Modern WisdomWhat Do BDSM & Meditation Have In Common? | Professor Paul Bloom | Modern Wisdom Podcast 120
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 24,131 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Some people think that…
- PBPaul Bloom
Some people think that the, the modern notion of race isn't something we've had for that long. But certainly breaking the world up into us versus them-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
... um, and liking the us and really hating-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
... the them i- is natural. There's, there's now tons of studies, including from babies, but also from young children, cross-cultural studies, computer simulations of biological evolution. If there's one thing we know, my field knows, it's that a propensity to break the world up into us versus them, um, comes natural. So there's even these very clever study. You get 100 people in a room, you know, like you and me, and we all have a coin, and we all flip our coin. So roughly half is heads, half is tails, go into different parts of the room. Then we ask, "So what do you guys think... You're tails. What do you think of the tails group?" They think, "We're smarter."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
Even put- putting myself aside, it so happens the tails group is smarter. The heads group, you seem to have like a, a bunch of ****** over there. Like, who, who likes them?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
And, and even the, you know, the most arbitrary ways of cutting us apart sets up psychological mechanisms where, where we, where we split the world.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm joined by Professor Paul Bloom. Paul, welcome to the show.
- PBPaul Bloom
Thank you so much for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a pleasure to have you on. Eh, been listening to a lot of your work recently, some fantastic interviews with Sam Harris, some podcasts that you did a little while ago. But, um, some super interesting stuff. We've been talking about empathy and about resilience a lot on the show. Recently discussed Eliud Kipchoge's, uh, sub-two-hour marathon performance-
- PBPaul Bloom
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... which was a, a very resilient, uh, physical feat that people have seen. Um, so we got a lot, a lot to delve into today. But how would you describe the work that you do if someone hadn't met you before and, and didn't know you?
- PBPaul Bloom
So I'm interested in... I'm a psychology professor at Yale, and I'm interested in human nature. And so my work goes from topic to topic, and they're kind of related. Um, broadly, I'm interested in pleasure, what we like, why we like it. I'm really interested in morality. Um, how do we explain our intuitions about good and evil? Um, how do we explain our, our, our, um, who we hate, who we admire, and what kind of moral judgments are good for us? Like, how should we think morally? And there, my work kind of blends into, into philosophy. And that was my most recent book, Against, Against Empathy. And, um, and I'm interested in a cluster of things. I'm interested in the self. I'm interested in, um, how we think about, uh, things that aren't like us, like robots or, um, non-human animals. Uh, interested in religion, where religious belief comes from. Most recently, I've been interested in suffering. So I have a kind of dream job where I, you know, I get (laughs) , I get paid perfectly fine to, uh, to just ask some really cool questions and my students and my colleagues work on them.
- CWChris Williamson
It must feel nice to be able to indulge your intellectual curiosity on a yearly basis and just keep on changing that up every so often.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah, they haven't fired me yet, and it is, it is, it is-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
... very nice.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Um, so you touched on a word there, morality. And, uh, I think a lot of the stuff that you're talking about are questions that people take for granted, or their appearance that, that is something that people just take as fact. Do you often find when you begin to look at the first principles or real strip things back to basics, do you find a bit of a disconnect or people just looking at the questions that you're asking and thinking that, "Well, why are you asking that? Why are you asking what is morality? Or why are you asking what is empathy?"
- PBPaul Bloom
It's interesting. My, my... It, it's a good question. My work tends to fall into one of two extremes. So I'm sometimes interested in things that are honest to God puzzling for a lot of people. Like, you ask people, you know, what do people get out of, um, uh, sadomasochistic sex or hot saunas or, um, or watching movies that terrify them? And people say, "I don't know. That's really cool that we do." But some of my questions, and this is what you're getting at, involve questioning things that we take for granted. And William James, a long time ago, a great psychologist, you know, said, "It's only to a scholar can you ask a question like, you know, why do people get flushed when everybody's looking at them? Why do we get hungry when we smell something delicious?" And these are questions like, you know, why does the apple fall from the tree? You know, you got to be in some way step back and be a scholar. And so say, say, "Well, okay, sure that happens, it's obvious, but, but why do we work that way?" And so for morality, you know, if you right now, you walked outside and you saw somebody slapping a child, just beating the crap out of a four-year-old, you would be shocked. You'd probably spring to action. Why? And it's not enough for you to say, "Well, of course, it's just natural. It's obvious." Okay, let's spell it out. What's bothering you? Can you imagine a person who would find this funny or have no interest at all? And those are sort, sort of the questions I ask.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I imagine that that must get you into some interesting, interesting situations thinking about some of the times some of the people that I spend my time with and talking to, and every so often you do, you posit a question or make a point about something and half of the room sort of turns and looks and gives you this... (laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... side eye.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. When they discover you're really not one of them. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. I know.
- PBPaul Bloom
They're sort of, uh, they're sort of, uh, looking at things from the outside perspective in our business.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I, I think to, to fly a flag for the outsiders, I, I definitely find those questions more interesting than, than not being able to look at them with perspective.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So let's talk about empathy. It's something that we've-
- 15:00 – 30:00
So I'm not against…
- CWChris Williamson
- PBPaul Bloom
So I'm not against empathy in general. Empathy can do a lot for us. It can do a lot for relationships, could be a great source of pleasure. But as a source, as a moral guide, who should I help, who should our country go to war with and everything, it is, I think, very limited.
- CWChris Williamson
It strikes me that both empaty- empathy and compassion can't exist in isolation. If I was the only person on the planet, and the planet was completely whitewashed except for me, is there such a thing as... Well, I suppose there's self-compassion, but there's not such a thing as self-empathy, is there?
- PBPaul Bloom
No, it's hard to imagine what it'd be to put yourself in your own shoes.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
It's kind of a, a mental gymnastics that's hard to imagine. Um, you could of course feel s- much empathy and compassion for people, but they would just have to be from your imagination.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.
- PBPaul Bloom
People from your memories or people you imagine. And, and, you know, if there's books left in this, this apocalyptic world, um, you could feel plenty of empathy for characters in books.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- PBPaul Bloom
And, and again, I think, I think that... You know, I, I love stories, and I, and I read a lot. And, um, and the feeling of empathy and, and, and that sort of imaginative pleasure is, is super important.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
I wouldn't want to (...) that.
- CWChris Williamson
It's what immerses you in the story, right?
- PBPaul Bloom
Exactly. You know, there are other things that could immerse you in a story, but, you know, you... Often, a story has an engaging character, and you put yourself in his or her shoes, and then you adopt their perspective, and you go through life as them. So, you know, I'm, I'm reading a Stephen King novel now, The Institute, and a lot of it is this boy who's trapped, uh, who's been kidnapped, and you really see the world through his eyes.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
And that's not such an interesting case. To me, the cooler case, and again, that just gets back to the problem of empathy, is that, um, even a, a bad character, if you get connected with him, you would adopt his perspective. I don't know. You ever watch, um, uh, like, um, Breaking Bad or Sopranos?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- PBPaul Bloom
So, so both of these shows at the core had, uh, uh, Walter White, Tony Soprano, guys who are actually not good guys. You're not supposed to take them as, like, these wonderful superheroes to follow. But once you have them on the screen, and you think about them, and you get absorbed in them, all of a sudden, their interests become your, your interests. There's an old problem, you know. One of my favorite books is Lolita by Nabokov, you know, and, and, and, uh, the, the main character of that, Humbert Humbert, is a pedophile. He's a pedophile pursuing the affections of this young girl. But by the time you're 10 pages in the book, he's your guy. It's a first-person narrative here in his head. Part of you says, you know, "This is wrong," but part of you cheers him on. And so a good storyteller can use empathy to, to cause you to have a connection with characters who are just awful.
- CWChris Williamson
And I suppose that manifests itself in the real world as bias.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes, yes. All of this manifests itself as bias. As soon as one person steps out of a crowd and says, "Put yourself in my shoes," the whole world changes.And there, there's a, there's experimental research on this. So, um, Dan Batson is a great psychologist of empathy, has a study where, um, where he tells you about a little girl, and she needs an operation. And, uh, and if she doesn't have an operation, terrible things will happen to her. But she's on a ... there, there's a l- a lineup, a list, and she's low down on the list. And it's a fair list. Other kids are ahead of her. Should you move her up? And you say, "No, if it's a fair list." But then he adds a, a little twist. He says, "Try to feel what it'd like to be her. Put yourself in her shoes." Now things flip, and you wanna move her up the list. You know? I have 100 people applying for a job, and I'm looking at their files and da, da, da. And then one person comes up to me and says, "Let me tell you my story." And all of a sudden, that person, he or she, is, is my person, even though the other 99 also had stories. It's just that, that the, by accident, the one who got to tell me theirs got to sway me. And, and I think that these things are morally corrosive. I think they're very natural, but the amount of bias they incur in the world is terrible. And it sets up empathy in a very tight connection with something like racism. I mean, whose stories are you likely to hear? Whose, whose, whose lives are you most likely to get connected with? Well, people around you, your group, your friends, your family. And those people are your, your ... psychologists call your in-group. Empathy favors the in-group. But as a moral person, you might say, "Look, even if somebody doesn't have the good fortune to be one of my friends or to, to look like me, still that person has as much moral value as anybody else." And that's what empathy misses.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. It's totally removing rationality, isn't it? That rank, rank order of whatever is first come, first serve, or people who need it the most, of a, out of a group of 100.
- PBPaul Bloom
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you have a look at how empathy and compassion would have been used evolutionarily by our ancestors? Did you think about that?
- PBPaul Bloom
I did. It's a very interesting question. Um, so the idea of caring for others, some sort of compassion for others, um, it used to be thought that this is crazy and non-Darwinian. Like, why would we ever have that? And it was a great puzzle for Darwin. Like, if, if nature is red in tooth and claw, if it's the survival of fit ... of, of, uh, of the fittest, um, why would we ever care for another? It's some ... it has to be a miracle, some people said. Um, or other people say, "We don't really care for other people." Can't. You know, just cynics all the way down. But the neo-Darwinian view got really sophisticated about a 100 years ago, and then people began to make sense over time of how you could evolve caring for others. So, for instance, one simple way is that if you take a sort of ... if, if ... once you have a genetic understanding, there's no sh- hard and fast division between myself and my children, who share half my genes-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
... and my siblings, who share half my genes, and my cousins and nieces and nephews and so on, who share different fractions of my genes. So, it behooves me from an evolutionary point of view to care about them as well, to really have them matter. So, that's one thing they call a kin selection. A second thing is sort of reciprocal altruism. So, suppose you and I work well together, you know? When we, when we kill an animal that's too big for either one of us to bring back-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
... we work together and bring it back. We do this repeatedly. We both gain from our interaction. Well, then it makes sense for me to care about you. And so these mechanisms, which aren't infinitely broad, but specific, uh, I think, I think can help capture where compassion comes from. Empathy is a little bit different. Nobody really knows why we have empathy, feeling the pain, feeling the feelings of others.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PBPaul Bloom
One theory, um, is that, um, it actually has to do with parenting, that your connection with your young child or your young baby, uh, helps if you have a truly empathic bond. And one reason to take this seriously is that the hormones that connect up, um, with empathy are also involved in breastfeeding and childbirth.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Yes, yes. I mean,…
- CWChris Williamson
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes, yes. I mean, so much of modern evolutionary theory and cultural evolution focuses on exactly these questions. So- so, as you know, you can't develop a good society without some way of punishing people who aren't good. If we're all no-hitters, and you run around and smack everybody you want, your life is so much better than the rest of us, so we have to have some way of putting you in your place. And maybe we punish you, maybe we shun you.Um, and then there's complexities, like for instance, suppose, um, suppose you do bad stuff and so you should be punished, but punishing is costly. What do we think about people who could punish, but don't, who choose not to? Do we punish them? And there's a- there's a recent study find that we tend to punish people who don't punish people who deserves to be punished.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) It's so complex, isn't it? It's so complex. One of the things that I- I was thinking there, again, rolling it forward to sort of the real- the real sort of worst parts of human impulses is how, uh, the- the development of, um, pushing people to have consensual sex and saying that unconsensual sex is something which is absolutely not allowed, because I'm going to guess that for the vast majority of our evolutionary history that- that also might not have been the case, not naturally. And all of these things, you know, when you- when you think about it, it- it is... When you look at it from a first principles perspective, it really is a- an interesting sort of question, a set of assumptions to- to look at as to why these things happen.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah, I mean, there- there's a general argument that Steve Pinker and many others have made, but Steve Pinker makes it m- in the strongest form, that in a lot of ways, the world has been getting better and better and better and better. Um, you know, you think the world sucks now, and in ma- many ways it does, but I would rather be... This is the best time in history, take last, you know, last, say, 30 years, I think, to be an ethnic minority, to be, um- to be, uh, physically disabled or mentally disabled, to be, um- to be a woman, to be a sexual... you know, to- to be... And- and a large reason why this is so is that we've been better at working out the very problems you're talking about. We're trying to understand consent, we're trying to- to figure out how to balance all sorts of things, but also a growing respect for people's rights and autonomy. You know, when I was, um- when I was young, nobody cared about bullying. You know, just consider, you know, kids smack each other now, who cares? And now, when my kids go to school, people are just really concerned about it. They say, you know, "No kid should be bullied." And I'm thinking about it and says, "Yeah, that makes sense."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
It's kind of- it's kind of messed up that kids will punch each other and nobody minds. Um, and similar thing, issues about sexual harassment and sexual assault, I think- I think we're learning to become better to each other. Now, you know, plainly, there's a million ways in which we're- we're crap to each other, but we're- we're getting better, I think.
- CWChris Williamson
That's good.
- PBPaul Bloom
We're getting better in part by- by smart people struggling with these questions.
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose as well, I don't want to go down this road because I've swam down it too much recently, but I suppose that people who take complex issues like these, plant a flag in one side of the ground or the other and reduce them down to their most simplistic forms and then attach them to a Twitter bio, are really- really (laughs) -
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... really doing a disservice to the development. And I- I do think, as I've seen posted more recently, like within the last year to six months, concerns about where our real intellectual integrity and our- our real intellectual power is being placed. Recently went to go and see Douglas Murray give a- a talk with Lionel Shriver, uh, literally two days ago for The Spectator, and his primary concern at the moment is that some of the best minds on the planet are spending their time thinking, including him, his most recent book, The Madness of Crowds, is about this, about socially constructed differences between gender, race, sex, sexuality. And I- I- I do- I do wonder how- how much further along we might have been in 30 years. Obviously, we don't know how- how much more time is going to be embroiled in some of these discussions, but yeah, when you talk about some of the things that you're doing, which are really uncovering the first principles of our nature, trying to work out real hard questions about why we are the way we are, and yet some super smart people, Douglas, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, you know, Sam Harris, uh, uh, they get embroiled in these things. That one tweet that he sent could have been sent about something else that wasn't that. Do you get what I mean?
- PBPaul Bloom
I- I do. I mean, you're raising a lot of issues here. So personally, actually, I find questions of- of, um- of gender and sex to be absolutely fascinating and underexplored. But I see your broader point, which is that, you know, my experience, I- I spend too much time on Twitter, and- and so much of it is, um, people defending outlandishly extreme positions, and then, you know, a sense of ideological purity on both sides, very strong. And then, um, you know, nas- nasty attacks that don't bring us anywhere closer. And- and I'm kind of an optimist about things, I think outside of social media, there's actually some excellent discourse and- and- and progress. But for a lot of these questions about human nature, particularly questions revolving around sex, revolving around ethnicity and race, um, they connect very much with our identities. And so they're not abstract theoretical questions to be bandied about, maybe nor should they be, because they affect people's- people's real lives.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
Um, I understand the point that Jordan Peterson was making about, um, wanting to have the freedom to describe people as he chose. I also understand the anger he got by people who felt that their identity was being belittled by somebody who had power over them. So this is not getting at it one way or another-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
... but- but, um, these issues are, as you say, complicated. And- and to go back to what, we were talking about racism, uh, you know, everybody I know would say, "Oh, well, racism, that sort of in-group, out-group is just morally wrong. It's morally atrocious." But...... other forms of in-group, out-group division, it's less clear. I love my children much more than I love you. More than that. I care for them. I give them resources, much more than I would give to you. Is this morally wrong? Well, maybe an extreme utilitarian like Peter Singer might say, "Well, it's kinda, w- you know, it's human nature, but we could have done better." But I'm, I'm inclined to think that some, some sort of in-groups, like in-groups of family and in-groups of friendship, are actually intrinsically valuable. So I would draw a distinction between me saying, "I only care, I care the most about white people." That's kind of a crappy way to live your existence. On the other hand, if I was to say, "I care the most about my family and friends," that doesn't seem as odious. What do you think?
- CWChris Williamson
I agree. I think the interesting question is, where does the group of family and friends extend out to?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
At what point, at what point does the rubber meet the road?
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes. And, and our affiliations are complicated. I think, I, um, I think, you know, we all have multiple ones. I'm, I'm a Canadian, I'm Jewish, I'm a professor. Um, I'm a man. You know-
- CWChris Williamson
You support a football team, you suppo-
- PBPaul Bloom
... (laughs) that's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Or it would be a hockey team. It'd be a hockey team in Canada, wouldn't it?
- PBPaul Bloom
That's right, that's right. Well, actually, I am, I am wearing a-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) .
- PBPaul Bloom
... a, a Toronto Blue Jays t-shirt for this-
- CWChris Williamson
Nice.
- PBPaul Bloom
... discussion. No. If you got a, uh... But, but we have multiple affiliations. To some extent, they're harmless. I think sports teams actually just give the world more pleasure than any suffering. And sometimes, they're, they're, you know, when it comes to religion and race, they're the most serious things in the world. And, and to go back to it, we recognize it's natural. We should never, ever infer that that means it's good. But it does mean that we have to be very prepared for an uphill battle when fighting it.
- CWChris Williamson
You're literally combating human nature-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Why? …
- PBPaul Bloom
I wanna argue it's not just pleasure or even happiness. It's a deeper form of meaning or purpose. And for that, suffering arises again, because we know we're living a meaningful life when we're suffering, to some extent.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- PBPaul Bloom
Any proj- any... because any project of any value requires effort. It requires the possibility of failure. It requires difficulty, often conflict, often anxiety. You know, having kids is the pure example of this, which is you've gotta be an idiot. Everybody knows if you're gonna have kids, it's gonna be tough. But this toughness is tied in so tightly with its reward. If you told me about something you did and you said, "It was easy-peasy, no pain at all, no suffering at all," I would guarantee you you're not gonna take much of value from it. How hard could it have been? How significant could it have been? So, so I think meaningful, difficult life pursuits will require suffering. S- it's wrapped in the very notion of difficulty.
- CWChris Williamson
I think there's some really broad implications for how people live their lives there, talking about overcoming obstacles and, and suffering.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Certainly, I know for me that when my life gets too comfortable, that's the only time that a little existential sort of tick at the back of my head starts to, starts to appear. But when I'm (clears throat) constantly working on something that is both challenging and worthwhile, that really doesn't occur.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. That's, uh, that's one aspect of what I'm interested in. So, um, this guy, uh, uh, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed a concept of flow, which is what you're alluding to. And a flow state is when you're just really into something and it's just perfect. It's just right. If, if it's too easy, it's boring. It's just fun, it's boring, whatever, like watching TV, watching bad TV. But if it's too difficult, it's frustrating and you're just sick of it. Flow state is just this Goldilocks state right in between, where if you do it right, you lose track of time. You str- you su- you... the level of difficulty is such it captures you and it captures your consciousness. People in these states say, you know, you go for a long time, you're working on your book, or, or, or some project, and then you forget to eat. You forget to eat, you lose, you lose track of appointments, you don't sleep, whatever. And that's, that's sort of... that's one aspect of what I'm talking about. But you don't have that unless you have difficulty.
- CWChris Williamson
Because there needs to be a challenge.
- PBPaul Bloom
Needs to be a challenge. That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm trying to relate that to people that like to get spanked with leather things during sex and wear-
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... (laughs) ridiculous outfits. I wanna see... I wanna hear the flow state for BDSM, uh, s- I was gonna say sufferers there, but it's not, is it? (laughs) BDSM fans.
- PBPaul Bloom
Well, I'll make, I'll make the connection for you, actually. The... (laughs) I think that-
- CWChris Williamson
I can't wait to... I cannot wait to hear this.
- PBPaul Bloom
They're not gonna be... they're not gonna be quite the same story, but here's, but here's, um, a connection. It's not my own. It's by a psychologist, Roy Baumeister, which is... one theory of what goes on with BDSM is that it liberates you from your consciousness. So, if you're like a lot of people... I'll speak for myself, won't speak for you, but I'm in my head all the time. My kind of... um, s- my, my, my anxieties, my nerves, my self-talk, my memories, my responsibilities, things I'm ashamed of, things... you know, all this stuff is in my head. Um-One way to empty your head of all of this is to, um, to get really good at meditation. And maybe after 10 years of meditative practice, you could empty out that head of yours for a while. But here's a way somebody could do it really quickly. They could slap you in the face really hard. Now, you're not gonna like being slapped in the face, but I'll tell you, when that slap hits, for a second afterwards, your head is clear. Your, uh, you know... there, there's this great quote by, um, you know, by an, a dominatrix saying, "Nothing captures one's attention more than a whip." And s- so the idea is, a B1 theory BDSM is that, well, the physical level and someone's at the psychological level, it's an escape from yourself. It's in some way, it's the opposite of meditation. Meditation, you sit ru- you, you, you kind of, you know, you're just stuck in your head, observing and trying to deal with it, anything like that. The BDSM, along with things like, uh, intense exercise, um, some drug experiences.
- CWChris Williamson
Extreme sports?
- PBPaul Bloom
Extreme sports, yeah. You know, I'm not a big martial arts guy, but the first time I ever did Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I'm there, uh, rolling with somebody, first time in my life. And so this goes on for a while, and I'm like, you know, I'm (laughs) no good at it, but just, you know, getting twisted into a pretzel by a guy. And, but I realized afterwards that during that, I don't know, three minutes, five minutes, I thought of nothing else. I thought, uh, my head was clear. And, uh, and, and that's... I understand is what BDSM can do for you.
- CWChris Williamson
There's not many situations now, you know, to the listeners that, uh, that tuned in at the moment, think about the last time that you didn't have any thoughts other than the one thing that you were doing or other than any one thing for more than about 30 seconds.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
If you held a gun to my head right now and told me when that was, I, I'd, I'd have to do a fair bit of work.
- PBPaul Bloom
And so, if you're ever fortunate enough to get mugged, there you go. Maybe you'll have that. Something... Now, now, obviously there's bad sides to being mugged, but, but the-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a wonderful, wonderful meditative practice though of being mugged. (laughs)
- PBPaul Bloom
... but, (laughs) but the, but the one good side is, during that period, you're in the moment, you know. And, and that moment of the slap... Now, you know, there's all other things going on. And, you know, you're re- this is a case your mileage really may vary. But, um, but I did some rock climbing. Again, I'm not saying my son is a serious rock climber, I'm awful at it, but it's the same thing. The mixture of fear, the tr- the need to solve a problem, the physicality of it all. You're not thinking of anything else. But you don't have that unless you have a task that's powerful enough to take away from your consciousness to, to, to, to devote your entire focus. One way to do that is through extreme difficulty. Another way to that is extreme pain. And that's what they have in common.
- CWChris Williamson
It's... I tell you what, I did not, I did not think that you were going to be able to draw those two together, but you've managed to do it.
- PBPaul Bloom
Oh, thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, a- again, going back to the, uh, going back to the extreme physical exercise thing, um, I'm a crossFitter myself, I have a lot of friends that do it. And the place that I see my athletes, the, the, my friends put themselves into on a weekly basis, a daily basis in the gym, is Jordan, who's the owner of the, the gym that we have, and it's a yearly ritual that the final workout of the open, which tends to be a very particular kind of time domain, a power endurance workout, which is like-
- PBPaul Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, sort of a 2K row-ish kind of, um, area, maybe a 7 to 10 minute, uh, or 5 to 10 minute of just go, full go. And, um, every single year, there's a... it's almost like a meta meme now about the fact that he's straight outside to go and throw up in the drain, but he does-
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... it every single year. He'll go and do it. And this guy is able to choose to put himself in that place in front of-
- 1:00:00 – 1:05:35
Yeah, because nuance to…
- PBPaul Bloom
in front of a largely unfriendly crowd. And if you have any ... If, if people are looking at you on social media, a lot of them are looking just to watch you fail and embarrass yourself and contradict yourself and perform some sort of heresy. And so, there, it's not a best time to fly your nuance. You know, you're better, better in the presence of friends or people who, who you trust.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, because nuance to a, a crowd which is not on your side will probably come across like a lack of conviction.
- PBPaul Bloom
That's right. That's right. A lack of conviction, incoherence. Um, (laughs) even saying, "I don't know," to, to, to an unfriendly crowd is risky.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that-
- PBPaul Bloom
Apolo- apologies, by the way, are famously risky, which is ... You know, everybody says to, to politicians "Really, apologize, apologize, apologize."... and then when they do apologize, the rest of their lives, they said, "Oh, he admitted he was wrong about..." (laughs) Yeah. You can't do right for doing wrong there. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder whether, because this, it's a cliché now to say long form conversations are missed, this is the reason for the podcasting platform taking this growth, because there is a hunger out there for people who want. But I do wonder whether it's less about the long form conversation and more to do with the fact that it is a open battleground to discuss ideas without a- an audience which is there immediately giving you feedback, which immediately biases you towards saying thing, things that might get a laugh or get a whatever. 'Cause you're still gonna have, want that at least a little bit from the other person. You're gonna wanna say things that make you sound-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... X, Y, Z to the other person. But I wonder whether these, the increasing popularity of these sorts of conversations online is something to do with the fact that it is this nice petri dish environment to have a discussion, where-
- PBPaul Bloom
And-
- CWChris Williamson
... nuance can be discussed in a way.
- PBPaul Bloom
I never thought about that, but I think you're right. I think you're right. I think one of the appeals of a, of a podcast is just listening to a conversation where ideas could be sketched out. And, you know, as you know, podcasts come in different flavors.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PBPaul Bloom
They're sort of a straight interview sometimes, where somebody, as it were, has a list of 50 questions in front of them, and they try not to be too obvious as they look down and they do that and like that. But then there's doing what you and I are doing, we're just talking. And, and when done right, I think that's very powerful.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. I agree. I-
- PBPaul Bloom
The, the topic itself might be interesting, but I think you're right, that more generally, it gives me kind of a warm feeling to hear people talk about interesting ideas, like, "This is how we should be doing these things."
- CWChris Williamson
I think so. And I think, as well, as you've said there, and as everyone's seen online, right, like, Douglas Murray has this line where he says, um, "People can lose their careers for saying the thing, uh, for not saying the thing that nobody said until yesterday."
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
The problem with that is that in a, a sample size that's only 30-second segments perhaps on the news or that's whatever it is now, 300 characters or something that's on Twitter-
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's very easy to take things out of context. Now, that's not to say that I've had clips from this podcast that get taken out of context, but when you spread it across the sample of a one-hour conversation, someone can say something that's wrong or that isn't fully formed, and then the other person might press them on it, and then that allows them to... You know what I mean? It, it, it, it's, it's less... The peaks and troughs are more spread out.
- PBPaul Bloom
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, that's, I, I agree with that. It's another reason why podcasts of roughly this length seem like a good idea.
- CWChris Williamson
Speaking of which, that's around about the length that's right. So, Professor Bloom-
- PBPaul Bloom
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... let us, um, let us crack on, and I will, uh, I will let the listeners have a look at some of your work, which will be linked in the show notes below. If they want to hassle you online and send you tweets that are 300, 300 characters long, where should, where should they head?
- PBPaul Bloom
Uh, (laughs) it's, uh, paulbloom@yale.
- CWChris Williamson
Cool. And is there a website or a blog that you, that you have at the moment?
- PBPaul Bloom
Nah. Nah. You're going to need to find my faculty website, but I don't, I don't run a blog or anything like that.
- CWChris Williamson
Cool. Well, Twitter now can be that, right? It's-
Episode duration: 1:05:35
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