Hello out there. This is Glenn Lowry The Glenn show, with subst, act.com forward slash Lynch show and at the YouTube am with Sam Harris. Noted off, their neuro scientist and philosopher, a podcast Behemoth, with what are you calling? Sam waking
up making sense. The meditation app is
waking making sense with Sam Harris, authored, many books. I've got a list.
Here, free will.
Lying.
The moral landscape.
The end of faith.
Letters to a Christian Nation.
So, I mean you got quite a, quite a resume their sound, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I've spoken with you once before or for your podcast, if I'm not mistaken, it's been five or six years, but thanks for doing this.
They're doing. Yeah, you are one of my gurus on the topics. We touched on my podcast. You have my proxy. I just default your views on questions of race and moral confusion.
Publicly around issues of race in our society. So, thanks for all that you do. It's been great to be a student of
yourself. Thanks, but you shouldn't, you shouldn't default to my view? Should you? I mean that?
Well, you know, that a person as a proxy for actually thinking everything through from first principles. Like I know I've now seen enough to know that I probably agree with you on these topics and be you and obviously the rest of the team met John McWhorter. And
Coleman and Camille. And there are many people who are having a similar conversation and, you know, not to say that you guys are all in agreement on all the fine points, but it's just I've become a student of all of you. So,
Thomas chatter dragons with you and Chloe, Chloe, valder, e. We are all black. These people that you're calling attention to.
Yeah, and and I am a consider it a perversion of our social discourse that that is relevant. But unfortunately it is all too relevant. You know, maybe it's just a, you can say things and you need, you need to say things that I can't easily.
Or I could, you know, I will pay a slightly different price or a drastically different price for saying them and not to say you don't pay any price. I know you have, but it's the fact that you're the color of your skin is relevant to. The conversation, is why the conversation is so necessary? Is it really shouldn't be? And if we were in a saner world, you wouldn't feel any special need to touch the issue of race based on your identity.
Yeah, I agree with that. And you know, it's not over yet. We're fighting for making it a better world, a world more, like the one that you envisioned. We don't live in that world at the present time. I would note.
There's a difference to be drawn between the principal. It shouldn't matter, and the fact it does matter. And in view of the fact that it matters that has implications. I suppose we're how we conduct ourselves. We avoid certain issues or
Take certain risk. I mean, I can take risk in my classes, for example, teaching. You know, I can I can
Say things that I think if my one of my colleagues one of my white colleagues with the say them, they might get into trouble. I mean, my friend, Amy wax, the law professor at the University of Pennsylvania is in trouble. Now because of something she said here at the Glen show, are raising questions about immigration or affirmative action policy, and I don't necessarily agree with everything. She says, although I do agree with some of the things that she says, but she said things like, if you have
Standards for admitting black kids than the kids. You admitted not going to do on average as well as the kids that you didn't lower the standards to admit.
This is just magic, The Fairly logical if the standards actually correlate with the performance of the students whom you admit.
Which if they don't, why would you be using them in standards? I'm talking about like admissions test. And if you use a lower score, we're admitting some kids and others than because it's a statistical necessity that on the average.
You going to predict those kids to do less? Well on the average, not one each one individually and she says stuff like that. And it's in a sardine has now written a letter to the faculty. Bringing her up on charges for engaging in activity. In the classroom, contrary to the values of the university, and I say this in my classes every day and no one has come around yet with a hook.
The pool me offstage.
Yeah, I'm honestly don't know what I believe about affirmative action. And I think you know, the first approximation. I think at one point it was absolutely necessary and it was obviously a lever that could be pulled to right a moral wrong and anti-social ill.
But I think now, we're at a point where it's creating its own negative effects, such that me, that you would to name only one. It's it requires obvious, racism against Asians at this moment to be enacted. So, I don't know. I don't know what I think. I think it is, is problematic for a lot of reasons of his son. Would you just cited based on what Amy said?
I mean, I think the most Insidious aspect to it is that I can Envision occasions where it would seem to justify something that looks like racism, you know, even though it would be motivated differently. I'm thinking of a case where, for instance, if it could be established and I believe it might have been established that
The medical field belts, you know, various medical Fields have practiced such affirmative action that you could reliably expect that the people in those jobs, you know, the cardiologists or the brain surgeons of color had less stringent requirements applied to them to get into those positions, right? If that is in fact true. I mean, I know people like Charles Murray have argued that it is true. You know, you get you get one chance to
Have brain surgery, you know, on yourself, or on your kid, right? And so how enthusiastic should you be to have a black brain surgeon? If you know that, you know, the the mcats for black doctors are the standard deviation lower or whatever it is, right underneath us. I know Charles Murray has his delved rather deeply and dangerously into backs of that kind in his latest book. If in fact that were true and it, you would expect it to be
true. If affirmative action really has been widely practiced there.
That's a really Insidious and perverse outcome. Last thing, I would want would be to be confronted with the choice between two surgeons for a very, very potentially life-saving and Elena literally the life jeopardizing surgery and to have my main criteria for deciding between them the color of their skin, and that's not the world. I want to live in. And that's potentially a
World, we have engineered through good intentions, right? And so that, that be that, that's something that that's one example. I mean, there are many examples where the stakes aren't that high, and we don't care as much. It's much, it's a great as is. In fact, rational to care about the social, good of diversity. Say, but brain surgery is not one of them, right? And, you know, as is a, you know, it's a powerful example for and pervert.
Analogously, you know, but on the other side of the coin Athletics is not one of them, you know, I don't see anyone arguing that we need more Jews in the 100-meter dash at the Olympics. Right? And there are no Jews alleging anti-Semitism or the fact that Jews are not well represented, you know, on the podium at the Olympic.
Yeah, they're going to dismiss this kind of argument. I think there's nothing logically wrong with what you're saying. You're going to stay. You know, who plays basketball, who plays soccer.
Who is not really important but who gets to do brain surgery or more generally gets access to the medical profession is important. They're going to claim that there's some studies. They're probably not going to be particularly impressive studies that show that black patients do better when they have black doctors Etc. They're going to they're going to deny the relevance of the emission standard. That was employed for the medical student to the judgment about
You proficiency of the brain surgeon arguing that there are many, many, many, many other filters between Medical School admission and actually being in the operating theater. They're going to dare you to do the statistical inference, that you're just doing. I mean, gosh, if they're using lower standards to admit blacks and by spraying search, and could be white or black. It's my choice. Why would I ever choose a black brain surgeon? Just based on the statistics? They're going to call that.
Kind of profiling to be a normative fault, you know, like the police officer who behaves differently when he stops in car with a young black kid in the vehicle. Then he does it with an older white woman in terms of the case of reaching for the glove compartment. Do I or do I not take that to be an aggressive act? So that's what they're going to say.
Yeah. Yeah. Why. I wish some of that were valid. Why one thing to point out is that, that whites are not at the top of the Heap there when?
You're doing this sort of profiling for surgeons in the, I think you, you know, by this logic, you should prefer an Asian surgeon at this point knowing what they're what they're up against a wide. Margin. Yeah,
if the Asian kid gets in the medical school. She must have been literally
off to recharge. Yes. So that but this is you know, I would argue this is not the world. They want to live in but I don't know how to get to the world. We want to live in, right? They could say
well I have an answer to that question.
Developed the historically underrepresented groups performance, such that it is comparable or at least closer to that, which is exhibited by other groups and accept. The reality that not all groups are going to perform every activity. At the same frequency as they are represented in the population. That's a silly Criterion of Justice. If you want there to be more black brain surgeons than, let's get more black kids doing,
Of chemistry at a high level when they're juniors or sophomores in college. And which means let's getting more black kids doing high school, chemistry and biology and the advanced placement level that some of the other kids are doing it and accept that. If blacks had twelve percent of the population. It's okay. If blacks are seven percent of the brain surgeons and 18% of the whatever, the flip side is. So I think that yeah, things are not entirely beyond our
Our
recap, we could get people to swallow that pill all at once. I think it would be all to the good. I do. I do think that is the framing that is that
So, morally confusing here. The idea that every Walk of Life that is desirable to be walking in requires a representation of the population that is perfectly in register with the general population. Right? So that if you have less than 12 or 13 percent African-Americans in any desirable, Walk of Life, that is a problem, you know, just on it.
Face and very likely explained by the, the ambient levels of racism that persist in that Walk of Life. I think that's something what there's the second claim is obviously Falls, and I think the first claim
is also as you just argued needs to needs to give because it's just
whatever the explanation, whether its cultural biological accidental. It's just not rational to expect that every group will show the precisely the same proclivity and aptitude for everything that is good to be involved in in the theater of human events. Frankly.
Frankly. I think it's a logical contradiction. I mean, I think it's demonstrable Iran.
So the identitarian is the people who are talking about, how many of this group, and that group, they take group NE. Seriously. They think this thing, race actually matters for some reason or another, they think ethnicity and ethnic identity identify as of this or that.
So, if these things are real, these differences between groups are actually constituative of something meaningful different embracing different Visions about ways of life, different interests different practices of the patterns different culture, different beliefs, different, expectations, different habits. How can it be, but that they would reproduce themselves to some degree in the different allocation of time. The different
Some attended various kinds of development and so on which would then be reflected in different occupations and engagement. I wouldn't expect them all to be in the same Industries. I wouldn't expect them all to be doing the same thing. Some of them are going to be small, shopkeepers more frequently than other groups are going to be. Some of them are going to be academics more frequently than other groups of some of them are going to be athletes and entertainers, more frequently than in other groups are going to be because Group - ends up being expressed in terms of what people do with their time and how they live their lives.
Lives. So then I think group, this matters. I'm prepared to fall on my sword to make sure that the black kid feels comfortable as a black kid in college, but then I expect that everybody's going to be in medical school, Law School in finance at the same rate as they are in the population. I did this think that's a logical contradiction. You weren't serious about identity. If you expect it to see a mirrored proportionate expression.
Of the various members of the identity groups in every human endeavor.
Yeah, and that's a great point if diversity matters because they're actually differences that matter between groups will then use express the expect. Those differences to have some expression that that leads to different, you know differences so you can't really you can't really have it both ways there.
Now, you mentioned Charles Murray, and you said, whether its cultural a biological or whatever and I'm aware of your big debate with Ezra Klein. Was it some years ago about Mary and all that stuff. All right. You got it. You taking any of it back or You Still Still Holding Out for whatever? You hold enough word. Tell me what you want. I wasn't, I was not holding out
for any.
Positive part of his thesis apart from the necessity of being able to talk about these things without being branded a racist. When it's obvious that you're not a racist, right? That's that was the hill. I was prepared to die on, right? It's not to, I be, I have the truth is I have as close to 0.
Interest in racial differences in anything as I think you can have right. I just, I'm just not interested in the topic. What I am interested in is the silencing effect of the perception that if you violate any one of a number of include increasing number of taboos erected on the left, and by our most prestigious,
Institutions journalistically and academically, you risk defenestration, right? So, so when Charles Murray stands up to 25 years, after he wrote his Infamous book, which I hadn't read at the time because I was have been convinced by all the bad PR that this was just racist, you know, moral pollution essentially.
When he stands at 25 years after having written that have been written many other books in the interim on different topics and at Middlebury and gets deep platformed semi violently, you know, such that his, his host gets a concussion. I think or a neck injury, I think it was a Nikki. I perceive a real problem there that I wanted to talk about. And, and so in the course of talking about it, you know, we spoke about his actual thesis. Which again, is his routine.
Misrepresented. I mean, it's either when you when you look at the most controversial paragraph in the bell curve, which I then went red advance of speaking with him. I have read the bell. Curve, cover the crime. It was so the worst paragraph in there.
It's a paragraph where he and Herrnstein say.
We don't know what contribution rare biology and environment make these differences. It seems rational to assume that both are involved. I'm not on paraphrasing.
Here. They are resolutely agnostic, excuse me for interrupting, but the words are important. They're resolutely and
cast. And if you interpret us to have made the claim that one or the other challenge for the whole story you have misunderstood us, right, you know, we just
no, and for that, he has
he has really he's been burnt as a witch, you know, figuratively speaking, but reputationally it has been the case, you know, repeatedly for a quarter of a century.
I just find that to be, you know, I mean, obviously there are many other cases of people touching far, less radioactive topic. We're now, you know, we're just we're seeing the cancellation of people. And so I, he was he, I perceived, you know, being in hindsight, the kind of canary in the coal mine.
and,
So anyway, I had them on my podcast and that, that proved to be every bit as controversial as I had reason to fear. It would be. And I did I did
after what book laughter. Excuse me again, for interrupting. After what book did you have him on
your way? What it wasn't actually in reference to a book. I don't know that. I don't know when he had published his last book. I think he probably the book before I've been coming apart.
Yeah. Okay. It was before human diversity,
before human diversity. And
yeah, it's yeah, and so I did pay quite a reputational price for even having that conversation with him and giving him as much Aid and comfort as I did in that podcast, but I reviewed it as a
You know as morally important to do because it just seemed insane what was happening at that point around him and and around everyone I made JK Rowling and anyone else who's getting pilloried for for having said something blasphemous.
Mary Mary is a special case. We actually I actually teach the Murray case in my course on free inquiry in the modern world at Brown where I'm you know, resolutely not agnostic about the issue of whether or not you should be able to investigate such questions. Of course, you should what are we doing? Putting our heads in the sand if we and what are we doing to science which is the foundation of our civilization, if we are, I mean, it's a kind of Corruption of our intellectual.
Life for close the discussion of important questions. Based on evidence. Mary doesn't have to be right or wrong about that. But clearly the question doesn't answer itself. It's not a priori obvious. What the answer to the question is, question, being what extent is bile? Genetic inheritance influence? The expression of intellectual ability as measured by cognitive ability test in modern society. That's a hard question. It's an important question, you get to ask that question. That's not a moral question. That's a question of cause in a
Back and so on and what manner of society will we have become? If not only asking the question is forbidden, but defending the asking of the question is forbidden. I mean, like, right here, right now. I'm black. Everybody expects me to give us certain speech, and I'm not giving that speech that speech is Charles. Marry. According to the Southern Poverty Law, Center is a white supremacist. That speeches that the line from Charles May read. A Jared Taylor is a short straight.
Line Jared Taylor being American Renaissance guy, and he's a white supremacist. And you know, he Jared Taylor Jared tell he could say have his views to. I don't have to agree with them for him to be able to have his views too. But that's a separate question. Charles Murray, losing ground was probably the most important book about social policy written in the second half of the 20th century. It was published in 1984 was Mary's first big book and it shaped the discussion about welfare policy to a
Three significant extent extent especially on the right but also in the center left, the welfare reform acts of 1996 that Bill Clinton signed into law where substantially influenced by the work of Charles Murray and that critical assessment of the impact of the Great Society social policy on any quality in America. That's the author of losing ground coming apart. Coming apart is a very, very prescient. I mean, Robert Putnam, the various
Steamed and distinguished Harvard. Political scientist basically is following in his book. Our kids is basically following and Charles Mary's footsteps pointing out that there's no opioid epidemic coming in their depths of Despair right around the corner. And we had better pay attention to the separation and quality of life between Class straight amongst white people in this country or else we're going to miss the boat. Donald Trump became president in part because of the forces that Charles Mary was putting his finger on and coming apart.
You got to relegate him to the the margins because he dared to ask a question about intelligence and class structure in American Life of which only one small part of the big compendium had to do with race. And now he's a racist and he's a white supremacist, you know, nothing anti intellectual intellectual thoughts. I mean, the people who want to shut up a discussion about this question and who want to make it a
Sign of your decency and your legitimacy for membership. In society to castigate and Oscar sighs Charles married, which I am not going to do. Those. People are a threat to civilization in my opinion.
Yeah, although I there is one aspect of this, which I'm a little conflicted about because I don't know where to draw the line here. I bet I don't even know where the drip to draw the line with respect to Marie.
I don't know. Well, I mean, my only conversation with him. I believe his was, it was on that podcast and I certainly don't think he's a racist, but I do question, why he has given so much attention to this issue, right? This is the one question. I asked him in my podcast, which I felt like I didn't get a satisfactory answer to. It's like why why go there or why go there this month, right? And I can imagine,
let me ask you questions to what I'm sorry. I interrupted you. I just want to know why he has to have an answer to that.
Question why an investigator has to justify the anybody why they're investigating some because that's ad hominem when you asked him, why? It's as if you suspect that his motives are somehow impure and his motives have nothing to do with the validity of his statements about the question. You may say that you are not interested in the question, but whether or not why he's interested, I don't understand
how that's all right, because I just think that you can make a larger argument here and you need to make a large argument or at least assume you're on the right side.
Out of this argument when thinking through the social consequences or just the sheer consequences of finding out certain facts, right? So I just, I think there's certain forms of knowledge that are that are, in fact, dangerous, and our best not saw it, right? Or are certainly best. And if sought, that's not published widely, and there's a one case, I most recent podcast is actually on this topic. Is that topic about which I've had my my
That fundamentally change, you know, that it used to be that I believe and up until a couple weeks ago that so-called virus hunting was an intrinsically, good thing, right? You send me virologist out into various caves and get them to sample. The the by Rome's of the assembled bats and then you doing this discover new pathogens, that may pose a pandemic risk. And what seems like it's a good thing, too.
Just by assumptions. It seems like a good thing to know in advance, what might be coming for us and it's be able to prepare ourselves better for it. But in light of current technology, it seems like a Payton. Leigh insane thing to do. First of all, it's patently and saying to me then publish the genomes of these pathogens online, open source, this project to the world. Because what you're then doing, is you're putting it because of bioterrorism you're putting into the
Just fully at this point as some tens of thousands probably 30,000 at this moment and the numbers only increasing your pertinent, put into the minds of 30,000 people, who are confident to build. These pathogens is the gist synthesize them on their own, you know, as effectively at home, right? So you're putting a lot of store in the in the mental health of the 30,000, you know, biochemist and molecular biologists and the you know, other the people who have relevant,
Training. Knowing that only 1% of these people are very likely to be in Spain, right? Or, you know, and it probably another 1% or are sufficiently open to being captured by, you know, some kind of ideology that would put them somewhere on the spectrum of being a concern there. Why do any of this work learn but they did. Let me just
ask you a question about. I'm going to ask you a question about the by the virality. Are you saying don't sequence the
Gnome or are you saying keep that information closely-held? Don't
publish this case? Don't even do the work because now we know we can create vaccines in 24 hours. Once we get a genome, right? So like you add most you're saving yourself 24 hours or 23 hours and being able to to do this a hadn't sequence this in advance, right? It just doesn't make any sense. Operationally to, you're not going to head of
Anything really, when you do this and your
for that for that application of the sequencing, you're not getting ahead of anything for the vaccine development, application of the sequencing, which I think is but how I mean, this is my proud. This is my problem with trying to regulate this kind of activity at all. It's presupposes a state of knowledge, which doesn't exist in the absence of actually carrying out the investigation. You're going to regulate whether or not to do an investigation, the fruit of which might be
Massively developmentally helpful for to humanize. Where was it heading of the risk that, you know, I think without actually having done, the
investigation is very low if non-existent. Okay, right, so you can absent some other argument. I guess. I could be swayed back in the other direction. I'm sure bye-bye.
A further argument about all of the benefits that would accrue to knowing this stuff in advance. Let's just assume
which I'm not competent to provide
but let's just assume for argument's sake that that doesn't exist in this case. Right? So we have a clear case of there's massive downside to publishing certain facts widely or even seeking those facts in the first place, and there's very little upside. I wonder whether in the case of, you know, doing a deep dive on, you know, intellectual.
Differences between various groups. We're on similar Brown here. Why do why seek this knowledge? What are we going to do with the knowledge and Y secant? Now, I agree that we may be ambushed by this
knowledge or anything and let me interrupt against him. Excuse me. No. No, I mean the primary question is not about groups. The primary question is about individuals, the the group question. It seems to me only to be a derivative or second-order question that arises
then once you've undertaken, the primary investigations, which is understanding the foundations of human intelligence and its distribution in populations, so, I don't know how you
Police the investigation of the determinants of human intelligence. So as to avoid the politically disquieting group comparative undertake. I mean, it just seems. I mean, that's precisely my problem with this kind of moral management of scientific inquiry and it presumes a kind of kind of omission.
Wonder, do you think it might?
Might be possible that it would be better if we didn't have group level data on all of these differences. And we just had individual data, right? So like, no, no one ever. We never took an inventory of what race you were or ethnic background. You were, and we still, you know, obviously you every individual went through had to jump through all these hoops, academically to get wherever they get. But at the end of the day, we weren't in a position to say,
Oh, we just looked at the MCAT scores for blacks and Asians and it turns out that there's you know, a vast Gulf between them. What do you want to do with that back to it?
Well, here's I know what, Charles Mary's answer to your question is and I think would be mine as well. Sure. We can do that. As long as you promise that we don't have a politics driven by the inequality, in the representation of groups in these various activities. I tell you what, you give up your racial Justice.
Weapon wear it. Whenever the number of doctors that who are black is low, or the number of people who are promoted to partner at a law firm is low, who are black or the number of people who get into the Bronx, High School of Science has low, you give that up and you stop collecting those statistics. And I'm happy to do away with investigating group disparity in the, you know, determinants of human behavior that actually influence whether or not people excel at the at these activities. It seems to me, you can't do one without the other.
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean that's
Again, this I'm open to argument on this point, but the world I think I want to live in is where race and other differences between groups.
As but has the moral and political status of hair color, currently cry, so, we just simply don't have the data on how many blondes got into Harvard last year. And nor would anyone think to have that day. We don't want the data and nobody cares. How do we get there with respect to skin color?
And religion and anything else, right? That's where I would. That's why I think I would want to be. And, and that the pad open to us, there is to cease to pay attention to these variables.
Yeah, but and I agree. I mean I guess I would have to given what's going on. So
far me if I told you, if I told you, we were going to be, there was a group of people who wanted to add hair color as a to the list of concerns differentiating groups, right? If there was, if there was a big political movement around, how many was find out how many redheads are currently employed at a Fortune 500
company or a color eye color?
Yeah, and we're now really going to work. It was convinced ourselves that we now need to care.
These variables to write that would seem like a perverse misuse of moral intelligence. Right? And it just would really well. I had that you are,
it could be coming. I mean people body size, you know, obesity the cultural preference for certain kinds of Ideal type. So the beautiful woman is the woman who's got blue eyes and blond hair and whatnot. If we looked into the
The market for eggs, you know human eggs that people are going to do in vitro fertilization and whatnot are purchasing. I don't know this for a fact but I bet a lot that there's a premium driven by these kinds of you know characteristics. Like how tall was the woman, what she blond or brunette what she white or black, or Asian were her eyes blue or brown or whatever. I'll bet people actually pay a premium in.
market for certain trades and so an investigative might want to know whether or not
employment or success in the business world or number people come out to your movie or whatever, turns on that. And then they might end up wanting to collect that data.
Yeah. I just yeah, I think we have a right to have an intuition that more of, that sort of thing would be. Regressive is a big. And so because of the, why not set our sights, on less, and less, and less, and finally, none at all so that because it would seem, it would seem insane.
To ask the question.
Wait a minute. Just how many blondes did get into Harvard last year, right? Like just like it. Look. Who are you? That you could possibly care? Right? Like what, who's going to get out of bed tomorrow morning with that moral and political project? Right? How do we get there with respect to race? That's that's the the riddle. I think we need to solve but the first impediment to solve that riddle are all the people.
Who think it is it would be?
It's just politically inadmissible to even have that as a goal, right? They don't even aspire to get to some kind of race-blind Utopia right there. Like that. It's not even, that wouldn't even be Utopia. That would be a bad outcome on their account. And the people who feel this way are, you know, on the far, right? Real racists, you know, what, real white supremacist who say that, you know, the moral differences and political differences between people are in fact,
Act indelible and our right to be drawn at the skin and the people on the far left who the, you know, the far-left, identitarian who think that it really matters. What race you are.
I mean, these people have to either be convinced or or overruled, right and left and that's that's a massive political project.
Let me see if I can imagine what they're thinking because I don't I agree with you that we should be in a world where we were these things are given less people say thinking about history. First of all, they suspect the person who invites this move. They think you're trying to change the subject. They want Justice. They think that the racial disparities to which they will attend by doing the kind of being counting that you. And I might wish they wouldn't do. Those disparities are reflection of structures of domination and
We should and whatnot and and they want Justice. And they think that your effort to call the whole thing off. We had race for a few centuries as the West came out of Europe and pocket. The where we had raced as we did a colonial thing and the slavery thing. And what not. We had raised and that we get to the 21st century One, Call the Whole Thing Off and there's an no no. No, that's not so quick. My being counting is really in the service of a larger accounts legal, moral accountancy.
Which can't even be broached. Let alone resolved without attention to the things you telling me to dis attend
that might be true in certain cases. And that's why I'm consider myself, confused around questions of affirmative action, right? Like that. Where are the places in our society were affirmative action? Still makes a lot of sense and is in fact necessary and where the places where it's obviously counterproductive and that that, you know, the devil is in the details there and
I'm open to argument on in any specific case and there are certainly places in our society, where I think we're right, to worry that something like structural racism is, in fact, true and problematic, and, you know, it needs to be dismantled. And then there are cases where we've obviously flipped it and there's a structural racism is working to the advantage of black and brown people and to the disadvantage of Asian certainly and white and
Mrs. It's maybe a controversial claim. It may be a Blasphemous one, but I think it's probably true. Certainly approximately true at this moment. That any truly desirable high-status placed in American culture. Now he is.
Is more easily gotten too?
Four people are black and and brown people provided the provided the equivalent qualifications, which is to say that if it's of you, you know, if you are getting great grades and you get you have great test scores and you're black.
There is no door barred to you in this in this society. And in fact, every door is wide open to you every door that you should want it. You would want to go through. You know, the you take the top 20% of Any Corner culture, whether it's journalism, Academia science media Hollywood, that would just any place that you'd want to be where you would wear a high status would accrue to you for being there.
It is easier not harder. If you're black at this moment, I would make that claim and maybe there's some exceptions somewhere but it's not, it's not at the Oscars. It's not, it's not in a writers room in comedy in Hollywood. It's not certainly, not a prince. Yeah, I got to know. And so
where is no, it's not. It's not at a law firm. It's not in medical school. It's not when you're running for office, Etc. So no, don't.
Don't worry. I'm not the least bit offended. Although I can imagine a lot of people will be finished. Sounds like that's not the first time you've made that declaration. Oh, no, I made that on my on
my podcast at least once and but it's so what do we do with it? Like I'm not I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Right? What I'm saying is lying about that is a bad thing. Driving people. Crazy with those lies is a bad thing.
Well, we tell the truth, what we do is we tell the truth. I want to say one final thing.
Affirmative action, and I want to talk to you about God for a little bit.
It's undignified for black people to be Reliant upon special dispensation. In order to be included into the most valued venues and society as a permanent way of doing business going forward. That's not equality. That's, that's being being a ward, that's being a client. You're being taken care of your being covered for. I don't know how anybody with self-respect could be. Happy living in such.
Well, I think the corruption of the Soul here attendant to accepting special dispensation as if it were your right because of something that happened, not to
you.
Not even to your parents, something that happened to your ancestors long since gone. You buy into a narrative of permanent injury and then you walk around with your hand, out expecting to be treated, specially afforded a special privilege as an entitlement and you call that equality. That's not equality. So, quite apart from, I think the legitimate concerns that you raised about the Dilemma of what brain surgeon to choose or about the fact of favorable, not
This favorable discrimination is the norm. In many venues of American society, is something profoundly wrong headed for black. People hear about settling for affirmative
act. But what about using it as a tie using race as a tiebreaker in cases of equally qualified people assuming diversity is okay, but intrinsically, good for that, you know, it's the same for an institution like
Harvard to want a say as much of a representation of American societies, they can get whilst keeping their standards High. Why not use race as a tiebreaker?
I think that's an easy case, which I can say. Yes, but I don't think is very helpful because that happens almost
never. I
mean, tiebreaker is an event of equal qualifications event of measure 0 as the way the technicians would put it it, you know, smooth distributions. I'm drawing it random. I've got two people. What's the likelihood that they're going to come out exactly the same. That's a low probability event, but it's fine as far as it goes. I mean,
You know, I am not talking about administrative practice. I had to admit kids to college. I'm talking about politics. I'm talking about the large Narrative of what is racial Justice and what is equality. And I'm saying, I think this is my view. I've developed in some of my own writing development is the key performance is the key ability. Mastery is the key preference. It's, it's so nice.
Team 70s.
You know, I say the world is fast, moving in its changing. The Chinese are coming. Nothing is standing still black. People don't want to be in the position of being Wards of
Pitying liberal establishment who think they are virtue signaling and standing on the right side of History by looking at other way at our mediocrity. We want to be players real players. We want to be like the Jews.
Well, actually there's another Point here another wall Paradox or apparent Paradox, which I'm sure this is probably a point you've made before. I think I heard home and make it the first time I heard this.
Time. Yeah. Hughes. Who, despite his his age? I have learned a lot from him. Talk about a precocious young man, but
he's a brilliant. No doubt. As, you know, I understand your big
boobs. Yeah, but so he made the point that if affirmative action is good and it's, you know, is and then morally necessary. Why do we have to treat it as as a
Something that is ignominious when when actually pointed out, right? Why couldn't they, why? You know, why wouldn't we point point to the students Annika on our campuses who are affirmative action admittances and and celebrate them as you know, the test cases that are that are correcting. This moral wrong, right? A like it's obvious. It's obvious that you it just doesn't run through to do that.
because no one as you say, wants to be someone who
Got into their station for reasons other than their merits, right? And that's the, obviously we do. We don't have actually.
No, I was to say, ironically, it's actually I think worse than that in a way. No one wants to be, you got to Yale law school because of affirmative action. On the other hand, having gotten too late, Yale law, school, graduated in risen to the federal bench. You might be heard to say, I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action, and I'm proud of it.
So people don't want anyone else to point out that they are beneficiaries of affirmative action when, you know, defense of affirmative action are quite prepared to Crow about having been boosted by from it. So they did. The discourse is just entirely dishonor around around these issues. I think we talked about God for emitter is belief in God
irrational. Depends, what you mean by God, I mean, you know, there's something you could mean by that which I think is entirely rational.
But if you're talking about a personal God, a sectarian God, you know, the god of Abraham, as opposed to some other God, you know, and maybe some specific stroll of the god of Abraham. And anything else is, is anathema and likely to send a person to hell. And when she started adding layers of Doctrine on to the claim, then I think it becomes irrational and, and untenable and I think we have lost.
The right to our provincialism on that front. I just think it's we know, we know too much about the world. We know too much about how these books came into our possession. We know too much about
the the merely human origin of the texts that tell us that every word between these covers is inerrant for all time and cannot be edited by human hand. And we know that we have just too many of these books each claiming to be the sole word of the creator of the universe. And so there for me, this is the point that Bertrand Russell made
The comic. The fact, you know, that just just just by the sheer numbers of religions that claim to be the sole
true. No, one of them, you
know that, you know, every every believer even if you are a Believer, you have to expect damnation purely on probabilistic ground. We just there's more than five of these things, you know, and and each claims that everyone else is going to
help God.
You say specific tradition which makes very strong claims like Christianity or Judaism or Islam, you know, you don't want to take these texts infallible or whatever. So, that notion of God, you would reject on grounds of rationality. But what would the thin version of God that you might think acceptable to irrational contemporary person? Look like
well, so if you want to say as I would that
Consciousness, you know that in you, which is makes your being in this world, something to consider in the first place, right? The thing that adds value to anything, right? The experiential part of the cosmos, that is resident in you at this moment, right?
This is something we don't understand. You know, this is, this is obviously, we don't we don't, we haven't explained this yet. We don't know how it's arising and therefore, you know, integrated in the physics of things. We don't even fight a, the end. We don't even know that it is a rising on the basis of the physics of things. That's not something we can say about the mind, but I think that is something we can still say about Consciousness as a Consciousness, is a mystery.
And a miracle and is the most important thing, right? And I'm not saying as a matter of science. We should, we shouldn't seek to explain it. But I think there's good reason to wonder whether we will ever explain it. And there's there's certainly good reason to think that any explanation will, in fact not be deflationary, right? Ami, even if we fought, even if we perfectly explain Consciousness in the end.
We understand exactly how it arrives in on the basis of information processing in complex systems, like brains. Say and we know what the necessary and sufficient conditions of it are it is still the thing that matters, right? It is still the, the source of all Beauty and all moral goodness, and all apprehensions of Truth and it can be explored on its own side. It can only be explored on its own side.
Experientially in, in contemplation, in meditation with psychedelic. So, you know, I mean like that, like the the good stuff of life is on the is only first person side, right? The experience. Even if
hold on, hold on a minute. I just want to, I don't want to get lost here. What is what is consciousness now? I mean, literally, what is it self-awareness? What when does the complex system?
It is ours.
The lights are on at. All. Right. So I self-awareness is an added capacity within Consciousness, but it's the fact that there's something that is like to be You In This Moment. It's a fact that it's the fact that the lights are on at, there's a qualitative character to experience and there's not, you know, it need not be need not have been the case, right, you know, will, you know, given what we think? We know at this moment about the brain. It seems that not every
A aspect of our minds have this character right? That the brain is doing a lot that does not seem to be
Experienced consciously by any part of the mind right now. This is this is
for example, its regulation of our breathing in the beating
of our heart. Yeah, and even stuff that is closer to what we can consciously apprehend in each moment. It's a princess. I'm speaking now. I can't consciously inspect. How I'm following the rules of English grammar and so far as I'm able to do that and I can't consciously inspect my failures to do that. I'm just
Witnessing this product of unconscious information processing. I don't know how I get to the end of this man, but that's right. And when I fail, to get to the end of the sentence, but, but then you
have a sense of you. Excuse me, again.
You're speaking, but you're not as it were aware of exactly how it is that your brain is causing you to speak but you're doing it nonetheless. But the there's a there's a you who is aware of the fact that this is happening somehow. And that's the mysterious dimension of being the lights are on that, you're referring to again. This is a
question. Yeah, but I wouldn't put it wouldn't
A lot turns on what you mean by the, by you there because I do think the self as is generally, perceived is a, is an illusion, right? And I think self-transcendence is the is the actual core of our religious concerns, right? If the experiential courts, it's what made Jesus Jesus, right? If Jesus. I don't know. I don't know who the historical Jesus actually was but assuming he existed more or less as described in the Bible and the same with
Would on any other matriarch or patriarch of a great religions. The aspect of human experience that they were testifying to that made them interesting enough to gather around and form religions upon.
Relates to qualities like self-transcendence and unconditional love, and they deliver the far end of the distribution of positive human psychology, which is rarely all too rarely experienced by us. But still experienced by millions and millions of people if only in moments and their ways to experience it more and more, right? And this is the valid ground of our spiritual concern, right? It personally and
And collectively and intellectually, right? I think we should want to understand this scientifically, but personally, I think we should all want to experience more and more of this good stuff before we die. Right? And that's what is the point of life. What is the point of having more years on this Earth? Together? By what? What is the Miss die? If you die today, what is the missed opportunity of tomorrow? It's
all a bit. And you propose to the answer to that question is
experience.
The experience of love and self Transcendence and the depth of your being in, you know that the cosmos is illuminated where you stand, right? It is the, it is what it's like to be you. And what it's potentially like to be you, when you really get your head screwed on straight, right? When you're no longer you
think self-transcendence is an illusion. I really I know what I'm doing.
Okay, attendance is real. The stealth that is transcended is an illusion.
Yeah, because the self is generally, the cramp self of, you know, you know, otherwise known as the ego, right? The the petty self, the fearful self, the self that seals can find in each and reducible. To, in each moment, the stream of discursive thought, right? That the voice in your head that feels like you in each moment that is what is to be penetrated by.
Any, you know, valid form of spiritual inquiry, right? I mean, when you're talking about, when you're talking about this back to your question about, you know, God and the validity of religion.
The baby in the bath water that we should not want to throw out. Is this range of positive Human Experience. That is, what is it, is the experiential fact around which every religion has crystallized, right? It's why we have religion in the first place. The reason why you have a Jesus, right? Who was so charismatic as to get people to make, you know, vast sacrifices to live by the lights of his message.
and the way you have,
Pray for thousands of years. Some number of Christian contemplatively who had deep experience, trying to be more and more like Jesus. And the way you have a Meister Eckhart. Say is the is
That it is possible to have fundamental insights into the nature of your mind that that are transformative. That it's possible to be very different than you were yesterday based on something you can do with your attention, right? It's possible to not suffer the way you used to suffer over ridiculous things, right? As possible for you, not to feel divided from from the world and from nature and from other people in the way that you tend to field.
I did when you're just lost in in self-directed, self-talk, and that. And so, I think, I think all of that is valid and more than valid. I think that's the most important project in life and it is traditionally, it has only been given a religious framing. I just think we at this point in our history. And for, and for probably 100 years, this has been true.
We have to recognize that what what has been testified to? There is not the unique Divinity of anyone, God or the unique veracity of any one religious tradition as organized by specific literature. It's that there is a universal.
They're there. They're Universal facts about the human mind that need to be understood in general universalizability. Non-sectarian terms very much in the terms of 21st century science. But again, the 21st century science that explores, this can't discount the first person side of these questions because it's the aunt of the dancer, at the back of the book of nature is not going to be, you're just a bag of chemicals. And, you know, love is just a
A certain complement of neurotransmitters. There is an experiential time in your wheelhouse.
And our time is limited. Would you be willing to have another conversation? I really like to I mean here I am a lapsed Christian who was baptized at the age of 40 who was deeply immersed in a African-American charismatic fundamentals.
Congregation, I mean not cultish but you know, very traditionally religious and let's and I have thrown all that all over but I still found meaning in the prayer, the ritual, the community, the practices of that of that faith, that that meeting felt very real to me. And it was outside of myself. It wasn't just
experiential it. It wasn't only about my mind. It was somehow being a part of the flow being integrated into a web of mutually believing people. There was a community there was something as I say meaningful there and I don't I don't see any room for that at all in the vision that you just.
Well. No, there's definitely room. But you're you're asking to add to the baby in the bath water, the variable of community and organizing.
And ritual. And I would, I would grant you that all of that is very powerful and for many people necessary. I think we, we suffer a deficit of it in secular society, right? But I would argue that we what we need are, non embarrassing, non divisive, not, and therefore non-sectarian and non-dogmatic approaches to community, building and ritual and and profundity. And I think we want all of the good stuff.
We want good. We want beautiful buildings in which to gather for high purposes. Right now. It just so happens that the only Built the only architecture currently devoted to that stuff at the moment, is specifically denominational, right? The only people who could raise enough money to build a beautiful building in the middle of Manhattan. Are the religious dogmatist, you know, are the Christians and Jews and Muslims who got those buildings built, right? So now,
Now, if you're a secular group wanting to meet, for purely rational secular, but it but nevertheless, ennobling reasons on a Sunday. You have to figure out which church you're going to rent. Otherwise, you're going to wind up in a bad hotel, banquet room, right? You know, it's just like. So the question is, what does that 21st century Temple of wisdom look like, and who will who's going to build it? Right? And how do you what songs do you sing that?
Aunt embarrassing, in terms of their intellectual content. But then also aren't embarrassing further, you know, having been totally denuded of beauty because, you know, bad secular Riders got their hands on them, right? And, you know, created bad songs, right? So it's a hard problem to solve culturally and we haven't solved it, but I just think, I do think we have to recognize that sectarianism real sectarianism.
The 21st Century doesn't make any intellectual or moral sense.
But I let that be the last word in my Christian will be having fans out there. Gonna be mad at me but take comfort that part 2 part 2 is coming just like they say on Easter Sunday, Good Friday was part one. Easter's part part 2 in this conversation is coming will arrange. That's a a lot Sam here. It's extraordinary neuro scientist and philosopher, and best-selling writer and podcaster who came on the Glenn show for which I'm
grateful happy to do it. Thanks for all you do con SU.
