15 Mental Models To Understand Psychology - Gurwinder Bhogal | Modern Wisdom Podcast 385

1. 0:00 – 2:23

   Intro

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:00

      An absurd ideological belief is actually a form of tribal signaling. It signifies that one's ideology is more important to them than reason itself, than truth, sanity, reason. And to one's allies, this is an oath of unwavering loyalty. To one's enemies, it is a threat display. So, it's not always about what's true. It's often about, how does this make me look to my tribal compatriots and to my enemies?

   2. CWChris Williamson0:27

      Tell me your background. How did you come to write long Twitter threads that hundreds of thousands of people see?

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal0:33

      So, my original background is in tech, um, and I was working sort of on, uh, search algorithms and things like that. And, um, basically tasked with sort of ensuring that people get directed to the right information. But I sort of started losing interest in that when I realized that the main problems with the internet were not actually caused by algorithms. Uh, they're actually caused by people because algorithms are basically, um, just a reflection of human behavior. So once that sort of epiphany came to me, I decided that it would actually be more productive for me to actually understand the core of the problems with the internet. And when I say the problems with the internet, I mean things like misinformation and polarization and things like that. So, um, I decided to sort of move away from tech and sort of explore human psychology a little bit more. Um, so I basically started freelance writing and sort of, um, you know, understanding, sort of trying to understand, um, psychology and how that sort of, uh, integrates with the sort of digital age and how it's caused so many problems and things like that. Um, so yeah, I've been gradually trying to build up a following on Twitter, and, uh, it's been working quite well so far. And then hopefully I've got some, uh, enough people interested that I can actually start to really, um, explore this topic, um, properly and as a full-time job. That's my hope.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:57

      I think so, man. The couple of tweet threads that I've seen from you that I got linked by some listeners are, they're monsters. Total, like 50,000 likes on a couple of them and 40 tweet threads long. So I got sent this by one of the people that listens to the show, and I just fell in love with it. So I wanna go through, I'm gonna harass you today and ask for some insights into some of the concepts that you came up with, and we'll see how many we get through today. So the first

2. 2:23 – 9:24

   Twitter’s Distortion of Reality

   1. CWChris Williamson2:23

      one, first tweet, "The law of very large numbers: given a wide enough data set, any pattern can be observed. A million to one odds happen eight times a day in New York City, population of eight million. The world hasn't become crazier. We're just seeing more of everything." What's that mean?

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal2:40

      So that's basically the story of Twitter. Basically, that, that sort of explains all of Twitter. Um, so the whole thing about news is that news is only news if it's surprising, if it's interesting. Uh, if it's not interesting, it's not news. So people only share things that are surprising. And, and as a result of that, what happens is that if you've got a feed, a Twitter feed, and people are just sharing things that they find unusual, it gives you a distorted perspective of the world because you're- you're not seeing reality. You're seeing the exception to reality. You're seeing what's surprising, you know? And the cumulative effect of this is that it, it can really sort of send you bonkers. It can send you crazy because you just get a completely, um, you know, distorted view of reality. And, um, you know, this, this is something that occurs regardless of what your beliefs are. Um, it really, you know, it's, it's a universal experience. So if you're on the left, you're just gonna constantly see, um, things that would, you know, be sort of surprising and sort of interesting and outrageous to the left. So, uh, you'll see, you know, racism, and you'll see a lot of, um, instances of corporate greed, um, bigotry, you know, transphobia, all that kind of stuff. So that will lead you to believe that the world is more bigoted and more greedy and just more corrupt than it actually is, because you're just seeing these sort of cherry-picked examples of the worst of humanity. And the same goes with if you're on the right and, you know, or you know, you're anti-woke and whatever, if you're following, um, sort of, you know, Libs of Ti- TikTok (laughs) -

   3. CWChris Williamson4:19

      Great Twitter account.

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal4:20

      Yeah, yeah (laughs) . It's a hilarious account. Um, and it's very entertaining. But if that's all you're following, if it's just those kinds of anti-woke accounts, um, then you're gonna, basically all you're gonna see is just, you know, um, Hollywood celebrities acting crazy. And you're gonna see these academics, you know, with this kind of critical race theory craziness. Uh, you're just gonna see that just over and over again. And it's gonna, you know, even if you're not conscious of it, it's gonna basically fool your brain into thinking that this is the norm. That, you know, this madness, this basically extremism is gonna, is the, is the norm, basically. So what that does is that it, it basically creates this sense of threat. And it makes you feel that the, basically the whole world is hostile. And this is what drives people further to the extremes because they think, "Oh my God, you know, there's basically a woke apocalypse." Or, "Oh my God, you know, racism is everywhere." So this basically causes people to double down on their beliefs and to say, you know, "Oh my God, you know, we need to do something about this." And it, it basically makes people militant.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:21

      Have you ever read 10 Reasons Not to Get Famous by Tim Ferriss?

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:25

      I haven't, no.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:26

      It's just an article online. It's about half an hour long. And fuck, man, like it's so interesting. And in it, one of the things that he highlights is that most people are shooting for fame. They want to try and get as big of an audience as possible. But what happens when you overshoot fame and you get 150 million or a 300 million person audience? And I think he said that 1%, around about 1% of the population are psychopaths. And he was like, okay, in a (laughs) in an audience of 150 million people, that's a lot of psychopaths.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal5:59

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:59

      So his, his point was that when you start to spread the net wide enough, the exceptions start to be able to band together to the point where you have so many, um-... outliers that they dominate your experience. And I guess this is kind of what you're saying. You know, for all the, "I find libs of TikTok kind of..." It, it, it's funny and sort of ridiculous. It does irritate me in a way, because I know that it's a misrepresentation of what most well-meaning people on the left must have. And it irritates me because I think what the, like, uh, outraged at what these people are actually saying. So, yeah, I, um... It's a difficult one, man, and it's just that limbic hijack race to the bottom of the brainstem that you immediately respond to.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:39

       Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, um, you know, further to what you were saying about sort of, you know, the psychopath thing, you know, it sort of increases the thing, the, uh, number of psychopaths. Well, the problem is, is that there's something called negativity bias. I don't know if I've included this in one of my mega threads. I don't think I have. But it's-

   11. CWChris Williamson6:54

       Bonus round.

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal6:56

       Yeah, (laughs) bonus round. Yeah. Um, so negativity bias is basically the human tendency to, um, remember and to sort of give more focus and attention to negative information rather than positive information. And so, if you've got an audience, um, like Tim Ferriss, for ex- for instance, I think he's got 1.5 million followers, probably more than that. Um, if you've got a huge number of followers, um, you know, you can sort of read through your, your, um, notifications and you'll see a lot of compliments after you tweet something. You know, and you see, "Oh, you know, this is nice, this is nice. You know, this person loves what I'm writing, that's great." And then suddenly, you'll, you'll get that one negative comment, and your mind will sort of focus on that negative comment. Even if you've got like, you know, 90, 99% of positive comments, that 1% is gonna remain in your mind more than the 99% of comment because, you know, that negativity is something that you have to react to. And this is, goes back to our evolutionary history, you know. It obviously is more important for you to be able to react to negative stimuli than to positive stimuli, because negative stimuli constitute an existential threat, so you have to react to them a lot more quickly and a lot more harder than you would to a positive stimulus. And so as a result of that, um, people, even if there's only a small number of psychopaths, even if there's a small number of rude people on Twitter, if you've got a massive following and you see that, those small, you know, those small, um, numbers, those are gonna be inflated, and you're gonna get this kind of distorted perspective, and it's gonna bring you down, and it's gonna make you depressed. And this is another problem with, with Twitter is that it kind of... It takes a lot more positivity than negativity to affect you, you know? And there's, because of this disparity, you're always gonna feel depressed if you spend too long on Twitter, because you're just gonna remember the negative things. You're gonna remember the negative news stories, rather than the positive ones. You're gonna remember the negative comments that you get from people, rather than the positive ones. And, you know, again, the cumulative effect of this is that it makes you feel depressed, and it just kind of brings you down, and it, it just, it's not healthy for your brain, 'cause your brain's not designed for this kind of information. You know?

   13. CWChris Williamson9:03

       Yeah.

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal9:03

       And so, uh, it's, it's basically, um, it, it just brings down... That's why, probably one reason why we have such a depression epidemic, you know, and anxiety, uh, epidemic as well, is just because of this sort of s- the importance of, of validation and, and how that's, can be easily sort of, um, you know, just obliterated by just one negative comment.

3. 9:24 – 15:58

   The Peter Principle & Golden Hammer

   1. CWChris Williamson9:24

      Right, next one. The Peter Principle. People in a hierarchy, such as business or government, will be promoted until they suck at their jobs, at which point they will remain where they are. As a result, the world is filled with people who suck at their jobs. (laughs)

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal9:38

      Right, yeah. (laughs) Well, this one was, is kind of more of a humorous one. I mean, I think it's probably true in, in, in a lot of instances. It's not true in every instance, because some people might choose to, to remain where they are. They, they might love that job and they might just want to do it despite the fact that they could do better jobs, you know? I know a few people personally who have actually declined promotions because they, they like where they are currently and they want to do that work rather than a man- managerial role or whatever. Uh, but I think it is true, um, as a general rule. I think, um, you know, it's just this kind of game. There's a, there's this whole hierarchical game where people are always trying to impress the people above them, and then, you know, they'll... As, as long as they can do that, they will be promoted and they will, you know, sort of rise in the, in the hierarchy. But once they can't, the investment in that person is too, um, big to let them go. You can't just fire them because you've trained them, you've, you've built up a relationship with them. So the, it makes sense sort of, um, to just keep them where they are, you know, to prevent them from being able to do any more damage by just containing what their responsibilities are, essentially, you know? Um, and a lot-

   3. CWChris Williamson10:44

      But you see this in, um, in sales organizations, right? Someone comes in, they're a good salesperson, they become a good head salesperson or senior salesperson, and then eventually, because humans in a meritocracy within an organization, they naturally want to progress and be promoted because they have this desire for growth, you end up eventually losing a good salesperson and gaining a shitty manager, because this person was never built to be a manager. They were a mint salesperson. They don't want to be told that they can't be promoted because they have this natural desire for growth. You can't not promote them because then they're going to leave and go somewhere else and be a good salesperson until they maybe do get to have a shitty manager job position within that. Um, but by promoting them, you lose the person that was good at sales and you gain the person that can't manage.

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal11:27

      Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think there's this sort of faulty sort of sense of success that people have, which is that if you're successful at one thing, you can be successful at anything. You know? And, um, so somebody who's, who's been successful at, let's say, um, who's basically done really well in engineering or something, um, somebody will think, "Oh, you know, this guy, 'cause he's so successful in engineering, he must make a great manager." And so they'll promote them to a sort of managerial role. But the thing is, is that the, that person has spent their entire life doing engineering, and that's why they're so good at engineering. So, to try to sort of just, you know, assume that just because they're successful as an engineer, they're gonna make a great manager, I think this is a bit of a, a, you know, sort of a fallacy that is quite surprisingly common, um-... you know, when I, you know, places that I've worked, I've found that sort of, people would just be promoted just purely based on numbers, just, um, you know, sort of their- their statistics, sort of, as it were, rather than, do they actually have the skills to succeed in a very, sort of, uh, very different environment to one that they've been working on. And, um, as a result of that, I think there are a lot of people who just aren't really qualified at what they do. And you see it all the time, you just see incompetence all the time, you know, and it's- it's the rule rather than the exception and it's... I think that, yeah, the Peter Principle does have a- a large part to play in that. I don't think it's the only factor but I think it's, um, I do think it's- it's certainly one of the factors.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:48

      Yeah. Next one, uh, the golden hammer. When someone (usually an intellectual) who has gained a cultish following for popularizing a concept becomes so drunk with power he thinks he can apply that concept to everything. Every mention of this concept should be accompanied by a picture of Nassim Taleb.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal13:06

      (laughs) I think that was a bit mean-spirited when I wrote that. I, I... If I was to write that mega thread again today, I probably wouldn't go so hard on Taleb. Um, I was a little bit, I was thinking of Taleb when I wrote that because, um, I- I, basically I'd been following him on Twitter and I just noticed that pretty much everything that came across him, you know, every- every sort of, uh, idea that he was talking about, he would link it back to one of his ideas which he had written about in the book. So it would either be something about, uh, anti-fragility or the Lindy Effect or black swans, you know. And, yeah, these are, these are quite, sort of, fundamental principles and they do have quite far-reaching implications. But it was pretty obvious to me that what he was doing, was he was essentially, um, selling his book by just sort of make- making his expli- his explanations as wide as possible. So, you know, he was basically saying that, you know, "If you want to understand A, read my book. If you want to understand B, read my book. If you want to understand C, read my book." He was basically linking everything to his book. And I think that this is something that obviously it's not just Taleb who's guilty of this. He was just the example that I thought of at the time. Um, it's anybody. I- I've, uh, found there's actually something that's quite common on Twitter. When you see, um, somebody who's just written a book and they've got a new concept, you know, they will try to explain everything in terms of that concept. And I- I'm... I think half of it is because they actually have spent so long on this idea that it's kind of become an obsession, and confirmation bias means that they're gonna just, you know, they're gonna see any sort of, uh, w- any- any sort of way that they can make their explanation the explanation, they'll do that. Um, that- that's half of the explanation. I think the other half is that, um, it's probably a conscious decision, um, to just sell their book, I think, you know? (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson14:51

      I think another bit of it's the in-group/out-group dynamic as well, that by highlighting this is the language of our people, if you understand what I'm talking about, you're one of the initiates, if you don't understand what I'm talking about, you're one of the heretics.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal15:05

      Absolutely, yeah. This is, uh, something known as Shibboleths and, um, I think this is quite common on- on social media as well. People form, um, lingo, they form these concepts, these words which signal to others of the same tribe that they are a member of the in-group. Um, they're called Shibboleths and, um, they are actually a very c- a very, very, sort of central part of tribal life, um, to have this kind of code. Uh, you know, everybody's got it, you know, like people on the right for instance use the word based a lot, you know, um, and stuff like... (laughs) you know? And then you've got people on the left who have got their whole, you know, academic sort of stuff about, you know, white fl- fragility and all that kind of stuff. So, everybody's got their own sort of code, sort of system which they use to sort of reinforce their in-group, uh, status and, you know, sort of re- you know, reinforce these relationships that they have with other tribe members. Um, so yeah, I think that that could be a part of it as well, yeah, absolutely.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:57

      Right.

4. 15:58 – 20:50

   Why the World is Full of Unrefuted Bullshit

   1. CWChris Williamson15:58

      Brandolini's Law, AKA the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It takes a lot more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it. Hence, the world is full of unrefuted bullshit.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal16:10

      Yeah. Um, I think one of the reasons why social media is just so full of shit, um, to put it (laughs) you know, to put it bluntly, is because it doesn't really take much time or effort to post something that's wrong. And if you think about the kinds of people who don't think very much about what they post, they're gonna be able to post at a much faster rate than people who do think about what they post. Um, so because of that rule, most of Twitter, most of your Twitter timeline, most of your Facebook, um, sort of, um, you know, timeline is gonna be composed of people who haven't thought through what they're actually saying. Because obviously they can post at a much faster rate and at- at a much greater rate than people who think very carefully before they post. And as a result of that, it creates the impression that people are actually stupider than they actually are. Like, I'm- I'm not being funny but when I- when I first joined Twitter in- in 2014, one of the first thoughts that I had was, "My God, there's a lot of stupid people on this planet." You know, I- I... That was actually one of my thoughts, you know, I just couldn't believe it. I- I'd never been exposed to so much stupidity when I just looked at Twitter for the first time and saw all of these idiotic comments. I just couldn't believe it. And- and part of that was because I'd actually been... I'd fallen under the illusion of Brandolini's Law, um, I'd basically been given this false impression of people by the overrepresentation of people who don't think before they post. There are a lot of very smart people out there but they- they, uh, sort of, um, are very, uh, anxious and they tend to really, really think very, very hard before they post. And as a result of that, they don't post very often, and so you don't see their tweets very often. You see the stupid tweets a lot more often than you see the- the un- the- the- the intelligent, um, tweets.

   3. CWChris Williamson18:00

      Have you had a look at the statistics around the percentage of people who contribute the highest volume of social media posts on Twitter? Have you seen this?

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal18:09

      No, I haven't, no.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:09

      It's like, it's like the Pareto principle on steroids. It's like 2% of Twitter users account for 90%...... of the-

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal18:17

      Mm-wah.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:17

      ... of the content that gets posted. And, um-

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal18:19

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson18:20

      ... that wouldn't surprise me.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal18:21

       Y- I can believe that. I can believe that very easily because, I mean, you know, when I, when I first joined Twitter, I, I sort of just followed anyone and everyone really and, um, there was just so many of the tweets were just like, "Oh, I just made a bacon sandwich. It tasted very good, you know, it's lovely." Just stuff like that, you know. And there's, there are a small number of people who post stuff like that all the time, uh, and they just, they're responsible for just filling up Twitter with junk, you know. That's why you have to be very, um, very discriminatory, I think, on Twitter. You have to be very careful about who you follow and I think it's a good idea to block as well. I used to be against blocking 'cause I thought it was kind of like, you know, unfair on people because you're kind of dismissing them out of hand. But I've come to the conclusion that there's too many people in this honest Earth for you to have any time for nonsense. So, I would advise people to just block. If, if, if somebody is posting stuff that's got very low information density... And when I say information density, what I mean is, um, in a single tweet, how much information are they actually giving you? You know, if they're not giving you very much information or if it's irrelevant information, it's a good idea just to block them or mute them. Um, probably mute them if they haven't been rude to you. I usually only block people who are rude to me, um, but I mute people quite often because I feel that, um, you know, it's, what they're doing is they're muscling out other people on your timeline who have more thoughtful thoughts. So, you know, it, it's like, it's, it's, it's very important, I think, to do this because it's the difference between Twitter being a hell site and Twitter being like a digital Disneyland basically. Uh, it's the- that's the difference. You know, if you're just very careful about how you curate, curate your information, um, follow the right accounts, block and mute a lot re- liberally, then you'll find that Brandolini's Law is not so influential on your life anymore because people will be thinking a lot more carefully before they post and, you know, that will sort of offset the sort of effects of the law.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:13

       Best thing I ever did was limit myself to 99 people that I follow. That's it.

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:19

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson20:19

       That is the best thing that I ever did and Twitter is such a beautiful place for me now. I see articles I'm interested in, I very rarely see retweets of stupid stuff and I've got, in the back of my mind, I've got some sort of little limbic clicker of how many strikes someone's on, and then if it, if within the space of a month someone annoys me too many times, it's like, "All right, well, there we go. There's a slot that's opened up." Who, I, I don't know who I had to kick off in order to start following you, uh, but whoever it was, unlucky. Right, next one. Uh, the Tocqueville

5. 20:50 – 32:08

   Are Societal Expectations Too High?

   1. CWChris Williamson20:50

      Paradox.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:52

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson20:52

      To- is that... Have I, have I pronounced that right? Yeah.

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal20:55

      Tocqueville Paradox.

   5. CWChris Williamson20:56

      Tocqueville Paradox. As the living standards in a society rise, the people's expectations of the society rise with it. The rise in expectations eventually surpasses the rise in living standards, inevitably resulting in disaffection and sometimes in populist uprisings.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal21:12

      Yeah. So this is a, a very important one, I think, because this is a very powerful counterargument against, um, the people who see racism everywhere, who see, you know, all the bigotry and all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, there's this whole concept of how, on the left, um, how sort of systemic racism has got worse and how, you know, um, basically it's almost... I- if you were to believe what, what is sort of posted, you know, in the New York Times and stuff like that, it would seem like there's an epidemic of racism and misogyny and transphobia and, you know, all these other phobias and isms. Um, but what's actually happened is that our conception of these things has actually widened. So-

   7. CWChris Williamson21:58

      Yeah, that's another one. Concept creep. That was the next-

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal22:01

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:02

      Yeah.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal22:02

       The concept links in with, with the Tocqueville Paradox quite well, quite easily, uh, because they, they're both sort of referring to the same general principle but in slightly different ways so I'll probably just do both of them together. So, um, so concept creep is basically when, um, your, your definition of a, of a certain concept expands when that thing becomes less common. So for instance, um, misogyny is an interesting one. So the original, um, uh, sort of, uh, concept of misogyny was that it was sort of like a violent hatred of all women basically. It was this belief that women were, um, uh, inferior and that, you know, um, or it was something to do with sort of that they, they should give over their sexual reproductive rights to, to men or some-

   11. CWChris Williamson22:45

       Like female racism almost.

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal22:47

       Yeah, yeah. Kind of, yeah. It was bigotry directed at females. So that was the original, um, sort of concept of, of misogyny. But as the world became more enlightened and, um, sort of, you know, uh, women's rights were put on parity with men's and sort of there was more equality, that old sense of the term no longer had much relevance in the West. I mean, it still has a lot of relevance in the East because there's still a lot of that kind of misogyny in the East. But in the West, there's not so much of it anymore. So the, the, uh, the Oxford Dictionary actually changed the definition of misogyny and it became... um, it went from sort of hatred of women to it could be dislike of, of individual women or it could be dislike of particular groups of women. It didn't have to be like, you know, just an, a sort of a blinding hatred of all women. And gradually that, that word has been sort of appropriated. Now it's been, um, sort of reimagined again by the, by the Left, by the modern feminist movement, um, to now it can also basically mean, um, it could be hatred of a particular woman. You know, you see this a lot, you see this very often, um, you know, if somebody... I mean, Hillary Clinton weaponized this new definition of misogyny very, very cleverly, um, in the sort of election. When she was criticized, you know, by people, she would asu- she would basically say that it was because she was a woman. She was, she was seeking to be the first female president and they didn't want the first female president because they were misogynists and this kind of thing. So it was, it was politicized then. It was basically... because of that, um, how this links in with the Tocqueville Paradox is that...... but when you expand the definition of a term, that thing becomes c- more common again. So if misogyny i- in the traditional sense is decreasing, and then you increase the scope of the word misogyny, suddenly the instances of misogyny are gonna increase again. So it is gonna seem like misogyny is getting worse, when in fact, it's not actually getting worse. The, the definition of it is expanding. And this applies not just to misogyny or to, to words like racism. Racism is another one, you know. Racism orig- originally was, uh, discriminating against people on the basis of the color of their skin or hating people because of the color of their skin. Now, there's all these different types of racism. Now we've got systemic racism, institutional, all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, they've expanded the definition of racism to include things like microaggressions and all this other stuff, you know. So the, the, the numbers of absolute instances of racism have actually decreased, but because racism now means so much more than it used to, you can easily find more examples of racism now than you would have been able to in the past just because of... And, you know, this also links in with the law of very large numbers, you know? That you, if you've got a wide enough data set, you can find any number of instances of racism. You can cherry-pick them and make it look like it's worse. So this is a paradox because as the world gets better, because of the change in these ideas, it can make it look like the world is actually getting worse. And a lot of people do believe the world is getting worse, and this is not just something that's confined to the left. Um, you know, you've got the neo-reactionaries who are convinced that the world is, is heading to hell, and they believe that the world is actually gonna just fall apart. Um, you know, so this is quite a common belief, this kind of ap- apocalyptic, uh, sort of belief system is, is something that's very common and it's... I think it is largely a result of the Tocqueville paradox because the definitions of problems are, are widening. Poverty is another one. In absolute terms, poverty has been dwindling. It's been, being reduced. I mean, a person living today, the poorest person in the West today is better off than most nobles who were living, you know, in the, in the sort of medieval times because they've got access to iPhones, even if they're poor, you know. Uh, pretty much everybody's got a phone or a laptop and got access to the internet. So in absolute terms, people are richer than they were i- in those days, you know. People have access to much, wider range of foods now than they used to have. Um, so in absolute terms, we've got much, much better. But there's this thing called relative poverty, which is how the UN, um, will measure... That's how it measures poverty. It doesn't measure it in absolute terms. It measures it in relative terms. So relative terms is basically, um, how much poorer is the poorest person compared to the richest person, you know? So yes, and if you measure things like that, if you measure poverty by a relative property, then you're gonna-

   13. CWChris Williamson27:14

       That's wealth inequality. I'm not s- I'm not convinced that poverty fits that definition, but that's concept creep again, right?

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal27:21

       Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. So that's essentially what, what this sort of relative poverty is. Uh, relative poverty is wealth inequality. Um, it's basically the, the gap between the richest and the poorest, and it's not absolute poverty because there used to be absolute poverty, which was, you know, um, if you're s- below a certain income per year, regardless of how rich the richest person is, then you are in absolute poverty. But now it's, it's done by different, um, sort of criteria because we... because the, the world has just got so much better that you can't really measure things in absolute poverty anymore. So now we're thinking more about wealth inequality, and so the Tocqueville paradox basically, it... to sum it all up, it makes the world look like it's getting worse when in fact it's actually getting better. And that's a, uh, a big cause of problems.

   15. CWChris Williamson28:05

       It's an interesting one to think about that when... Rightly, as, as society develops kind of steel man the side of the Tocquevillians. Um, why you would say that that would be a good idea is we now have more access to technology, we have more wealth, we have more ability to actually deploy things to improve well-being and happiness and fulfillment and flourishing and blah, blah, blah. Therefore, the level of dexterity and resolution with which we should be looking for problems has to become increasingly fine as well. It's no point saying, "Oh, well, we've got rid of dysentery and f- fucking managed to get the MR... the, um, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, therefore we fixed all the problems." No, no, no. There are more problems to continue going. But you're right, that it's not... it's not necessarily about this linear progression, it's about the way that the rules of the game continue to be played that redefine it.

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal28:57

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson28:57

       It, it's impossible to compare progress of today with problems of yesterday when the rule set that was used yesterday and today are now different.

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal29:05

       Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. I think, um... Yeah, absolutely, and I, I believe that wealth inequality is, is generally a bad thing, and I do want to see the people who are at the bottom, you know, lifted up. Absolutely. Um, and I, I don't think that we should be, um, content with where we are. I think we should always be looking to improve the, the situation for people, no matter how well we have improved it in the past. But what the Tocqueville paradox... the true sort of, um, problem with Tocqueville paradox is not, um, that it stops us, um, trying to make the world a better place. The problem is, is that it, it creates this sense of pessimism which can manifest in dangerous ideologies. Um, so, you know, you can have this sort of left- leftist sort of view of, for instance, you know, the Black Lives Matter riots, um, last year. They caused a lot of damage, um, and, you know, I can understand why people are angry. I mean, you know, George Floyd should not have been killed the way... h- he shouldn't have been killed at all, but it was particularly egregious the way he died. And, um, you know, so I can understand what... that it made people angry, but if people had actually looked at the facts, they would see that the violence, um, against... by the cops against members of the Black community has actually decreased massively, and Coleman Hughes is a great writer. He, um... uh, on race and stuff. He, he wrote this thing called The Racism Treadmill-... which is that no matter how well race relations, uh, become, there will always be people who will say that it's not enough and that there needs to be, more needs to be done. And that it, it's bas- it's, it's not like that, that they're saying that, um, basically that they just need to improve because that would be fine. Of course race relations need to improve. What they're saying is that race rel- relations haven't moved at all basically. They will always say that race relations are still as bad as they were in the 1950s-

   19. CWChris Williamson30:50

       Or worse.

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal30:50

       ... or even the 1900s when it's self-evidently not true, you know? (laughs) I mean, there's been huge, huge civil rights, um, movements which have, you know, given black people the right to vote, the, the rights to, uh, go to school, um, with white people, you know. And all these things have happened sort of in the past 100 years and so it's- it's self-evidently false, and yet these people still believe that race relations either haven't moved at all since those times or that they've actually got worse. And, um, this is, you know, it's just, it- it- it's- it is largely due to the top wheel paradox. People just can't see that these, um, they can't see the- the sort of, uh, the advances because they're sort of... they've been fooled by language and they've been fooled by ideas and they've been fooled by sort of a lot of, um, ideologuing by the sort of New York Times and, you know, these kinds of publications which are always pushing this sort of narrative that, um, the world is getting more racist that, yeah-

   21. CWChris Williamson31:51

       The racism treadmill. I like... I- I haven't spent much time watching Coleman Hughes' stuff. I've got John McWhorter on in a couple of weeks-

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal31:58

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson31:58

       ... and his-

   24. GBGurwinder Bhogal31:59

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson31:59

       ... he's got a new book called Woke Racism out, which I haven't read yet, but he'll be interesting to speak to. Right, next one. This is one of my favorites 'cause I adore the blog post that this

6. 32:08 – 46:49

   Competing for Status Over Truth

   1. CWChris Williamson32:08

      came from, The Toxoplasma of Rage. "The ideas that spread most are not those everyone agrees with but those that divide people most because people see them as causes to attack or defend in order to signal their commitment to a tribe." And this is Scott Alexander from what used to be Slate Scar- Slate Star Codex and is now Astral Codex 10.

   2. GBGurwinder Bhogal32:29

      Yep, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, he's a great writer. Um, so yeah, this is a, a very important one also, um, 'cause there, you know, there's this sort of naive view that some people have which is that people just want to know what's true and, um, you know, if you just only give people the truth then everybody will be enlightened and, um, you know, the world will be sort of rosy and everything will be, uh, hap- happily ever after kind of thing. But that's not how the human brain works. The human brain is not actually that interested in truth. Um, what the human brain... I mean, the human brain is interested in, in creating an, a sort of image of reality that is in line with evolution basically and, um, part of that evolution because most of our lives, um, if you look at human, humans have been around for about 200,000 years and for approximately 180,000 of those 200,000 years, so approximately 90% of human evolution has been spent in hunter gatherer lifestyles, in, in tribal societies. And as a result of that, we have tribal mentalities so we tend to, um, play status games within tribes and we tend to have these kind of internecine, um, struggles and, um, we also sort of are very hostile to people who are not of our tribe. And, um, when it comes to information, we often try to use that information in ways that will benefit our tribe or which will benefit our status within that tribe. And so this is one of the core things behind, um, sort of epistemology, you know. If you've got a set of information and you give that information to people, they're not gonna process it as in "Is this true or is this false?" They're gonna process it largely as "Does this hurt or does it help my, my tribe?" And this really explains a lot of the sort of polarization that we're seeing, um, on the internet and s- social media specifically, um, because essentially what the culture war is, the culture war is, um, a sort of a- a relic. It's a, a vestige of our tribal struggles. We have essentially sort of reprimitivized technology, um, to sort of, you know, bec- we've basically we've reverted back to this kind of caveman sort of tribal ideology, um, because of the way that, um, Twitter is sort of... and, and Facebook and, and stuff are basically sort of arranged, you know. So we form these communities online which are essentially tribes and we do not look at things as true or false, we look at them as "How is this gonna benefit my tribe? How is it not gonna benefit my tribe?" And from that, from that simple fact you have polarization, you have misinformation, you have all the big problems that we are facing today as a result of this one thing, you know. People will tend to share information and I've seen this happen so often that it's just... it doesn't even register anymore, where people will know something is not completely accurate but they'll post it anyway because it either demeans the- the enemy tribe or it makes their own tribe look good. And I mean, there's- there's plenty of words for it. There's one thing called nutpicking. Nutpicking is when you take the ex- most extreme, um, sort of examples of the opposing tribe and then you use that to demonize the entire enemy tribe. So if you, if you're on the... on the left and you see a... and you- you wanna sort of demonize the right, what you would do is you'd go to someone like Stephen Molyneux or, um, you know, like a Richard Spencer sort of character, someone who's unpopular with most people, someone who's very, very far right. Um, and so, you know, then, then they would say, "Oh, well, this person is... this person's a racist and he's a member of this tribe so they're all racists," you know. And likewise if you're on the right you'll get the most-

   3. CWChris Williamson36:23

      Libs of TikTok.

   4. GBGurwinder Bhogal36:25

      Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You'll get the most woke person that you can find, you know, somebody who basically thinks that math is racist or something like that and then you'll say, "Oh, look. Look at this person, you know, they're- they're so woke. This- this is what the woke believe. They believe that math is racist." And so...... you know, it's, this- the people who post these things, they know that they're just- they know what they're doing. They know that this is not a representative example, you know. It's just this- they're taking an extreme and they're using that to sort of demonize the entire tribe. And, and strawmanning is- is basically the same sort of concept, you know, where you, you get, you take what somebody said and then you just interpret it in the worst possible way. And you- people often do this dishonestly. They don't do it, um, sort of unwittingly. A lot of people do this dishonestly. So, you know, somebody says, um, you know, "Oh, uh," if they have concerns about immigration for instance, you know, then you'll say, "Oh, so what you're saying is that you hate all immigrants." You know, you, "So you're a racist. You don't like brown people basically." So they'll take the- the worst interpretation of what somebody has said and then they'll basically, you know, they'll use that to demonize a tribe. So this is- this basically sums up pretty much 99% of- of the culture war basically.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:34

      There's an article by Eric Torenberg that I read a couple of weeks ago, and he talks about status games and some of the idea pathogens that we're sort of seeing at the moment. And one of the things that he highlighted was that some of the crazy ideas that people share from their own tribe, the ones that they know to be false, they're almost commitment devices. So they're seen as commitment devices by their own side. "Look, we all kind of know that this thing's a bit mental, but you need to posit your position alongside us as a show of faith. And if you don't, it's a canary in the coal mine that you might not be someone that is aligned with our interests." And that's really, really fucking interesting that this is some sort of like hazing initiation type fealty ceremony to check whether or not everyone's on side.

   6. GBGurwinder Bhogal38:27

      Yep. An absurd ideological belief is actually a form of tribal signaling. Um, it signifies that one's ideology is more important to them than reason itself, than truth, sanity, reason. And to one's allies, this is an oath of sort of unwavering loyalty. Uh, to one's enemies, it is a threat display basically. So it's- it's not always about what's true, you know. It's- it's often about, how does this make me look to my tribal, um, sort of compatriots and to my enemies, you know? And I think a lot of that is actually- it really does explain a lot of the culture war. Um, people are not saying what they think is true. They're thinking- they're saying what is gonna sort of favor them to their tribe.

   7. CWChris Williamson39:12

      They're- they're saying what they think is effective.

   8. GBGurwinder Bhogal39:15

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson39:15

      Yeah. All right, next one. Uh, bulverism. Instead of assessing what a debate opponent has said on its own merits, we assume they're wrong and then try to retroactively justify our assumption, usually by appealing to the person's character or motives. Explains 99% of Twitter debates.

   10. GBGurwinder Bhogal39:34

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, and- and this also links in with what we were just talking about. I mean, you know, people are not configured for truth and, um, they're configured for these tribal games. And, um, so, uh, often, if you're- if you're debating somebody who's of a different tribe, it makes sense to just assume they're wrong, um, rather than have to actually do the hard work of actually, you know, analyzing, are they really, you know, telling the truth. It's just much easier and much better just- just to assume that they're wrong and then to work your way backward through that. And I mean, I think everybody's guilty of this. I'm guilty of it myself, you know. Sometimes if I'm arguing with somebody that I just know that I'm- I'm gonna disagree with, I will just- I won't really pay too much attention to what they're saying, I'll just look at the keywords that they're using and then just be like, "Oh, okay,

   11. CWChris Williamson40:17

       Make a value judgment from there. Tell you what's the perfect example of this that you see from the right, as soon as someone criticizes them, they'll go onto their profile and if they've got their pronouns in their bio, they'll just reply with pronouns in bio, case closed. And you're like, well-

   12. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:31

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson40:31

       ... that is precisely dealing with the- the person, not the, uh, the argument.

   14. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:37

       Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with the format of Twitter as well. I think, um, you can't really have a- a decent debate on Twitter. It's just not possible. I've made this comparison where I've said that trying to have a debate on Twitter is like trying to have a sword fight in a phone booth. Um, it's just not possible because you don't have the space, you don't ha-

   15. CWChris Williamson40:59

       Unwieldly.

   16. GBGurwinder Bhogal40:59

       Yeah, it's unwieldy. You don't have the space to really, um, to explore ideas. And so, um, people will tend to just take shortcuts because they don't want to argue. I mean, it's- it's a laborious thing to actually get into a Twitter argument with somebody. I don't- I don't do it anymore because it's just a waste of time most of the time, because you're not gonna change their beliefs, they're not gonna probably change yours-

   17. CWChris Williamson41:18

       Yep.

   18. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:18

       ... and it's just gonna result in insults and then just heat rather than light. And, you know, what's the point in it when you could be spending that time doing something more productive?

   19. CWChris Williamson41:27

       One of my favorite Twitter followers, Adam, tweeted this earlier on, "Twitter is too short for specifics. Generalizations have to suffice. Midwits can't abide generalizations. They'll point out every exception and demand you tweet a full thread, then they refuse to read the threads. Don't tweet for midwits. They are not your audience."

   20. GBGurwinder Bhogal41:45

       Yeah, yeah, it's true. I mean, I- I have to deal with this all the time. Um, every time I tweet, I have to sort of make a compromise between accuracy and pithiness. Um, and the thing is, is that I like concision. I- I like to just- I like to say witty one-liners, right, on Twitter. But the thing is, is that if you say witty one-liners, you have to omit a lot of context. And the context, the lack of context is where the people are gonna be coming up in your mentions and they're gonna be accusing you of, you know, lacking context of just, you know, general-

   21. CWChris Williamson42:18

       Well, the best- the best reply to one of those pithy little statements is, "Well, like, not everyone..." And you're like, "Well, yeah, obviously not everyone. I wasn't trying to be ex- like exhaustive with this little aphorism that I've come up with that rhymes, so I think it's cute." Like, just leave me, allow it.

   22. GBGurwinder Bhogal42:35

       Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Twit- that's what I mean. Twitter is really just, um...... is for very, very brief general maxims about the world. It's, it's not really for anything more, right? I mean-

   23. CWChris Williamson42:45

       It's an aphorism, aphorism circle jerk, isn't it? All right. Next, next one. This is one of my favorites. I really want to hear your thoughts on this. Goodhart's law: When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to become a measure. For example, British colonists tried to control snakes in India. They measured progress by the number of snakes that were killed, offering money for snake corpses. People responded by breeding snakes and killing them.

   24. GBGurwinder Bhogal43:09

       Yeah. Um, yeah, this is a very interesting one. Um, so when you have a system and then you try to, um, sort of optimize that system by reference to a single metric, what normally happens is that that metric will be gamed. Uh, history has shown that human beings will always game a system if they can do so. It's, it's sort of, like, part of the human makeup to try to do that. We always try to find loopholes. We always try to, you know, try to get sort of underneath the, sort of, the fence and try and g- get to the other side. We try to, we try to always find our way around things. And, um, basically, this is why it's, it's a bad idea to try to, um, use metrics for anything, because they will always be gamed. You can always... you can always find a way to manipulate metrics, um, with anything, you know. Like, for instance, I mean, this... Again, this goes back to what we were talking about with, uh, poverty and relative poverty. If you measure things in terms of, of poverty and absolute poverty, people will change the, the sort of definition of it, or they will, um, they will manipulate it in such a way as to, um, make it look like something it's not. Um, so for instance, if you are measuring absolute poverty, um, and you are measuring it by a salary or by a yearly income, which is how it was measured, what people will do is they'll misreport their, their salaries, um, because they want their area to be... they want themselves to, to seem like they're in, in greater poverty than they actually are in order to get more, um, help and, from people. This is, this is a bit of a vague example, but this is one that you can find in-

   25. CWChris Williamson44:50

       No, no, dude.

   26. GBGurwinder Bhogal44:51

       ... any-

   27. CWChris Williamson44:51

       An, an example that I really love using is, um, email capture. So let's say that you're a content creator that wants to start building up your email list. And your goal, the outcome that you're looking for, is emails. How many emails can I capture? So what you say is, "This ebook contains a world-winning lottery combination formula that will guarantee to make you £1 million," blah, blah, blah. And you post it everywhere and you get tons and tons of emails. But when people open the PDF, it's just blank. There's nothing in it. It's like, okay, so you've gamed the outcome. The outcome was get emails, but really what was the distillation of the outcome? The outcome was get access to people who genuinely want to hear what I have to say in a good faith way that makes them continue to want to hear what I have to say.

   28. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:37

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson45:37

       So by m- optimizing for that particular outcome, you've actually missed off the thing that you were there to get.

   30. GBGurwinder Bhogal45:44

       Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it works in so many different ways. I mean, again, you see this on Twitter, um, you know, if you try to measure a person's, uh, credibility via the number of followers that they've got, for instance, you know, um, what happens
7. 46:49 – 52:34

   Explaining The Messiah Effect

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal46:49

   2. CWChris Williamson46:49

      The Messiah effect: Most people don't believe in ideals, but people... uh, but in people who believe in ideals. Most people don't believe in ideals, but in people who believe in ideals. Hence, why successful religions tend to have human prophets or messiahs, and why, when a demagogue changes his beliefs, the beliefs of his followers often change accordingly.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal47:10

      Yeah. So this one, I wasn't really sure about including this one, because this is completely my own invention (laughs) . That, that's what basically sort of, um, separates this one from the others. But because I included one of my own from the first thread, I thought, "Okay, I'll include one of my own in- into this thread." It's still a nascent one, which is why the Messiah, the Messiah, um, effect is not a great name. Uh, I just sort of spur- spur-of-the-moment name. But, um, it's something that I do feel is generally true. Uh, I don't think it's true in every instance again, but it's, it's something that I feel is a general truth. And this is from my observations of people, and I think, um, generally, if you look at people, um, when they... during election time, what they will normally do is that they, they will normally express, um, sort of their sentiments towards a certain person, a certain politician, rather than towards an ideology. Um, if you ask people... You know, for instance, if you look at Donald Trump, for instance. If you ask a Trump supporter what they like about Trump's policies, most of them wouldn't really be able to give you a very good sort of overview of, of his policies. They would generally just say that I like him, him because I think he tells it like it is, you know, he doesn't care about what the establishment thinks, um, he just... you know, he just basically does what he want, wants to do, he's independent and all this kind of stuff. So they would generally fire off the qualities of the person rather than policies that he espouses. And I think that one of the reasons for this is that, um, policies are quite hard to understand and they take a lot of, uh, sort of time to really get to grips with. You have... In order to understand Trump's policies, you need to understand how economics works. You need to understand how the political system works. You need to understand how, um, business and corporations and things like that work. So there's a lot of, um-There's a lot of things you have to understand in order just to understand Trump's policies. Whereas, if you look at Trump himself, he's quite easy to read. You just, you ... All you gotta do is just re- watch him on TV and you can see aspects of his personality very, very quickly. You don't need to have any other knowledge. So this is ... So it's a shortcut, basically. It's a shortcut. You, you ... We trust people rather than ideas and, um, it makes, it makes it much easier on our brain because then we can just, we can just delegate all the responsibility to that person rather than have to think for ourselves.

   4. CWChris Williamson49:28

      It's like they're a distillation of what they represent.

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal49:31

      Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, eh, eh we tend to think of human beings in terms of archetypes, I think, and when we see somebody, we think of what they represent, um, as a symbol. We see sim- people as symbols in a sense, you know? And ... But a lot of people, you know, Trump symbolized, um, sort of this kind of anti-establishment, um, sort of independence basically. He was essentially like a wrecking ball that is gonna sort of, you know, just tear apart the, the sort of polite society, sort of, you know, that, that governed before him. And then obviously to people who like ... who don't like Trump, um, he's just this, you know, crude sort of buffoon who is just an idiot basically, doesn't really know anything and he's this pathological liar. And that was basically ... That was ... for them, that was sufficient for him. But-

   6. CWChris Williamson50:13

      Do you know why ... Another reason I think this might be the case, and perhaps it's a weakness or a vulnerability of the 21st century, I don't know many people that genuinely love a thing. I know people that love people, but I don't know many people that are actually really passionate. So if you ask someone, "Dude, what do you really, what do you really care about? What are you really passionate about? What do you love in life?" And-

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal50:37

      They, they say their family, wouldn't they? But-

   8. CWChris Williamson50:38

      Correct yeah. They don't tend to say a thing. So when you see someone who is outright caring ... This is from Eliezer Yudkowsky actually. He highlighted that most people take the piss out of the rationalist movement not because they're taking the piss out of the rationalist movement, but because not many people love anything as much as rationalists love the rationalist movement. And he says-

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal50:59

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson51:00

       ... it's just an, uh, uh, an outlier effect to see people that care a lot about a thing. And when you finally do, I think the presumption from midwives is they know something. No one would be this bought in to any idea if there wasn't tons and tons and tons of virtue behind it, because I'm not. I think I'm smart and I'm not bought into anything as much as this guy, so I'ma, I'ma put my colors onto this person's flagpole. I'ma hold onto those t- uh, coattails because that's-

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal51:32

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson51:32

       ... the person that's going to carry us forward.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal51:34

       Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we generally do have more of an affinity to people than to ideas or to things. Um, and I think, I think part of it is also the same reason why we like watching, uh, Hollywood actors, you know, play parts and stuff is that we, we get the archetypes from these people. Um, you know, we basically ... We see the way that a certain person behaves and if we like the way that they behave, it's ... we try to emulate them. We see them as a model for our own behavior and through that, you know, we, we sort of, um ... It's like a way that we kind of try to improve ourselves by emulating other people. And if we see somebody that we like, we think, "Oh, okay. I'll be more like this person." You know, you can't really emulate an idea, you can't emulate a thing, but you can emulate a person and because we are sort of mimetic human beings, you know, we, we tend to learn by copying others, um, it, it's only natural that we're gonna sort of migrate and n- sort of, you know, navigate towards, um, t- people rather than towards ideas.

8. 52:34 – 1:14:27

   Choosing Freedom Over Reason

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal52:34

   2. CWChris Williamson52:34

      Reactance theory. When someone is restricted from expressing a point of view or pressured to adopt a different point of view, they usually react by believing their original point of view even more, and then you did an article about why the cure, the best cure for fake news is more fake news as well, which is related to this, I think.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal52:52

      Yeah. Ri- reactance theory is one of the key arguments in my view against, um, censorship because what history has shown, and by history I mean just the past couple of years, um, what's that's sh- ... what that has shown is that if you try to stop people from believing something, they're gonna dig their heels in harder because ... Dostoevsky actually made this point, you know, uh, long, long ago where he basically said that, um, what people want is not truth. What people want is they wanna exercise their free will. They want to, they wanna basically exercise their free will and if that means going against reason, they will choose freedom over reason. So ... And he, he said this in a book called Notes, uh, Notes in the- Notes From the Underground. Um, it's a pretty good book. Um, and basically this is the idea behind reactance theory which is that if you tell people they can't do something, they're gonna feel like they're under threat. They're gonna feel that their freedom is being, um, sort of reined in and, and they, they want to exercise that freedom, uh, in order to sort of feel that they're not ... in order to sort of assuage this feeling of claustrophobia and the way that they do that is by believing what they believe even harder and reacting even more against, you know, what, what is trying to sort of stifle them. Um, it's almost like if you look at the, sort of the story of the Garden of Eden when, um, you know, God tells Adam and Eve that they can't eat from the apple and that makes them even more curious about the apple and they're like, "Okay, He told us not to eat the apple. Why d- why didn't He do it? Now I really wanna eat the apple." You know? (laughs) So they, they, i- they become even more sort of adamant to eat the apple. So it's ... this is a very sort of fundamental idea and it's one that, um, you see all the time. You know, if you, if you look at the way that censorship works now, I mean, most of the censorship, um, that occurs is, is usually targeting, um, you know, people who are pushing what are regarded as conspiracy theories, things like QAnon, um, the anti-vax, anti-vaxxers and those kinds of people and, um-What these people generally do when they, when they see their, their posts being deleted from Twitter, um, is they're not gonna say, "Oh, okay. Right. They deleted it, so that means it's wrong. So I'm not gonna believe that anymore." They're gonna, they're gonna do the exact opposite. They're gonna say, "Okay. These guys don't want truth to come out. So they're, they're basically... They're censoring us because they are afraid of what we have to say. So that means that we're right. You know, that's basically... that validates what we're trying to say. Because if what we were saying wasn't, uh, dangerous, if it wasn't true, they wouldn't bother, um... You know, they would just point out why we were wrong. They wouldn't bother trying to censor, uh, you know, us." So it... Basically, it's counterproductive. And you see it with, um, what happened with Parler. You know, Parler, the, um, social media app. I think it's pronounced Parler.

   4. CWChris Williamson55:47

      Parler.

   5. GBGurwinder Bhogal55:47

      Yeah. Uh, it's, it's spelled Parler but I think it's pronounced Parler. At least that's what I heard.

   6. CWChris Williamson55:51

      Oh, interesting.

   7. GBGurwinder Bhogal55:51

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson55:52

      Nice.

   9. GBGurwinder Bhogal55:52

      Um, yeah. I mean, I only knew this... I only found this out yesterday, in fact. So actually-

   10. CWChris Williamson55:58

       It's called, it's called fucking nothing now because God knows where it is.

   11. GBGurwinder Bhogal56:01

       (laughs) Well, it... Well, it's back online. It's actually back online again now. Yeah. It's on a different server. But what happened, um... So I'll just, uh, sort of quickly and briefly, um, sort of, uh, delineate what happened. So, um, after the, the January 6th Capitol riot, uh, there was a lot of pressure put on the tech giants by, um, by the Biden adminis- administration to essentially, um, you know, uh, reign in these kind of QAnon conspiracy theories. And, um, basically, what, uh, Amazon did is Amazon figured that one of the, uh, uh, one of the websites using its platform, its, um, its web server, uh, uh, this social media site called Parler, uh, was basically a key to, um, organizing the riots. So they essentially deleted the website from their platform. And there, there... In their view, this was a good thing because this would ensure that people wouldn't be able to coordinate any further, um, sort of riots. But it actually had no effect because everybody just went to alternate, um, uh, platforms, uh, platforms s- such as Gab. And, um, they basically just did what they were doing before. But now they were extra angry because now they, they thought this is actually a confirmation of everything that we have been saying. That they have actually... You know, they've tried to silence us. They've tried to silence us en masse. And so this is clear that there's some kind of conspiracy. And this is the thing with conspiracy theories, is that if you try to conspire against a conspiracy theory, it becomes more evidence of the conspiracy. You know? (laughs) And that's what essentially is, is, is happening with these kind of... with censorship. It appears to the, to the conspiracy theorists that censorship is a conspiracy. Uh, it... That it's part of the conspiracy, essentially. In that sense, conspiracy theories are anti-fragile. You cannot, um... You cannot, um, defeat a conspiracy theory by conspiracy because that just becomes part of the conspiracy of... that they believe in. So, you know, it, it sounds a bit sort of obvious, but, uh, this is something that a lot of people who work for these, um, uh, these... you know, these sort of fact-checking organizations and these Silicon Valley, uh, sort of, uh, censors, a lot of these people don't really realize this. And this is actually very interesting-

   12. CWChris Williamson58:21

       One of the problems... One of the problems that I see with this, partially, or a counterpoint to it, is that taking out individual, uh, speakers that hold keystone positions can be effective. So I know that Alex Jones has a particularly large audience, but his audience isn't going to grow. Like the only way that infowars.com now increases in size is by word of mouth. He can't advertise. He's not got access on social media. You know, Donald Trump now, when you see him on the internet, you're like, "Oh, look. It's Donald Trump." As opposed to, "Oh, look, it's Donald Trump." Like it's, it's a surprise rather than something that's obvious. And the example that I use for this is Milo Yiannopoulos. Like Milo got totally unpersoned from the internet.

   13. GBGurwinder Bhogal59:05

       Yeah. I think-

   14. CWChris Williamson59:05

       And where the fuck has he gone? Now, he may be, uh, an easy example because he's just gone mental, um-

   15. GBGurwinder Bhogal59:11

       Yeah. I think, I think-

   16. CWChris Williamson59:12

       ... but in some situations it might work.

   17. GBGurwinder Bhogal59:15

       Yeah. I, I think with Milo it was a very peculiar case, because he didn't just get canceled by the establishment, he actually got canceled by his own peers. He got canceled by the right.

   18. CWChris Williamson59:23

       Yeah.

   19. GBGurwinder Bhogal59:24

       Because, obviously, you know, he, he did the unthinkable. You know, he, he basically tried to create an excuse for pedophilia and, um... So obviously, I don't think anybody could recover from that, um, no matter how far to the right you are, no matter how pro-free speech you are. You know, you're not gonna recover from that.

   20. CWChris Williamson59:38

       Yeah. Richard Spencer is not coming to save you there, no.

   21. GBGurwinder Bhogal59:41

       Exactly, exactly. So, um, I think that was a slightly different... But I understand what you're saying. I, I do think that it can work sometimes and I do... I, I think your, your example of Alex Jones is a particularly important one because, I mean, I've got a lot of criticism for writing a clip- Quillette article in which, although I, I... you know, I reiterated that I'm, I'm basically pro-free speech, I said that, um, it was actually... that Alex Jones was a threat to free speech. Um, because... And the reason for that is because what he was doing is he was essentially, um... He was accusing people of being child molesters with no evidence. And this guy has got millions of followers and a lot of those followers have got guns and they don't take kindly to hearing about pedophiles in their vicinity. And this obviously manifested with, um, Planet Ping Pong being shot up, you know. Luckily nobody was killed but, you know, when you've got a guy who's crea-... just basically creating these sort of conspiracy theories and accusing random innocent people of being pedophiles, that's actually pretty bad because that creates, um, violence in the real world. And that's not good because that intimidates people, it prevents people from wanting to speak out against Alex Jones because if they don-... if they s-... if they say something against Alex Jones, they might be sort of, you know, assumed to be pedophiles too and then people come after them. So I felt that Alex Jones was actually creating... Although he always talks about freedom of speech and all this stuff, I felt that his actions in that respect were actually, um, detrimental to freedom of speech.But now the thing is, yes, Alex Jones was ... He was taken off Twitter and it had a small effect. He had a very small effect. Not a huge one, um, because, you know, he's still going viral. He went viral very recently on, on YouTube despite being banned from YouTube. He went viral on Twitter despite being banned from Twitter, you know, so it doesn't, it doesn't actually have a massive effect. It does have a small effect. But the thing is, is that this is all gonna come to an end very soon. Um, it's no longer gonna be possible for people to be canceled, um, by the establishment within the next couple of years. And the re-

   22. CWChris Williamson1:01:43

       Web 3.0 decentralization?

   23. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:01:46

       Bingo. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. That's exactly what's happening. Um, so we've got Web 3.0 coming along and, um, because that works on the blockchain, uh, primarily on, on Ethereum, it's, it's ... It ... There's no, um, there's no regulatory body. There's no sort of centralized, uh, node in that network. So, so nothing has to ... There's no middleman basically. Nobody has to get their information, uh, going through a router in order to get it to somebody else. It just ... It goes directly from one peer to another. And because of that, um, the old systems are not gonna work, um, very well at, as sort of regulating peop- what people can and can't say. Um, you know, you've got ... Now for, for instance, you know, in the, in the Web 2.0 system, you've got things like Patreon. Patreon can take your livelihood away from you, um, if it thinks that you've said something that it doesn't like, because in order to get payments, you have to go through Patreon. You can't just get payments directly from your, from your, uh, users. At least you couldn't, um, until Web 3.0. So, um, you know, that was one way that they would leverage, um, their, their power against people in order to stifle speech.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:02:53

       Gatekeeping.

   25. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:02:53

       Another way ... Yeah. Yeah. And another way was like Facebook would be, you know, they could, they could just completely delete your account, uh, because your, your entire, um, sort of online personality is dependent on, on Facebook's platform. So you can't really, um ... You know, if you, if you want to, uh, continue to have business ties, if you wanna continue to, um, you know, have relationships online, you have to do what Facebook tells you to. But this is all gonna come to an end, I mean, for most people. Not for everybody, but it's gonna come to an end for a large proportion of people, um, with Web 3.0, because with Web 3.0 you're gonna have, um, all of this payments processing, all of this kind of stuff. It's all gonna be done on the blockchain. And so, um, because it's trustless, because it's permissionless, um, it's, it's ... There's no, no single person or no single entity or no single organization can, um, have the ... Ha- has the leverage to stop you from saying what you want. And that's a great thing. But the thing is, is not everybody is gonna be able to use Web 3.0, because it's gonna require, I think at least for the foreseeable future, it's gonna u- it's gonna require a little bit of knowledge of blockchains and things like that. So, um, I'm a bit worried actually, um, with the way that things are currently going with misinformation and censorship, because, um, there's actually ... There's gonna be the older generations like the boomers and stuff who are gonna continue to use Web 2.0, and then there's gonna be the younger, more tech-savvy people who are gonna use Web 3.0. And, um, so the people who are using Web 2.0, they're gonna still be restrained by these systems, and as a result of that there's gonna be a kind of disparity, um, between these two classes. I mean, one of the reasons ... Uh, you know, there are plenty of ethical arguments against censorship, um, and I'm sure your, your viewers have probably heard them all already so I won't go into them, but there are also functional arguments against censorship. And, um, there are three. There are in fact three, three functional arguments against censorship. Um, the first one is that censorship doesn't really work because fact-checkers are not very good at their jobs. Um, pretty much all the fact-checkers that work in Silicon Valley, they have to do something. Uh, they have to basically ... Um, they have to be accredited by something called The International Fact-checking Network which runs out of the Poynters Institute in Florida, and this is a very liberal organization like most of its kind. You know, most organizations of this kind. Uh, it's quite ... Uh, it's, it's very heavily liberal. In fact it works very closely with the Southern Poverty Law Center which you might know, um, has a tendency to just call everybody far-right. I mean, it, it was sued by Maajid Nawaz, um, for calling him far-right and it was forced to pay him $3.5 million and apologize publicly for, for that, you know. So, I mean, these guys, these guys are just ... Have a tendency to just dismiss anything that doesn't agree with them as far-right. And these are the people who compiled a database for the International Fact-checking Network of fake news websites for the fact-checkers to use. Uh, this database had to be taken down after it was revealed that it consisted pretty much exclusively of conservative news websites. And it was written by a, a podcast produced for the Southern Poverty Law Center. So, um, so it's pretty, it's pretty, pretty messed up system. Um, all of these people basically ... You know, these people are the guys who work at Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley's fact-checkers are overwhelmingly, uh, ultra-liberal. They're very liberal. They are ... They, they regard anything to the right as fact news. They don't fact-check the left very often. Um, so it's, it's very ... Got a very strong ideological sta- slant, and because of that you get the, you see them getting things wrong like, for instance, lab h- lab leak hypothesis. They completely got that wrong. They thought it was a conspiracy theory. It's very clear that there's more evidence now for a lab leak hypothesis than there is for a natural origins hypo- hypothesis. And this ... They got this wrong because they have this liberal mindset. They assume that Donald Trump was racist and anybody who, who believed in the lab leak hypothesis was racist, which makes no sense because the alternative explanation, which is that it came from Chinese dietary habits, is more racist. That's a lot more racist than believing it came from a, a lab. And yet they somehow managed to ... Because Trump said it, it was by virtue of that he was racist. So, that's the first problem for the censorship, is that you can't actually determine what's fake news and not because-... it is very, very heavily ideological. Um, the second problem with, uh, it is that it interferes with our natural adaptive processes. So you can't, uh, get rid of all the misinformation in the world. You can only get rid of a small proportion of it, and some of the time. But what you're doing is you're making people reliant on you to tell you what is true and what is false. When you, when you, when you choose what people can and can't see, and when you put these kind of nutritional labels on, on posts to say, "Oh, this has been fact-checked and proven to be false," what you're doing is you're, you're not allowing people to... You're not... If you're not exposing people to lies, then you're not giving them the experience that they need in order to work out what's true and what's false for themselves. You're basically spoon-feeding them what's true and what's false. And so you're making people reliant on your system to tell you to tell them what is true and what is false. And that is a bad thing because if you do that over a long enough period of time, eventually people are gonna grow dependent on that. They're gonna grow dependent on organizations like Facebook to tell them what is true and what is false, and that's very, very dangerous. Y- you know, people should always try to work out for themselves what is true and what is false. So that's the second problem with censorship, and then obviously the third problem is that Web 3.0 is going to, um, create this division. It's gonna split the web in two, basically, where you're gonna have the old Web 2.0 users who are being spoon-fed. Uh, they're in, you know, they're gonna be completely reliant on these centralized structures to tell them what's true, and then you're gonna have the Web 3.0 people who are gonna be learning for themselves what's true and what's false. And this is gonna... I mean, this might be a bit of a, you know, crazy thing to say, but you might, y- know about the story, um, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and you've got, uh, the, the Morlocks and the Eloi. So, so basically i- in this story, this guy goes into the far future. And in, in the far future, um, the Morlocks... Basically human beings divide... they, they divide into two different subspecies. Um, the, you've got the Eloi, who basically live lives of luxury and they have ev- they basically... they don't have to worry about anything, and they basically have every... they're pampered and they have everything done for them. And as a result of that, they grow very, very stupid. They, they never have to use their brains so their, their brains atrophy. They never have to use their bodies, so their bodies atrophy. And so they become very weak and very stupid, and very naïve and, and sort of, you know, they believe the best in everything. And then underground you have the Morlocks who do all the work. They do all the toil, all the industrial toil. They live lives of hardship, and as a result of that, they become very sort of... their, their brains over-develop and their, their muscles over-develop, and they basically become the opposite of the Eloi. And so, you know, in the end, I mean, you know, it's sort of implied that the Eloi will be destroyed by the Morlocks. Um, I don't think that, that, that would go, it would go quite so far, but essentially what would happen if we, if we retain this kind of, uh, centralized structure on top of the decentralized structure, what's gonna happen is people will be divided into two and you'll have these kind of people who are using Web 2.0 who will be kind of Eloi, and then you'll have people who, who are using Web 3.0 who will become kind of Morlocks. So the people who are using Web 2.0 will be spoon-fed by these organizations. You know, they will essentially brainwash them, tell them what's true and what's false, and then you'll have people who are sort of using stuff themselves, you know, finding out things for themselves, and they will have an advantage over the people who are using the, the, Web 2.0. So it's, it's a bit of a dangerous situation, um, when you try to regulate what people can and can't say because in the long term it's gonna create disparities. Um, people... you know, you're gonna create people who are completely reliant on others to tell them what's true and what's false. You're creating an entire class of people who are essentially sheep, you know? And it's-

   26. CWChris Williamson1:11:08

       You get a Matthew Principle with this as well, right? You're gonna get... So the people who have the ability to understand technology and utilize the way that Web 3.0 works and can fact-check more effectively themselves, they're going to... You are going to end up with a bifurcated culture if, if-

   27. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:11:26

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:11:26

       ... Web 3.0 takes off in the way that some people think it might do.

   29. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:11:31

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:11:31

       You are going to end up with one group of people speaking one type of language, having a, a, a group of, uh, commonly held cultural assumptions, and then another group of people who have the old ones, the ones that have just been left behind.
9. 1:14:27 – 1:18:37

   Hitchen’s Razor

   1. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:14:27

      So, so-

   2. CWChris Williamson1:14:27

      Speaking of that one, Hitchens' Razor. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If you make a claim, it's up to you to prove it, not me to disprove it.

   3. GBGurwinder Bhogal1:14:39

      Yeah. So, um, this actually has a precursor, um, in, uh ... It was, uh, I mean, it's famously attributed to Hitchens, uh, Christopher Hitchens. You know, a lot of people love Christopher Hitchens 'cause he's a great speaker and he's, he's done a lot of great YouTube videos, and that's how most people get to know him. Um, but this was actually originally thought of by a guy called Bertrand Russell, who's a great philosopher who was around sort of in the first half of the 20th century. And, um, he, his, he had a concept called Russell's Teapot, which was basically that imagine there's a teapot, um, which is sort of orbiting the moon right now. You can't prove that there is no teapot there, you know? And so because you can't prove that there's no teapot there, if the onus is on you to disprove it, then you have to believe in pretty much everything. You have to believe in Santa Claus, 'cause you can't disprove Santa Claus. You have to believe in Zeus. You have to believe in Poseidon. You have to believe in Shiva. You know, you have to believe in all these imaginary beings because you can't disprove their existence. So it, the only way that you can actually get through life, um, is by assuming that what has been asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Because if you don't do that, then you have to believe everything, essentially. So it's, it's basically a, a sort of, it's a system which ensures that your mind is occupied by the minimum amount of bullshit, basically. It, it's a, it's a bull- bullshit-filtering heuristic. That's the best way to think of it. It, it-

Episode duration: 1:29:05