWChris Williamson6:54

       Perish.

   26. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:55

       Sort of thing. Yeah. That's, I think that's, it's a very aggressive kind of thing that I think a lot, turns a lot of people off, but also, it also turns a lot of people on, unfortunately, as well, which is why they do it. Um-

   27. CWChris Williamson7:06

       Can you imagine, if we make it all the way to whatever year Star Wars is set in, and we've got lightsabers and laser guns, and we can travel super, super fast around the universe, and yet still the most important thing about somebody is their skin color? I honestly think-

   28. GBGurwinder Bhogal7:19

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson7:19

       ... just bring on the Death Star, man. Fucking send us all-

   30. GBGurwinder Bhogal7:22

       Exactly.
3. 7:35 – 12:19

   Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity

   1. CWChris Williamson7:35

      go and check that out. Uh, Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity. Evil can be guarded against. Stupidity cannot. And the world's few evil people have little power without the help of the world's many stupid people. As a result, stupidity is a far greater threat than evil.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal7:52

      Yeah. So, so we have a tendency as a species to view the world in Monistian terms. Monistian is a fancy word of, saying that we divide the world into good and evil. Um, we evolved to view our tribe as good and the enemy tribe as evil to justify annihilating them, quite frankly (laughs) , uh, and taking their resources without any sort of hesitation or guilt or, you know, any sort of other emotion that might get in the way. Um, tribes that were sort of morally relativist, they would not have survived for very long because they would have been killed by the tribes that were morally absolutist, the ones that were so sure that they were right and their enemies were evil. So as a result of that, we have this kind of flaw in our DNA, which is that we see the world in Monistian terms. We tend to divide things into good and evil. We see struggles as fairy tales, in a way. Um, it means that when you have a debate with somebody online on Twitter, you're, instead of sort of seeing them as just having a disagreement, you'll see them as evil, oftentime, you know? Um, you know, you can see it today with the way that the left sort of views the right as bigots, and increasingly, you see the right viewing the left as groomers or child abusers, and you know, so they, they take the worst sort of thing that they can think of, and they attribute that to their, their, the people that they disagree with. Uh, this is sort of evolutionary sort of byproduct that we have. Um, I think if we recognize that most people are just merely ignorant rather than actually being malevolent, then disagreement ceases to become a cause of conflict, and it instead becomes an opportunity for understanding. So I think that that's a crucial lesson for social media in particular.

   3. CWChris Williamson9:49

      How is it that stupidity can't be guarded against, and how is it that stupid people help evil people?

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal9:55

      Well, because stupidity is not predictable, you know? It's not, you can't predict when you're gonna make a mistake. Whereas you can, to an extent, predict what an evil person is gonna do. An evil person will try to do evil, you know? But stupidity is so broad, and it's, you can make so many mistakes at so many different points of reasoning that you just, that it's impossible to predict. So you can't really guard against it. Um, so, you know, that's, that's, that's the, the first thing. And then the second thing is that there are some evil people, I mean, I use the word evil broadly to describe people who are sadists, people who take pleasure in the suffering of others, or either that or people who are sort of sociopaths, you know, people who don't care at all about other people's feelings, have zero, you know, regard for them. Um, but these people are a tiny mi- minority, you know? Most people are not like that. And what these people do, these psychopaths and these sociopaths, um, is that they can't really do much on their own. I mean, they can become serial killers, and they do sometimes, but a serial killer can usually only kill a few dozen people at, at most before they're caught. Whereas if you look at the most destructive people in history, they were people who had armies, they were people who had nations behind them. And these people were, essentially, they were psychopaths to an extent. Um, you know, people like Stalin and, and Hitler, for instance, they had very sort of, uh, uh, low regard for human life. But they were only able to do what they did because they were able to get many, many, many stupid people onto their side, you know? And not, not even necessarily stupid people, but just people who were uninformed, basically. And it's so, it's really if they didn't have all of those people on their side, then they wouldn't have done, they wouldn't have been able to get anywhere close to what they did. They would've probably, you know, Hitler might have just ended up being a, a crappy artist, you know, like he was going to be before he was chucked out of art school. Um, Stalin would probably have become a priest 'cause he was at s- you know, at seminary when he was young. So it's these...... it, it's the masses, the- the sort of, the stupid masses who really cause the- the- the destruction in the end. It's not the- the people that we- we put all the blame on. They're just the sort of spark that ignites the wildfire,

4. 12:19 – 20:40

   Mean World Syndrome

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal12:19

      as it were.

   2. CWChris Williamson12:20

      Next one, mean world syndrome. The news exists to get your attention, so it tends to shock. As such, it doesn't reflect reality, but precisely that which is uncharacteristic of reality. But since it's all we see, we begin to think the world is crazier than it actually is.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal12:37

      Yeah, so... So people want to see stuff that's surprising, um, because it has more informational value. You learn more from what's surprising than wha- from what's mundane and predictable. Um, and since people have an appetite for the surprising, the information filters that dictate what you see online, the editorial filters, the algorithmic filters, they select for shocking stuff, basically. So the news that you see is stuff that's intended to sort of shock you. And obviously, if it's shocking you, then it's not gonna be characteristic of reality. It's not gonna be something that you could predict. It's gonna be something that's completely out of the ordinary. The problem is, is that while your mind is browsing this information online, it's not very good at critical thinking, because you enter something called a dissociative state, in which you kind of zone into what you're- you're looking at, and you kind of become lost in it, and you don't... You lose the capacity for thought. And as a result of that, what happens is that you lose the ability to make the distinction between what you're seeing and the probability of it actually occurring. So you see extraordinary events and you regard them as just ordinary events, in a sense, when- when you see them enough times. So, the problem with this is that it- it- it leads us to sort of see things like injustices and other sort of, uh, anomalies as the norm, and we'll probably get more into this actually, with some of my other concepts. But yeah, I mean... So it's a... Yeah, This is, I think, a very important concept for, um, again, for social media, because when you have a curated feed like Twitter, you're seeing information that is passed through several filters. And that information, every time it passes through a filter, it- it selects for stuff that's uncharacteristic of reality. So it's taking you further and further away from reality as it passes through all these various filters, the, you know, the algorithms and the- the sort of editorial decisions and all that sort of stuff, and your own decisions as well. So I think it's- it's one that people should be aware of, definitely, because it...

   4. CWChris Williamson14:54

      It's strange about what rises to the top, you know?

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal14:56

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson14:56

      The most shocking news stories, the ones that are unrepresentative, the ones that are uncharacteristic of what happens, they're the ones that garner the most attention, they're the ones that limbically hijack, so they're the ones that are going to be pushed the most online by other people and by the algorithm. And then it- it- it's so obvious when you think, well, the reason that people are shocked by it is the fact that it wasn't mundane, but by definition of it being shocking and not mundane, it has to be an outlier event.

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal15:23

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson15:23

      And if you get a collection of outlier events all the time, because that's what's most effective in order to garner the most attention on the internet o- and- and on news, what you have is a selection of anomalies put together to try and represent a world that people think, "Well, this is just what happens." And I- I also think the human brain is not meant to consume the entire globe's news in real time-

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal15:48

      Certainly not, no. Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson15:49

       ... 24 hours a day.

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal15:50

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson15:50

       And then when you have some perverse incentives like this going on as well, what you end up with is a very sort of skewed perspective of- of just what's going on. It doesn't surprise me that people think that the world's going to shit at the moment.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:01

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson16:02

       You know, it's chaos out there. We- i- th- the world's never been so turbulent and... Well, has it or is that just the lens through which the information that you're being fed is giving it? Because think about your daily experience. It's strange that people can hold in their minds at the same time, um, the world is kind of banal and it's this sort of gray sludge that we're being fed to kind of keep us working for the man, and yet at the same time, it's a post-apocalyptic hellscape with, you know, fire and brimstone going on outside.

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:31

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson16:31

       Like, people's personal experience doesn't seem to match up with what's going on. This is the same with the black pill, MGTOW, incel movement too-

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:41

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson16:41

       ... that most guys, when you actually drill down and say, "Look, what's your experience like with women?" it's perfectly pleasant. Most guys.

   19. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:49

       Absolutely.

   20. CWChris Williamson16:50

       That's- that's not to say that there isn't a bunch of Amber Heards out there that are manipulative and- and- and doing stuff to- to- to men and taking their kids away from them and accusing them of stuff, yeah. But for the most part, and yet, because the internet and Reddit forums and Telegram groups and YouTube channels that work in that space obviously raise up the most shocking stories out of the lot, well, what do you end up with? You end up with a group of people that believe that those stories are representative of what all women are like, whilst having an experience in their own life which completely disproves that.

   21. GBGurwinder Bhogal17:21

       Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, it gives people a completely distorted sense of reality and it's one reason why I've actually, uh, sort of toned down my consumption of news. Because, um... I mean, I read this really good piece by, I don't know if you know Sara Haider, she's a- a writer.

   22. CWChris Williamson17:39

       Yeah.

   23. GBGurwinder Bhogal17:39

       She writes on Substack, and she wrote a great piece about news consumption, about what it's actually good for. And, you know, she sort of came to the conclusion that essentially most of the news that we consume is actually pointless. It doesn't help us in our daily lives. It doesn't really enlighten us. It doesn't make us... It doesn't increase our understanding of the world. And when you pair it with what we're talking about, in fact, it actually has the opposite effect. It makes you less informed because it distorts your sense of reality. And so what I do now, I mean, I still have to consume better news because obviously I'm a writer, so I have to write about what's going on in the world, but...... I, I only consume what I have to. I don't consume any more than that. (laughs) I feel that if you get into a habit of, like, feeling that you always have to keep up with what's going on, it puts you in this kind of trap in which you're, you're sort of just constantly distorting your own reality every day. Every time you, you log on, you know, in the morning and you check Twitter or whatever, you're, you're creating a sort of false narrative in your mind which... It compounds with itself over time. If you- the more you consume news, the more distorted your reality becomes. And so, I think really, the best way out of this is just to limit your consumption of news to, to basically what is essential for you to know and, and to not really bother with all the other stuff, 'cause it really doesn't help.

   24. CWChris Williamson18:56

       I am in a group chat with a bunch of guys from Austin, and one of them came up with something that I think should be in... should appear in one of your future tweet threads. So I'm gonna give it to you now. It's the midwit appeal theorem. By definition, most people are midwits, therefore nothing can achieve mass significance without appealing to and allowing itself to be explained by midwits.

   25. GBGurwinder Bhogal19:17

       It's something that, you know, uh, something else that I, I've written about is the idea that we all tend to sort of converge in our narratives because we all ultimately see the stuff that gets the most traction online, and this is what results in midwits. Midwits are people who browse the internet in, in predictable ways, and because they're browsing the internet in predictable ways, uh, it's very easy to game them. You know, social media can game them very easily. So it can, um, show them stuff that's gonna sort of incite outrage or whatever, because it knows that they're, they're predictable so it can, it can sort of... It knows what they're gonna see, it, it knows what they're not gonna see. And when you've got large numbers of people all consuming the same content, the result is that people tend to sort of form these big blocks of like-minded... Not, not just like-minded, but people of uniform beliefs, you know, and, uh, and that's where the midwits come from, I think. They're all people who just consume the internet in very predictable ways, which is why I try to do the opposite. I try to, you know, look at things that other people are not looking at. Um, click on the 21st search result rather than the 1st, you know, that kind of stuff. Um, fooling the algorithm I think is very important to maintain a kind of independent mindset.

   26. CWChris Williamson20:30

       Or just being really stupid. Or being-

   27. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:33

       Yeah. (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson20:33

       ... really, really smart. But it's kind of hard, uh, pretty hard to be really, really smart, but yeah, just be really stupid or really smart is the best way to inoculate yourself.

5. 20:40 – 26:38

   Two-Step Flow Theory

   1. CWChris Williamson20:40

      All right, next one, next one from you. Uh, two-step flow theory. Most people's opinions are copied from their favorite influencers, who in turn copy the opinions of their favorite mass media. As such, politics is largely a battle between two armies of puppets being ventriloquized by a handful of actual thinkers.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:59

      Yeah. So this is, um, one of my sort of pet issues. Um, so basically, the, the rise of social media as the primary form of social interaction changed the way that we evaluate people. Uh, we once used to judge people mostly based on their deeds, but in the age of social media, we judge people mostly based on their opinions because that's really all we see of people. Um, and since we're now defined by our opinions, there is pressure to have an opinion on everything. Uh, the problem is, is that people generally don't have the time or the will to research every issue on which they're expected to have an opinion, so they copy the opinions of others. Uh, and the result of this is that there are preciously few genuine thinkers out there, basically. The, the majority of people posting opinions online are just thoughtlessly reposting other people's opinions, uh, as their own. Uh, what this means is that almost everyone who posts an opinion online has not actually researched it or even considered it, you know. They, they've not actually considered the issue that they're opining on. So in other words, you know, they don't know what they're talking about.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:08

      Where do you think the first mover of this comes from? Because there has to be someone that comes up with something somewhere.

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal22:12

      Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there are people out there who come up with ideas, you know, the intellectuals. They're a very, very sort of small minority of people, but there are genuine thinkers. And what happens is that these guys come up with the ideas, uh, and gals, they come up with the ideas, and then everybody just copies them, and then they get copied, and then they get copied. So what usually happens is, there are a few people usually in the mainstream media commentators, and they have original thoughts. And then influencers will usually read these, and then they'll sort of just, just basically-

   5. CWChris Williamson22:48

      Parrot them.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal22:49

      Yeah, just parrot them. And then the people who follow those influencers will parrot them, and then it just spreads like a virus basically, you know?

   7. CWChris Williamson22:57

      Do you remember in the general election, the UK general election, was that 2019, the last one?

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal23:02

      Yeah.

   9. NANarrator23:02

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson23:02

       And in the lead-up to that, if you watched social media, you would have thought, "This is an absolute whitewash for Labor." And you were seeing Stormzy and Amber that won Love Island, and all of these people that were, like, so vehement. And you think, "Well, this person's got a very, very strong opinion and they're just one person, so the other people, they must, they... It must be a, a complete army that's behind them." And then the results came in and you realized that-

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal23:31

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson23:31

       ... it was just loud people saying things that they definitely... I mean, forgive me, but S- Stormzy doesn't strike me as the sort of guy that's spent ages considering his political position.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal23:43

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson23:43

       Makes good music, but, like, he's not really-

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal23:46

       Absolutely.

   16. CWChris Williamson23:46

       ... a political thinker.

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal23:47

       I mean, I, I think the thing with Stormzy is that his crowd are not really political. They're not really interested in voting in elections, and that's where the mistake was made. Because although, yeah, there are probably a lot of people who, who voted because of him, it, there was nowhere near the amount that people expected, simply because he's not, he's not generally a political figure, he's an artist and people are more interested in his music than they are in his opinions. Uh, really, I think th- where the two-step flow theory really sort of becomes apparent, I think, is on social media with-... uh, things like sort of pol- political opinions, you know, that actually sort of spread through social media in particular amongst the political classes, not amongst sort of teens, you know. 'Cause, I mean, Stormzy's main audience are probably teens, aren't they? I mean, um, those guys are not political really. So yeah, it's, it's mainly... This is more of an issue that really sort of becomes apparent on, on, i- in Twitter politics.

   18. CWChris Williamson24:46

       But if you think about what a retweet actually is, like what is a retweet? It's you-

   19. GBGurwinder Bhogal24:52

       Yeah. It, it is a demonstration of that very fact. It is-

   20. CWChris Williamson24:53

       Yes.

   21. GBGurwinder Bhogal24:54

       ... essentially parroting an opinion.

   22. CWChris Williamson24:55

       Precisely.

   23. GBGurwinder Bhogal24:56

       It's cloning an opinion. (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson24:58

       Yeah.

   25. GBGurwinder Bhogal24:58

       Um, so yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Tha- that's a very good point. Yeah. It's, it, it sort of... So it works in two ways, I think. Firstly, people copy opinions directly, but then secondly, they also would rather just retweet something rather than actually think for themselves. You know, it's much easier just to press the retweet button than formulate your own tweet. And so-

   26. CWChris Williamson25:19

       I do think the, the retweet function, the, the less that you use it, m- most of the accounts that I follow don't retweet that much.

   27. GBGurwinder Bhogal25:27

       Mm-hmm.

   28. CWChris Williamson25:28

       I think that they're the, they're closer to the first movers, and that's probably a pretty good heuristic.

   29. GBGurwinder Bhogal25:32

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson25:32

       Like a- are most of the people that you follow retweeting, or are most of them either quote tweeting or, or tweeting their own stuff?
6. 26:38 – 33:58

   Introspection Illusion

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:38

      to do.

   2. CWChris Williamson26:39

      Introspection illusion. We think we understand the real reasons why we think and act the way we do, but we think other people have little understanding of why they think and act the way they do. We assess ourselves as if they're psychiatric patients, and ourselves as if we're gods.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal26:55

      Yeah. So, I mean, you've probably noticed this when you've sort of witnessed a, a Twitter debate, but many debates online consist not of two people trying to refute each other's ideas, but rather two people trying to psychoanalyze each other. Um, so for example, you know, I believe what I believe because it makes sense. You believe what you believe because you're just seeking social approval. And, you know, I do think many people believe things just for social approval, like we were just talking about, you know, with the corporations earlier. But it's much harder for me to accuse myself of seeking social approval, you know? I, uh, it's something I haven't really... It's a bit alien to me. I think it's alien to everybody to accuse themselves of believing something for something other than reason. It's not something that we normally do. Um, I mean, you know, I don't think I do believe things for social approval, but I can't be sure, because my actual motivations could just be rationalizations. So, you know, this is, it, it, it basically puts you in a bit of a tricky spot where you have to really consider the things that you're accusing other people of, isn't it strange that you never accuse yourself of these very things? So I think we should sense, uh, foster a consis- We should foster a sense of consistency on this issue. Um, you know, yes, many people hold beliefs as a result of social needs and character flaws, so it's legitimate to accuse other people of it. But for the very same reason, we should recognize that we could also be guilty of it. And therefore, instead of getting defensive, we should be open to accusations that we believe what we believe due to character flaws rather than reason.

   4. CWChris Williamson28:31

      This is the fundamental attribution error as well, right? That-

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal28:34

      Yeah. To, yeah, to an extent. Yeah. Th- I mean, that's more to do with whether you believe something because of an inherent, something inherent to you or whether you believe something due to situational factors.

   6. CWChris Williamson28:44

      Mm-hmm.

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal28:44

      Uh, so yeah, it, it's a... I think the, the fundamental attribution error is, is a more broader way of-

   8. CWChris Williamson28:49

      Yes.

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal28:50

      ... of ex- of saying this. Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson28:51

       Yeah. But the, it, it is, this is something that I always said to people that are going through, uh, breakups. If you invert this, what you realize is, your understanding of yourself and the depth of time and detail that you've gone into your own mind with is greater than even if you had a conjoined twin, you're going to have with them. So if somebody's gone through a breakup, a lot of the time, a- and it wasn't their choice. They romanticize the other partner. They make them out to be kind of saintly, and, and they're wistfully just sort of chasing after them. A- and they can also put them on a pedestal. "It's going to be very difficult to find somebody like this," so on and so forth. But one of the ways that you can at least invert that a little bit is by using this introspection illusion kind of to your advantage and think, well, look at how deep and rich your understanding of your experience is, right? There is this wild asymmetry. Basically your, your, your brain's infinite to you, and somebody else is unbelievably finite to you in your experience.

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal29:50

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson29:50

       Not only do you not know what they're thinking, all that you know about what they're thinking is what they've communicated to you, and they can communicate what they do, what they think at a much lower bandwidth than they think. And they don't choose to say everything, and you weren't there for all of the things that they were going to say. So this asymmetry between the two I think is something that can cause people, firstly to feel quite lonely in the world, right? Because your inner experience is significantly richer than the, uh, reflected experience you get from other people. But on top of that as well, uh, it is something that should make you feel a bit reassured.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal30:21

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson30:21

       Like you are, you are special because your experience of you is the only person, the only consciousness that's ever going to get that degree of depth.

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal30:30

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson30:30

       So it is the sort of thing...

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal30:32

       ... I think in part that should give people, uh, reason to be sort of proud of themselves. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, I think it's always worthwhile to sort of consider oneself, like when one is, w- when one's sort of forming opinions, to actually consider what one gains from it or what one would lose from it. Because I think, um, you know, the idea is that we don't really know ourselves. We don't know ourselves. We think we know ourselves. You know, we have this idea of who we are. But really, that's... We can't step outside of ourselves. You know, we're stuck inside of ourselves and that prevents us from seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak. So really, we can't, we can't really second-guess our own opinions. We can't know the real reasons why we believe what we believe. But what we can do is we can try to understand what we would gain from those beliefs. You know? So if I, if I were to have a political belief, I should ask myself, "What would I actually gain from believing this?" Because we know now that, you know, a lot of beliefs are not just sort of reason, uh, they're not just a result of reason. Uh, they... There's complex factors at play in a te- in terms of somebody's character and what they want from life. And, you know, people believe things because they think it brings them comfort or, you know, there's so many different factors to what goes into a belief. So in order to avoid the trap of believing something purely f- for an irrational reason, it's always worth asking you what else you stand to gain from that belief. It's something that I've been trying to do. It's a very hard habit to develop because we're used to criticizing other people for that, you know. We, we're not used to doing it to ourselves. But I think when you do it to yourself, it really does help you understand yourself. It helps you understand why you think the way that you do if you look at your experiences and you're trying to understand how your experiences ha- have shaped your beliefs. Mm-hmm. If you can make a habit of that, then you can start to interrogate yourself and start to realize why you believe what you believe and to sort of see the flaws in your own beliefs and then correct them. Would you say that if somebody assesses either one of their own beliefs or that of somebody else and it seems like they pay quite a high price for holding that belief, that they should probably consider that as more likely to be truthful? Uh, I always think about this- Yeah. I mean- ... with regards to Sam Harris, that the fact that he's got, um... He was anti-woke but anti-Trump. He was pro-vax, but anti-mask mandate. You know. Th- He held a very sort of unusual, um, dynamic- Competitive beliefs, yeah. ... i- in his beliefs. And you go, "Well, he's paying a high price for that." Does that mean- Yeah. ... I probably tend to have a bit more faith that he actually believes what he believes? Absolutely. I mean, yeah. Li- like we were saying earlier, you know, with the corporations, you know, not risking anything with, for their beliefs. Um, when you risk something with your beliefs or when you sacrifice something for your beliefs, then that's a sign that your beliefs are genuine. But that doesn't mean that your beliefs are justified. You know, that's a whole different ball game. And I think the introspection illusion is really more about establishing whether your beliefs are justified rather than whether they're genuinely held. Ah, yeah. Because you, you could make a good idea... Y- you have a good idea of whether your beliefs are genuinely held. You know better than anyone whether your beliefs are genuinely held. But you, you can't really tell whether your beliefs are justified until you interrogate yourself. A- and that takes a lot of effort. It's something that we're... Is completely alien to human beings.

7. 33:58 – 41:28

   Sayre’s Law

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal33:58

      Yeah. All right. Uh, Sayre's Law. "The lower the stakes, the more vicious the politics. Intense nuclear talks, people act civilized. In Twitter culture wars, people act like Armageddon has come, raging like maniacs, calling for total war, safe in the knowledge that none of it matters." (laughs) Yeah. So, um, this law was originally invented to describe academic politics, uh, but it's recently become applicable to online politics. Um, Sayre didn't really offer an explanation for the law, but I think I have one of my own, which is basically, firstly, people... People's egos cause them to exaggerate the importance of their struggles when it's possible to do so. Um, in truly serious matters, understanding is essential, therefore precision of language is essential. This prevents people from exaggerating their struggles. But when it comes to issues with lower str- uh, stakes, in which there is some leeway, accurately describing reality becomes less important so people could take greater liberties to exaggerate their pet issue. So the result, you can see it widely in, in the culture wars. So, for instance, you know, um, with the woke left sort of thing, words are violence, silence is violence, you know, um, using the wrong pronoun is erasing someone's existence, uh, dressing as a Cherokee for Halloween is committing genocide against Native Americans, you know. Um, but I mean, it... We do see this problem on the right also. It's not just a problem of the left. I mean, for instance, um, you know, uh, racial mixing is white genocide, you know? (laughs) So both sides e- engage in this kind of, um, you know, sort of catastrophization and I think really it's, it's just a symptom of people wanting their struggles to seem more important than they actually are. Uh, because really it's... They're not that important when you, when you really consider, you know, the grand scheme of things. And so people make up for it. Whereas when people actually do have real struggles, they have to be truthful, they have to be precise because there are costs to being incorrect or im- imprecise. So the result is that you can gauge how serious an issue is by the language used to describe it. Issues that are described in sensationalist terms are generally not as serious as issues that are described in very precise terms because in the latter case, the rewards for misrepresenting reality are smaller and the risks are far greater.

   2. CWChris Williamson36:40

      ... what was Sayer trying to describe originally?

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal36:44

      So he was trying to describe academic politics as this kind of thing, very bitter and very vicious struggle where people are very petty. And I mean, you could say that he was talking about the narcissism of small differences. Um, you know, he was basically saying that because the stakes are so low in, in politics, people's egos generally drive them to become more ruthless and more petty basically, just, just to sort of compensate for the fact that their struggles are so trivial. But he didn't... like I said, he didn't really explain it. He just... it was more of an observation, and I really had to think about it to try and work out why I thought it was true. And I think... I mean, I do believe it is true. It's just that it took me a while to try and work out why, and I think that that's what it is. I think that there are costs to being untruthful when the stakes are high. When, when you're in a nuclear negotiation, you can't misrepresent reality. You have to be truthful because, uh, the cost is just too great. And the rewards are small because you don't need to exaggerate the problem because the problem's already big. Whereas when you're in a small struggle like a Twitter culture war, there's plenty of room to be untruthful because it doesn't matter because it's so... it is so trivial. It doesn't matter whether you're economical with the truth. You can just say whatever. It doesn't matter. It's all incon- inconsequential. So people exaggerate, and they, they LARP, and they catastrophize, and then they just, you know... The, the result is that this problem takes on an apocalyptic tone even though it's usually just, just what somebody said online, you know? (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson38:14

      And bizarrely, there's probably an inversion between the seriousness of the problem, the language that's used to describe it, which means that the problems that probably require the most attention are the ones that linguistically are given perhaps not the least, but they're at least being constrained with precision, uh, thoughtfulness, uh, and, and perhaps even in some situations, I suppose, s- like secrecy to a degree, you know? Uh, so many-

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal38:41

      Yeah, absolutely.

   6. CWChris Williamson38:41

      Th- th- there's this, uh... it's called Terrorism: Close Calls, uh, and it's on Netflix. It's kind of a bit cheesy actually. It could have... it could have been much better, but it's kind of fun, um, and it's declassified files and CIA agents and stuff and FBI people that have dealt with close calls where some serious shit nearly went down, and this is how you're finding out about it. This is.

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal39:04

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson39:04

      It, it's 30 years ago, and someone was gonna blow up a, a tube going from New York to whatever, Long Island or some shit, that's how you found out about it.

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal39:14

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson39:14

       Um, and I wonder as well whether... a- a- again, everything... i- it's easy to bring everything back to social media because almost everything is mediated by social media and the perverse incentives that you have online for attracting attention, for using this inflammatory language. It's kind of really hard to just separate that out and go, "Okay, this is... this is just something like gravity that's always there. How do we then pass this in?" But for sure, this is a, a big reason that it gets promulgated even more, the fact that signaling is such a big part of what you do now online and that the language that you use is one of the primary signals that you use.

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal39:50

       Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I mean, um, I think really, the, the Twitter culture war is largely a result of language being used to exaggerate, um, struggles, you know. Uh, it's, it's taken on this kind of apocalyptic tone precisely because of the way that it's described, you know, online. But when you really break it down, what, what actually is it? It's just people sneering at each other online. It's just, you know... it's just kind of people exchanging insults. That's all it is. Because although the struggle... you know, some of the struggles might be real, like for instance, you know, things like, uh, uh, transgender rights and things, these are all real political struggles, but the actual Twitter culture war is divorced from that. Even though it, it purports to be about such things, it doesn't really have any effect on these... on these issues.

   12. CWChris Williamson40:40

       It seems-

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:40

       It's-

   14. CWChris Williamson40:40

       ... as well like i- it's kind of a bit of a losing battle because let's say that there is a serious problem that you're dealing with, uh, so you decide to use precise language and treat it with the requisite respect that it deserves, it doesn't garner any attention.

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:54

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson40:54

       Then you decide, "Okay, well, that's not gonna work, so we'll try the flamboyant, incendiary language instead," and then people have got this filter. I have this filter, even if it's subconscious until I read this thread and realized why. Uh, oh, I'll, I'll discount that. So okay, so you're damned if you do and you're damned if you... people aren't gonna pay attention if you're precise and realistic with your language, and they're going to castigate you and, and dismiss it if you're inflammatory with your language. So yeah, I think a big rule over the top of all of this is social media is a very bad way to have conversations that are serious.

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:26

       Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

8. 41:28 – 54:43

   Nut-Picking

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:28

   2. CWChris Williamson41:28

      Next one. Let's go into nutpicking.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:30

      Yeah, sure.

   4. CWChris Williamson41:30

      Uh, "Cherry-picking the most outlandish members of the enemy side and presenting them as indicative in order to make the entire side look crazy. A common tactic on Twitter. Arguably, the entire culture war is just each side sneering at the other side's lunatics." That is (laughs) so good.

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:49

      Yeah, I mean, um, so you'll be very familiar with this, and I... you know, I think most people who browse Twitter are familiar with this sort of thing because it happens so commonly online. Um, last time I was on your show, we, we spoke of Libs of TikTok, and I mean, that, that... since we've last spoke, that's exploded. It's now massive, you know. And, um, one of the reasons it's, it's massive is that it engages in this nutpicking, which people love. People love to see nutpicking, and that's why it's so popular. Um, you just... you know, I was browsing through the Libs of TikTok, uh, feed the other day and was just seeing all these crazy people, you know, that were just sort of trying to get sort of four or five-year-olds to come out, you know, of the closet and stuff, and, you know, I thought, i- if you, if you spend your life following this account, you're gonna think that this stuff is happening literally everywhere.... you're gonna think that this is extremely common, that it's, like, you know, happening in every school, that there's a massive plot to sort of sexualize young children. And it would drive you absolutely crazy. It would dr- I, if I, if I believed that the world, you know, was like, a big conspiracy, just basically filled classrooms up with these kind of s- sort of, uh, sex positivity activists who are just basically trying to sexualize young children, I would drive, it would drive me absolutely insane. Um, and you see it, you see people online who actually believe this is happening, you know, the, they believe that there's a massive operation, uh, to sort of, you know, just completely just, uh, sort of turn kids degenerate, basically. (laughs) But then you've also got the left-wing version of this, um, which is Right Wing Watch. This is a s- a- a- another-

   6. CWChris Williamson43:29

      I haven't seen that. What is that?

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal43:30

      Yeah, so that's a Twitter account which is the sort of left-wing equivalent of Libs of-

   8. CWChris Williamson43:33

      What do they post?

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal43:35

      So they just post crazy, like, Christian conservatives, you know, who believe that, you know, the, the modern world is gonna burn in hellfire and all this kinda stuff, and just-

   10. CWChris Williamson43:44

       (laughs)

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal43:44

       ... and mental, like, racists, and like, you know, white nationalists (laughs) and stuff like that, just the craziest loons from the right wing, basically, and, um, you know, people who are like, wanna blow up, um, buildings, and just, just get crazy people on there. Um, and I mean, if I was, you know, following this account, if I was following Right Wing Watch, I would get this idea that the right are just gonna like, you know, kill everybody, shoot everybody to death with their guns, and, um, just basically, you know, put minorities into concentration camps or whatever. (laughs) So, you know, that, that's the problem with when you take the worst examples from each side, and then you create like a Twitter feed of nothing but those, because this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about, you know, how social media misrepresents reality-

   12. CWChris Williamson44:28

       Mean world syndrome, yeah.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal44:29

       Yeah, with the mean world syndrome, yeah. Um, you know, you, all you see, if all you see is just the most extreme examples of any, uh, world view, you're gonna think that that world view is an existential threat to, to the world, basically. And, and that's gonna drive you crazy, and it's gonna make you more extreme in your beliefs. So, the long-term effect of this is that it makes everybody more extreme, which makes it quite dangerous. It, it might be entertaining, you know, nitpicking is always quite entertaining if, especially if you're a culture warrior, you know, and you wanna, you wanna laugh at the other side. Then if, you know, if I'm a r- if I was a right winger, I wanted to laugh at the other side, I'd just go on Libs of TikTok and just, uh, start browsing, and you know-

   14. CWChris Williamson45:08

       But look at-

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:08

       ... I'd just, I could spend hours on it.

   16. CWChris Williamson45:09

       ... look at a ton of the right wing channels and, and the content that they put out. I mean, Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire has, um, his five headlines. I would s- I would guess that at least two to three news stories per week on this show that has a big research team probably comes from Libs of TikTok.

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:26

       Hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson45:26

       So you go, okay, the oth-

   19. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:27

       That's really-

   20. CWChris Williamson45:27

       Tha- that's not even one, um, like, ideology, that's not even one type of talking point. That's one account that is filtering some of this stuff through.

   21. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:36

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson45:36

       And one of the weirdest things about this is it should enrage people of the side that this account is putting stuff out from more than-

   23. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:49

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson45:49

       ... it enrages the other side.

   25. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:50

       Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson45:51

       Libs of TikTok should piss off the moderate left significantly-

   27. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:55

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson45:55

       ... more than it pisses off the right.

   29. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:56

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson45:56

       And it, it's, it feels like a duty of the people on that side of the fence to call out the lunatics-
9. 54:43 – 1:01:03

   The Lesser Mind’s Problem

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal54:43

      worldview.

   2. CWChris Williamson54:43

      Yeah. Okay. Right, next one. Uh, the lesser minds problem. We dismiss those we disagree with as stupid, insane, or evil because it saves us from having to deal with the complex truth that people see things differently from us largely because the labyrinth of experience has led them to different conclusions.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal55:01

      Yeah, I mean, so this sort of goes back to what I was saying earlier about Menasheism. Uh, we evolved to view people of other ideological tribes as just plain wrong, basically. (laughs) Whether by evil or insanity. Um, you know, 10 years ago, you know, when I was a, a leftist, I got all my news from the New York Times and The Guardian, which taught me that right-wingers were only right-wing because they were selfish or bigoted. Uh, but then I actually got to know a few right-wingers and I began to see that there's a kind of... there is a value in right-wing politics that isn't really mentioned in the New York Times or in The Guardian, um...

   4. CWChris Williamson55:39

      What is that? What's the value?

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal55:40

      Oh, there's plenty of value to it, but it's something... This is something that I learned is that the value of, of leftism is very obvious and it's very clear and it's very shallow in a way, and that's why young people always begin as leftists. Um, but then they gradually move rightwards as they get older. And the reason for that, I think, is that people become more risk-averse. Because when you're young, you know, you, you're experimental, you're exploratory because you've got nothing to lose, so you take big risks and you take big chances, and so you wanna completely overturn society, you wanna completely change everything, you know? Tear down the old statues, let's erect something new. You're very ambitious when you're young. But then as you begin to accumulate things in life, as you begin to accumulate a family and a house and wealth, you become more risk vi- averse, um, because you realize that you've got something to lose now, and you realize how good you've actually got it. You realize how grateful you should be because of the position, the unique position that you occupy in history, um, and you realize that the things that you thought were useless in the world actually have a very, uh, important purpose. You know, this is the whole Chesterton's Fence argument. And as a result of all of this, you become conservative. You begin to see things from a more conservative point of view. You realize that, "Hang on a second, we've got it good." You know, you've, "We've got it really good to live when we live in this time, having, you know, been through all the things that our, uh, species has been through, to actually live in a time where we have all these freedoms that we..." you know, we don't take these things for granted anymore because we've become grateful for them and we understand what we have. And so I think that's part of the, the value of right, of the right. Uh, there are other values as well, obviously, you know, like, there's the more libertarian angle where, you know, you, you value freedom and things like that. But for me, uh, you know, I, I wasn't really aware of, of the... what I was just talking about. I wasn't aware of that until... in my sort of, uh, mid-20s when I kind of, like, believed that... when I stopped getting all my news from the New York Times and The Guardian and sort of liberal media, you know, Washington Post and all that kind of stuff, and I actually started to, uh, talk to actual right-wingers and actually have a civil conversation with them. Um, so that was when I, uh, stopped realizing... that was... sorry, that was when I realized that, um, that right-wingers are not evil, not simply evil or not simply stupid or, or whatever, you know. And that was a big revelation for me because it... that was one of the reasons why I, I started having doubts about the left, because... for the very same reason. I believed that the left were good. I believed... when I was young, you know, I believed, um, the left were... they were compassionate because they wanted an equal world, they wanted to look after everybody, you know, y-

   6. CWChris Williamson58:29

      Is that what you mean when you say that it's obvious and shallow?

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal58:32

      Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's... the, the, the appeal of leftism is very easy to see because who doesn't want a more compassionate world, you know? Who doesn't want a world where the, the weakest amongst us are taken care of by the strongest? It's a very beautiful image, isn't it? Um, where we all look after each other and, you know, where nobody goes hungry, nobody is discriminated against. It's a beautiful image, and anybody can relate to it pretty much. So, yeah, the value of leftism is, is very clear, but being, in being clear, it's also quite shallow, because when you get older, you realize that it's not actually very easy to create that world because you have to sacrifice a lot of things to create that world, and the sacrifices that you make can actually make things a lot worse for, for everybody. And so you gradually learn about economics and you learn about evolutionary psychology and you learn about all these things that the left doesn't teach you about, and that's when you start to have the doubts about the left. And that's when I started having doubts, and that's when I realized I couldn't really consider myself to be a leftist anymore because... I mean, part of it was I just didn't want to be tribal anymore, you know? I wanted to see things from outside the perspective o- of a tribe, so I had to abolish all allegiances to tribes. But secondly, I thought that the left itself... I do value the left, I think it's important to have the left as a, as a sort of political force in the world, but I don't want to be part of it because I believe that doing so would make me irrational because I'd have to believe things about the world that I naturally do not. Um, you know, I would have to dispute some of my own deepest convictions. And so, um... yeah, it's a complicated thing. It's, it's very complicated that as you get older, you realize that people have good reasons for believing things that seem o- on, you know, on the surface to be completely crazy.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:00:19

      Do you know... So, over time, um, age tends to cause people to lean more to the right. Do you know if it causes people to go from authoritarian to libertarian as well?

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:00:31

      I have no idea about that.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:00:32

       I'd be really interested to find out.

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:00:34

       I've never seen any research about that, no. Um, I mean, uh, one thing, I've seen research which shows that there is a very real trend towards conservatism, but I don't think that there's any particular correlation between authoritarianism, uh, libertarianism.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:00:47

       Interesting. Yeah, I just wondered whether or not people increasingly, uh, kind of see the fallibility of politics as they get older. And, you know, if you're going further down, it just means basically, "Leave me alone."

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:01:00

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:01:00

       Um, the more that you go toward that libertarian thing...

10. 1:01:03 – 1:09:38

    Discussing the Word ‘Retard’

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:03

       Okay, right. Um, I wanna talk about the word retard. What have you learned about the word retard recently?

    2. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:01:10

       Okay. So, I was doing a bit of research into why things become offensive because it, it just became curious to me. I wanted to know, why are some things offensive and other things not offensive? And I began to, sort of think about the word retard, and this is a word that's quite offensive. I mean, most people would consider it pretty offensive, you know, e- especially in polite society. I mean, there are a lot of people who use it in jest, but, but there's a lot of people who find it offensive, and, um, you know, if you ask these people why they find it offensive, then they'll say, "Oh, it's because, you know, um, it was historically used to refer to mentally disabled people," um, which I think is a perfectly reasonable explanation. But then you ask these same people do they find the word idiot offensive or the word imbecile offensive or the word moron offensive or the word cretin offensive, and most people don't find these words offensive. I mean, a few people find cretin offensive, but most people don't find idiot or imbecile or moron particularly offensive. You know, they use... it's a very, these are common words. But the thing is, if you look at the history of these words, they were also used to refer to mentally disabled people. That's their origins. Their origins is actually, they were used as cat- categorizations of mentally disabled people. Uh, and I, I point out this example of, um, the Queen's first cousins, um, who were officially diagnosed as imbeciles, and as a result of that, the Royal Family, um, faked their deaths and basically locked them away in a care home for the rest of their lives. Um, and they were... and when they died, the Royal Family didn't even attend their funeral. Uh, you know, it was a pretty tragic story, but like, um, it goes to show that, you know, the word imbecile was used even for members of the Royal Family if they had... if they were mentally disabled. And so there's this weird sort of disparity between the word retard and the other words which mean exactly the same thing but which are not offensive, and you've got to ask yourself, what's the purpose for this? Why is the word retard offensive but all these other words, which were used, again, for exactly the same reason, why are they not offensive? And I, I, I was looking into the history of these words, and the only conclusion that I could come to was that it was a purely arbitrary decision. So, a group of people, you know, a group of intellectuals one day decided that the word was offensive, and they said as much to the people, and, you know, I don't know where, where it was officially established but gradually it became offensive to use that word. And so we chose... we, we all collectively decided to have a specific emotional reaction to a certain word but not to other words with the same meaning, and that strikes me as very strange because it means that a lot of the outrages, a lot of the things that are outrageous, are purely arbitrary. They're just, they're just arbitrarily chosen. You know, there's no real reason why we should be upset or offended by a certain word. We just choose to be offended by it, and we choose to not be offended by other words, you know. So this, I think, is a... it was a big insight for me because it really opened my eyes to exactly what outrage is. A lot of outrage is just manufactured. It's purely manufactured. You don't need to be angry about any of the things, any (laughs) or at least most of the things that you're angry about, you know, in, in everyday life.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:04:49

       They're not rooted in anything more solid than simply people making choices in the past. You also used that example of, uh, is it the NAACP?

    4. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:04:59

       Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, so the word... this is another thing that I've never understood is that somehow the word colored people became offensive and you had to use the word, the, the term people of color instead. I've never understood why. I've never really understood why. I mean, I did ask somebody who was pretty, sort of woke, and they said to me, um, that it's because when you use the word... when you use colored people, you're, you're centering color, but when you use people of color, you're centering people, because the first word is people rather than color.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:05:31

       (laughs)

    6. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:05:32

       And so...

    7. CWChris Williamson1:05:33

       Oh, (laughs) that's a fucking tenuous-

    8. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:05:35

       Yeah.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:05:35

       ... very tenuous explanation. (laughs)

    10. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:05:36

        That's just bizarre. I mean, I don't understand it, you know, and I have no problem with people calling me a colored person. I j- don't find it offensive at all.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:42

        What's your heritage?

    12. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:05:44

        Indian.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:44

        Yeah.

    14. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:05:45

        Yeah, I'm Indian, Punjabi. So I, I don't have any problem with, with people calling me a, a colored person, you know, and I, I don't think most colored people do. I don't think most of us do have a problem with it, but-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:57

        See, what's really interesting is the NAACP is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is that right?

    16. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:03

        Yeah, yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:06:04

        So what that's like is kind of like a fossilized record of what linguistic territory used to be acceptable-

    18. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:11

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:11

        ... and because they haven't updated their branding to move in line with lexically what's now part of the green light/red light system-

    20. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:18

        Yeah, definitely.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:19

        ... they're, they're, they're kind of this fossilized record of, oh, that used to be okay, but now it's not. So if there was the NAARP, right-

    22. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:31

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

        ... for retarded people-

    24. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:33

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:06:33

        ... you go, okay, well, hang on, is that a pejorative? Are you using that to, to refer to this entire group? What about the cretins in the room?

    26. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:40

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:06:40

        And what about the morons in the room? What about them? Where are they?

    28. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:43

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:06:43

        So yeah, it's so... that, that-

    30. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:06:45

        Yeah. Th- the thing is, is that linguistic... all this kind of linguistic re-, re-tribalizing of territory is that it, it just creates outrages where outrages don't need to exist. We've already got enough things to be outraged about in this world, plenty of things to be outraged about in this world. You know, if you... you've just got to switch on the news to see what's going on, you know, (laughs) uh, in some parts of the world. But the thing is, is that, uh...... instead of, like, trying to do something about the things that outrage us, the things that we should be outraged about, some of the injustices that are occurring, for instance, you know, the, the concentration camps in China, for instance, um, instead we just sort of, kind of redraw the territory of language and create new outrages out of it, out of nothing. We create new outrages out of nothing, and it just doesn't make any sense to me. I just don't understand why, why people would choose to be upset over, you know, the, the use of words than, than so many other things to be outraged about.
11. 1:09:38 – 1:12:50

    The Law of Oligarchy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:38

       Okay. Iron law of oligarchy, all organizations of people, no matter how democratic and egalitarian, will eventually be controlled by a dominant few since, if everyone has power, then no one has power. And if someone has power, they'll use it to get more power.

    2. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:09:56

       Yeah. So, um, so in order to be able to move an organization forward, there needs to be a power differential between people. Uh, it's simply not practical to have every decision made by committee. But if someone has got power, if they've got an extra, a little, extra bit of power, then that power will compound over time. This occurs, like, largely as a, uh, result of the Matthew effect. I think I've, I might have spoken about the Matthew effect in the last podcast. I can't remember. But, um, yeah, the Matthew effect is, is the idea that advantage begets advantage. So, it, it's sort of usually encapsulated in the saying, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Um, you know, if somebody has influence over decisions, then they can use that influence to steer decisions that favor them and give them even more influence. And the typical result of the Matthew effect is, is a Pareto di- dist- dist- distribution and this is basically a, a, a sort of statistical dist- distribution in which you have a small number of people holding the vast majority of power, uh, is the best way to sort of really describe it. Um, so, the, the interesting thing about this concept is that it can be used to justify left-wing or right-wing politics. Um, for the right it's the key reason for why communism and socialism don't work. And for the left, it's an argument for regulation against monopoly power. So, what you really think, like, how, what you conclude from this, um, concept really depends on your, your political views. But I think that it's, uh, a very interesting, um, concept because it's so fundamental because people are always trying to create sort of egalitarian democratic systems or, um, highly competitive systems, and this law essentially refutes the possibility of that. I don't think it's impossible to create a, a completely democratic or competitive s- situation in which there are equal players operating against each other or with each other. Um, but I think it's very, very difficult because, like I said, you need to have some people have power over others in order to, for the organization to be able to do anything because some people make... you 'cause you just, you just can't make a organization by committee. It, it, it doesn't work. Even communist states, like the Soviet Union, didn't have pure committees. They had to have people like Stalin and Beria, you know, who actually made decisions, um, uni- unanimously sort of thing, or unilaterally rather. Um, and so, yeah, this is, uh, th- that, it's ex- it's interesting because it, it really does make you question the possibility of, um, a lot of these programs that people try to create.

12. 1:12:50 – 1:18:58

    Noble Cause Corruption

    1. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:12:51

    2. CWChris Williamson1:12:51

       Noble cause corruption. The greatest evils come not from people seeking to do bad, but people seeking to do good and believing the ends justify the means. Ironically, few things legitimize the immoral treatment of others more than the belief that you're more moral than them.

    3. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:13:08

       Yeah. So, once again this harks back to what I was saying about monitionism, uh, where evolutionary configured to view ourselves as good and our opponents as e- and our, and our opponents as evil in order to justify competing...... um, in order to justify c- uh, conquering them. Sorry. So there's a weird irony in that our belief that we are good can make us act with great evil. Uh, what this means is that the real problem is not that some of us are good and some of us are evil, but that we all believe we're good and that our opponents are evil. And if you look at history, you know, the greatest injustices were committed in the name of justice. Uh, even the Holocaust was regarded as a means to a righteous end, you know. It was viewed as necessary to save Western civilization, um, Western European civilization, you know. The, the Jews were regarded as evil, uh, which made it easy for the Nazis to commit evil against them. And I think this is why we should f- ... The people we should fear the most are not simple psychopaths, but rather, those with noble aims who are convinced that they're on the right side of history. Because such people's belief in their own goodness is so great, that it can be used to justify any evil.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:14:22

       There's a lot more conviction that comes from someone that believes that they're right than knows that they're doing wrong.

    5. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:14:27

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:14:27

       It's gotta be more fragile. You know, it's gotta be more of hit it, hit it enough times and it's going to break if someone is kind of LARPing or they're playing a persona or whatever, versus someone who actually genuinely believes that they're on the side of righteousness. I mean, this is the sort of crusader-style adherence that you have to particular viewpoints. I mean, look at, you know, after this Uvalde school shooting-

    7. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:14:50

       Mm.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:14:50

       ... you know, the degree of, uh, vitriol and how vehement, uh, Second Amendment, um, people have become online. Even just buddies of mine, like friends of mine from Texas that are really, really ... they're even more unprepared to give ground now. Like they're, they're, they're not going to give a single inch with regards to that because that's their ... that's one of the deities that they, they hold up.

    9. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:15:19

       Mm. Yeah. I think when you're convinced that you're right, um, you're capable of, of essentially anything. And that's the danger because, you know, even ... I mean, if you look at w- what does evil really, you know, what does evil really achieve? What does somebody who's evil really do in the, in the world? They usually end up becoming serial killers. Um, but when you look at what good does in the world, it, it leads to genocides and massacres because people actually believe that they're, they're making the world a better place.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:15:51

        Presumably, it's more compelling as well, like we were saying earlier on, getting people to believe in your cause is, it's sort of a solo man operation if you're doing something that's evil. But if you can convince someone-

    11. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:16:01

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:16:02

        ... that what you're doing is good, that's how you end up with entire armies and nation states behind you.

    13. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:16:06

        Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So that's a crucial part of it as well, is that you can get people on side much easier because there are a lot more people who want to do good in the world than there are people who want to do evil. I mean, there are very few people who actually wake up in the morning and rub their hands together and say, "Oh. What's the nastiest thing I can do today?" You know. Um, most people want to do good, but it's just that they're misguided about what good actually is.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:16:29

        Isn't that what Peterson keeps on bringing up about how, um, if you were a German in 1941 and you were in the army, you would have been a Nazi as well? And everybody likes to think of themselves as the person that would have not sent the Jews to the gas chambers and so on and so forth. But-

    15. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:16:46

        Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:16:46

        ... if you're convinced of an ideology, if you're convinced that these are the people that are causing the world to be, uh, bad and terrible and taking everything away from you and a threat to the, the safety of your community, uh, that's gonna compel you to do some pretty wild things without any belief that you're doing anything wrong.

    17. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:17:05

        Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, if you, if you actually look at the s- some of the interviews of, um, former Nazi SS guards and, and people like that, a lot of them will say that they believed that they were doing the right thing, you know, when, when they were, when they were c- carrying out their active actions. They would say that they were basically taught that the Jews had, um, essentially brought Germany to its knees, and that they were essentially sort of they were corrupting the entirety of Western civilization. That they were basically like a cancer and they had to be removed in order to preserve everything that their ancestors ... that, that the German ancestors had built. And, um, I mean, you know, this is in an age where there was no internet. There was no Wikipedia. You couldn't just go online and fact-check things, you know. So you had to make do with the propaganda basically that was being pushed out by the newspapers. Goebbels was a master propagandist, one of the greatest propagandists in history, uh, in terms of the skill that he, he had. And he managed to convince so many German people that, that essentially that Jew- Jews were not human beings essentially, that they were, they were de- demonic beings, that they're demonic creatures that needed to be removed from the world in order to create a utopia, in order to create a world where everybody loves everyone and everything is beautiful, you know. And so these people were fighting for beauty. That's the, that's the horrific thing about it. You know, the, the, the most ugliest things in history were fought in the name of beauty. And that, I think, is a very sort of striking thing, a very dangerous thing, because it's something that people don't think much about. People tend to have this, this view that, that the world's evils are c- are caused by people trying to do evil, but that's just not the case. You know, very, very f- little evil in the world is actually caused by people actively trying to do evil. The vast majority of injustice in the world is the result of people trying to do good.

13. 1:18:58 – 1:23:02

    Fire-Hosing

    1. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:18:59

Episode duration: 1:33:11