Modern Wisdom14 Shocking Lessons About Human Nature - Gurwinder Bhogal
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,336 words- 0:00 – 0:57
Intro
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
A team of researchers analyzed 27 million news articles published between 1970 and 2019, and what they found was that use of words like sexist and racist in the New York Times and in the wider liberal media increased over 400% since 2012. Obviously, sexism and racism have not actually increased 400% since 2012. It's only the media's use of these terms that's increased.
- CWChris Williamson
Your writing is so good, dude. People send me that audience capture article all the time. This most recent one that you did about, uh, how Smart People Make Themselves Be Dumb, uh, the TikTok article, it's, it's phenomenal. I, I... You're the only Substack that I pay for, and, uh-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Oh, thanks (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... quite rightly, quite rightly so, so-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
That's super nice.
- CWChris Williamson
... what, what can I say? So, my favorite thing-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
... to do with your Twitter is go through some of the mental models, biases, and ideas that you've got, and we're gonna go through as many as we can today. First
- 0:57 – 8:18
Social Media is Making People Less Sincere
- CWChris Williamson
one is chilling effect. When punishment for what people say becomes widespread, people stop saying what they really think and instead say whatever is needed to thrive in the social environment. Thus, limits on speech become limits on sincerity.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So, I mean, so this is, you know, a, a, sort of very timely thing, I think, because there's a lot of talk about sort of suppressing people from social media and stuff, and, um, I think people should really realize that stopping people from airing their true opinions doesn't change their opinions. It just makes them mask their opinions. Um, and when this happens at scale, it can lead to all kinds of absurd situations, uh, like the Abilene paradox. I don't know if we've covered the Abilene paradox.
- CWChris Williamson
Run it back.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
It's basically a situ- yeah, it's basically a situation where everyone professes a belief that no one actually believes, purely because they think everybody else believes it. And so you can have a situation where literally everybody just is saying stuff that is just not true for the sole reason that they think everybody else thinks it's true. And an example of this, um, would probably be considered sort of, um, the, the issue of what a woman is. Um, you've got pretty much everybody in the mainstream culture now pretending that they don't know what a woman is. Um, but if you were to ask these people in private, they would probably be able to tell you. They'd just probably say, uh, "An adult human female." But because there's this sort of stigma now around knowing what a woman is, people, you know, have basically, sort of, they have to pretend like they don't know (laughs) . And, uh, it's just, it leads to absurd situation after absurd situation, and that's why I think it's, it's... I mean, there's many reasons, there's many arguments against censorship, but this is definitely one of the, the strongest, I think. Um, you're not... By censoring people, you're not changing their behavior, you're not changing their opinions, you're not changing their beliefs. All you're doing is just sort of sweeping them under the carpet, you know? And they're just gonna continue, just, you just won't be, be able to see it anymore, so you can't-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... keep track of these people anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
This ties into your view about, uh, when people are their opinions, they feel like they have to have an opinion on anything and everything, and changing your opinion is tantamount to destruction of yourself. So, because people value their opinions so much, in this situation, quite rightly, y- your, um, the performative nature of having the right opinion, of the Abilene paradox, playing along with that has never been more important, because-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... opinions have never been more relevant to our status within the world.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. And you see this reflected most in the, precisely the industries that you would expect it to be reflected in, i.e. the industries that are image-oriented. So, if you have a look at people who have the most fashionable opinions, I mean, Rob Henderson would probably call these luxury beliefs that sort of, you know, fashionable opinions that, uh, people adopt in order to, to sort of signal status. Um, you know, when I was a kid, uh, we all used to, like, buy sweatshirts which had, like, brand names st- stamped across the front of them, like, you know, Fila and Nike, you know, when you're a kid at school, because you want everybody to know that you'd paid, paid for it. So, nowadays, when you get older, you no longer wear these labels. Now it's opinions instead. Uh, you know, you have the, the she/her and the he/him instead of a por hom, por femue, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And, um, it's sort of like you see this in Hollywood. You see it amongst Hollywood actors, you see it amongst academics, you see it in politics, you see it in all of the industries where image is important, where basically appearing to have the right opinion is more important than actually having the correct opinions.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, and it's also-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And so-
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, uh, an industry where opinions and actions have never been more diverged, right? You know-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... somebody now can have a Twitter account that proselytizes the right, uh, beliefs, and in private, hold completely different beliefs, or the way that they go about living their lives be totally different. You could be a, an online vegan who's an offline carnivore, and for as long as the twine shall never meet, uh, it, it kind of doesn't really matter so much. Whereas in the past, your ability to profess a belief that you didn't live up to in reality would have been much more difficult to diverge. Especially in before the internet, right, or before print media, there is no way for y- y- your, your opinions are very much your actions, right? There is no way to do this and to bifurcate you and what you say from what you and what you are and what you do. So, yeah, i- it's, um, the opportunity and the motive have aligned to, uh, create this chilling effect.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. I think people have... What the digital age has done is it's separated the person from the persona.... um, so now, you know, there's a, a much wider gulf between how you appear to others and how you actually are than there ever was because of the sort of, uh, importance of social media in our daily lives. And so because of that sort of dissociation, there's now big gulf between, uh, the beliefs that people profess and what they actually believe in real life. There's no consequences nowadays for what a person actually believes, really. Um, and most of the time anyway. At least as long as you have the fashionable opinions, you know. Uh, if you have unfashionable opinions, then there is consequences. But if you, if you believe something like, for instance, um, uh, that it's not a problem for, um... Like for instance, there was this issue in Scotland recently about, um, that there was a rapist who was locked in a, a women's prison briefly, and then there was an outcry, outcry about it over the internet, which sort of led Nicola Sturgeon to walk it back and may have led to a resi- a resignation. Um, but I mean, if you're like a, a really, really sort of, uh, rich Hollywood actor, um, and you, you know, you, you're n- you've got no, you know nobody who's gonna go to prison, there's nobody in your life who's ever gone to prison or anything like that, uh, you don't need to worry about anybody you know being hurt by your opinions on whether women should be... whether a trans rapist should be allowed in a woman's prison. So you're not paying the consequences. Other people are paying the consequences, and you could say the same thing about Black crime rates or whatever. You know, people say that, um, you know, Black people are be- being shot at a dispro- disproportionate rate, um, by police, um, and that this is purely due to systemic racism. Um, you know, if you're a Hollywood actor, you don't need to worry about, uh, the true causes of the sort of, uh, crime rates in, in, in Black neighborhoods-
- CWChris Williamson
Or the, the outcomes of-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... so you could just say it's all just systemic racism.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, or the outcomes of defunding the police, right? Defund the police-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... would be a perfect example of this. Say it, but-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... yours isn't the neighborhood where you need police in any case. Okay, so next
- 8:18 – 13:18
Instead of Trying to Be Right, Be Less Wrong
- CWChris Williamson
one. Epistemic humility. Instead of trying to be right, try to be less wrong. The investor Charlie Munger said, "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent. Avoiding idiocy is much simpler than achieving genius, so it's easier to turn it into a habit." Furthermore, if we try to be right, then we'll often convince ourselves we're right even if we're not. But if we begin from the position that we're wrong, and we simply try to be less wrong, we gain more awareness in our blind spots and become less wedded to our beliefs, reducing our resistance to learning.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, so this has got wide applications. Uh, I use this in every endeavor really. Um, a particular one that I found that's very useful was, uh, my approach to writing. Because when I first started writing, I used to try to sound smart. I tried to be intelligent. And what this led to was me using a lot of really fancy words, a lot of big words. So instead of using the word tiptoe, I would use the word digitigrade, you know, and I'd use all these other really long words that people just didn't know what, what I was talking about. And because they didn't know what I was talking about, what actually happened was that by trying to be smart, I became less clear in my communication. So I basically, I was becoming more stupid, and people had less understanding of what I was trying to say. So it backfired, and it was then that I realized that actually good writing is not about trying to sound smart. It's about avoiding sounding stupid, uh, by just using... You know, you could use simple language, um, to communicate clearly rather than trying to sort of signal sophistication or anything like that. And when you can commu- communicate clearly, um, then you naturally become smarter because your, your thoughts and your, you know, what, what you write reflect each other. So if you think clearly, you'll write clearly, and if you write clearly, you'll think clearly. Um, you know, if you try to think in these big, long words that you barely understand, you're not gonna really develop a good understanding of, of what you're actually thinking.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you heard the-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And so this is one, one example.
- CWChris Williamson
... Have you heard the mental model never multiply by zero?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I think I have, but I can't recall what it is. You might have to remind me. I've heard that, hear that-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So it ties in, it ties into this perfectly. So never multiply by zero describes avoiding situations that could permanently get you out of the game, whatever that game may be. So for instance, you could have the perfect health and fitness regime, making sure that you eat organic fruit and vegetables. Your micros and macros are perfect. You sleep eight hours every night, and you're hydrated thoroughly throughout the day. But you have a common habit of driving a car without a seatbelt. It's like, okay, all of the good things that you're doing, it's 45 times 7 times 1.2 times 360 times 0. If you multiply any sequence of numbers by zero, the outcome is zero. It's the same as you've been saving for a long time and, uh, working hard on your education and you can't wait to move away, but you commonly have unprotected sex and accidentally get pregnant. Okay, that has put a very big change, that has stopped a lot of the things that you had intended, and it's the same here. It is, it is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent. You can get so much success in life simply by avoiding failure because so many people multiply either by zero or by, by half or by three quarters, and it takes down so much of the good work that they've done.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, it's the, it's the lowest common denominator issue, isn't it? It's people can focus all of their energies on certain things and maximize those, you know, until their heart's content, but they'll neglect one tiny aspect of their life, and then that will be the thing that brings them down. And, um, I think when you, when you're trying to be smart, you can get lost.... in trying to excel at one particular thing whilst neglecting all of the other things that are periphery, but which are just- just as important. Uh, all of the supporting things. I- I've found just it simplifies life so much when you just try not to be stupid, you know. It just, it's just such a- a more elegant and simple way to live than to try to be smart. I don't have any... I, you know, I used to signal a lot to people, you know, especially on social media and stuff, where I used to try to just be as smart as I possibly could. But it would often just lead me into just complete stupidity, because I would just be hyper-focused on one thing, trying to make that thing as perfect as possible, and in s- in so doing, I'd neglect everything else, uh, which was needed. So yeah, I mean, gener- i- it's all about being a generalist. It's not about being a specialist anymore. You know, if you want to excel in life now, you've got to be a generalist. You've got to be good at... You've got to have a baseline sort of gold- goodness at everything rather than s- you know, being super good at- at one thing. Because that super goodness at one thing can lead you astray.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting.
- 13:18 – 17:15
People are More Interested in Criticising than Helping
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, next one. Cunningham's Law: The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer, because people are more interested in criticizing others than helping them. This is so incisive. It's so correct.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the- the actual... I mean, Cunningham's Law is basically just, um, the best way to get the right answer on the internet is- is not to ask a question, but post the answer. And then I was the one who- who basically decided that it was because people are more interested in criticizing others than helping them. So, I don't want to, um, give the impression that, you know... If- just in case this turns out to be wrong, that- that- that was the law. His law is just the first part of that. Um, so I mean, yeah, it... Uh, I've witnessed this constantly since I've been on social media, you know, places like Twitter and Reddit. I even... I think I even did this experiment myself where I actually asked a question, and I got very little response, and then I deliberately posted the- the wrong answer. I'm pretty sure I did that once earlier, in 2016 or something like that, 'cause this is something that I've thought about for a long time. And, um, I think many people are constantly on the lookout for someone to ridicule, and I think they- they want that because they want to feel better about themselves. So, if- if you give people an opportunity to make them look smarter than you, they will take it, you know, because people want validation on social media. And one of the ways people get s- validation is by pointing out when other people get things wrong. Um, I mean, I- I used to do this a lot as well. I used to- I used to re-... I mean, I don't know if I was trying to seek validation, maybe I was subconsciously, but I did get this drive to really point out when people got things wrong, and I felt like a duty almost to do it. I don't do it anymore, but I used to always do it on social media. If I saw something that was incorrect, I would just feel, well, like, "Now, this is wrong." And you know, I'd- I'd bask in the praise afterwards. And I think it's pretty powerful.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, your- your- your smarts stand on the shoulders of somebody else's stupidity, right? So, by pointing at the stupidity. Really interesting thing. So, I'm- I'm all for, um, calling out the performative incentives of social media. But Chris Voss, the guy that wrote Never Split the Difference, he was the former head of the FBI's negotiation team. He said that one of the ways that he extracts information from people who are either unwitting or unwilling is he will, uh, make proposals about them that are wrong, but that they want to correct. So for instance, he'll say, "That's a, that's a great accent. Is that s- That's Hull, isn't it? That's d- You're- you're from Hull." "No, no, no. I'm actually from Huddersfield." He'd go, "Oh, yeah, interesting. But you- I mean, you must be a Pisces." "I actually am an Aquarius." And he'd go, "Okay, I've got the place that you live and the month of your birth there," simply by proposing things that are wrong. And I- I- it's... I don't know where it comes from. It- it can't just be performative fanciness on the internet. It's something deeper than that. It's a desire to close loops of erroneous information, and I think that that just gets maybe magnified when the internet's involved.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah, I think, uh, I think that probably is part of it. People probably do it for different reasons. I mean, this is quite, it's quite a general sort of concept. So I mean, you know, I'm sure it's not just a specific, it has one specific cause. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think it, it's always better. You get a lot more information out of people by getting them to tell you what they want to tell you rather than trying to sort of railroad them into an answer, you know? So, I think a lot of, sort of... I- interrogators will probably do that. I don't know, I don't know their tactics, but I could see them doing that, um, you know. They would... rather than, rather than actually asking you a question, they would give you a statement that would lead you to a certain response. I think because then you don't feel like you're being interrogated as well, you know. You feel like you're just giving the information freely, which probably is- is better for them, um, you know. So, I don't know. But I'm not an expert in that, so I don't know.
- 17:15 – 20:29
Never Take Information at Face Value
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
- CWChris Williamson
Next one. Wittgenstein's Ruler: The less you know of the measurer compared to the thing being measured, the less the measurer's measure measures the thing being measured, and the more it measures the measurer. As an analogy, if a man says everyone he meets is an asshole, the asshole is likely him. You can apply this concept to any source of information. For example, if a news outlet's stories frequently outrage you, instead of taking it as evidence that the world is becoming more outrageous, consider the possibility that the news outlet is deliberately trying to outrage you and temper your reactions accordingly. Basically, never take information at face value and always ask yourself, "What does the info from this source suggest about the source itself?"
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So, I'll ne- I'll never sort of understand why people just take information at face value. You know, I see it just constantly online, where somebody will say something and then nobody questions the motives behind the person saying it. They just as-... It's as though it's like ChatGPT saying it to them, you know? They'll just accept whatever it, is- is being said without any kind of...... uh, suspicion towards the motives behind, "Why did somebody say this?" You know, "What does this say about the source of the information?" Um, I think it's just a very, very important skill for media literacy, uh, in the age of misinformation. There's, you know, there's, there's always a agenda behind every piece of information that is shown on your screen, um, apart from in the cases of ChatGPT, but, but that's, uh, a different issue. But, like, when you're getting information from other human beings, there's always an agenda there. There's always some reason why you're being showed that information, some reason why they've chosen to disclose that information, and I think it's always worth considering what those pos- potential agendas could be, because that is half of the information you're being given. You know, if you're just accepting the information at face value, you're only receiving half of the information. Uh, you need, you need the other half. You need th- the other half, the context. You know, so, um, you, you see this, you know, if, if, for instance, like, the Guardian, uh, posts something about, um, the economy, you know, and then you see the, the author, and then you can do a bit of background research into that person's views on economics, and then it's amazing how much information that will provide you when you actually read the article.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh. So that is-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Because then you'll suddenly-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. That would be the, the first line of Wittgenstein's ruler is, "The less you know of the measurer..." So what you're doing there is you're learning more about the measurer.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah. You, you want to get as bo- as much information about both sources. You wanna get... Sorry, not both sources, b- about the, the source and the information. So you wanna get as much information about both, and you should... Y- y- the, the ruler in this case is the one that you have the most information about. So if you have more information about the information than the source, then you should use the information to measure the source, and if you have more information about the source, you should use the source to measure the information. So it's, you know, it's basically like you would... If you had two rulers and you weren't sure which one was correct, yeah, you knew one of them was correct and the other one wasn't, you would use the correct one to measure the one that wasn't, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So it's a similar principle.
- CWChris Williamson
Interesting. Okay.
- 20:29 – 30:47
Becoming Trapped in a Purity Spiral
- CWChris Williamson
Purity spiral. Members of political tribes inevitably begin competing with their fellows to be the most ideologically pure. The constant one-upmanship toward moral superiority causes the whole group to gradually become more extreme. For example, Maoist China or Twitter echo chambers. Nice that you drew the correlation between those two there.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) Yeah. Uh, I think people have this kind of tendency to turn everything into a competition, and that goes for morality also. You know, if you have a certain dominant ideology or dominan- uh, moral ideology, uh, that's fashionable, again going back to the, the thing that we were talking about before, then people will start competing. They'll turn it into a competition. They'll start gamifying it, essentially. They'll, they'll turn it into an opportunity to, um, to sort of gain an advantage, a social advantage, uh, and this has been shown throughout history. I mean, you know, it's not just Maoist China. You can look at any regime that had strong sort of laws, uh, against certain behaviors or in favor of certain behaviors, and you would see that there were people always who would compete to either call out those behaviors in other people or, if they were bad, or engage in those behaviors if they were good. You know, literally, a- any, any regime, you name, you know, you, you, you'll see, you can see examples of it. It's, it's something that's sort of fundamental to our species, um, and it's one of the reasons why I think, um, a lot of regimes become, uh, more extreme over time, you know. Uh, a lot of them, like, for instance, if you look at, if we go by the sort of, uh, the, the example of communism, uh, you know, Lenin was pretty bad. He was quite bad. He wasn't Stalin, though. You know, Stalin was a completely different category of, of sort of authoritarian, and it would have continued if, as long as Stalin was there, 'cause he got worse and worse as, as he gained more and more power. And it wasn't just because he was gaining more power. It was because the people around him were also becoming more extreme. If you ever look at people like Laurenti Beria, for instance, you know, they were also, they became more extreme over time, and part of it was because, I think, of, of the purity s- spiral where people felt that they had to, uh, compete to be as much like Stalin as possible in order to avoid being purged, um, so in this case, it was literally life and death matter, but it's not always life and death matter. Sometimes it's just a case of status, which is more the case on Twitter.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you ever hear Tim Dillon push back on Joe Rogan's view of LA comedy? 'Cause this is exactly the same thing.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
I did, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So, uh, Tim is one of the few guys that can kind of poke back at Joe because he's, you know, similar status and he, he's, he's doing well in comedy scene and stuff like that, and Joe was saying about how lovely the LA comedy scene is. You know, every time that he goes through there, everything's just fantastic and everyone treats him so well. And Tim sort of bumped in and said, "Joe, you, you do know that you're Joe Rogan, right? That the way that people behave when you step into the room is not representative of how they behave typically for other people, that, that there is a reality distortion field that occurs when this happens, and because of that, your experience may not be representative of everybody else's." I, I can't remember the rule that we went through but this was on one of the previous episodes that you featured on where, uh, as somebody gains power, the people around them are more concerned with appeasing the person in power than giving them real information from the world outside. So if you have purity sp-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Howard Hughes syndrome. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Howard Hughes syndrome. Thank you.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Howard Hughes syndrome.
- CWChris Williamson
That's it. Um, so if you combine Howard Hughes syndrome with the purity spiral, the purity spiral is the incentive...... or, uh, the purity spiral is like the, the, the drive and the direction that, that's the, what's going on. And then the Howard Hughes syndrome is the fuel that persists and causes that to keep on going. Uh, one, one question I've got in my mind is, what sort of environment would engender a more purity spiral-like situation? What are some of the predictors of, uh, a purity spiral, do you think?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So, there need to be rewards, incentives basically, for that kind of behavior. There need to be rewards for extreme behavior. So, um, you know, if you, if you look at, say, Twitter, for instance, there are rewards to acting... If you're, you know, if you're like in right-wing circles, for instance, then there's an incentive to act based, you know. And if you're in the left-wing circles, then there's an incentive to act woke because other people will see you as a sort of paragon of what they believe and then they'll, they'll want to retweet you and, you know, say, "Oh, this person..." If you're based, for instance, people will say, "This person doesn't give a fuck," you know. He's, you know, uh, uh, uh, basically, he- he's, he's sticking it to the libs, you know. He's, he's triggering the libs or whatever. Um, and, you know, vice versa with the, with the, the left. They'll be like, you know, "This person is calling out, like, calling out injustice or whatever, blah, blah, blah." So, there's gotta be some sort of, um, social reward for, uh, engaging in more extreme behavior than your peers. Uh, that's the first rule. And another thing is, this is probably an even better incentive, would be that, um, if, if there's a punishment for not acting more extreme. And this is more to do with the sort of Stalinist kind of, uh, element of things. So, if you look at the purges, for instance... In fact, there's an even better example than that. Um, if you look at... There's a very famous video, um, of Saddam Hussein where he basically is in a room filled with people and, um, he basically says that he's uncovered a plot. This was shortly after he, he assumed power. It was shortly after he assumed control in Iraq. And the way that he consolidated power was that he basically concocted this idea that there was a conspiracy against him so that he could, you know, uh, pretext to remove people that he didn't like. And he had a list of names and, uh, he said that these people had betrayed him. And there was a big packed room full of people, all of them sort of delegates and diplomats. And one by one, he called out the names of the betrayers and they were led out of the room to their deaths. They were basically executed. And as soon as people realized what was happening, they began to panic and they began to copy Saddam Hussein's actions. So, there's a point where he, um, he, h- he was apparently crying or he was pretending to cry and he got a, a handkerchief and he began to wipe his eyes and immediately the camera pans to the, the crowd, to the audience. And you see many, like, people just get handkerchiefs out of their hands and --, sort of ou- out of their pockets and they begin to, um, wipe their own eyes, exactly how Saddam Hussein's doing. And it, it's... I think it's, it sort of... It speaks to sort of this idea that people were so terrified of dying that they just... They only... They panicked and the only thing that they knew how to do to prevent from dying was to be as ex- as much like Saddam as possible in that moment.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. I imagine one other predictor or another predictor of the purity spiral would be an important in-group/out-group, uh, tribal dynamic that's happening because the whole purpose of having a purity spiral is to identify others, right? There is us and there is not us and if you do not do the things, pray, do the shibboleths, et cetera that is the us, then you're a not us. And it's why intersectionality, in particular, is a, a pretty obvious example of what goes on with regards to a purity spiral because in part some of it is based on fanciful exaggerations and also it's mostly based on not being another as opposed to being a something. When you have a poorly defined something, the only way you can identify yourself is as not being the other and what that means is in order to keep group cohesion together you need to constantly shave off people who are others. It's like if your mutual love of an in-group is not bound together over that, it's bound together over the mutual hatred of an out-group, you need to permanently find new out-group members in order to say, "Well, see? We're not, we're not that." For instance, Douglas Murray, uh, gay man but like white and conservative so he's not really a part of the LGBT movement anymore. You know, like, "You're just gay?" It's like, "Mm, dude, you really need to be like gay and Black with a c- club foot and, uh, gluten intolerance. Like that's really where you need to be at in order to be a part of our gl- our club."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's easier to rally around shared hatreds than shared values and so there are people always looking to create new things to hate just in order to keep the, the group together. Um, you know, shared values are, are okay for a while but really what people want is they wanna get together to really hate somebody, you know. There's, there's few things that bring people together like hating someone else and I think a lot of this happens like... I mean, you see it in, um, when, uh... There's this thing called rally round the, the flag syndrome which is a concept, another one of my mega thread concepts where it's this idea that when, uh, leaders are unpopular with the public what they do is they will start conflicts. They will start foreign conflicts, uh, because this will bring people together against a mutual enemy. And, uh, I mean, some people have argued that, that Putin... Part of, part of the reason that Putin invaded Ukraine was that he was flagging in po- popularity and people were becoming disillusioned with him and so he needed to have a sort of external enemy to sort of unite the people and sort of, you know, create this, this other that they could sort of level all their hatred against. You see it in, in the novel Animal Farm as well where, um, the character of, uh, Napoleon, the pig, Napoleon-... essentially exiling Snowball, who's his rival, and then just sort of blaming him for literally everything that's going wrong, you know, scapegoating him. And that's how the sort of Animal Farm gets consolidated and how they form their sort of, their, their, their community, by hate- hatred rather than love.
- 30:47 – 45:53
It Isn’t Coordination, It’s Cowardice
- CWChris Williamson
This is one of mine, so I've got a new one for you here, and this is Schultz's Razor: Do not attribute to group conspiracy that which can be explained by cancellation anxiety. From the outside, it might look like everyone is coordinating to push some ideology or movement. From the inside, everyone is terrified of losing their job if they don't adhere to the new ideological stance. It's not coordination, it's cowardice. A lot of the time we believe that there is a grand plan at work to try and push a narrative or hurt people from a particular group, from the outside it looks a lot like a coordinated assault, collusion orchestrated some, by some malign overlord conspiracy. But on the ground, it doesn't look anything like that. It's just individuals trying to save their own skin and not get fired. They've got an expensive house they can barely pay the mortgage on, and a wife who wants a new car and private school for kids. It's much easier for them to adhere to whatever ideology will keep them in their job rather than go against it. Sure, it might mean that they push an unhinged story about trans story hour for toddlers or ban someone from saying something innocuous on a platform, but this doesn't mean that they've been indoctrinated into some grand plan. The incentives encourage execs, influential actors, and people in power to behave in particular, aligned ways, but their coordination is not consciously conducted. It's just the path of least resistance for each person. It doesn't make them less culpable. It makes them less malicious and more cowardly, for sure. And Schultz finished this off and said, "So much content is curated by a pool getting installed in an executive's yard."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, that's a, a fair assessment. I think it's quite accurate. Um, it, it sounds to me like sort of Hanlon's, Hanlon's Razor, um, uh, sort of applied to cancel culture. I, I think, yeah, a lot of people are more passive than active when it comes to, um, the sort of propagation of new ideologies. And I, I see this pretty much all the time. Um, you know, if we go back to the example of wokeism and stuff like that, uh, it, the, wokeism's largely pushed not by ideologues, not by people who are, you know, actively trying to sort of spread this ideology. But mostly by people who just sort of read Wikipedia to see what ideas are, are on there and just accept them as fact and just think, "Okay, I'd better not question this because, you know, this is the, the consensus amongst my community and, you know, if I, if I speak out against this, I, I'm gonna be in trouble, so I'll just keep my mouth shut." And that's largely how, you know, these ideologies really spread, I think. Um, it's, it's sort of like... It goes back to the sort of chilling effect where people are afraid of saying what they really think so they just keep their mouths shut, and then this allows false ideas to propagate, uh, much more quickly. Um, so yeah, I mean, I, I think that's... it's a pretty straightforward, um, one. It is. You said it was Schultz's Razor. Who, who was the one who, who, who, uh, came up with this?
- CWChris Williamson
So Andrew Schultz on, on, on his podcast just talked about the fact that, um, he's spent time in Hollywood. In Hollywood everyone from the outside thinks that it's all of these people trying to trans the kids and stuff. And he said from the inside, it, it, there's none of that, you know. They're blundering around just trying to sort themselves out and get to CrossFit in time.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And i- i- just... I, I came up with Schultz's Razor and then sent it to him and asked if I've got, uh, if he reckons that it was a good s- summation of what he was talking about, and he was like, "Fucking hell, that's really nice." That's cool. "Do not attribute to group conspiracy that which can be explained by cancellation anxiety." But another thing, the reason that I really like it, and I actually spoke about this in Miami this weekend, I spoke about that, that exact passage, is because it's very reassuring for the people who are concerned that we are facing an insurmountable, coordinated coalitional assault, right, on our freedoms.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Because what it reminds you is, individual actors' incentives can align in such a way to make it look like collusion, but it's not. And if it's not, it's actually a lot more fractured and, and fragile. And all that you need to do to fix something which isn't a coordinated conspiracy is change the incentives. If the incentives then change, that immediately opens up and frees pretty much everything else.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. I think, uh, there's that famous quote which is, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," um, which I think really sort of sums it up. Uh, I think, yeah, I agree, I agree. I don't think that there is some sort of massive conspiracy to trans people or anything like that, you know. I don't... I think that's just nonsense. Um, I, but I mean, what I am worried about is exactly what you've just been saying, which is that there are gonna be a lot of people who simply will just accept stuff that, that is probably untrue, simply because they're afraid. And, you know, I don't have specific cons- concerns about trans, the trans sort of ideology in particular, but just generally I think this is a danger, um, for pretty much any- anything really. I mean, you know, you've got the equivalent conspiracy theories on the right about the World Economic Forum. So many people believe in this now. They believe that there's some s- evil, dastardly plot by the WEF to sort of enslave everybody and... I mean, I've looked at the evidence, and I'm not convinced by it. I could be wrong, but I, I think people are just sort of, most people are just sort of accepting it on the right now. Just as people are accept- accepting sort of a lot of ideas, woke ideas on the left, you've now got people accepting conspiracy theories on the right just because everybody else is accepting them. And, um-
- CWChris Williamson
What's, what's-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... I think that's quite dangerous.
- CWChris Williamson
What was that, um, the world has many stupid people and few evil people, therefore the world's few evil people can not succeed.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Bonhoeffer's Theory of Stupidity.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Bonhoeffer's Theory. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, yes.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, that's the same as this, right? That's, that's precisely the same.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Exactly, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, that you have-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And it would be maybe not stupid people, uh, but just self-interested people or-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Or-
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, you know, resourcefully anxious people.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Just the hap-Yeah, yeah, passive, I would say. I'd just say passive people-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... because I think, you know, like, like you alluded to earlier, they're more interested in feeding their families. And who can blame them, you know? Um, they wanna feed their families. They wanna, um, just live their lives, you know? I mean, why would... You know, why, why worry about all these things that are probably not gonna influence our lives sort of very much? Unless there's some drastic, you know, uh, sort of, uh, tyranny that just suddenly takes over, but that's very unlikely. I mean, I think most of these issues, things like, um, the whole thing about the trans ideology and the WFEF and all these other, you know, sort of th- theories, uh, they don't really impact the average person, uh, very much in their lives. These are really social media issues. These are issues that people get really, really worked up o- over social media. And this is not to say that there's no real world impact. There is, obviously, but the, the level at which they're being discussed is far in excess of their actual real world impact. Uh, there's far more important things to be worrying about, you know, like AI for instance. Um, you know, AI is a major, major issue now, but most people are still worried about trans people in toilets. And it's, um, you know, the... Like, AI is literally a ex- existential threat. I mean, not in the immediate future, but eventually it will be.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Uh, you know, once we've got AI now, that will soon give rise to AGI. AGI will probably give rise to a superintelligence, um, and then we're gonna be in-
- CWChris Williamson
Then we'll still get the alignment problem.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... in shit. (laughs)
- 45:53 – 52:51
Media is Now ‘Post-Journalism’
- CWChris Williamson
post-journalism. The press lost its monopoly on news when the internet democratized info. To save its business model, it pivoted from journalism into tribalism. The new role of the press is not to inform its readers, but to confirm what they already believe. Post-journalism.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So (clears throat) there was a study, um, published in the Social Science Computer Review, um, and basically what it was is a team of researchers analyzed 27 million news articles published between 1970 and 2019. And what they found was that use of words like sexist and racist in the New York Times and in the wider, uh, liberal media increased over 400% since 2012. So, obviously sexism and racism have not actually increased 400% since 2012. It's only the media's use of these terms that's increased. And this is, they, they found this was the case anyway, you know. They, they found that essentially what happened was that there was some event that had occurred that had caused a massive shift in the editorial policy of the New York Times towards sex and race. And I mean, this was actually, uh, uh, I think, uh, who was it? There was a writer who, who dubbed this the Great Awokening. Uh, he, although he didn't, he didn't refer to this specific example, but he referred to a general trend that, that occurred with the rise of social media in the early 2010s, where there was this sudden shift towards l- uh, issues of sex and race. And this was driven by the media, I think. I think this was driven by the fact that the s- the New York Times was no longer the sole author- you know, one of the sole authorities of news anymore, um, with the sort of advent of social media and, and all this alternative media that, that sprang up, and stuff like the Joe Rogan podcast and all these alternative sources of information. The New York Times had suddenly lost its authority, um, it was no longer, it no longer had a monopoly on information. And so obviously they had to do something. And I believe, I don't have any hard evidence of it, but I think that this is what led to this surge in usage of, um, terms like sexist and race and, and the rise of the sort of, you know, woke politics in media. Because I feel that... it, it decided that it was c- gonna cater to hipsters, basically, you know, to s- to certain f- I don't want to stereotype them too much, but the kinds of people who hang out in Starbucks and, you know, like (laughs) um, you know, drink s- sort of pumpkin spice latte and all that, you know. They wanted a sort of, they thought these guys -
- CWChris Williamson
Pumpkin spice latte crowd will be coming for you hard.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. I, I've tried them. They're actually quite nice. Like I've drank, drank a few myself.
- CWChris Williamson
Knew you were a hipster.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Um, but yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I always knew you are.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
(laughs) Yeah. I did it before everybody else. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
That's the most hipster thing that you could say. That doesn't defend you from being a hipster.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, okay. So what you're saying is that, uh, the n- the New York Times, they need to, uh...... uh, uh, they need to re-engineer news from being something which accurately portrays what's going on to competing for clicks, up against people who are significantly better at getting clicks. Um-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... what it seems like, if, uh, racism and sexism have increased by 400% since 2012 in New York Times and the liberal media, it seems like racism and sexism have been split-tested as the most limbically hijacking, perfectly curated, tempting way to get people to press on a news article.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because the interesting thing with these, uh, terms is that they don't just get the audience, uh, from the n- they don't just get the liberal audience engaged. They also get conservative audience engaged, because, you know, the, the conservative sort of, uh, media ecosystem is l- oddly reactive, which fits in with their reactionary ideology. So, they, they, they react to the liberal politics of the day, to the liberal mainstream media. And so, when The New York Times, um, says that, uh, air conditioning is racist or whatever, then Fox News is gonna come out, Tucker Carlson is gonna go on, and he's gonna say, you know, "Look at this madness in The New York Times. Uh, you know, the world's going to hell. The New York Times now is claiming that air conditioning is racist." And The New York Times obviously knows that Tucker Carlson is gonna do this, and that's why they do it, because they know that they can provoke him. So, then Tucker gets his audience of, uh, conservatives to essentially just h- take part in this dialogue, to take part in this sort of debate, and that drives more traffic to The New York Times, uh, when people share it. Like, "Look at this craziness," you know, on social media. (laughs) What they're doing, they're doing The New York Times's own work for them, you know? They're just sharing it. Even if, it doesn't matter if, uh, people don't like The New York Times's article, it's still getting shared, and that's what matters at the end of the day. People are clicking on it so that they can hate it. And I think, you know, that's really the, the sort of, the liberal media's business model and the conservative media's business model. The liberal media will randomly accuse things of being sexist or racist, knowing that it's gonna fire a, a lot of people. Uh, then the, the right-wing media, the conservative media, will sort of react just as predicted, and it will just create... It, it's like a sort of symbiosis where they sort of fuel each other, you know? They, they fuel each other's traffic. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, I mean, you do see it happening the other way now as well. You see, you know, Tucker Carlson or whatever will, will make a claim which is absolutely crazy on Fox News, and then The New York Times will write an opinion piece about him and how he's a danger to, you know, everyone, and he's gonna, you know, create the Third Reich or whatever. Like, um... Oh, sorry, the Fourth Reich. But like, um, you know, it's a, it's a back and forth between them. They, they have this, this sort of tribal warfare thing going on, and they both moni- they're both monetized it, they both profit from it. Uh, and everybody else loses because everybody else becomes more stupid as a result. And then that's basically the media ecosystem now, I think. The mainstream-
- CWChris Williamson
There's a re-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... media ecosystem.
- CWChris Williamson
... there's a really good quote from Dana White, and this is from three years ago now, and he says, "The media are not in the news business. They're in the clickbait business. They think negativity sells and gets clicks, so that's what they deliver. Negativity is their product." And what he's touching on there is the fact that people are more likely to click on sensationalist negative stories than they are... I mean, dude, we see this even when it comes to designing thumbnails for the channel. If I use a term like war or battle, uh, go to war with your mind, you must battle for self-improvement, stuff like that. Y- even though they're being used in a positive manner, it's still an inflammatory word, and it gets more clicks. You know, people, people see that war-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... that words, they see the word war, and they go, "Oh, war. Uh, I'm gonna click on it," even if it is a, a war for f- more fucking hypertrophy or whatever it is. Anyway, next one.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, noble
- 52:51 – 59:34
The Majority of Evil People Had Good Intentions
- CWChris Williamson
cause corruption. The greatest evils come not from those seeking to do bad, but from those seeking to do good and believing the ends justify the means. Ironically, few things justify the immoral treatment of others more than the belief that you're more moral than them.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So, if you look at sort of people who do evil things in life, very few of them are actually evil in terms of very few of them actually set out to deliberately do evil. Uh, you know, I mean, there are probably a handful of serial killers who would fall under this, uh, umbrella. People like Richard Ramirez, uh, you know, the Night Stalker. I would say he was probably closest you could come to somebody who was just doing things purely because they were evil. He, he deliberately went out to do things because he knew that they were evil. But people like that are extremely rare in life, and the vast majority of, of sort of evil acts in life are committed by people who actually think they're doing good. If you look at history, you know, I mean, how many people have l- uh, created atrocities as a result of them trying to be evil, trying to do the wrong thing? Uh, not, I don't know of any. But then if you ask yourself, how many people have committed atrocities in the name of trying to do good, well, you could, you can... There's no end of, of them, you know? They're just everywhere. Like, uh, if, you know, if you look at the classic example, I mean, even people like Hitler. I mean, Hitler's regarded as a classic supervillain, um, but the fact of the matter is, is that he wasn't, he wasn't evil in the sense that he didn't deliberately set out to do evil. He actually believed he was doing the right thing, you know? And, and Germany believed he was doing the right thing as well, that's why they elected him. Uh, you know, he wasn't, he didn't just take over power and become a tyrant, uh, and go against the German people's wishes. The German people elected him into power, and they elected him because they believed in his message, because they believed he was correct that-... Western civ- that Germanic civilization was collapsing. And, uh, it was the fault of, of Jews and Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses, uh, because they were apparently, uh, stealing the wealth of the country, and they were corrupting the minds of the, the youth with degenerate art as they, as the Nazis called it. So, these ideas were very common. They were not just common in Germany. They were common in the US, they were common in Europe. Um, antisemitism was, was commonplace in the 1920s and '30s. I mean, you know, there was a, in Madison Square Garden, there was a massive meeting of American Nazis. Now, can, can you imagine that today? Imagine today you had like a, you know, um, the Aryan Brotherhood-
- CWChris Williamson
... NSG Nazi Fest 2023.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah, ex- exactly, (laughs) hiring out Madison Square Garden, you know, and actually having a, a, a live show, neo-Nazi show. And that's what it was like in, in 1920s. So there was a lot of people who actually believed that it was right to do what they, what Hitler eventually did, um, you know, which is actually terrifying when you think about it. This wasn't, this wasn't just some madman who just took over power and then decided to exterminate an enti- you know, entire race of people. This was something that had support from the bottom, from the grassroots. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
It says, uh-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... these people were convinced they were doing the right thing.
- CWChris Williamson
It says here, "Ironically, few things justify the immoral treatment of others more than the belief that you're more moral than them." What does the more moral than them part have to play here?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. So, if you think... So if, if we go back to the, uh, example of, of Jews in Germany, uh, Nazi Germany, uh, Hitler and the Nazis believed that they were morally superior to the Jews because they believed that the Jews were corrupting people, um, because they believed... Well, first they believed that they were greedy, and they were stealing the wealth of, of Germany. Secondly, they believed that they were corrupting, uh, the minds of, of Germanic youth, um, by, with their, with their so-called degenerate art. Um, they were essentially undermining civilization. They were parasites that were destroying civilization, so they were immoral in that sense. That's, that's what the Nazis believed. And so the Nazis believed that since these people are not moral people, they're not ethical, since the Jews are not ethical people in their view, it's okay to exterminate them. It's okay. They're not human. They're, they're subhumans, you know, they're Untermensch. Uh, wiping them out is good for society. And you see this literally in every other example of this kind. So if you go to the polar opposite example of Stalin, um, Stalin believed that the bourgeoisie were morally inferior to the proletarians because they were, they were being corrupted by their wealth. Uh, they were greedy, they were, you know, capitalist. They, they wanted to enslave, uh, everybody else. And so he used this idea that, that the humble worker was more, uh, moral and more ethical than the bourgeoisie to, um, to sort of justify the murder of the bourgeoisie. And not just the bourgeoisie, but pretty much anybody who spoke out against him. So these people were, by definition, immoral if they, if they spoke out against him because they were obstacles to the utopia that he was trying to enact. So, the idea is that if, you know, if, if you can present yourself as more moral than your enemies, then you can justify their slaughter because nobody's gonna miss, um, a person, you know, who's, who's immoral. I mean, I like to think about... A very commonplace example would be, um, the, the idea of, of child molestors. Like, child molestors are considered probably the most evil, uh, and the, the people, the most least worthy of sympathy people on the planet. And I know people who are really, really good-hearted people, like, really nice, kind, compassionate people, and I hear them sometimes say things like... I mean, there's one person that I know who's a really, really kind person, really compassionate person, and they said that what they wanted was, um, for child molestors to be locked in a room with a ground with, with, with floor made out of sandpaper that was basically a treadmill that never ended. You know, that's what they wanted. And they said it, they said it without any most... They just said that that's what they should do to, to, to child molestors. And this is a classic example. Like, if somebody is regarded as morally inferior, then they, they lose any right to compassion in, in a p- in an average person's mind. Like, you can, you know, you can say, "Oh, this person's a child molestors, so you can do whatever you like to them because they're not human because of what they've done." And so if you can present a person as morally defective, as morally inferior, then you don't feel bad no matter what happens to them. And that's why, you know, people who are so convinced of their own morality, when they see somebody who's less moral than them or who they think is less moral than them, then they can become complete monsters towards that person. So that's where I think a lot of the, the world's greatest atrocities occur, is due to that, that sort of belief.
- CWChris Williamson
Fascinating. Okay, next
- 59:34 – 1:09:16
Why It’s Easier to Debate Geniuses than Idiots
- CWChris Williamson
one. Guinda's third paradox. In order for you to beat someone in a debate, your opponent needs to realize they've lost. Therefore, it's easier to win an argument against a genius than an idiot.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
This is the reason I stopped debating. Um... (laughs) You know, I, I... Well, it's one of the reasons, anyway. I, I, I used to debate people all the time on social media, you know. I used to, I used to think it was something worth doing. I actually thought, you know, that I could convince people. But I realized, um, after a while, that really a debate is not... It's not a... It's not really a battle of intellect. It's not a match of wits. Uh, it's really just... Uh, it's more of a battle of ego than intellect because people want to win. They don't want to understand. And they approach their... They, they approach debates... Uh, well, they say there's, there's a rationalist thinker called Julia Galef who had this great book called, um, Scout Mindset.
- CWChris Williamson
She came on the podcast.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And she basically made the... Yeah, yeah, great, yeah. Yeah, in fact, I think I saw that one, yeah. And, um, yeah-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... she, yeah, she made the case that basically when people, um, when they enter debates, they tend to approach with a soldier mindset, which is that they just want to win, they just wanna conquer the enemy. They have no real other goal.... but they should really approach with a scout mindset, which is to seek as much information as possible, uh, objective information, do what a scout does rather than what a soldier does. Uh, the problem is, is that most people are sold- they approach with a soldier mindset. And when you approach with a soldier mindset, uh, and you're not very bright, what will happen is you'll often just keep going because your ego is just driving you, you know, further and further. And you, you won't see that you've, you've actually lost the, the debate because your ego is just there and you're just, you're trying to do everything you can. You're moving the goalposts, you know, as much as you can to try to win at all costs. I think with smart people... This is not to say that smart people don't approach with a soldier mindset, they also can be extremely, um, egotistical and they can be arrogant, stuff like that. But they often are more likely to realize when they've screwed up, when they've contradicted them- themselves or when they've, uh, you know, they've said something that's just factually incorrect. And it's harder for them to come back from that because they've realized they've screwed up, you know? So they're like, "Oh, okay." And they can't just pretend. They can't just, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... some of them will, but... but, but they're just-
- CWChris Williamson
Sam Harris talks, talks about this. He says that, um, once you've become convinced of something, even if you claim the opposite, you can no longer unconvince yourself of it. If I convince you that two plus two equals four, and you then see it, you can tell me, "No, no, no, it's three. I know it's three." But on the inside, you, you can't become un- un- up until the point at which somebody convinces you of something else, you can't be unconvinced of something which you are convinced of. But, as you've spoken about in your most recent Substack article that everybody needs to go and read, smart people plus ideology is a terrifying cock- terrifying cocktail because that can use their ingenuity to engineer a more easily, a more, uh, uh, fortified defense around their irrational beliefs or around just beliefs-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that they haven't assessed. So there's a- another thing that relates to this. So Gwinder's Third Paradox about needing to ensure that your opponent has to work out that they've lost. And this is from Scott Alexander and it's years ago, this is from his old stuff. "If you're interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponent's arguments. But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponent's arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter, you must fight the most horrible thing that be- can- that can be constructed from its corpse."
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
It's a very good way of putting it, yeah. Um, there's a, a concept called Rogerian rhetoric, which is how I try to approach, uh, any kind of discussion, which is instead of trying to convince that person that they're wrong, what I try to do is I try to understand that person's belief system as, as well as I can. So I don't necessarily, uh, deny, uh, or defy anything that they say. I just listen and then I ask them questions to work out how they came to that conclusion. And then I leave the discussion not having convinced them, but having a better understanding of why they believe what they believe.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
And I think that's far more important, you know, because that helps me to better understand positions that I disagree with. Um, then I will formally... maybe I, I will attack their beliefs in a piece of writing, you know, where I can really think it through and I don't have somebody, you know, moving the goalposts or anything like that. But I'll do that formally in like an essay, I won't do it in a discussion. I've found that trying to change somebody's beliefs in a debate is almost pointless. It's like trying to change their mind through a rap battle, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So it's just, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
It worked for, it worked for Eminem in 8 Mile, but-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I am, I'm totally on board with that. And, and someone asked in a Q&A a couple of weeks ago about how I remain at least partially impartial, uh, when it comes to speaking to people. And for me, the question asking, I, I called it the Socratic method, but you've just called it, what was that one?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Rogerian rhetoric. It's, it's different from the Socratic method because the Socratic method is, uh, an attempt to win an argument. It's basically-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... an attempt to ask questions until you lead somebody into contradicting themselves or into saying-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... something that's not true. Whereas Rogerian rhetoric dispenses with that completely. Rogerian rhetoric is purely about, um, trying to understand the other person's position from a, a neutral, objective point of view. So trying to understand what experiences in their life led them to the beliefs that they have, have, have with them now, no matter how wrong those beliefs are. You know? So if somebody, um, believes that the world is flat, instead of trying to refute that, instead of saying, "Oh, you know, um, if you use your binoculars and you, you peer out over the horizon, you'll see that the, the sails of ships appear before their prows," you could say something like that to d- to refute them. Or what you could do is ask them, "So how did you come to this belief system? And what is the evidence that convinced you?" And then once you've asked these questions, you get a better understanding of why they believed what they believe, wh- why they were persuaded by that, and that in itself is valuable because now you understand why people believe it, which is probably more valuable to you than unders- than just refuting them and changing their beliefs. Do you get what I'm saying?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm, I do, I-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So it's different, it's a different value system.
- CWChris Williamson
I actually think-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
It's basically more about understanding-
- CWChris Williamson
I actually think that that is much closer to the position that I take as well because m- my goal v- is very rarely to ask people questions that make them look stupid up until the point at which they ref- recant all of the opinions that they've got. Uh, it's much closer to that. How do you spell that first thing?
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
So it's O-R-G-E- G-E-R-I-A-N, so it's Roger-
- 1:09:16 – 1:25:28
Don’t Take Social Media Attacks Seriously
- CWChris Williamson
Tilting at windmills: an online stranger doesn't know you. All they have are a few vague impressions of you, too meager to form anything but a phantasm. So, when they attack you, they're really just attacking their own imagination, and there is no need to take it personally.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah. I mean, when I first joined social media, uh, so tweeting in 2016, I used to get quite upset when I used to get, like, nasty comments and stuff, you know. (laughs) Like, people would say stuff and, you know, it would get, I would, I would believe it in a way. I would be like, you know, like, they'd s- they would say stuff about me and I'd, you know, they'd call me like, um... Well, sometimes I'd, I'd, sometimes I'd just be called a dumb shit or whatever, you know. Sometimes people would say that, uh, I was a pseudo-intellectual or whatever and, and, uh, uh, back then, you know, I, I used to sort of think, "Oh, okay, I must have said something that was wrong, you know, for them to, to think that." And then I realized after a while, "Hang on a second, I don't know anybody who I, um, engage with online. I don't actually know any of them. I don't have, even have an idea of who they are, really, but I've convinced myself that I know who they are. So therefore, I mean, the same must be happening to other people doing that to me, that they couldn't possibly know who I really are." You know, they've only seen one or two of my posts, and then they've built up a personality profile of me based on those two posts, you know. And I mean, we barely know people that we know in real life. You can live with someone for five years and still not really understand who they are. And yet we seem to think that, you know, we can read one post by someone or, you know, watch one video by that person, and immediately we think that we know that person. And this is a very powerful illusion that in- influences, I think, almost every... In fact, I would say that everybody is afflicted by this delusion. Um, where we, we just get a tiny snippet of a person's words or their actions, just a tiny snippet, and from that we just build this massive fictional character in our heads, you know, from that skeleton, you know. I mean, I actually, I think I did tweet something along the lines of that. I'll read it out to you. Um, yeah, this was a tweet I recently sent actually, so I'll read it. So, it says, uh, "You are a different character in the mind of each person who knows you, because their impression of you is made of the bones of what they've seen, fleshed out by a musculature of pure imagination." And I think that really sums up what we do when we see people online, where, you know, we just have this bare bones, just bare bones based on a very brief interaction with someone. And then from that, we create this whole fictional character who is very real in our minds, but doesn't actually exist outside of our own heads. And that is the person that we level our criticism at, that is the person that we level our praise at, and that is the person that we'll defend or attack in arguments and, you know, we'll develop all these theories about this person who doesn't actually exist. And that happens all of the time, and it happens... I realized it was happening to me, you know, people were doing that to me. They would say things about me that just wasn't true. Like, for instance, if I sp- wrote a tweet that criticized the left, people would say that I was right-wing, but I'm not right-wing at all, you know. (laughs) In fact, I'd say that, you know, I, I, I don't really have strong political opinions, but I'm probably a centrist overall, generally. I find that, you know, I, I agree with some of the left, ag- agree with some of the right things, and just merge them together. But left-wingers, when I, when I criticize the left, people assume that I'm, like, some far-right guy and they'll be like, you know, they'll, they'll write, "Ah, you're a, you're a crypto fatic- fascist." And then if I criticize the right, you know, um, then s- so yeah, if I criticize the right, people say I'm a globalist libtard, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... uh, (laughs) all this stuff like, you know, I'm a WEF shill or whatever, like, you know. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) These terms are so good. There's never been a better time-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... to insult someone than right now.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... exactly. And, uh, and I'm just there, like, you know, before, this would've really upset me, you know, I'd have been like... Just, just from the fact that it was just... 'Cause I wasn't used to it. I wasn't used to receiving all this hate. But now when I read it, I actually read it with a smile on my face, you know. (laughs) I'm just like... 'Cause I know that this person is not actually attacking me, they're attacking their own imagination-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Well, here's one-
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
... you know, of me.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, here's maybe a couple of, of interesting considerations to add in there. This is one of the reasons why audience capture is so dangerous, because the only way that someone can genuinely tilt at windmills is if they have an erroneous view of who you are really compared with what they've seen of you online. But if your entire persona has subsumed the person and you are playing a role on the internet, quite rightly, they're pointing at the person that you are on the internet. And what you've done is you've basically become cucked by your own audience. You're now this marionette that's being played by the algorithm to the point where you do whatever it asks of you, you feed red meat to the, to the mob. So when someone does point the finger and say, "You're a globalist shill," or, "You're a, a, a woke libtard," or, "You're a right-wing racist," or whatever, when someone does say that, where is the firm place for you to stand? Where, where have you got that you can actually stand if you have sold your soul in order to gain notoriety online, uh, a- and your integrity is something that you can't buy back, no matter how much you try and pay for it? If you've done that, where is the f- what... You can't grin when people criticize you, because they're criticizing the contrived, uh, monster that you made, that you created yourself into.
- GBGurwinder Bhogal
Absolutely. And it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop as well, because like if you're, if you're someone like, say, um... Let's use an example. Let's use someone like Tim Pool, for instance. Tim Pool was originally sort of like a kind of a anti-... Uh, he was a, he was a Occupy Wa- uh, Wall Street guy, and he was sort of, I'd say he was quite progressive, he was quite left. And he began to sort of flirt with some right-leaning ideas, and he developed a right-wing audience. And over time, h- the people on the left who were formerly followers of his, they began to attack him, you know, saying, "Oh, you're a right-wing shill now," you know, you know, "You're a racist, a sexist, transphobe," blah, blah, blah. And so they were attacking this. And what happened was that Tim began to take this to heart. Uh, at least this is what it appears like to me, I don't know him personally, but this is what it seems like to me. Um, he seems to have taken that to heart, and he became gradually more and more right-wing. Uh, so I mean, I would say he's probably on the right now. I don't know if, if he would agree with that. But based on what I know of his, his content, he seems to be pretty firmly conservative. Although he calls himself a liberal, his, his opinions don't gel with his self-perception. So I think he's a, he's a pretty good idea of somebody who's succumbed to audience capture. Um, he, he might still think he's a liberal, but all of his guests pretty much are people on the right or, at best, at the center. Um, he doesn't really have... He doesn't engage with left people very often. Um, you know, the only time that I really remember him doing that in recent history was, uh, with Vijay Gadde, uh, on the Joe Rogan podcast. Uh, but generally, he seems to be pretty firmly on the right. He's got his... You know, his, his friends are people like The Quartering, who are also sort of somewhat... They call themselves liberal but they're really more slightly to the right. Um, and I think what's happened is when left people call people like Tim Pool out, what happens is this makes him even more audience captured, because he then says, you know, "I'm a centrist, how can you call me right-wing? How can you call me a le- a, a racist? I'm a centrist." Or, and then he'll say, "Oh, n- no, no, no, it's not me who's moved, it's you who's moved. Y- you have gone crazy and not me." And so he'll go even further to the right and say, "These people are absolutely crazy, they're accusing me of being a racist." And, you know, so i- it's like a self-perpetuating cycle, and then he becomes a bit more right-wing, so then the left attack him even more, saying, "Oh, you know, y- y- you're a racist, y-" So it just keeps going on and on and on. And, uh, you know, it happens, I think, across the spectrum. That's just one example. I mean, there are probably people who have done this who've moved leftwards and, um, you know, they've been attacked by people on the right, uh, due to that, and then they've gone even more to the, to the left as a result of that. And, uh... So yeah, it's, it's a mutual sort of cycle, a symbiosis.
Episode duration: 1:50:14
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