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Why Atheists Keep Finding God (in everything) - Alex O’Connor (4K)

Alex O’Connor is a YouTuber, writer and a podcaster. Expect to learn what shifts happened in Alex’s thinking these past few years, why you actually would ever want to time travel, why so many people are moving away from atheism, why…

Chris WilliamsonhostAlex O’Connorguest
Nov 12, 20261h 56mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 3:00

    Should We Debate With Compassion?

    1. CW

      Brand new Modern Wisdom merch goes live this Friday. Look at this beautiful Doing the Thing angel. We've got our first ever death metal design sleeveless T-shirt and a hoodie, this awesome High Country Ranch thing that we've got, this snake design which I love, Wisdom Nation world tour, Wisdom coffee, and much more. Sign up at mwmerch.com now to be the first person to get access. [clicks tongue] We were talking about the arc from sometimes a sort of mean debate bro persona-

    2. AO

      Mm-hmm

    3. CW

      ... into something that's a little bit maybe softer, more empathetic, more understanding.

    4. AO

      Yeah.

    5. CW

      Where do you sort of come into land on, like, these are the facts and I should just say them in this way, versus I can still do that with a degree of like grace and compassion?

    6. AO

      I get a lot of flak for this, and I think it's because people enjoy seeing someone who has thought about a view, knows what they think and, and wants to defend it against, against critique. Um, especially when it's something that people consider important, like views on the existence of God or ethics or something like that. It's really important to people that there are people who are sort of strongly advocating for those positions. But I think that particularly when it comes to questions about God and questions about consciousness and foundational philosophy, um, it would be foolish to think that my confidence should approximate anything like, uh, a, a closeness to truth that warrants a kind of, um, forthright exposition, if you can-

    7. CW

      Like militant sort of fervor.

    8. AO

      Certainly militant. I mean, uh, there's not much for me to be militant about. You know, e- even when I was an atheist... I prefer to call myself an agnostic now because it's very difficult to claim that the universe is made out of consciousness and, and sound like there isn't something a bit weird going on.

    9. CW

      Mm.

    10. AO

      Um, but I used to think to myself like, you know, I, I'm not exactly celebrating the fact that, that people would become atheists because they're listening to me. I mean, I have always said that I'd love for Christianity to be true or-

    11. CW

      Mm

    12. AO

      ... you know, I'd love for, for a number of religious traditions to be true or just the idea that there is a God and an eternal life and this kind of... I think that would be great. You know, that would be awesome. I'd love for that to, to happen and I'm totally open to it. It's difficult to say that at the same time as when someone comes up and says, "Hey man, I listened to your argument and it made me think that, you know, there's no God" to go, you know, "Hurrah, brilliant, awesome," you know? It's one thing to show up to the pearly gates and say, you know, "Sorry, Father, you didn't give me enough evidence" as Bertrand Russell would have said. It's another thing to show up with like, you know, 2 million people behind you who you've also turned into atheists and be like, "Look, I can, I can explain."

    13. CW

      Mm.

    14. AO

      Um, so I'm not celebrating that fact, but what I do celebrate is the fact that most of the time that's representative of the fact that somebody has questioned something that they wouldn't otherwise have questioned.

    15. CW

      Mm.

    16. AO

      Right? 'Cause I, a lot of people speak to me and they say that they grew up in a religious community and they kind of didn't really have a, have a... It's not even that they didn't have the opportunity to think about this stuff. They just didn't have the impetus. No one had asked them questions about the relationship between God and the good or the transmission of scripture and whether it's accurate and this kind of stuff.

  2. 3:00 – 13:05

    Is Philosophy Bringing People Back to Religion?

    1. AO

      And so that I'm extremely grateful for. But just as many people come up to me who are religious and say, "You know, this is gonna sound really strange, but you really helped me in my faith" and I'm like, it gets less and less strange every time I hear it, you know? [chuckles]

    2. CW

      Why?

    3. AO

      Just because it happens, it happens so regularly now.

    4. CW

      What do you think it is that's, that's happening there that you have provided, you in your-

    5. AO

      [laughs]

    6. CW

      ... decade-long journey to try and f- pick holes in arguments for the existence of God have done such a bad job-

    7. AO

      Mm

    8. CW

      ... that you've managed to reinforce a theist's belief? Is that the suggestion?

    9. AO

      That's, that's hilarious. You know, there's, there's, there's, there's this guy who just converted to Catholicism. Total shock like in the sort of YouTube philosophy community. His name's Joe Schmid and he just suddenly came out and said he was a Catholic. And I think he made some posts about how he removed a few of his older like discussions and debates because he used to host debates between religious and atheists, uh, religious people and atheists, and he got sort of nervous that these would lead people into sin. So he like took some of them down.

    10. CW

      Mm.

    11. AO

      And it was a bit of a con- controversial move, but I can understand why he would do that if that's his conviction. But somebody tweeted in response, they were like, "Can you imagine if you were the Christian on that debate and you performed so badly that he's now taking it down because he's worried that people are gonna be led into sin?"

    12. CW

      And considered that that's you.

    13. AO

      Yeah, yeah.

    14. CW

      You're inverse that.

    15. AO

      So I think I'm kind of like a bit of a barrister, right? I'm like a barrister for, for different positions in some ways when... And that makes it sound flippant. Like I do actually care about the subject matter.

    16. CW

      Yeah.

    17. AO

      But I mean to say that even if I were to become a, a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu tomorrow-

    18. CW

      Mm-hmm

    19. AO

      ... and suddenly believed in God, I'd still have all of the same criticisms that I have today. It's not like I'm suddenly gonna think that arguments that are unsound are now sound.

    20. CW

      Mm.

    21. AO

      And I think a lot of people believe for reasons that are not robust. We all believe in things for reasons that are not robust. That's why if you had a debate with a flat Earther, for example, you might lose, 'cause this person's thought about it loads and loads and loads and if it turns out that actually really the reason you believe the Earth is a globe is because you were told so-

    22. CW

      Mm

    23. AO

      ... by like NASA and your teachers, that's actually a pretty bad reason to believe the Earth is a globe. Now that's-

    24. CW

      Even if it's true.

    25. AO

      Yeah, exactly right. Now don't get me wrong, right, it is true that the Earth... Well, it's not true that the Earth is a globe. It's an oblate spheroid, but you get the, the, the picture.

    26. CW

      I've seen that, um, LiDAR adjacent image floating around of just how not round the world is.

    27. AO

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    28. CW

      Like if you were to give it a roll, it would, it wouldn't be pretty.

    29. AO

      Yeah, there are lots of sort of trivial ways in which, uh, in which you can sound like you're one of these conspiracy theorists. The Earth is not a globe, 'cause it's actually like egg-shaped. I also am a geocentrist. I think that the Earth is the center of the universe because all motion is relative. And so you can measure it from anywhere and so you can actually have the Earth as your center of, of-

    30. CW

      I read a-

  3. 13:05 – 19:34

    Are We Becoming Kinder in Our Criticisms?

    1. AO

      recent.

    2. CW

      What do you make of the even more recent, at least as far as I can see, pivot away from a more militant sort of mean-spirited approach? 'Cause I, I've been friends with you for fucking hell, I think eight, eight years now. It's a long time.

    3. AO

      Something like that, yeah.

    4. CW

      It's a very long time.

    5. AO

      Yeah.

    6. CW

      And, um, you have been a, an interesting canary in the coalmine, kind of like a-

    7. AO

      [laughs]

    8. CW

      ... a, a weather vane of, of, of theological weather vane-

    9. AO

      Sure

    10. CW

      ... in some ways. I think a lot of people that are of my age and, and, and your age grew up with the sort of Four Horsemen, Four Horsemen adjacent, like, "Religion fucking sucks, man," and, like, "We're cool," and, like, "We're gonna see this thing," and, like, the sort of dunking... The proto-

    11. AO

      Hmm

    12. CW

      ... Ben Shapiro videos of, like, a Christopher Hitchens-

    13. AO

      Yeah

    14. CW

      ... up against someone, and it's, like, kind of terse, I think, and-

    15. AO

      Yeah

    16. CW

      ... and, and, and, um, prickly. And then you told me a story in Austin three years ago, uh, about Ayaan Hirsi Ali-

    17. AO

      Mm-hmm

    18. CW

      ... uh, explaining about how she had been suicidal, very upset, and, uh, as what... who would've been the fifth horseman-

    19. AO

      Yes, yes

    20. CW

      ... of the apocalypse.

    21. AO

      She was supposed to be there, yeah.

    22. CW

      But she was late or wasn't able to make it for some reason.

    23. AO

      Yeah, might've been the five pillars in that case, I think.

    24. CW

      Um, so someone that was very central to kind of the new atheist worldview for a long time-

    25. AO

      Yes

    26. CW

      ... sits on stage with Richard Dawkins, who is one of the people who did manage to make the appointment-

    27. AO

      [laughs]

    28. CW

      ... and tells this story. "I was very depressed for a long time, and I was, I was sort of despondent, and I'd lost all hope, and I was considering doing something pretty kinetic about it. And then I, I, I had some experiences and some realizations, and now I sort of believe."

    29. AO

      Mm-hmm.

    30. CW

      And g- this very emotional, emotive story about what it meant to her, and I'm pretty sure that you said something like after the applause of half of the room, the half-

  4. 19:34 – 27:54

    Did Religion Exist 150,000 Years Ago?

    1. CW

      If I was to say go back 150,000 years-

    2. AO

      Hmm

    3. CW

      ... do you think that-

    4. AO

      Well, you'd be in space, wouldn't you? You'd suddenly-

    5. CW

      As if we're in the same place. You have somehow managed to tether yourself-

    6. AO

      [laughs]

    7. CW

      ... as your time machine goes back.

    8. AO

      Yes.

    9. CW

      I imagine that there were lots of personifications and narrative explanations for why the sky was angry today.

    10. AO

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CW

      Right? The, the, the fact that there was lightning over the far side of the horizon or that the crops didn't get rain this ye- I guess we wouldn't have even had crops. Like, the... It was colder than usual-

    12. AO

      Mm

    13. CW

      ... over the last however long. What do you think is the likelihood that 150,000 years ago, early hunter-gatherers were experiencing or had some form of religious, proto-religious experience?

    14. AO

      I think it's highly possible, maybe probable, only because, like anthropologically, when we look at human societies, um, it's more difficult to do now because the world is so much more connected. But you know, like we typically observe some kind of religious impulse as a, as a universal-

    15. CW

      Convergent cultural evolution.

    16. AO

      Yeah, exactly right. And there are two explanations for this. One is that there is something which evolutionarily selects for this numinous connection to divinity and, and so therefore it evolves independently. Or there just is this-

    17. CW

      It's true

    18. AO

      ... divinity. It's true, right?

    19. CW

      It's an accurate representation.

    20. AO

      And that's, that's, that's always, that's always the problem with so much of these, these religious discussions is that the data can sometimes be predicted by both. Um, like I, I'm sort of looking at the problem of divine hiddenness, which is why if God exists, he's not obvious to people. And John Hick, a great theologian, writes that there are... God wants to keep a kind of epistemic distance from his creatures so that they have freedom to act without feeling like they're being sort of hovered over all the time. There's a lot to say about this, but he says something like... He says, you know, "The world must in some way be as if it were if there were no God." And I think, you know, great, fair enough. But [laughs] it, it seems like both theories now predict the data, which makes it a bit unhelpful. Um, but yeah, it's clear that there's like a religious impulse that's somewhat intrinsic to, to human beings. However, it might look a little bit different because I, I think it's very unfortunate that we use the word God with capital G and the word gods with like a little g-

    21. CW

      Hmm

    22. AO

      ... so interchangeably. So you might have heard atheists say things like, you know, "Oh yeah, okay, well I don't believe in your God, but you also don't believe in like Wotan and Thor and Zeus and these guys." Because these guys aren't a single unified, immaterial, creative deity who is responsible for the existence of the universe. These, these gods, small g gods, are like characters within the, the created order. They, they move around, they talk to each other, they communicate, they interact. They're like characters in a play.

    23. CW

      Hmm.

    24. AO

      The conception of God that is at the heart of the monotheistic traditions, and I would say also like Hinduism is sometimes called polytheistic, but there's one ultimate foundational reality called Brahman, and all of these gods are just like expressions of it.

    25. CW

      Hmm.

    26. AO

      Um, it's no more polytheistic than Christianity is because it has the Trinity. You know, these are expressions of, or persons of, of one unified God. Um, so to the extent that people were going around sort of seeing the world as enchanted, you know, the, the, the spirits in the forest and the, the, the, the god of thunder and the, and the, the sun god who they worshiped, um, that clearly points to some kind of supernatural instinct within human beings, that there's something sort of funny going on that's transcendent of our human experiences. But it's not the same thing as belief in this like singular wellspring from which everything comes, right?

    27. CW

      Yeah.

    28. AO

      These are two different, um, instincts. And I don't think we can really have a good idea of when the sort of monotheistic picture begins to develop. I mean, in philosophy, goes as far back as, as Aristotle, who... I mean, his conception of, of the foundational sort of actualizing principle of reality was this very impersonal creature who didn't care about human affairs, couldn't care about human affairs because it's this sort of, you know, super transcendent kind of thing. Um, but it's like it's this... It, it, I don't know. It sort of develops over time. So it kind of depends what you mean. I think that today when a religious mystic experiences unity with the divine... It's, it's very difficult to define mysticism as well, as the books will tell you. But one of the key sort of themes of mystical religious experience is some sense of unity-

    29. CW

      Hmm

    30. AO

      ... with God. Is some sense in which like the boundary between myself and God disappear. Meister Eckhart says, you know, "The same ground that is God's ground is also my ground." And um- There's a, there's a famous Sufi mystic, um, I'm, I'm blanking on his name, but he famously spins around and says, "Ana al-Haqq," "I am the truth." And al-Haqq is one of the names for God in the Quran, so it's extremely blasphemous. But he's saying he felt this connection, right? Um, it's difficult to feel that connection with like, particularly like the god of the green forest. You know what I mean? Or with like Wotan.

  5. 27:54 – 42:24

    Is Consciousness Impossible to Define?

    1. CW

      Is consciousness one of the biggest holes in the atheist worldview?

    2. AO

      [laughs] Um, it's one of the biggest holes in, I think, basically every worldview. I don't think anybody has a, has a super comfortable like home for consciousness with the rest of their thought, except maybe those philosophies which make it primary and foundational, which is typically associated with the Indian tradition. In Western philosophy, it's like this kind of really uncomfortable, strange facet of reality that doesn't neatly fit into anything else that we, that we like to talk about.

    3. CW

      Mm.

    4. AO

      Um, I don't think it matters whether you're an atheist or whether you're a theist, um, because a, a lot of believers in God also think that there is a material universe and somehow consciousness is this separate thing, which you've got like an immaterial soul which like interacts with your physical body. That's super problematic. For an atheist, you can also believe that like consciousness is immaterial, and you can believe in souls and minds just without believing in God, right?

    5. CW

      Mm.

    6. AO

      It's not really about belief in God and atheism and theism. The question for me is, is the foundational question of philosophy, I think, is consciousness, because everything comes through consciousness. Consciousness is the thing that you start with. You don't start with a table and a microphone and another person. You start with your experience of those things, and it's always, it's always mediated through experience. It's impossible to just directly interact with this thing we call the table. There's only how it looks, how it feels, how it sounds, how it tastes, if you want to give it a lick. Um, there's no other way to access it. Um, and the question, I suppose, is if we believe that there is a real thing out there, a thing in itself, as Kant would have said, um, but we can't access it directly, you know, where, where does that leave us? What is our actual knowledge of the universe? What is it based on, and what are we actually interacting with?

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm.

    8. AO

      You'll never... It, it, it sounds a bit weird to say, but you, you never interact, strictly speaking, with the table. You interact with how the table presents itself to you through consciousness, right? You get what I'm saying?

    9. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AO

      Um, like if you took away the way the table looked, if you were blind, you could still know what a table is, but you, you'd feel it and you'd listen to it. But if you took away the s- the sense of touch and then the sense of hearing- And then sense of smell and the sense of taste. What are you left with? How would you interact with this table? You literally would have no access to it, right?

    11. CW

      Mm.

    12. AO

      So we look through consciousness at everything else. And then everyone's like, "Okay, so we wanna understand consciousness. We wanna know what consciousness actually is, so we have to sort of look at consciousness." But there's no way to do that, 'cause consciousness is the thing with which you look. It's like trying to point a flashlight at the flashlight.

    13. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm.

    14. AO

      It's like trying to point at your own finger. It's not possible to do.

    15. CW

      Mm.

    16. AO

      And any kind of investigation into the nature of something firstly defines what it is, then compares it to things which it, which it is not, and then tries to sort of figure out, like, maybe where it came from or what its nature is or something like that. But consciousness evades all of these kinds of investigations, because you can't point at it. You also can't switch it off without sort of switching off the very mechanism by which you can do anything.

    17. CW

      Mm.

    18. AO

      Um, it's also impossible to define. I think it's literally impossible to define.

    19. CW

      Why?

    20. AO

      Because... Well, what is a definition? It's really interesting, this, right? If you think about a dictionary, it's entirely self-referential, right?

    21. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm.

    22. AO

      Every word is defined in terms of another word. So there, there's no, like, objective, like, basis-

    23. CW

      Root words

    24. AO

      ... from which it's all coming, right?

    25. CW

      Yeah.

    26. AO

      It's, it's all interrelated. Um, and so-

    27. CW

      [clears throat]

    28. AO

      ... the only way that can work then is when I define an object with words, you need to know what those words mean. And to define those words, you need to know what those words mean. And where does this all start? How do you start knowing what any words mean? Probably by experiencing the world, pointing at things and being told. So when you grow up, someone goes, "Can, table, light, person," right? And they also go, "Wood, metal, metal." And you, and you start figuring out what these things have in common and what they don't, and you start to realize, ah, that's what a cup is, that's what a, that's what a table is, that's what metal is, through experience, through your experience of the world. In the same way that you can talk about yellow. Uh, you can, you can tell me that a f- a, a English phone box is red, and we can both know what that means, but only if we've at some point experienced red.

    29. CW

      Mm.

    30. AO

      If you'd never experienced red, if you were blind, you'd have literally no idea what it meant, and you c- you literally couldn't define the word red. You couldn't do it. Um, so when it comes to defining consciousness, what do we do? Well, we wanna kind of point at consciousness. We wanna say, "Here's consciousness." Like, let's, let's point at consciousness and, and, and see what it is. But there's, there's no way to do that, 'cause consciousness is the thing through which you observe everything else in the world. And if you look at people's attempts to define consciousness, it's always super foggy and super vague. Like, the most famous definition is Thomas Nagel's from the '70s, where he says that, "If something is conscious, there is something it is like to be that thing." And you get what he means, yeah? There's something it's like to be you. There's something it's like to be probably a dog. But there's nothing it's like to be a rock, right? And that's what consciousness is. Fair enough, but that's not really a very functional, like, definition. Something it is like to be. Like, that's not very exhaustive. We don't know quite what that means-

  6. 42:24 – 50:12

    Will Science Ever Answer These Questions?

    1. CW

      Are there any other areas that you think science will never be able to explain?

    2. AO

      I'm not sure. Um-

    3. CW

      Wondering whether the category of consciousness is unique in itself?

    4. AO

      I think it, I think it really is. I think consciousness is unlike anything else in the universe, and it, it... because it's not just another thing in the universe, right? It's not like you've got the table and the chair, and you've got your ear, and you've got your hand, and then you've got consciousness. It's like all of the other stuff is, is seen through consciousness. So consciousness is not just like... There's, it... That's why it sounds weird to people. It's like, "Oh, you s- so you're telling me that science can explain this and explain that and explain that, but it won't explain this one thing?" It's like it's not just this one other thing that sits in the universe like everything else. It is the tool with which you are empirically investigating the world around you. It's like you've got this, this brilliant, like, tool. You've got like a, a wrench that just, like, helps you fix every single thing in the world. Every... There's nothing in the world that can't be fixed by this brilliant wrench that you've created.

    5. CW

      Mm.

    6. AO

      And then your wrench breaks, and you think, "Well, why don't we just fix the wrench with the wrench?" Can't do it. It's the tool with which you are investigating the rest of the world, and that's what consciousness is.

    7. CW

      Mm.

    8. AO

      It's the thing with which... Turn off consciousness and try and do science. See how far you get. Try to investigate the world and run experiments and write things down and turn them into mathematical syllogisms without some kind of... w- with- whilst being an unconscious sort of agent. It, it's, it's not something that you would, you would be able to do.

    9. CW

      Does that mean studying consciousness has made atheism harder to defend?

    10. AO

      I think it's made materialism harder to defend.

    11. CW

      Can you explain?

    12. AO

      'Cause again, you can believe that consciousness is completely inexplicable. You can believe that consciousness is foundational. You can believe that consciousness is in tiny atoms. You could believe that consciousness is a complete illusion. None of that necessarily has any connection to whether or not you believe in God. Like, you don't need to believe in God to believe that the mind is immaterial.

    13. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    14. AO

      Um, the- these two things aren't connected. But yeah, like materialism, which often goes alongside atheism, is, I think, pretty impossible to defend as a theory of the world. I mean, what is materialism? What does that actually mean? Well, the, the universe is made out of matter. Okay. What's matter? What is that? Like atoms and stuff, right? Great. Okay, what's an atom? And this, this is a, this is an old thought. Like, Bertrand Russell had this problem. He said, "Okay, well, what is an atom?" Well, it's made out of protons and electrons. Okay, what's an electron? It's a fundamentally... fundamental negative, negatively charged particle. Okay, what does, what does that mean? It me- well, it means that if you bring it into contact with another negative particle, they'll repel each other, you know? Okay, that's what it does. But what is it? What's the substance? What's the actual nature of the thing that we're, we're interacting with? And that's a question which science can't answer because it's a descriptive enterprise, and that's not an insult to science. Of course, it can't answer that question. It tells you how things behave. It tells you what things do. It doesn't tell you what they are. It doesn't give you a substantial understanding of anything, um, any more than the rules of chess can give you a substantial understanding of what a chess piece is made out of. You know what I mean? It tells you how things behave in the universe. Objects don't move because of Newton's laws of motion. Newton's laws of motion describe how they move when they're put in motion. You know what I mean? And so, like, I think that trying to explain the nature of fundamental reality, what it is, with science, which is a... which is fundamentally an enterprise of describing how things behave, it's like behavioralism about atoms-

    15. CW

      Mm

    16. AO

      ... um, is a mistake in the same way that if a carpenter was trying to work out what to build a, a little, you know, king piece out of, that they studied the rules of chess to find out. It's like a, a totally different enterprise. I don't think, I don't think that, that, that they can, they can do that. So, okay, so, so then what actually is the foundational stuff of reality? You know? Like, maybe the only answer is, like, we don't know. You know?

    17. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm.

    18. AO

      There's no way to access that. Like, I'm, I'm not trying to say that the only way to solve this problem is to have some crazy views about consciousness. I'm just trying to say that science will not tell you what the foundational nature, the substance of reality is, and most scientists, by the way, just agree with this. They're like, "Yeah, but, you know, why should it? You know, there only is what it does. That's, that's all there is." I think that's a bit weird, but, you know, maybe it's true. Um-

    19. CW

      There only is what it does.

    20. AO

      Exactly, because then it's like, well, what is the thing that's doing the thing? You know, it's like, what, what are you even talking about? And that's why Carlo Rovelli has probably the best defense of this, um, in, in recent publications. Like, he just put out a book that I think defends this view quite well. But, um, the point is that when someone says, "I'm a materialist," I wanna know what they mean. It seems like they're making a claim about what the universe is made out of, not just how it behaves, not just what it does, but what it actually is. Like, what's its substance? Um, and yet when you break it down, it's, like, literally impossible to define.

    21. CW

      Mm.

    22. AO

      So maybe by a materialist, they really mean something like, "Well, I just don't believe that there's anything other than that which can be described by science," and that's fine. But then, then the view just sounds really weird, 'cause you're saying that the only thing that exists is behavior, but there's no thing doing the behaving.

    23. CW

      Mm.

    24. AO

      There's gotta be some substance. So for me, I find it kind of interesting that at the foundation of reality, literally, you don't have a ground to stand on. Like, the substance of reality is completely impenetrable to science, and it's not something I think it will ever be able to answer. And again, I wanna stress this. Scientists broadly agree with this. This isn't some controversial, weird, like, critique of science. This is just a, a defining of the boundaries. It's just like it's not an insult to the rules of chess to say that they'll never explain music theory, you know?

    25. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AO

      It's not an insult to the method of science to say that it will never tell you about the substance of what's appearing.

    27. CW

      I think the difference is that science hoped to be able to describe everything.

    28. AO

      Yeah, but, but-

    29. CW

      That everything should be able to be described-

    30. AO

      That was always foolish

  7. 50:12 – 53:52

    Is Consciousness Evidence of God?

    1. CW

      If the universe is fundamentally experience-

    2. AO

      Mm-hmm

    3. CW

      ... fundamentally experiential-

    4. AO

      Mm-hmm

    5. CW

      ... how different is that from saying it's God?

    6. AO

      Depends, um, on how you, how you cash it out, as philosophers like to say.

    7. CW

      Well-

    8. AO

      So-

    9. CW

      ... previously, you mentioned a lot of people have these numinous experiences.

    10. AO

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CW

      This thing.

    12. AO

      Yeah.

    13. CW

      And then this thing is critiqued and assessed using a bunch of tools, many of which are either squarely in the purview of or tangential to science.

    14. AO

      Mm-hmm.

    15. CW

      And if experience is what's being criticized, but you have said that the ability to describe and assess our experiential, uh, interpretation of the world is fundamentally outside of the purview of science-

    16. AO

      Mm-hmm

    17. CW

      ... does that not make the God experience assessment thing just kind of-

    18. AO

      Yeah. It-

    19. CW

      Pointless?

    20. AO

      I think... This is why I think that the mystical traditions and the experiential traditions have this element of unity. It's not like communication. It's not like you have this experience where you feel like you're totally sort of everything's normal and you're just, like, chatting to God. You feel this sense in which you are, like, you are, like, connected-

    21. CW

      Mm

    22. AO

      ... to this divinity. You are, like, some kind of expression of this divinity. Um, and I think that if you believe that what we call God is best described as, like, the foundational consciousness of, of the universe, then you're kind of an expression of that consciousness. This is, this is where Indian traditions better capture this kind of thought. Like, they... Their view of Brahman, which is their word for ultimate reality, um, which sometimes is thought of as, like, equivalent to the word God, but it's not quite. Like, they, they don't think of it as, like, this being who exists and creates the universe with agency and... They just think that Brahman is just the big ocean in which we're all swimming, and they use these kinds of, these kinds of, uh, analogies all the time. They say that what you as what yourself is, is like a whirlpool in some water. It's like you can point at it. It's a distinct thing. It's, it's, it's doing something, but it's just an expression of this big ocean. It's not separable from the ocean.

    23. CW

      Right.

    24. AO

      You can't, like, pick it up out of the ocean and, like, move it somewhere else, right? It's one way in which this ocean is expressing itself. So for, for idealists and panpsychists and people who believe that the universe is fundamentally conscious, they typically think of everything that exists in the world as, like, a manifestation of consciousness.

    25. CW

      Mm.

    26. AO

      And so the religious experience on their interpretation would be, like, a realization of this, a recognition of this. You know when people take psychedelic drugs and they feel like they're sort of one with nature?

    27. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    28. AO

      They feel this connection. They start to feel as though, like... I mean, what does that mean, I'm one with everything? What on earth can that possibly mean? You know, I'm the same thing as that tree over there. That's absolutely ridiculous, unless you consider it on the level of, like, you know, we are both expressions of the same thing.

    29. CW

      Mm.

    30. AO

      You know, in the same way that all of the leaves of the tree might be able to look at each other and go, "Oh, look, we're, we're all one great big organism," you know? Um, I think that's kind of what's being driven at. So in a religious context, it would be like we are expressions of, of the foundational consciousness, and, and the, the primary thinker in the Western tradition for this is Spinoza. A lot of people say, "I believe in Spinoza's God," right? And what they mean by that is, "I'm an atheist, and I love science," right? They, they... P- people have this idea that what Spinoza did was just sort of take this idea of God and drag it down to nature, and you say, "I just think nature is God."

  8. 53:52 – 1:00:17

    What Really Happens When You Meditate?

    1. AO

      move.

    2. CW

      Question.

    3. AO

      Yeah.

    4. CW

      You, not necessarily famously, but at least publicly, have, uh, a strained relationship with meditation.

    5. AO

      Yeah. [chuckles]

    6. CW

      Uh, I think someone tried to get you to do it at some point. You had a-

    7. AO

      Yeah, I've had conversations about this and it's just-

    8. CW

      ... relatively unenjoyable experience.

    9. AO

      I've never, I've never really enjoyed meditation.

    10. CW

      So what do you think is happening or what is it about very, very deeply experienced meditators where they all seem to converge on some sort of non-dual awareness? Some would call it an awakening experience. Some would say enlightenment. Some would say it's sort of an awareness of the, the, the boundary of, uh, duality is kind of dissolved between them and the world around them. As you were talking about the tree thing, it sort of got me thinking-

    11. AO

      Mm

    12. CW

      ... about that.

    13. AO

      Mm-hmm.

    14. CW

      You know, we were talking about convergent cultural evolution of lots of different cultures-

    15. AO

      Mm

    16. CW

      ... sort of arriving at this. It seems like the experience of some sort of non-dual enlightenment moment-

    17. AO

      Yeah

    18. CW

      ... is also relatively very rare, but evenly distributed-

    19. AO

      Mm-hmm

    20. CW

      ... across people from different cultures in different times using different processes and different techniques. Think you've, uh, considered what's going on there?

    21. AO

      I mean, it seems to me that they're, they're, they're probably apprehending a kind of truth, which I think what meditation probably does for people is it allows them to kind of step outside of their concepts. This is what people celebrate psychedelics for as well. It's like, it's not like if you take a psychedelic drug and the world starts going all funky, sometimes the feeling is not so much everything's really weird. It's rather, everything's always been like this, and I'm only now just noticing, right? And the way that that works is it, is it gets rid of your, kind of, your concepts and your, your... the way in which you perceive the world. I think Joe Rogan talked about this idea of, like, a... or someone on his show talked about, like, a, a sled going down the, going down the, the ice or the, or the snow. He was like, "You know, you've been riding on this sled that just goes down the, goes down the hill. And what psychedelics do is, is they get rid of the, they get rid of the imprint in the sand, and now you can just sort of freely zip around." It's like you get rid of your concepts and you can just see the world for what it is or for how it presents itself to you, like, naively. Um, and I imagine that meditators manage to kind of do the same thing. So the biggest thing that gets in the way of, like, understanding the oneness of everything and the, the foundational nature of consciousness and all this kind of stuff, like, the, all the weird and wacky stuff, the thing that gets in the way of that is, is, like, our, our concepts. It's the way we like to box things in. It's the fact that when I see the table, I'm convinced that I'm just seeing the table, that, like, my eyes are, like, these transparent windows-

    22. CW

      Mm

    23. AO

      ... into the world, that I'm, that I'm literally just experiencing the world as it is. And, like, for me, philosophically, I need to remind myself I am not experiencing the world as it is. I'm experiencing it from a perspective. It's being translated, you know, by my brain into a way that I can understand. I... like, this table appears to me to be, like, one color, even though there are loads of different colors bouncing off. My brain is translating. We know that our brain does that. Have you ever seen these optical illusions, like the Rubik's Cube illusion and stuff like that, where these two things are the same color? Can you believe it? The reason they work is because your brain is hardwired to, like, tell you a story about reality.

    24. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    25. AO

      This square is actually this color, but you perceive it as a different color because that's what helps you to make sense of reality, right?

    26. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    27. AO

      Those kinds of concepts mean that when we look at objects, we're not really looking at the nature of reality. We're looking at how it presents itself to us. If we can somehow switch those off, then we start to see it for, for sort of what it really is.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. AO

      You're like the, you're like the painter who when you see the blue sky, you actually realize that, oh, there's a bit of green and a bit of purple. Actually, there's a bit of white, you know? Where the, where the sun reflects off the water, it's actually pure white and, and there's a bit of orange and, you know, this kind of stuff, right? And painters are masters at this. That's why it's so difficult to paint because, like, when I look at a table, I think it's brown. But dude, if you look at the colors on this table, there's blues and there's, there's, there's white somewhere in the middle and stuff.

    30. CW

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

  9. 1:00:17 – 1:13:47

    How Our Senses Construct Reality

    1. AO

      experience.

    2. CW

      Let's say that I could give you, uh, the ethics board pass to be able to do this.

    3. AO

      Mm-hmm.

    4. CW

      Wouldn't it be a cool kind of experiment to run to maybe have a little microcosm of, uh, humans... You... What was that one? Was it Mother? Was that the movie where a baby was raised by a robot?

    5. AO

      Hmm.

    6. CW

      This, uh, child was raised and raised and raised and raised and raised and didn't realize that there was maybe other people out there and, um, but learned to speak, but had none of the sort of cultural presuppositions-

    7. AO

      Yeah, sure

    8. CW

      ... about the world. How, uh, like, fascinating it would be, and completely unethical, to Create a little community, little human breeding colony thing-

    9. AO

      Mm-hmm

    10. CW

      ... um, where you were able from birth to kind of prescribe a, uh, the, the most de-patterned perspective possible.

    11. AO

      Yeah.

    12. CW

      Right? Because no human, even going back to protohumans, even going back to primates, everyone has been influenced by-

    13. AO

      Mm-hmm

    14. CW

      ... that that came before and the lessons and the, you know, sort of even the genetic, uh, i-imbuing of this, some of the instinctual things-

    15. AO

      Mm

    16. CW

      ... that you do. But I don't know, maybe through some combination of genetic engineering and-

    17. AO

      Well, you might like this. I mean, some people who are born blind, like there, there, there are curable kinds of blindness. There are lots of different ways in which you can be blind, and some of them are, are at least partly curable. And so imagine you're born blind, you've never seen anything, but you've experienced the world through touch and sound and stuff, and so you've... You know what it is. You know what a cube is, and you know what a sphere is, for example. And imagine that I then, like, fix your eyesight, right? And suddenly you can see for the first time. And in front of you is a cube and a sphere, and you know what those objects are from, from your touch of them, but you've never experienced the sight before. Do you suspect that if I turned on your eyesight and you looked at them, you'd be able to tell which is which?

    18. CW

      I would suspect so.

    19. AO

      So funnily enough, it seems like people actually can't.

    20. CW

      Mm.

    21. AO

      Which is shocking, right? I mean, that's just shocking. How, what would you... Like it, one-

    22. CW

      Being able to feel something doesn't translate into being able-

    23. AO

      One of them's, one of them's pointy. One of them's smoo- yeah, but you don't know what that means. You, you do- you don't-

    24. CW

      Pointy. What is pointy? What is smooth?

    25. AO

      You've never, like, connected those two experiences-

    26. CW

      Mm

    27. AO

      ... in your mind. And, and I think that, like, experiments like that, which, you know, um, it, it like really go to show the extent to which our, our understanding of the world is just the way that our different senses sort of interact with each other.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. AO

      You know? Like we, we just... We only have our senses. We only have our experience. And by the way, like, a lot of people call themselves empiricists, which is a very sort of science-y sounding, like, you know, rational-minded approach, which is like, "Oh, I only believe in what I can observe and what I can test." And I'm like, "Yeah, me too, actually." Like, we're, we're kind of con- it's like a bit of a horseshoe where the empiricist and the, the idealist or the, or the, the consciousness first person are saying the same thing, which is like all of your knowledge comes through experience. All of it.

    30. CW

      Mm-hmm.

  10. 1:13:47 – 1:22:05

    What Lies at the Foundation of Reality?

    1. AO

      if you go looking for... And, and again, I'm just representing this for you because I think it's fun, but, like, if you're someone who thinks that the universe is made out of consciousness and, like, electrons are, like, you know, conscious or something weird is going on there, like, yeah, it's not gonna manifest itself at the level of a, of a pop filter for a, for a microphone. But what this, the defender of this view would say is like, "Yeah, but just zoom in for a second," and even the scientist will tell you that if you zoom in far enough, it's like, it's crazy what's going on down there. Um, and, and physicists will say... Uh, but bear in mind, like, of course, I'm not, I'm not saying that anything I've said here should convince you that the universe is made out of consciousness. I actually kind of haven't made that argument. I've just explained why I think science has its limits and, and some of the, I guess, implications of a conscious foundation for the universe. I haven't really made the argument. But for people who think that it just sounds stupid on the surface of it, I understand that. I thought that as well. Um, but just bear in mind that nobody knows what's going on down at the foundations of reality, and some of the ideas that you hear are absolutely mental, but some of them are just, like, more widely accepted. Like, if you go into a physics seminar and ask world-leading experts, "What do you think an electron is?" One of them will say, "I think an electron is a cloud of mathematical probability, which when you observe it, collapses into a definite position." And everyone goes, "Cool." It's the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. As I like to say, you can't spell Copenhagen interpretation without cope. Another physicist might say, "Okay, um, I think that when an electron has to make a decision, uh, when an electron has to make a decision, it kind of does both and, like, a new branch of reality is created such that every single time a quantum decision gets made, an entirely new universe is created, and we live in... And trillions and trillions of new realities are created every single second." This is the Everettian Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. And everyone goes, "Yeah, cool. That's really interesting. Yeah, let's look into that." And then somebody comes along and says, "I think that this completely mysterious quality of consciousness that we cannot explain, try as we may, as emerging from foundational reality, which is not itself conscious, points to the fact that maybe there's some rudimentary level, uh, rudimentary amount or level of consciousness at the foundations of reality." And everyone goes, "That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." You know what I mean? It seems, like, a bit unfair to the, to the, at least prima facie, to the, to the consciousness foundational position. Mm. Because people will say, "Oh, yeah, Alex, okay, like, all very interesting, or maybe not very interesting, but dude, like, consciousness clearly just, like, emerges, you know? Just like, you just put the brain together. The brain is a really complex organ, and if you put dead stuff together in the right order with the right complexity, it just produces thought, right? Just emerges, right?" They say it's sort of like how zeros and ones create an image on a computer screen, yeah? Um, or how no a- individual atom is hot, but if you put them all together, you get this emergent temperature called he- uh, thing called heat, right? Except, like, [laughs] there are a few problems with that. One is just, just instinctively, right, people think that if you put matter together in the right order with the right complexity, it will just produce thoughts, right? That's what, that's what a lot of people think. That's what the materialist believes. Okay, imagine I were to tell you, Chris, that I, right now, I'm gonna think some thoughts, and I'm gonna think really hard, and I'm gonna think really complex thoughts in the right order and in the right way, and I'm gonna produce some matter just by thinking. I'm just gonna produce a, a chair or even, like, a single sort of molecule of water. I'm just gonna literally produce it out of nowhere by thinking the right thoughts in the right way. You'd think I'd gone crazy, and you wouldn't just say, "Well, that's really interesting. How are you gonna do that?" You'd say, "That doesn't make sense. You're talking about two different kinds of thing." Mm. You can't produce matter by organizing your thoughts in a complex fashion, right? Because there's th- this impenetrable division between the thought stuff and the physical stuff. Mm. And they might interact somehow, but you can't produce one out of the other. Okay, but when you flip it over, suddenly this is just, like, what everyone assumes about the nature of consciousness. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you put, you put matter together, and you just, you get thoughts. How? Why? Why on earth would that happen? I've, I've compared it before to, like... I mean, we're talking about two different kinds of things. It'd be like organizing tangerines in the right way and somehow producing the concept of divorce, you know? Or, like, purple. Mm. It, it just doesn't make sense. And some people have said, "Oh, yeah, but, like, if you organize the tangerines to spell the word divorce, yeah, then..." It's like, yeah, okay, only insofar as you then look at it and, and... So this is the other thing about emergence, is that people give examples. What about the zeros and ones becoming an image on a screen? What about the temperature thing? And what people always miss about this is that every single example of emergence they ever give is something which emerges in conscious experience every single time. It's like, doesn't matter what example you're given. Firstly, notice that when someone says consciousness is emergent, they never tell you how it works. They never even try to tell you how it works. They don't know how it works. Of course they don't. They just give you examples. They just say, "Oh, it emerges like this or like that." And every single example that they give, every single one of them, is an example of something emerging in consciousness. So take the temperature thing. Is an individual atom hot? Depends on what you mean by temperature, right? Because for a physicist, temperature is just the average vibrational sort of velocity of, of atoms, right? That's what temperature is made out of. An individual atom can have that. So an individual atom has this thing called temperature, and so does lots of atoms put together. No problem. The thing they're interested in is no, no, no, because when you put them together, there's, there's this extra new thing that comes about alongside just the vibrational stuff that you can predict with science. There's this like... Well, there's this extra... What's the extra thing? What's this thing called temperature, called heat? What is it? It's when you touch it and it goes, "Ow!" You know, it's when you get near it and you can feel the temp. That's the thing which emerges, and guess what? That's an experience. That's a kind of conscious experience, right? Same thing with the computer and, and the image on the screen. The zeros and ones, really like transistors sort of on and off, um, they send electrical signals down cables, and they connect to a monitor, and the monitor lights up little LEDs, which causes electromagnetic waves to go out into the air and it, and to touch your eye and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, cool. That's all just scientific. You can describe what's going on there. But what's the thing that you're interested in that emerges? Well, it emerges as like a picture of a daisy. Yeah, as long as you're looking at the screen. If there's no one looking at the screen, all there is is just electromagnetic radiation traveling through the air. There's no yellowness, like, in the universe. There's yellowness insofar as your brain translates electromagnetic radiation into yellowness. You know what I mean? So, like, zeros and ones and transistors on a computer, all they actually produce is just more scientific, scientifically measurable stuff, that is light waves and photons. The thing that's interesting is how they sort of emerge. It's how... emerge as like a, an image, but an image is something that your eyes see. So in other words, it's like consciousness emerges just like X, Y, and Z, but all the examples of X, Y, and Z are just like consciousness emerging. They're saying, "Oh, consciousness emerges just like all these other conscious experiences that emerge." You haven't told me anything. You've just brute, like, sort of forced this view that consciousness emerges.

    2. CW

      Yeah.

    3. AO

      And because every example of emergence ever given is an example that emerges in consciousness, you're tell- you're essentially implying that the only thing in the universe which emerges is consciousness. And I just, I just don't think that's true.

    4. CW

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  11. 1:22:05 – 1:26:42

    How Are Consciousness and Religion Connected?

    1. CW

      What's the connection between consciousness and religion?

    2. AO

      Well, for some people, they, they sort of use consciousness as an argument for the idea that there must be some kind of mind at the foundation of reality, right? Because i- if, if what I'm saying is true about emergence, that... And by the way, people distinguish between strong and weak emergence. So if anyone's listening and is like, "Oh, but doesn't like a, doesn't like a family emerge out of its, like, members, or doesn't like an ecosystem emerge out of its, like, individual organisms?" Yes, but in a predictable way, in that if I know how all of those organisms are behaving, then I can predict at the larger scale how this, what you're calling weakly emergent thing called an ecosystem would, would behave. The thing about consciousness is I could, I could sort of describe all of the brain activity and still be completely at a loss and, and never, like, expect or predict that it would come along with experience. Um, so people say if, if this is right, if consciousness cannot be emergent, but we know consciousness exists because we're having it right now, that means that somehow, like, consciousness must be, like, at the foundation of stuff. And there are a few ways of thinking about that. A panpsychist says, "Okay, great. That means atoms are conscious." It's a bit weird in my view. I don't really think that that's, that's accurate. Others say, "Oh, well, maybe like, you know, we sort of exist in one great big mind." This is idealism, um, and kind of the view that Spinoza had as well. Um, but yeah, a traditional monotheist would just say, "No, no, no. What, what's really going on there is there's like a foundational conscious cause of consciousness," that there is a material world that exists, and there's this thing called consciousness, which you can't explain as just emergent from matter. That doesn't make any sense. Instead, they kind of imagine that matter is doing its thing, and then it's sort of given this animation by a conscious agent. So there's this God, there's this conscious mind that kind of breathes life into some of the material universe. So humans are conscious and animals are conscious, but tables are not, right?

    3. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AO

      Either way, the, the argument typically says something about the fact that you can't just get consciousness from matter. It's gotta come from somewhere. So it can only come from consciousness being present in the really small stuff, consciousness being like the totality of everything we exist in, or there being some kind of consciousness which is, like, in control of the universe and can kind of like plop it in here and there-

    5. CW

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    6. AO

      ... where, where it feels like it.

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. AO

      And that's kind of the monotheistic sh- like view, and I think that that's not super parsimonious. Like, there's this God who kind of makes some things conscious and other things not, and there's a material world, and the consciousness interacts with the material. Yeah, so it, they're kind of messy.

    9. CW

      Mm.

    10. AO

      I prefer the view that, if anything, this view points to the, to the view that there is kind of one great big mind and everything exists in consciousness somehow, um, which sounds really weird and it's difficult to put into words and you s- and you start to get really sympathetic with, with the, with some of the philosophical traditions that always speak in analogies, and they're always talking about waves and whirlpools and stuff, which is, like, really annoying if you're, like, an analytic philosopher and you wanna know what's really going on. But y- I, I start to get a bit more, um- ... sympathetic to that because it's, it's difficult to, to quite put into words. Um, but I don't think... I, I think you, you don't need to account for the cake in terms of the crumbs. You can account for the crumbs in terms of the cake as well.

    11. CW

      Mm.

    12. AO

      Uh, and I think with consciousness, it's probably the latter. I prefer to think that if this view has any legs, as it were, um, it would, it would be a view pointing to something called idealism. That there's kind of a, a great big mental substance, and we are all, like, expressions of it. And that what we call the physical world is actually kind of an expression of mental stuff, and that extension and weight and space and all this kind of stuff, and distance and, and whatnot, it's not, it's not like... It's not real. It's kind of an appearance.

    13. CW

      Mm.

    14. AO

      And the best way to understand what that means is to think about a dream and how, if you have a dream... Imagine this is a dream right now, right? You, you wake up in five minutes, and you remember that you were in a room, and there was another person, and there was a table, and there was distance, and there was... I might say, like, "Okay, so how big was the room?" You say, "Well, in my dream, the room was, it was, it was pretty big. It was pretty, pretty, pretty wide." And it's like, "Yeah, but how big was it actually?" Like, in, in the substance of, of, like, real, you know, reality, how big was the room? And, and you kind of realize that becomes a meaningless question because it was all existing inside of your mind.

    15. CW

      Mm.

    16. AO

      There was no distance. It was kind of an appearance. It was, it was something whi- which existed inside of a mind. And so idealists, um, sort of view the world as a bit like that. They see all of it as, like, an expression of a, of a great big mind. Which sounds super wacky, but no more wacky than the idea that there's some, like, omnipotent creative deity who, like, goes zap and creates the universe, right?

    17. CW

      Mm.

    18. AO

      Like, that, that actually sounds a bit more

  12. 1:26:42 – 1:31:36

    What Is Prayer Actually For?

    1. AO

      weird to me.

    2. CW

      Speaking of that, I came across a tweet recently that I wanted to get your reaction to. So Spencer Greenberg asked a question for you, "What's the most useful non-obvious thing that you have AI agents do for you?" And Reborn The Hunter replied and said, "Pray for my immortal soul. I have 75 intercessory agents pleading with God to spare me from eternal damnation at a rate of around about 500 Our Fathers per minute. Eventually, a pope will declare them unsold, retroactively validating their prayers, aiming to spend 60 years in purgatory tops." What do you reckon?

    3. AO

      [laughs] Yeah. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I mean, it's one way to hedge your bets, right? Um-

    4. CW

      Pascal's Agent Wager.

    5. AO

      [laughs] Pascal's... Yeah. I think, I think that's, that's funny. But the, the problem is, of course, that he's not serious, right? But I, I like to, to kill the frog, as it were, and to try and find out why something is funny, right? Like, why is that funny? Because it's so obviously ridiculous. And there are two things we can learn from that. One is that the concept of prayer is a bit weird, and second, that most people actually don't think that AI is or can be conscious, right? Um, but I think the thing about prayer is interesting, right? Because a lot of atheists, like, critique religion in this way, which is to say, kind of, what's the point in prayer? Why do people pray? You know, if you, if you pray and say, like, "Oh, you know, please, Father, look after my friend who's in the hospital," it's like, okay, do you think he wasn't gonna do that, like, already? And if he was gonna do that already, then there's no point. And if he's not gonna do that already, then he must have some reason to, and you don't know better than God. So who are you to change his mind? Like, do you think you're gonna pray and he's gonna go like, "Oh, yeah, Johnny in the hosp- Man, I nearly forgot. Thank you." Right? It seems extremely weird. Like, why would you ask, like, the omniscient creator of the universe to do something? You know what I mean? Um, but of course, like, you know, people aren't stupid, okay? So if, if, if it's obviously stupid, then there must be something else going on. So what's actually going on when you pray? Well, those kinds of prayers at least, I kinda suspect they're not for the person being prayed for. They're for you, right? Like, prayer is an opportunity to align yourself with the will of God. Um, and it doesn't matter what your views about fundamental reality are here. Like, if you believe that there's some kind of foundational agential being, foundational will, or, like, a god who creates the universe with a purpose, um, you're gonna be constantly straying from that purpose. You know, you're not gonna care about other people. You're gonna walk past a homeless person on a street without looking twice. But if you say a prayer for them, you know, "Lord, please, please protect them," what you're really doing is you're, like, aligning your own will. You're reminding yourself that that's something you should care about.

    6. CW

      So it would be less likely for people to be doing prayers to say, "I really hope that Alex O'Connor trips over today."

    7. AO

      Yeah.

    8. CW

      But it's, like, doing mean things.

    9. AO

      Yeah. I mean, you... 'Cause you could pray for that, right? People, people do pray for that kind of stuff. They, they probably pray all the time for stuff that actually, you know, uh, you know, "Please, Lord, let me, let me get the new iPhone, like, before anyone else." You know? You know. And I, I was stood in the queue for the Apple Store for the iPhone 5 doing that.

    10. CW

      Right.

    11. AO

      I was praying, you know. Um, which obviously God isn't gonna answer those, answer those prayers. And in fact, you know, uh, people sometimes forget this, but Jesus prays in the Gospels, and God, like, says no. [laughs] He's in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he says, you know, "Lord, take this cup from me." He's just about to be crucified, and it's, it's, it's referred to as the agony in the garden. It's a, it's a huge motif in religious art, Jesus weeping in the, in the garden, being like, "Please, like, like, don't make me, don't make me do this," is actually, like, "Can you take this away from me?" But then he says, "But your will, not mine." So it's like a prayer where he's sort of recognizing that he doesn't wanna do it, but saying, "But if this is your will, then I'm gonna align my desire so that actually, yeah, I'm gonna do that."

    12. CW

      Mm.

    13. AO

      So he prays for something, and God says no. But it's still a very important moment where Jesus is clearly, like, you know, just coming to terms with what's going on, right? And I feel like that's what prayer kind of does for people. Um, it's the same reason why people pray. I mean, when you pray before eating dinner, when you say grace, like, what are you actually doing, you know? You're not like, "Who's that for?" It's just for you, you know? It's, it's just gratitude. That's why I'm a big fan of a secular grace. I love the idea of before you're about to eat some food, just take a minute and just be grateful for the fact that you are where you are. You know, people call it mindfulness, right? It's the same kind of thing that's going on. Um, you can direct it to God. You can not. Doesn't really matter. But it's not for God. You're not giving anything. You can't give anything to God. God is an infinite substance. You can't add anything to God, and you can't upset God by doing something that he doesn't like, so it can't be for him. And if you pray for somebody else and God was gonna do what he was gonna do anyway, then it can't be for them either. So it has to just be for you. Which is why when [chuckles] this guy's like, "You know, I've got, got 50 AI agents praying for me," it's like, well, maybe if the AI con- you know, bots become conscious, um, then that prayer will be good for them.

    14. CW

      Hmm.

    15. AO

      Um, but I'm not sure it'll do very much for, for that guy's

  13. 1:31:36 – 1:42:37

    Is Genetically Engineering Traits Unethical?

    1. AO

      salvation.

    2. CW

      All right, I wanna see how philosophically consistent you are, so I've got some-

    3. AO

      Okay [chuckles]

    4. CW

      ... got some questions to get your opinion on here. If someone could genetically engineer their child to be more attractive, intelligent, and emotionally stable-

    5. AO

      Hmm

    6. CW

      ... is refusing to do so morally different from refusing them a good education?

    7. AO

      Hmm. [chuckles] Um, uh, maybe, right? Maybe it is. But I think most people at least want to live in a, in a culture where education is valued and aesthetics are not. But then I think that the basis of that intuition is probably the fact that people are aware that you are sort of in control of your education in a way that you're not in control of your looks. So if you got a new haircut, I might say to you, "Wow, your, your hair looks really nice. Like well done." I'd like congratulate you on it. But if you just had like, you know, a funny shaped nose or something, I, I wouldn't like hold it against you or hold it for you in the same way. You know what I mean? Because it-- we've got this intuition that you can control it. Uh, and so maybe if we really sort of... If we normal- normalize the idea that you really can like, you know, custom build-

    8. CW

      Mm-hmm

    9. AO

      ... how someone looks, then it does become something that you're kind of in, in control of, and, and you should be given the best-

    10. CW

      I wonder whether being overweight is going to be seen as more of a comment on who you are when GLPs make the process of losing weight more readily accessible.

    11. AO

      Yeah, maybe. I mean, it, it, it might well. But I, I, I... I mean, I share all of the fears that this is kind of in an ineffable and indescribable way the, the, you know, the first step on the road to hell. Um, it ju-

    12. CW

      GLPs are the first step on the road to hell.

    13. AO

      [chuckles] Well, th- this idea of like, um, you know, custom aesthetics for your, for your children and stuff like that.

    14. CW

      Yeah.

    15. AO

      Uh, I think in a way that I can't quite describe, y- sometimes we just have a gut feeling that something is, is, is bad. People have that feeling about AI at the moment, right? Like when, when you, when you sort of see something it can do and you just go, "Mm, I don't like this, and I don't know exactly why and I can't quite justify it." But I think, I think we should be-

    16. CW

      The ick is there

    17. AO

      ... resistant to that. But then I, I also think that we should resist the idea of holding people accountable for their lack of education. Even if they had an opportunity to pursue an education and didn't take it up, I think there's some extent to which you don't get to control your, um-

    18. CW

      Proclivity to want-

    19. AO

      Yeah

    20. CW

      ... to be educated.

    21. AO

      Exactly right.

    22. CW

      Yeah. As... I- if you take the behavioral genetics red pill, which is a, a few steps away from taking the determinism red pill, uh, you end up b- basically excusing everything that everybody does.

    23. AO

      Yeah.

    24. CW

      Uh, an interesting one around embryo selection. So, no, I think genetically... Genetic engineering for me actually, uh, ethically is different to embryo selection. So you already do embryo selection-

    25. AO

      Mm-hmm

    26. CW

      ... when you do IVF.

    27. AO

      Yeah.

    28. CW

      You... And, uh, uh, you can have a question about whether or not IVF should be done, but anchoring bias is a hell of a drug, so yeah.

    29. AO

      George, for sure.

    30. CW

      Um, when the, uh, eggs are fertilized, the doctor, fertility specialist goes and looks through a microscope and goes, "Ooh, th- those two, nice and round, they look pretty good. Like those are As."

  14. 1:42:37 – 1:54:08

    Does Fantasising About Someone Else Count as Cheating?

    1. CW

      All right, another one. If cheating is wrong because it violates trust-

    2. AO

      Yeah

    3. CW

      ... is secretly fantasizing about someone else morally different from cheating or just technologically limited cheating?

    4. AO

      [laughs] Well, um, "He who looks upon a woman with lust has committed adultery in his heart"-

    5. CW

      Hmm

    6. AO

      ... said Jesus the Nazarene. Um-

    7. CW

      But that's secretly fantasizing.

    8. AO

      Yeah. Well, the thing about fantasizing is that it's proactive, right? Like, people criticize this, this Christian notion of, of lust being punishable, or not punishable even, just, like, like, negative. 'Cause they, they say it's like thought crime. They say, "Oh, even if you think the wrong thing..." But it's not just thinking a thought. It's not like, you know, a thought creeping into your mind. It seems to be, like, an entertaining of that thought. You, you go on to, like, engage with that thought. Um- And yeah, I think like the, the thing that's wrong with cheating is, is not the fact that you found another person attractive, right? Like, you can get into a relationship, you can be married, and you can sort of see someone else and notice that they're attractive.

    9. CW

      Hmm.

    10. AO

      But then I think people who are, who are good at marriage will essentially just shut down that thought. They'll just like-

    11. CW

      Hmm

    12. AO

      ... look the other way, or they'll like get rid of that thought in the head. Or may- maybe they don't even have that thought in the first place because they're so committed to their wife, right?

    13. CW

      Let me give you another one which I got from Mark on Schultz's show.

    14. AO

      Uh-huh.

    15. CW

      He had had a dream-

    16. AO

      Mm-hmm

    17. CW

      ... erotic dream, where one of his wife's friends had been in the dream-

    18. AO

      Mm-hmm

    19. CW

      ... with him. And he, in the dream, although it wasn't a lucid dream-

    20. AO

      Yeah

    21. CW

      ... hadn't cheated on his wife with her friend.

    22. AO

      [laughs] Is that like a, a good show of character?

    23. CW

      Hadn't... Yet he woke up and said, "Should I not get good boy points?"

    24. AO

      [laughs]

    25. CW

      "Should I not be praised by my wife for involuntarily, unconsciously not cheating on her with her friend in my dream?"

    26. AO

      Only if you can also be held responsible for all of the bad things you've ever done in your dreams, which maybe you kind of should be because maybe what happens in your dreams are like these expressions of, of what's going on in your subconscious. And so that really reveals who you truly are. So I, I'd be, I'd be quite happy, uh, to experience such a dream because I think it would sort of reveal that actually that is, that is maybe who I am. But then we don't really know what dreams are all about. There could be like anything going on.

    27. CW

      Hmm.

    28. AO

      I mean, sometimes you dream about the craziest things that, that you wake up and you're like, like, you know-

    29. CW

      Mm-hmm

    30. AO

      ... n- none of that is-

  15. 1:54:08 – 1:56:41

    Where to Find Alex

    1. AO

      aware of the facts.

    2. CW

      Alex O'Connor, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you rule. I appreciate you. Where should people go? You got a tour coming up? What else are you doing?

    3. AO

      Yeah, I do have a tour. Um, I'm doing six shows across North America and one show in Canada in November, so extremely soon. Um, which is gonna be really exciting. It's a kind of ask me anything type situation. So if you want to come and ask about consciousness or religion or my Instagram feed, you know, I'm an open book. Um, uh, apart from that-

    4. CW

      Where do people get tickets?

    5. AO

      They... Via the link in the description, Chris.

    6. CW

      What? Right. Okay.

    7. AO

      You go to alexoconnor.com/tour, and the tickets will be available. We're doing New York and LA.

    8. CW

      You're doing the town hall in New York-

    9. AO

      That's right

    10. CW

      ... which is where I played last year.

    11. AO

      San Francisco sold out. Um-

    12. CW

      Very cool

    13. AO

      ... doing Toronto. We're doing-

    14. CW

      They don't like it-

    15. AO

      Washington, DC

    16. CW

      ... they don't like you calling it Toronto.

    17. AO

      No?

    18. CW

      It's Toronto.

    19. AO

      Toronto?

    20. CW

      Yeah. You, you, you-

    21. AO

      You drop the T

    22. CW

      ... you have to do a glottal stop.

    23. AO

      Like Toronto.

    24. CW

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Toronto.

    25. AO

      They do share a lot of, like, British sort of ways of speaking, right? So it's-

    26. CW

      Don't call it Toronto

    27. AO

      ... it's like, it's, it's really weird. It's like an American trying to do British slang some of the time, especially, like, in the rap culture.

    28. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    29. AO

      It's, it's very strange. Um, but I'm excited to experience it firsthand. I've never been to Canada, so I'm-

    30. CW

      Canada's great. The, uh, Ontario... Uh, are you doing Vancouver as well or no?

Episode duration: 1:56:42

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