Episode 72: Moral Progress and Tolerance for Intolerance
- Links to this episode: Spotify / Apple Podcasts
Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.
Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.
Transcript
[00:00:07] Bruce: Welcome to the Theory of Anything podcast. Hey, Peter.
[00:00:11] Unidentified speaker: Hey, Bruce.
[00:00:12] Peter: Nice to talk to you.
[00:00:14] Bruce: So today we're gonna talk about a subject I wanted to talk about a long time. I invited Mark and he couldn't make it, which is too bad. Maybe, so you're gonna have to help me with this, because this is one that I've wondered about for a while, and I'd like to get somebody else's opinion on that is knowledgeable in critical rationalism. So there is an idea that is expressed by David Deutsch and Jonathan Rauch and others about how we make moral progress. And this idea, it seems like it kind of follows from Popper's theories. And it's this idea that we eventually do get to a moral consensus, because there's an objective morality out there. I'll, once we get a little bit further into it, I'll give you actual quotes from Deutsch on the subject and from Jonathan Rauch. And then there's this alternate point of view that's interestingly enough, also critical rationalist, and it comes from Nicholas Taleb.
[00:01:13] Bruce: And he claims that that's all wrong. And that actually moral progress comes from intolerance. So I've read both points of views, and I really dislike Nicholas Taleb's point of view. I find it very pessimistic. But I can't really say that I can dismiss it. I don't have any... So as you know, Peter, I will work very hard to try to criticize the things that I actually believe in. And I will try to find the best alternative arguments, even if I don't like them, and then I will try to dismiss them through criticism. And this was one that I struggled to find a good dismissal through criticism or refutation for what Taleb was saying. And so I feel like I would like to talk about it, and I don't think I have an answer as to... It could be that they're both right in degrees, although even that I would find a little disturbing, even if Taleb is only partially right.
[00:02:18] Bruce: But I wanted to get your opinion on that, and I figured that you would probably have a mostly negative view of Taleb. Am I right about that?
[00:02:28] Peter: Yes, mostly. A couple of things I might want to say about him before we get going into the content of this essay, which I actually feel kind of similar to you. I have a little bit mixed feelings about the content of the essay, just to explain where I'm coming from with him. And I don't think we have to focus on his personality or anything, but he's a guy I just want to explain my background on him, which is I have not read his other books other than Skin in the Game. He's one that I've wanted to kind of check out for a long time, kind of heard mixed things about. My initial reaction when I started this Skin in the Game was quite negative, actually. I expected to be kind of pulled into his worldview. He kind of sounds like, have you ever had the experience where you're at, you go to a restaurant with your family and you just want to have a nice meal, but there's like a guy in the corner who's just like loudly talking about just economics and Monsanto and just going on and on, and you just can't concentrate on being with your family because this guy across the restaurant is talking in your ear, and he's like kind of angry and loud.
[00:03:49] Peter: I don't know, he seems to, he kind of seems like the, I was a little bit, I know that there is some overlap between fans of David Deutsch and Taleb, which I get, I can see some similarities, but you know, they really have much different attitudes towards just people. I mean, David Deutsch on people, every human who is functional at all is rational and creative and capable of being more so. Only a tiny minority do not leave the world a little better than they found it. That might be even more extreme in the optimism than me, honestly. Taleb seems his attitude, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I think even his supporters would probably agree that his attitude seems to be 99.9% of humans are just stupid. And he's him and maybe a few others have got the world figured out. And I don't know, that's just not it really, really rubs me the wrong way that that attitude towards life.
[00:04:57] Peter: I just it's just not something I subscribe to. Now, does it mean that he's wrong about everything he says? Well, of course not. He's a smart guy and he's got some interesting ideas in there somewhere. I just wanted to get it over with, get this out that critics of the way he expresses himself, I think I agree with quite strongly.
[00:05:22] Bruce: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I've listened or read all of his books, or at least the ones that are in that series with The Black Swan, starting with Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan is the next one, and then Antifragile, Skin in the Game, I think I might be missing one, but there's a series of books that he sees as part of the same series. I've listened or read each one. It's interesting to track how he changed over time. Fooled by Randomness, he's a normal human being at this point. He's trying his best to be, if he's disagreeing with Steven Pinker, he's very respectful of Steven Pinker. And the book, interestingly enough, is about how we become fooled by randomness. And he talks about things that he's done where he's fallen into believing something because he tried to find a pattern that was in fact just randomness. And he gives some of his superstitions where he found himself not tying his shoes and walking around the block because that was what he did the time before that caused him to make a good trade or something like that.
[00:06:35] Bruce: And he's not even consciously doing it. He's automatically falling into patterns because human beings find patterns and they'll find patterns in randomness. And because of that, he's very respectful of people he thinks are wrong because they're just being fooled by randomness. It's something that happens to all of us, right? By the time you get to Skin in the Game, Steven Pinker is a total pseudoscientist that's trying to destroy the world and is actively being stupid because he... Everybody's an idiot. And what happened to the whole Fooled by Randomness from the first book, right? People who might be well-meaning and might actually... They found a pattern, you know, and this is what they think. And it's just gone by the Skin in the Game. And he's now actively showing contempt for everybody who he disagrees with, right?
[00:07:37] Peter: Oh, that's very interesting. So it sounds like you're saying that the earlier books, like Black Swan, are not... I mean, [unclear: he aren't quite like skinning the game]. I mean, he basically openly insults Pinker constantly in the book, which is fine, but I mean, I don't mind criticizing Pinker.
[00:07:55] Bruce: Listen to Fooled by Randomness after you finish Skin of the Game and tell me you don't see the immediate stark difference between the two.
[00:08:03] Peter: Fair enough.
[00:08:04] Bruce: Because I actually did that. I actually listened to Skin of the Game, then happened to do Fooled by Randomness next. And so it just blew me away. The degree to which there was a difference, and the degree to which in Fooled by Randomness, he explains why he's wrong in Skin of the Game. Why you shouldn't be insulting of people because they're just being fooled by randomness. So he's forgotten his own principles in the first book by the fourth or fifth book or whichever one it is. So Skin in the Game is the worst one, by the way. It did get progressively worse, but the first two in particular are quite good. He's not really trying to be insulting. Fooled by Randomness is probably the softest. And then it really wasn't until Skin in the Game that I think he was famous enough and popular enough that now he felt comfortable to kind of reveal what he says is his true feelings.
[00:08:56] Bruce: I honestly wonder if it's that he was revealing his true feelings that he had all along or if he's just kind of an embittered person at this point.
[00:09:04] Peter: Well, I think that sometimes there's something about being a prominent or public intellectual that kind of like drives some people almost a bit crazy. Just being that, having that level of attention and criticism of your ideas and having to defend yourself. And there's just, you just feel like there's so many haters out there. I don't know.
[00:09:27] Bruce: And you know what? I can understand that, right? You had a book, it went popular. You had another book. It's even more popular with Black Swan being the second book, but the more popular—most popular—of his books. And then you've got people who are maybe just dumb, who just keep trying to argue with him when he's actually making correct points. I can understand how that might eventually turn you kind of bitter over time, right? I don't know why he specifically picks on Steven Pinker. I think that was the one that bothered me the most, because so much, they agree on a lot. I feel like Taleb is not, he has certain disagreements with Pinker. I can tell you one of the main ones is Taleb wrote a paper talking about how violence isn't necessarily reducing, war is sorry, is not necessarily reducing. Because Pinker made the claim in his book, Better Angels, that there was evidence that war was reducing.
[00:10:27] Bruce: What Taleb points out is that that's a meaningless statement. You can't determine if war is something that only breaks out every so often. You can't determine just because of the length of the time since the last big war, that it's been reducing, and he's right. The argument that Pinker made was not entirely sound, and Taleb is correct to point that out. But I don't think you can just [unclear: resume/presume] the other side. Like Pinker was trying to suggest, well, this is suggestive of that maybe we actually have started getting good at stopping war, and you're right, it's not a true refutation. It's a weak effort. It's BENT evidence, bad evidence, no test from Deborah Mayo. It's fair to point it out. It's fair to have it challenged, but I don't think it makes either man particularly bad-motivated. And in fact, I don't think Taleb is actually necessarily shown that Pinker was wrong.
[00:11:33] Bruce: He just points out that his argument was weak. But I think even Pinker [unclear: do/knew] that. And so I'm a little unclear why it became such a bad blood. Really more Taleb bad blood towards Pinker than Pinker bad blood towards Taleb. I don't think Pinker, I think, was shocked that he was being insulted and stuff like that over this. So yeah, I definitely think that something's happened here, and whether this is the way he felt all along, whether he became embittered after. And he talks about some of the attempts to discredit him. But it seems like most of them come from progressives, not liberals like Pinker. So I'm still a little unclear, like the ones that tried to get him kicked out of the university he was associated with. Well, he doesn't actually work for any university.
[00:12:26] Unidentified speaker: They were mistaken.
[00:12:28] Bruce: And so they attempted to get him kicked out. And he talks about how he has no connections that they can go after. They tried to, I can't remember the entire story. They tried to go after a member of his family, but she was like totally into this sort of thing.
[00:12:44] Unidentified speaker: And so it did no good.
[00:12:45] Bruce: There was just nobody that they could actually go after to force him down. But it seems like it was usually leftists that were doing this from his descriptions. So I'm not sure why he would go after a liberal, like Pinker, right? You see what I'm saying?
[00:13:02] Unidentified speaker: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:02] Peter: I mean, I do, I guess that now I think about it more. I really, what I do like about him is this skepticism towards elites and intellectuals and so-called experts. I mean, I really do kind of like vibe with that idea, but then you also kind of, I don't know, you don't have to be such a jerk about it too. Like, and you also kind of have to apply that same kind of attitude towards yourself a little bit and your own ideas and kind of, you know, I mean, that's just, to me, that just seems like what a curious person does that wants to, but I just don't see that kind of humility with him.
[00:13:48] Bruce: You can't be branded an idiot for having a wrong idea. Like that just, that is absolutely not what we want in an open society, right? Is people have to float ideas and that's where conjectures, that those are conjectures, right? So, okay, so with that kind of out of the way, here's the thing, though, as much as I agree with you, that he just comes across bad, right? And the truth is, is that he often makes really good arguments, ones that I have a hard time, like, let me try to put it like this. If you take a look at like this podcast, I've taken a lot of, starting with David Deutsch's books, but other people as we've gone, and I clearly have no fear of trying to criticize their ideas, right? In fact, I strenuously try to criticize their ideas, and the ones that I can't find good criticisms to, those are the ones that I over time start to adopt.
[00:14:48] Bruce: Okay, this one looks like it might be right, right? Then there's others where I just go, this idea just isn't a good idea at this point. It's easy to criticize. It's got alternative views that are still very live. We've seen how I’ll support an idea like many worlds, which I hate, but I can't find a good criticism of. But on the other hand, I will very easily dismiss ideas that are very popular amongst Deutschians. Animals don't feel things, things like that. They'll say, you know what? These are just not good ideas at this point. They're very easy to criticize. They don't actually come as a natural consequence of universal explainer theory. I'll very freely go after these ideas. Because of this, when I take someone like Taleb, I'm not really disposed to agree with him. But if I can't find good criticisms of ideas, I will over time start to adopt some of his ideas.
[00:15:50] Bruce: It's exactly the same thing as with Deutsch or with Popper. Hey, I've been willing to criticize Popper. I've been critical of Popper's use of the word refutation. Everyone summarizes his epistemology as conjecture and refutation, so it's completely central to his way of thinking. I don't buy it. I think that from a certain point of view, yes, it's a refutation, but it's a refutation of the combination of the theory plus the background knowledge, and that's it. If you want to understand Popper's actual critical rationalism, you have to actually start with the realization that he called it a refutation and he didn't mean it. That's me criticizing Popper. I'm just trying to get at the truth as best I can, so I'm trying my best to come up with the criticisms that I can. I think that's what makes me uncomfortable with this part. I'm not saying I buy it because I feel like in this case, both points of view make some good points and it's unclear to me how to differentiate between them.
[00:16:54] Bruce: I would see both as legitimate at the moment because I can't eliminate one of them.
[00:16:59] Peter: Let's shift to this, The Most Intolerant Wins, The Dictatorship of the Small Minority essay. I thought perhaps I could summarize how I see the main idea and then you can, I'm real curious to hear your take on it because I think it is a pretty compelling idea. Re-reading it and sort of ignoring my more surface level objections to his personality made me think, yeah, there's a lot of interesting things in there. So basically how I see it is that we have this idea that to, I don't know, to change anything in the people's opinions or actions. You kind of have to get a majority of people thinking a certain way or acting a certain way and then that will kind of sway things towards the majority viewpoint. What he seems to be arguing, as I understand it, is that it's really, so much in the world is actually controlled by sometimes very small minority viewpoints.
[00:18:13] Peter: The examples he uses are, which are all pretty compelling, I think. For example, a kosher food, it's only like a fraction of 1% of people who eat kosher, but then there's so much food out there that is kosher, just to accommodate this minority of people. GMO or organic food, automatic cars, just a small, well, I don't know, that seems more debatable. Things like wine is served at parties more than beer, because beer drinkers will drink wine and wine drinkers won't drink beer.
[00:18:55] Bruce: I thought it was humorous that he said that once over 10% of the attendees at a party are women, then you have to do wine.
[00:19:07] Peter: The English being a lingua franca, you know, if there's just one person at a meeting that doesn't speak a different language, suddenly the meeting's in English.
[00:19:20] Bruce: It's not native for anybody there, right?
[00:19:23] Peter: Interfaith marriages. He's talking about Islam in the Middle East, how Islam was more intolerant of apostasy than Judaism or Christianity. So that over time, these societies became dominated by Islam just because of that intolerance. So it's sort of an intolerant minority grows, I guess, in that way. Book bans. It's just a small number of motivated activists who are really pushing, controlling these bans. Prohibition of alcohol. I think those are the main examples that I wrote down he uses. So basically, yeah, the idea is that things are much for better or for worse. I'm not completely clear if he thinks it's a good thing or a bad thing or a neutral thing.
[00:20:23] Unidentified speaker: That was one of the things I was going to [unclear].
[00:20:26] Peter: But oh, and then in science too, I think this is actually a good thing about science. I think this was one of the positive things is that the single individual can be shown to be right and a thousand experts can be shown to be wrong. It's just it's kind of how science works sometimes.
[00:20:49] Bruce: The theory of falsification, right? Because you are expected in science to put forward always testable explanations, if one person can come up with a falsification, you don't have to accept it. You can say, oh, that was for some other reason, but you're expected to put up and not just an explanation. It was this other reason, but how to test that empirically. And if you can't do it, then even if the majority of people accept that theory, it's gone, right? It's discredited until someone can figure out a way to make the alternative explanation testable. And because of that, the false theories fall away in science and it's got nothing to do with consensus of scientists, right? It's entirely, you know, put up or shut up, right? You show me, show me the evidence, show me the empirical evidence, and so there's this constant need to navigate everything in terms of, okay, I don't agree with you, but here's my testable alternative.
[00:21:53] Bruce: And if you can't do it, then you're dead in the water.
[00:21:56] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[00:21:58] Peter: And you know, that sounds like one of the positive aspects of this, this idea. But then he also straight up says the West is a quote, the West is currently in the process of committing suicide. And what we're talking about bending over backwards to what he calls Salafism, which is the, you know, the most extreme forms of Islam. So he, he definitely sees some negatives to this view too, I think maybe rightly, but so do I have it right?
[00:22:33] Unidentified speaker: I guess, is that how you saw it?
[00:22:34] Bruce: That's how I read it too. And you know what, one of the things that I noticed is, it is, he will openly write as if this is a good thing, and then openly write as if it's a bad thing. And he never actually helps you understand when it's good or when it's bad, or what to do about it.
[00:22:53] Unidentified speaker: Right?
[00:22:54] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[00:22:54] Peter: Which to be fair, I mean, you know, all kinds of ideas can be morally neutral, I suppose.
[00:22:59] Bruce: So one of the things I find interesting about this is that Taleb is deeply critical rationalist, right? He comes from, he's one of the children of Popper, as I call it, right? That Karl Popper spawned many different intellectual children that have their own takes on critical rationalism and explore different possible ways to look at it, different aspects of it. And Taleb is one of the more famous ones. And David Deutsch is obviously one of the famous ones. And each of the different kind of break offs from Popper have kind of their own little take on critical rationalism. David Deutsch drastically downplays the empirical nature of science and, sorry, of critical rationalism, I should say, not science. He agrees that science is empirical and talks about how it's just one kind of criticism and things like that. Each of them has kind of their own little take on critical rationalism.
[00:23:54] Bruce: And one of the things that makes it confusing is that when you talk about critical rationalism, you could be talking about any of these different branches, right? And some of them come to drastically different understandings of critical rationalism from each other. Jonathan Rauch also famously is a critical rationalist that gets a lot of his ideas from Popper. And he has written a lot about this. He's more similar to David Deutsch, I would say. So let me give you some actual quotes here just to kind of give a feel for the other point of view. So here would be from Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch's version of this. He'd say, throughout the West, a great deal of philosophical knowledge that is nowadays taken for granted by almost everyone, say that slavery is an abomination or that women should be free to go out to work or that autopsies should be legal or that promotion in the armed forces should not depend on skin color, was highly controversial only a matter of decades ago.
[00:24:51] Bruce: And originally, the opposite positions were taken for granted. A successful truth-seeking system works its way towards broad consensus, the one state of public opinion that is not subject to decision theoretic paradoxes and where the will of the people makes sense. So convergence in the broad consensus over time is made possible by the fact that all concerned are gradually eliminating errors in their position and converging on objective truths. Facilitating that process by meeting Popper's criteria as well as possible is more important than which of the two contending factions with near equal support gets its way into a particular election. Okay, so then later on in the book, for example, in a 19th century, if an American slave had written a best-selling book, that event would not logically have ruled out the proposition Negroes are intended by Providence to be slaves.
[00:25:42] Bruce: No experience could because it is a philosophical theory, but it might have ruined the explanation through which many people understood that proposition, and if as a result, such people had found themselves unable to explain to their own satisfaction why it would be providential if the author were to be forced back into slavery, then they might have questioned the account that they had formerly accepted of what a Black person really is and what a person in general is, and then a good person, a good society, and so on. And then here's kind of where he eventually ends up with because of this very optimistic view of error elimination. For example, racism and other forms of bigotry exist nowadays almost entirely in subcultures that suppress criticism. Bigotry exists not because it benefits the bigots, but despite the harm they do to themselves by using fixed non-functional criteria to determine their choices in life.
[00:26:38] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:26:39] Peter: Well, this actually ties into what question I was going to ask you about this, is this premise. I think that Taleb is quite critical of Pinker and probably would be critical of Deutsch too. The idea that society and humans are progressing as knowledge grows and that things are basically are, at least since the Enlightenment, basically improving. Is his criticism of this kind of optimism rooted or tied into this idea about the dictatorship of the minority?
[00:27:26] Bruce: It seems to me that's what he's saying, yeah.
[00:27:29] Peter: Okay, okay, so this, you could read this as a criticism of progress or optimism.
[00:27:37] Bruce: So I think you could, right? It's, you know, I believe in steel manning everybody's position. I'm going to attempt to give a steel man version of Taleb that maybe isn't quite as negative as his, but still fairly negative. That I suspect could survive criticism better. Let me, first, let me quote Jonathan Rauch, who I think is, does a very similar, as to David Deutsch, point of view. So in Kindly Inquisitors, so Jonathan Rauch is famously, he's almost, he's a homosexual, and he was very important in going out and campaigning for gay marriage, right? And then after he got gay marriage, you know, him and others got gay marriage legalized, he turned his efforts to trying to protect the liberal order because he saw that one of the things that had come out of that is that now we were starting to see people trying to suppress the other opinion, because now they had the power to.
[00:28:43] Bruce: And so Kindly Inquisitors and really all of his books seem to be about this, okay? So he is arguing, we need to allow people to express their opinions and not charge some penalty on them and trying to silence them. And so here is him and he's using an argument similar to Deutsch's, but obviously it's maybe not quite as optimistic because obviously he thinks that there's a problem that needs to be corrected. So he says, today I fear that many people on my side of the gay equality question are forgetting our debt to the system that freed us, the system being liberalism. Some gay people, not all, not even most, but quite a few, want to expunge discriminatory views. Discrimination is discrimination and bigotry is bigotry, they say. And they are intolerable whether or not they happen to be someone's religion or moral creed. Here is not the place for an examination of the proper balance between, say, religious liberty and anti-discrimination rules.
[00:29:48] Bruce: It is a place, perhaps, for a plea to those of us in the gay rights movement and in many other minority rights movements who now find themselves in the cultural ascendancy with public majorities and public morality, strange to say, on our side. We should be the last people on the planet to demand that anyone be silenced. Partly the reasons are strategic. Robust intellectual exchange, including [unclear: obnoxious cell phone apps], serve our interest. Our greatest enemy is not irrational hate, which is pretty uncommon. It is rational hate, hate premised on falsehood. If you believe homosexuality poses a threat to your children, you will hate it. The main way we eliminate hate is not to legislate or [unclear: invade/inveigh] against it, but to replace it with knowledge, empirical and ethical. That was how Frank Kameny and a few other people, without numbers or laws or public sympathy on their side, turned hate on its head.
[00:30:46] Bruce: They had arguments and they had the right to make them. And partly the reasons are moral. Gay people have lived in a world where they were forced day in and day out to betray our consciences and shut our mouths in the name of public morality. Not so long ago, everybody thought we were wrong. Now, our duty is to protect others' freedom to be wrong, the better to ensure society's odds of being right. Of course, we can and should correct the falsehoods we hear. And once they are debunked, deny them the standing of knowledge in textbooks and professions. But we equally have the responsibility to defend their expression as opinions in the public square. So that would be Jonathan Rauch's summary of he's a critical rationalist. This is his view of how you understand critical rationalism and the distinction. He's making obviously a distinction between how we treat something as knowledge versus allowing basically all opinions to be expressed.
[00:31:42] Bruce: And from what I've read of Jonathan Rauch, he is a really strong advocate of free speech, goes probably further than most people would be comfortable with.
[00:31:51] Peter: Oh, yeah, that Kindly Inquisitors book is just probably about the best defense of free speech I've ever read. I mean, that's I just is one of those books that just reaches out from I mean, I can't believe that it was written in the 90s. It's just like reaches out from history and just seems so relevant to today's world.
[00:32:12] Bruce: By the way, he has one of the best short descriptions of critical rationalism that I've seen in that book. And he understands critical rationalism better than most critical rationalists understand critical rationalism, which gives me some hope here that this is someone who really does understand critical rationalism that is trying to apply it, right? And then his Constitution of Knowledge, which actually is part of what I'm going to do to try to steelman Taleb's point of view. Yeah, his Constitution, his book, Constitution of Knowledge is excellent. It is something that critical rationalism has not spent anywhere near enough time talking about. He turns to Charles Peirce instead of Karl Popper, because this is something Charles Peirce talked about, this idea that it's not just a matter of we need to have a marketplace of free ideas, that that alone will end up with the bad ideas overcoming the good ideas, and that you actually need certain kinds of institutions in place to make it so that the good ideas thrive compared to the bad ideas.
[00:33:16] Bruce: And he's given some real thought to that. And that's something I think is completely true. Like the fact that individual scientists don't make good critical rationalists, but the institution of science is so much better at critical rationalism than any one individual scientist that takes part in it. I think that's stunning, right? It's an overwhelming idea that the institutions might really matter, right? Maybe even more so than the individual's attitudes, critical attitudes. And I see the open society in the same way. Like you look around and you try to debate people over politics, people are not that particularly critical, at least not in the moment, not in the short run into the length of a debate, right? And yet somehow we keep making progress, right? I really do think that that is highly attributable to the fact that we've got these institutions in place that create a Popperian filter that only good ideas can get through and the bad ideas kind of bounce off of it, right?
[00:34:18] Bruce: Which is what science does. So there's something to be said, and I agree with Rauch on this, for the idea that it's not so much that you need to personally have right ideas or have even a critical attitude, right? A scientist that lacks a critical attitude may still be a good scientist, as long as they're participating in the institutions of science, where they have no choice but to put everything in terms of empirical evidence, right? Because no one's going to take them seriously otherwise, and they know it. And that there's something to be said for the fact that these institutions might be one of the most important parts of all this, okay? I mean, obviously, you can't, I mean, like the institutions would probably never exist in the first place if there weren't some good critical attitudes that existed amongst human beings. So I think it's probably hard to tease the two apart.
[00:35:14] Bruce: So I'm hesitant to take it too far one way or the other. But all I will say is go read Jonathan Rauch's book, The Constitution of Knowledge. I think he makes a compelling case for the importance of the institutions. And something that we have not talked enough about as critical rationalists.
[00:35:29] Peter: Would you say that is the title a reference to Hayek's Constitution of Liberty? Would you say like whereas the Constitution of Liberty is more, seems to me, making the case for the importance of the individual liberty?
[00:35:46] Unidentified speaker: Whereas
[00:35:48] Bruce: I can't remember if he got the term from Hayek or not.
[00:35:52] Peter: Or maybe that's just a common phrase, the Constitution. So there's all kinds of things. I don't know.
[00:35:58] Unidentified speaker: I can't remember.
[00:35:59] Bruce: I'm going to have to go back and listen to the book again.
[00:36:01] Unidentified speaker: I'm just curious.
[00:36:02] Unidentified speaker: It was an excellent book, though.
[00:36:04] Bruce: I love Jonathan Rauch.
[00:36:07] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:36:07] Bruce: So now let's compare this with a few quotes from Taleb so that we get a feel for the alternative viewpoint.
[00:36:14] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:36:16] Bruce: So he says, It suffices for an intransigent minority, a certain type of intransigent minorities, to reach a minutely small level, say, three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. By the way, this article is called The Most Intolerant Wins, The Dictatorship of the Small Minority. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority. A naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. This is where I think the strongest disagreement between Critical Rationalist Taleb and Critical Rationalist Deutsch and Rauch. Deutsch and Rauch believe that the majority changed their minds, whereas Taleb seems to be saying that's not really true, or at least is challenging that idea, which probably explains why Deutsch and Rauch are optimists and Taleb comes across very pessimistic.
[00:37:17] Bruce: So then he goes on to say the minority rule will show us how all it takes is a small number of intolerant virtuous people with skin in the game, in the form of courage for society to function properly. So this statement really sounds like he's saying this dictatorship of the minority is a good thing, right? And I try to read the article after reading that as, okay, he's saying this is a good thing. But then, as you pointed out later on in the article, sorry, this is one of my favorite examples that I thought was humorous, but I thought makes the point. He talks about big agriculture, the large agricultural firms, and how they thought that they just needed to convince the majority to allow for GMOs, genetically modified organisms. And what they did not realize is that they were entering into it. It says, Big A, the large agricultural firms, did not realize that this is the equivalent to entering a game in which one needs to not win more points than the adversary, but win 97% of the total points just to be safe.
[00:38:26] Bruce: And then he gives the example of if you're going to throw a party and you're going to serve food, then you don't want to go try to do separate shopping for people who accept GMOs and people who won't. You're going to just not allow GMOs, period. And so basically, even though the majority of people would have no problem with GMOs, like easily 97% of people could care less and would eat GMOs just fine, that everybody is going to not eat GMOs and never will, because this minority group has decided on their own that they're not okay, and so nobody eats them. It may look like the majority is accepting this and is agreeing with this minority, but in fact, they could care less.
[00:39:17] Peter: Well, this is going to get us down a tangent, perhaps, but that was one, I mean, he seems to think this is a great or a good thing, because he's so against GMOs and Monsanto, and he even goes off on, later in the book, I think he goes off on Golden Rice, which has arguably saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world. But I don't know, he just has a much, much different take on this. I find it a little hard to understand that a science minded person would be so opposed to these things, which I think is completely, they are completely harmless. I mean, [unclear: grow you so much a] big agriculture, as demonized as it is, it's just about growing more food with less land and less water and feeding more people. I think it's, you know, I'm with Pinker on this. So this will take us down a tangent, I think.
[00:40:19] Bruce: [unclear: I'm not even sure I can / I think I can] explain his argument against GMOs, right? I mean, at a vague level, I understand that he sees them as dangerous because there's a chance, even if it's just a small chance, that if they escape into the wild, that we will end up with some sort of problem where the entire food supply gets wiped out, and so you end up in ruin. And so part of his overall critical rationalist attitude is that you must always avoid a small chance of ruin. He uses the example of playing Russian roulette, right? Again, I don't understand GMOs well enough to make his argument for him. But since he sees GMOs as like playing Russian roulette, yes, the odds are good that nothing will go wrong, but there's a slight chance that you will wipe out everything and it will go to ruin, and you'll lose the ability to even get to the old non-GMO food.
[00:41:22] Peter: So it sounds like the precautionary principle.
[00:41:25] Bruce: It is the precautionary principle. I need to say though, it's not quite the same as the Deutsch version of the precautionary principle because it's a strengthened version of it. He's bringing up things that Deutsch hasn't properly criticized, this idea of ruin. So in a strict sense, I can agree with what he's saying. It doesn't make sense to try to earn money by playing Russian roulette because even if there's only one in 100 chance, it just doesn't make sense because if you die, you're dead. So from this standpoint, it seems like if you bought the idea that GMOs have a certain percentage chance of ruin, then in fact, his argument makes sense. So of course, what you would have to actually do is you would have to show that in fact, there isn't a percentage chance of ruin, that that's a misunderstanding epistemologically, and this is why critical rationalists often go after Bayesians, et cetera, that you would have to show that that just isn't the way this works.
[00:42:34] Bruce: And I don't know enough about the GMO thing. I don't even understand how he calculates. I'd probably have to go read his papers first before I could give an intelligent response or even have an intelligent opinion on the subject. But if I were to read his papers and if I were to find that he's right, there is an X percent chance that we will ruin the entire food supply and you'll have mass starvation and possibly can't recover from it, then I would absolutely be in favor of the precautionary principle. That would make perfect sense.
[00:43:10] Peter: Well, you'd also have to, of course, I think, carefully examine downsides, too, which would be just more human suffering and starving to death worldwide and food being more expensive and being less environmentally friendly. I think that's one of the things about organic that people maybe don't understand. You can make the case, it's complicated, but I think you can make the case that it's actually worse for the environment to eat organic because you're talking about more water and land that goes into growing the food. And not only that, they oftentimes use more pesticides with organic because the pesticides they use aren't as effective. So they have to use these quote unquote natural pesticides, put more into the food. So I don't know, I find the premise that there's just nothing to this whole like clean food movement, environmentally friendly movement, food thing that I think there's nothing to it.
[00:44:22] Peter: I actually, when I go to the grocery store, maybe I'm a little extreme, but when I go to the grocery store, I actively avoid buying organic.
[00:44:31] Bruce: So let me actually take your argument. And I actually agree with you, just to be clear, but let me play devil's advocate for a second. I'm admitting here my own, I've never looked into this. I know when I actually understand the subject well enough, I can lay out an argument, and I know when I can't. And this is one where I can't. But let me pretend like we had some knowledge. Let's take Taleb's argument on the face, and let's say that we knew, and we all agreed, we all agreed, no matter which side you're on, that there is a one in 100,000 chance that if you allow GMOs, that you will wipe out the human race. Let's say a one in a million chance, one in a million chance that you're going to wipe out the human race. But if you don't do it, then you're going to have people starve. And you know, you can quantify that it's going to be that you're going to have, you know, a million people.
[00:45:35] Bruce: No, let's make it larger. Ten million people per year starve.
[00:45:39] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:45:41] Bruce: If I actually knew those were the facts, and that was it, that was the facts, I would still agree with Taleb. I would say you absolutely should not allow GMOs. That instead we should solve the problem of the ten million people starving in some other way.
[00:45:57] Unidentified speaker: Right?
[00:45:58] Bruce: So from that standpoint, I actually can agree with Taleb. I would assume, first of all, would you agree with me or would you disagree with me? Because this is the way I would do the calculus if this is the facts that we all agree upon. Would you still be in favor of doing GMOs? Because A, it's really only one in a million chance that we're going to wipe out the human race?
[00:46:21] Peter: I think that one of the things that I find attractive about Deutsch's view is that he kind of pushes back against this way of thinking.
[00:46:31] Unidentified speaker: That's right.
[00:46:31] Peter: You know, the best way to handle these kinds, I mean, there's a one in a million chance that all kinds of things would destroy the human race. I mean, the best way to address it, I think, according to Deutsch, would be to try to just increase our knowledge more generally so that we can address these kinds of issues that may come up. I would say, I mean, one in a million indicates that it's a pretty far-fetched premise that GMOs could destroy. I mean, I've never really heard that expressed as an existential danger exactly, even by fanatics. So the thought experiment doesn't really go anywhere for me. I mean, I think that just increasing science and technology and getting better food is a positive.
[00:47:21] Bruce: So let me try to make the other side of the argument then, because the way I phrased it, I believe the precautionary principle would be correct.
[00:47:30] Unidentified speaker: I honestly don't think there's any doubt about it.
[00:47:33] Bruce: I think the way you would attack this would be to show that there is no such thing as measuring that there's a one in a million chance that we're going to wipe out the Earth. There is some chance, I suppose, but it won't be an event. It's not some probabilistic event that takes place. What you're really saying is that if we do this and it goes wrong and we don't error correct it, then there's a chance we would wipe out the human race. It's almost impossible to try to put numbers on it at this point. In one of our other podcasts, I used the example of climate change wiping out the human race. If you phrase climate change in terms of, yes, if we don't error correct ever, like never again error correct, then there's a chance we're going to wipe out the human race. From that point of view, Greta Thunberg makes sense to me. She's saying, how can you even take this chance?
[00:48:30] Bruce: Because even if it's a low chance, there's this chance we're going to wipe out the human race.
[00:48:35] Peter: Or just cause global economic catastrophe to steelman their view, I think they would probably see that as more... I mean, really wiping out every last person on Earth, it's probably not that kind of an existential threat.
[00:48:50] Bruce: So, no, it is. Have you seen Al Gore's movie?
[00:48:56] Unidentified speaker: Oh, yeah.
[00:48:57] Bruce: He actually says it's an existential threat, you would wipe out the entire human race. You could imagine a scenario where that happened. Let me give you the scenario where that happened, okay? Imagine that we just keep putting out carbon dioxide, and now remember, it's a slow process. So it's not just every day we put out carbon dioxide, and therefore slowly the Earth gets hotter, and then one day we can just stop putting out carbon dioxide, and it will all go back to normal. It's actually this geological process where we are putting so much carbon dioxide in the air and it's going to take so long to get it back out that even if we stopped all of it today, the heat is going to continue to travel and eventually we're in the heat of Venus or something like that, right? Under that scenario, you do wipe out the human race.
[00:49:50] Peter: There would just be nowhere habitable anywhere, not even for a small community or something.
[00:49:58] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[00:49:59] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:49:59] Bruce: And that is what Al Gore, if I remember correctly, has been a long time since I've seen the movie, but I swear he says that in the movie.
[00:50:07] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:50:07] Unidentified speaker: Well, it's pretty extreme.
[00:50:09] Bruce: It is pretty extreme. Okay. And I would argue that it's primarily a scare tactic, and I'm going to explain why.
[00:50:15] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:50:16] Bruce: So, but I think it's important that we do explain why it's a scare tactic.
[00:50:21] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[00:50:22] Bruce: So yes, if we never did anything, I can see Al Gore's point. I can see that it may be that you've already put too much carbon dioxide in the air. There could be a point where there's so much carbon dioxide in the air that it's just impossible to recover if the only means by which you choose to recover is by removing carbon dioxide, right? It could be the case that we're already past the breaking point and we're dead. But as I pointed out, the people who wrote Super Freakonomics, who take climate change seriously, more seriously than most leftists, right? They said, you know what? There's this thing we could do where we could put a little bit of ash in the air and it would cool the planet and therefore we would not die. It would never become like Venus. It says we can even track how much is in the air, how much it affects things. We could do experiments and we can get to the point where we could keep the Earth's heat growth under control.
[00:51:23] Bruce: And then at this point, how did the leftists respond to the guys in Super Freakonomics? They tried to silence them. Here they are, they're literally scared that the leftists are right about climate change and that we may destroy the Earth if we don't do something. And the way the leftists respond is by trying to shut them down and discredit them. Okay, now tell me why you would do that. Supposedly, on the left, you're worried the planet's going to go extinct, right?
[00:51:57] Peter: Well, to be blunt, I think we're probably, with environmentalism, we're in many cases at least talking about something that's more like a new age religion than rational assertions about the future.
[00:52:11] Bruce: And this is the proof of it, okay? Because if the left was actually worried about extinction, then this would have been received as good news. That there is this way that we can, if necessary, forever keep the planet from turning into Venus.
[00:52:28] Unidentified speaker: Okay?
[00:52:29] Bruce: So, I mean, like, there's literally, we know there is at least one way that you can forever keep the planet from going extinct, at least in terms of heat growth. Now, so what does the left say? Well, first thing they point out is that they are not experts. Well, you know, of course, I don't care if they're experts or not. What I care about is whether they're right or not. Okay? And I've never seen, I've searched for it. I've never seen a single person who hates what they wrote in that book claim that they're wrong because they are, of course, right.
[00:52:59] Unidentified speaker: Okay?
[00:53:00] Bruce: So then they'll point out that it would have downsides, that it might destroy the ocean and that would disrupt the ecosystem. No, they admit that, but then they would say, well, of course, what you could do is you could then adjust, you could put base into the acidic ocean and you could normalize the ocean and therefore you could keep the ocean from going extinct. And so you could theoretically keep that from ever causing us to go extinct either. And of course, that's also true. Now, of course, this is scary, right? I can totally understand why people on the left would say, wait, you're going to put ash into the air and then you're going to put us in danger of wiping out all life in the oceans and then you're going to try to stop that by doing the exact same thing by putting base into the oceans. And you're right, it's like this kind of terrifying thing, okay?
[00:53:55] Bruce: But what you've done is you've shown that none of these, like by itself, the one concern, climate change, that it might overheat the Earth to Venus, we know for a fact that there is a zero percent chance, not a one in a million, but a zero percent chance that that will wipe out humanity, okay? None, zero zilch, not a nil, as long as we have the knowledge to put ash into the air, okay? And I think this is the correct way to go about talking about these things. It's not that the left is misrepresenting things, right? And apparently knowingly so, because if they actually thought that the Earth was going to get wiped out by climate change, then this would have been considered good news, and it wasn't. So we know that the explanation that they're giving us that they're worried about humanity getting wiped out, we know they don't believe it. And we have to.
[00:54:49] Bruce: It's been refuted. It's of the different possible reasons for why they might claim humanity is going to get wiped out, we've refuted the one that is that they said it because they believed humanity was going to get wiped out, because otherwise super-freakonomics would have been good news. OK, you see what I'm doing? This is how critical rationalism works. I can literally decide what a person's thinking by using criticisms and offering experiments like this. I can actually eliminate the possibility that the left takes the idea of humanity getting wiped out seriously. OK, strange as that may sound. OK, so because of this, and then, of course, this now leads to the whole Deutsch viewpoint. Yeah, it's a problem. You solve it. Then you have the next problem. That might wipe us out. Then you solve that one. Then you have the next problem. That one might wipe us out.
[00:55:40] Bruce: We solve that one. OK, and this is the idea of the constant knowledge growth. Now, my guess is that GMO probably fits into this category, that there isn't actually a one in a million chance we're going to wipe out humanity and that Taleb has made a mistake. Now, I don't know that, right? I don't understand this part of the argument. And so I'm not prepared to go on record that everything is like that. It just isn't the case, right? Like when we set off a nuclear bomb in Oppenheimer, the whole question of what if you wipe out the entire world with this bomb? Have you seen the movie? I haven't seen the movie, but this is like in the trailers.
[00:56:17] Peter: I have not, unfortunately. I want to.
[00:56:21] Bruce: They calculated the odds that there was this little bit of a doubt that the chain reaction would stop, that it might [unclear over overlapping speech: perfectly wipe out the entire] atmosphere, literally wipe out all of humanity.
[00:56:30] Unidentified speaker: Oh, I've heard that. Yeah.
[00:56:36] Bruce: So, now the odds were very low. And that's what they tell them. The odds are close to zero, and they show the guy saying close to zero. This is a place where the precautionary principle may have made sense. This is now a single event. This isn't like climate change, where we can always take an action. Because you're going to set this bomb off, and there is a something percent chance, something very low, that you wipe out all of humanity. Based on what our current knowledge is. Maybe we shouldn't have set that bomb off. In fact, one of the things that I've heard argued, is that there was no particular reason why we absolutely had to invent the atomic bomb. I know the fear was the Germans were going to do it first and things like that. But like humanity, there are all sorts of things that humanity decides not to pursue, that they could have.
[00:57:37] Bruce: They may eventually do it, but up through a certain point, nobody's really taken seriously trying to work out how to do human cloning. We probably eventually will, but the fact that there's some precaution used in that, isn't necessarily the same as the precautionary principle, if that makes any sense.
[00:57:57] Peter: Well, that's the other thing about the precautionary principle, is I think it's used in a very authoritarian way, really. The only way to really enforce this is to control what other people do, to legislate, to stop people from programming AI, or just anything that could conceivably hurt us, which I think is just another thing that's wrong with it.
[00:58:23] Bruce: In the case of the atomic bomb, one might make the case, the odds were so low, and in this case, we would rather wipe out the earth anyhow than let the Nazis win, or something like that. You can maybe even make a sane case there. I'm not trying to actually say they were morally wrong to set up the atomic bomb. I don't really know. I'm just simply trying to find a case where the precautionary principle makes more sense, and it would be when there's a single event. A single event has a chance it can wipe out humanity. Then honestly, maybe you shouldn't be doing that event, and the precautionary principle probably applies now, right?
[00:59:01] Peter: Well, didn't they say the same thing about the Hadron Collider?
[00:59:04] Unidentified speaker: Yes, they did.
[00:59:05] Peter: Yeah, that there was a chance that it might just maybe even destroy the universe? Is that right? Or destroy at least the Earth?
[00:59:15] Bruce: Yes, so the idea was that there was supposed to be a chance it would create a black hole, and the black hole would fall at the center of the Earth, and then it would suck the Earth into it. You know, I've talked to physicists about that, and the physicists don't necessarily see it as there was a percentage chance that was going to happen, because a black hole, even if they did create a black hole, but apparently there was a chance they would create a black hole. That part is true, but even if they had created a black hole, mathematically it would evaporate before it could even reach the center of the Earth. So like they actually had, you know, again, if you have an explanation for why it's not going to fall in the center of the Earth, then I don't think this is the same as the precautionary principle, right? They basically knew it wasn't going to happen, and that was why they didn't worry about people's concerns on that.
[01:00:11] Bruce: I guess you could argue there's some percentage chance that their explanation is wrong. That's always true, right? At that point, you really are getting into the bad version of the precautionary principle, where now you can't make progress at all, right? I'm trying to find an example, and maybe even atomic bombs aren't a great example, but let's say that we had worked out that there was a one in a million chance you're wiping out humanity if you set off a bomb, test it. You probably shouldn't set off that bomb. It's got nothing to do now with the precautionary principle in the bad sense. It's just a matter of, look, there's a chance of ruin, don't do it. And this is as far as I can go with agreeing with Taleb on this. Now, which is GMOs? Is it the atomic bomb example or is it the climate change example? Well, I guess I would have assumed it was more like the climate change example and that Taleb has made a mistake in not understanding the difference between those two cases, that it's not just that you're going to roll the dice once and an event takes place.
[01:01:14] Bruce: If that is the case, then I agree with Taleb. But if it's not the case, if it's more like the climate change, then I don't agree with Taleb. In fact, the intransigent minority that is dictating that we don't do GMO is in fact killing those 10 million people in our hypothetical example each year, and they're responsible for it. Here's the thing though, getting back to the original point, let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right, Peter, and that there really is no reason to not allow GMO food, and that we would in fact save 10 million people per year if we allow GMO food. This would then be a case of where the dictatorship of the minority is forcing everybody to a certain viewpoint. And it's not like if you're in favor of GMO food, it's not like you won't eat non-GMO food, right? Because you will. If you're at a party and they say, oh, this is non-GMO food, you're not going to say, I refuse to eat it.
[01:02:20] Peter: Yeah, even though I'm not that extreme.
[01:02:23] Bruce: Okay, and nobody is. And this is his point, is that there is a 3% of the population that will not eat GMO food. Whereas there is a 0% of the population that will not eat non-GMO food. Okay, and because of that, all food is non-GMO, period, end of story. And this is probably the best example that we could use to show his point that it's not really a true consensus like Deutsch and Rauch are suggesting. I'm trying to steelman his argument.
[01:03:00] Unidentified speaker: I'm not saying I actually agree with him.
[01:03:02] Bruce: But in this particular example, you could be staunchly in favor of GMO food, and it just wouldn't matter. The minority is going to win because they're intolerant and you're not. And so this would be an example of, and maybe this is the bad example, right? This is the example of how intolerance can be a bad thing. But he's also saying it can also be a good thing, that it can lead to certain moral rules coming into being that society adopts, even if the majority of people aren't sure they agree with it. And that there is no actual need for a consensus view to form, as long as there's a courageous group that intolerantly requires that everybody do it. Now, this is what I understand him to be saying. And up to this point, I think he's arguing positively for it, that this is a good thing, that because of this, we actually make moral progress because of the existence of these small minority of people who force us to make moral progress.
[01:04:09] Bruce: And you can see how this is at odds with what Rauch and Deutsch are saying, because they're talking about an actual consensus, moral consensus forming. Whereas he's saying, not only do you not need that moral consensus to make progress, but you may not ever have it. It may be that people die out and they grow up and they become indoctrinated. I don't know. I don't think that Taleb is going like forever. People are going to have bad opinions or something. I think what he's saying is you will have the laws change, and the majority of people may disagree with them. I think at least in principle, I don't know if that's really what happens. I'm not even sure how to go about testing this. If you were to go back to the 60s during civil rights era, did people's opinions really change or did the laws just change? I guess I'm of the opinion that for the most part people's opinions changed.
[01:05:11] Peter: I agree.
[01:05:12] Bruce: But I guess I don't know. At least he's making a compelling case that it would look the same either way. Unless I'm explicitly going to test for it, that it would look the same. Therefore, I don't really know that back during the civil rights era, people's opinions of racism changed.
[01:05:33] Peter: I guess you could make the point that the laws somehow influenced people's opinions. Maybe the laws changed and then people's opinion changed.
[01:05:44] Unidentified speaker: I don't know. I mean,
[01:05:44] Peter: I tend to think that probably the laws were maybe more inconsequential than people think. It really was about knowledge growing and people's opinions improving.
[01:05:58] Bruce: We could see this idea that the laws changed because people's opinions changed. Or we could see the Taleb idea that the laws changed due to the dictatorship of the minority. And then maybe after that, because it was now the law, people's opinions slowly started to change. These are at least both viable theories at this point. And I may have an opinion or I may even have a strong opinion as to which is right. And it could even be that they're both right to some degree. And yet at the end of the day, I don't think we can truly eliminate the other opinion, the other point of view yet. I think both have a certain viability. You would have to think about how would I test between these two accounts of what reality are? And how would I come up with a test between them? I'm not sure I know. I think I could come up with something where I could probably arrange for back during the 60s what people's opinions were, but I would have to make it so that it was done completely anonymously.
[01:07:03] Bruce: You could probably come up with some way to test it. I've got to believe somebody did test it. Somebody in the audience, if you know of a book that might actually explain how people's opinions actually changed and whether it matches Taleb's view versus Deutsch and Rauch's view, I would love to know something about that because I guess I just don't know at this point. But I do feel like one of these opinions is more optimistic than the other. I know which one I want to be true.
[01:07:34] Peter: That people actually change.
[01:07:36] Unidentified speaker: Yes.
[01:07:37] Peter: Because knowledge is... Probably a lot of it was technology too. It's just people watch TV shows and novels and music. It was easier for them to get into the minds of other people. They over time became less bigoted. Maybe something similar is happening with social media. Maybe that's too optimistic,
[01:08:04] Unidentified speaker: but I don't know.
[01:08:08] Bruce: Let me give you a thought experiment that's meant to make you think a bit more about this. Let's take people who are concerned with... If you're listening to this show, there's a good chance you're either a conservative or a libertarian, probably more likely a libertarian, or at least libertarian leaning. There may be people on the show that are left leaning. Nothing wrong with that. I actually have no problem with any of the different viewpoints. I feel like all are complete necessity in an open society. But I know at least amongst the people I've talked to who've listened to the show, that some very large percentage of them have concerns with wokeness, which is this thing that has come out of the left and that is at least perceived, maybe rightly, as being anti-liberal, where they're trying to silence people. I think one could point out that the right, my own conservative side of things, has got a very similar problem.
[01:09:12] Bruce: And the idea that this is something purely on the left just isn't true. But I do think that the stuff on the left is very high profile, and maybe even for good reasons, like even like the New York Times, which is super left-leaning, will write articles about some of the excesses of wokeness, because it scares them and it bothers them. And so there is maybe a case to be made that there is a legitimate concern here, if even people on the left are afraid of wokeness. When we look at wokeness as an example, and I'm going to try to stay really neutral here, because I need it for my experiment, is wokeness a good thing or a bad thing? In other words, it is a form of intolerance.
[01:10:01] Unidentified speaker: That's why people dislike it.
[01:10:02] Bruce: That's why even super left-leaning New York Times will write articles against it. Is because they perceive it as a dangerous intolerance, right? If I'm taking Taleb's theory seriously, then there is something to be said that maybe wokeness will win the day because of their intolerance. And that's maybe how you win the day, okay? And really, I perceive him as saying that. In fact, I'll give you a couple other quotes here in a moment where I really feel like that's what he's saying, right?
[01:10:37] Peter: That really distills it, yeah.
[01:10:39] Bruce: The one that wins.
[01:10:41] Peter: Yeah, it's such a pessimistic view.
[01:10:43] Unidentified speaker: I just can't believe that.
[01:10:46] Bruce: So the question I would have to ask is, is he right? Is he right? Even in part is the question I would have to ask. So let's start with the assumption. This is a thought experiment, so it's okay. We're intentionally stretching. [unclear: Does it have to be realistic? / It doesn't have to be realistic.] We're stretching things as far as we can to see where our intuitions break. This is the value of thought experiments. So let's say that Taleb is right, and that certain ideas will eventually get adopted by the majority. At some point, the laws will change, and that wokeism will serve that purpose. Their intolerance and their shutting down of other ideas will eventually lead to the ideas around racism, making positive changes, changing society in various ways. That is the only way it can happen. If we are going to get past systemic racism, it's going to require the intolerance of wokeism to be able to make the necessary changes, to force the necessary changes that are systemic, that we can eventually get, say, minorities out of poverty.
[01:12:07] Bruce: So the thought experiment is that the wokes are right, in essence. And we're using Taleb's explanation for why they are right. Now let's consider the alternate opinion, and let's look at the alternate thought experiment. And under this thought experiment, we're going to go entirely the other way. And we're going to say there is not an ounce of good in wokeism. They may have even some correct ideas, but the intolerance is entirely unnecessary. That if they were to simply be tolerant of people's opinions, allow discussion, that the exact same change will come about. And that every ounce of their intolerance, every ounce of it is immoral. Because all you really need is people sharing their ideas, the right institutions, which we have in an open society, and that the excesses that they bring up, where they try to silence people, plays zero role in the eventual systemic changes that end systemic racism, bring minorities out of poverty, etc.
[01:13:17] Bruce: So we've got two views now, and we're not allowing for anything in between, intentionally. That either the Wokes are entirely right, that this is the sole way that we make this necessary change, or the Wokes are entirely wrong, even though they're right that there is systemic racism or whatever, that every ounce of their intolerance is a complete evil. And if they had just done the same thing tolerantly, the same changes would have happened.
[01:13:47] Peter: Okay, so putting aside the issue about whether or not the Woke solutions are effective in terms of their goals, which I think they're probably not, but just in terms of capturing the majority opinion, do they need to be intolerant to further their ideas? Is that an effective strategy? Their ideas would have to be demonstrated to work well, and that things like systemic racism or inequality or whatever you want to put their concerns would have to be demonstrated to decrease when their vision is implemented, which I don't think is happening. And the reason I think that it would have to actually work comes down to my ideas about humans, is that as imperfect as we are, as fallible as we are, we like to be right. We do want to know the truth. And I think that over time, most people are not going to accept a view that does not demonstrably increase harmony in the world, which is why ultimately humans rejected communism, largely rejected communism, largely rejected fascism, largely rejected a lot of bad ideas that don't make any sense, because we do like to be right, and we want to move closer to truth.
[01:15:40] Peter: Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a long time, and a lot of people have to die. Anyway, that's my take on wokeism.
[01:15:50] Bruce: My guess is, so you really made a separation of two things, but they have to be tied together. So let me say, wokeism could be defined in terms of their goals, which would be, we want to get rid of systemic racism. Now, I don't hear you saying you think that is wrong. Presumably, you think their goal is actually correct. On the other hand, we associate wokeism very strongly with intolerance, even the New York Times does, even though they're very left-leaning. So wokeism could have a correct goal, but be intolerant about it. So they might even be, in terms of their goal, correct, but in terms of their means, incorrect or something like that. So even if I were to agree with you that their ideas must turn out to be true, maybe we're in agreement their ideas are true, and maybe it's just their means we're disagreeing over, okay?
[01:16:52] Peter: But I think that intolerant ideas are typically wrong. They're wrong about a lot of things. That's why if you look at the most intolerant people, they almost always are factually wrong, and it's because you don't have that process where they're looking, there's enough kind of self-reflection where they're criticizing, criticizing their own ideas. And so if they're not criticizing their own ideas, which doesn't seem to, I mean, the extreme advocates of woke-ism are explicitly, they don't like two-sides-ism, two-side-ism is what they call it, when there's this idea that through debate and discussion and looking at alternate viewpoints, that's how you move closer to the truth. They're openly hostile to that. They just want to shut people down, and they think that is going to move [unclear: the dial truth] or increase knowledge. I don't think so.
[01:17:50] Bruce: Okay, so could I then say that of the two thought experiments, you actually are already in the 0% camp, that you think that the intolerant aspects of woke-ism, maybe they do have some good ideas, you're not denying that, they may be right, for example, that there is such a thing as systemic racism. And you may even agree with some of their goals.
[01:18:12] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[01:18:13] Peter: I might just call it racism, but anyway.
[01:18:16] Bruce: Well, so this podcast is not going to be about racism versus systemic racism. But typically, the way people define those, they are actually different. Racism being an individual who feels a certain way about other races, where systemic racism requires no individual to feel anything. It's just that, and you know what, I don't really deny that there is systemic racism. Listen to David French, who's very conservative on Advisory Opinions podcast, and he will give you, just in the most recent podcast, he gives example after example of where we know systemic racism exists, because it was a program that was set up back when people were racist, and now you don't have to be racist to want to keep it. You may have good reasons for why you want to keep it, but it was something that already existed, and you're just trying to hold on to the status quo.
[01:19:09] Bruce: He gives examples of the best schools are in white neighborhoods or something like that. Of course, you live in this neighborhood because you like the fact it had a good school. It may have nothing to do with racism at this point, and yet it is something that was set up for racist reasons far enough back in time.
[01:19:30] Unidentified speaker: That would be what systemic racism is.
[01:19:32] Bruce: It's got nothing to do with it. Nobody individually needs to be racist. It may just be that the order was such for racist reasons in the past.
[01:19:41] Peter: Fair enough. I think that how it's talked about can turn into a kind of conspiracy theory, where if you start seeing the whole world through this lens, it starts to ignore a lot of truths.
[01:19:56] Unidentified speaker: Sure.
[01:19:57] Bruce: This is part of the problem, and this is actually what I'm trying to get you to. We say systemic racism. It might mean something that we can all agree is real, or it might mean something else that we don't agree on. We can say the word racism, and that's true. We can say the word wokeism, and it may mean just someone who cares about trying to remove racism or systemic racism or whatever a lot, and they may be otherwise quite tolerant.
[01:20:27] Peter: Yeah, fair enough, which indicates to me it's not productive to argue about words, as Popper has pointed out.
[01:20:36] Bruce: The problem with that, though, is that I have to refer to a group. I'm trying to intentionally make a thought experiment, and I want to talk specifically about people who are intolerant in their beliefs, right? And of course, the word wokeism is strongly associated with that. Like even for the New York Times, right? And so I have to use a word, and there's already a word that exists, even though it may not actually mean something bad in some cases. If I could use maybe the best example of this, it's actually feminism, right? There are tons of women out there who will tell you, oh, I'm totally in favor of women that they are equals to men. And then they'll say, then you'll ask them, are you a feminist? They'll go, oh, absolutely not. It's really common. It's super common. And the reason why is because the word feminism really sort of has two meanings.
[01:21:33] Bruce: It can mean just, I believe women are equal to men, in which case probably most people are feminists. But more often than not, the term only gets used when you're talking about a certain kind of radical feminism that people largely don't agree with, which is why if you go ask people, are you a feminist, most people deny being feminists, even though the basic idea of feminism everybody agrees with, right? And I think you got the same problem going on with wokeism, where there are probably some very tolerant wokeists out there who would really prefer to reform the term to mean something very reasonable, but somehow the shadow of the term, the penumbra of the term, mostly casts its shadow over the way we think of certain intolerant people behaving. And yet I still need a term. So I'm going to use the term wokeism. Hopefully people will not be offended by that.
[01:22:27] Bruce: We're just doing a thought experiment. And I'm openly admitting it just depends on what you mean by the term. But the way you're expressing this, though, it sounds like you're in the 0% camp. You're saying the intolerance of wokeism, whatever good might come of wokeism, none of it will come from the intolerance of wokeism as a whole. Would that be a fair way of describing?
[01:22:49] Peter: I think it's a general premise. You don't make progress by trying to shut people down. So, yeah, 0%.
[01:22:59] Bruce: That's clearly what what Rauch is saying, right? That's clearly what Deutsch is saying. They're in the 0% camp, that there is not an ounce of intolerance that in terms of public speech and trying to silence people and things like that, that actually is good.
[01:23:18] Peter: Unless your goal is just to shut people down and feel better about yourself.
[01:23:24] Bruce: In terms of moral progress for society, none of it's good. And clearly Taleb's in the opposite camp, right? I'm not sure I would say Taleb's in the camp where it's 100% good, because clearly he gives examples of it being bad. Let me read a couple of examples so that we can accept that Taleb's not saying, Taleb's not truly in the other camp that I'm describing here of it's good. This is the way you make progress. For example, he says, clearly can democracy, by definition, the majority tolerate enemies? This is him talking about Popper's paradox of tolerance. He says, the question is as follows, would you agree to deny the freedom of speech to every political party that has in its charter the banning of freedom of speech? Let's go one step further. Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance? So reading a little bit further down, we can answer these questions using the majority rule.
[01:24:22] Bruce: Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, as we saw elsewhere in the book, it will eventually destroy our world because of the GMO example and pull the trigger and eventually you ruin the world. So we need to be more than intolerant of some intolerant minorities. It is not permissible to use American values or Western principles in treating intolerant Salafism, which denies other people's rights to have their own religion. The West is currently in the process of committing suicide. So I don't know, this is, it's a weird thing here, because clearly he doesn't think this is only a good thing, right? He claims that this idea of minority rule is going to eventually destroy the world and it's going to destroy the West and things like that. On the other hand, he's basically saying, this is where all good progress comes from, right?
[01:25:26] Bruce: So Taleb is not in favor of wokeism. That's why I'm using this as an example, right? He actually talks about how intolerant they are and he writes all these negative things about them and things like that. And yet if I take his point of view seriously, I would have to seriously consider the possibility that wokeism is a good thing in its intolerant forms. Now here is why I feel like as much as I dislike Taleb's view, I don't feel like we can at this time entirely dismiss it. This is why I put it into the 100% camp or the 0% camp. And admitting that Taleb's not maybe even himself in the 100% camp, right? But my first impulse is to say, well, the truth falls somewhere in the middle. That sometimes intolerance, the fact that we silence a person, maybe that's sometimes a good thing. It forces them to think about how their views get people angry.
[01:26:23] Bruce: There's a part of me that wants to agree to it's partially true. And the moment I start to think that way, if I were to say 50% intolerance is good, I'm not in the zero camp, I'm in the 50% camp, right? It seems to me that's the same as me agreeing with Taleb 100%, right? If I were to say, well, it's 10%, it's right. 10% intolerance is a good thing, but 90% of the time it's bad, just like Peter is saying, right?
[01:27:01] Unidentified speaker: It seems to me that I'm basically 100% in the Taleb camp.
[01:27:05] Bruce: I don't think there's any way to get out of the Taleb camp unless you're in the zero percent camp. I'm trying to throw this idea out there to get us to think about it more. And maybe I'm in fact wrong, but this is the thing that I bumped into that I can't seem to get past. If I'm saying intolerance is 90% bad, but 10% of the time it's okay, then it seems to me like I'm really just agreeing with Taleb that we need intolerance. If I do 1%, 99% of the time it's bad, but 1% it's okay, it seems to me I'm still going along with what Taleb is saying. And this is why I find it a little hard to dismiss his idea, is it's easy enough to point out intolerance can be bad. Even Taleb points out intolerance can be bad. But what you really have to do is you have to demonstrate that every single instance of intolerance is bad. And that's a tough bar to try to clear.
[01:28:08] Peter: These are large, complicated words. And I think in some ways, intolerance has its place in the world. I think Ayaan Hirsi Ali says tolerance for intolerance is cowardice. And you know, it's a Popper's paradox of tolerance is an intriguing thought experiment as well. But I don't know, I started to harp on this again, but I do think it comes down to your feelings about humans. And are we truth seekers or just kind of like puppets to be manipulated? And I think that overall, big picture, humans, even fairly average humans, are seekers of truth. We want to be right. And you know, we don't change our minds maybe as easily as we should or and we're highly fallible and emotional. And, you know, there's all kinds of problems with humans, of course. But I think that overall, you know, even terrible people want to be right. You know, they want to, you know, even if someone who—I hate to go full on fascism or something.
[01:29:30] Peter: But, you know, I mean, if you look at something like Nazism, you know, they have a series of just incorrect ideas about race and history and all this. I mean, they're wrong. Of course, they're wrong. But they at least want to be right. You know, humans like being right. I think it's one of the beautiful things about our species and the human mind.
[01:30:01] Bruce: Let me give something that is my opinion now, since I'm trying to play neutral.
[01:30:06] Unidentified speaker: I'm trying to play the advocate.
[01:30:08] Bruce: So one of the things that Deutsch talks about is this idea of rational memes versus irrational memes. And one of the things I've argued is that there's no actual clear distinction between the two, because memes don't exist as separate units. So he lists as an example of a rational meme how we got rid of racism. Because, in fact, the races are equal.
[01:30:33] Unidentified speaker: That's a fact.
[01:30:34] Bruce: And therefore, racism is an irrational meme. But if you were to actually get down and you were to look at how anti-racism eventually won out over racism, or non-racism, I should say, since anti-racism has a different meaning these days, how being not racist won out over being racist, I think it's fairly clear that there was an element of intolerance that came up and that Taleb's not entirely wrong. In some ways, that's just a historical fact, right? In some ways, what I'm really asking is, did we need that intolerance? Like, it definitely is there. It is a part of how we did it. And it's not a mistake that the intolerant wokes, let's put it that way so that we can allow for their tolerant wokeism also, that intolerant wokeism, they're using the playbook that worked before, if that makes any sense. Now, if intolerance is in fact irrational, which you made a good case it is, okay, because you're not open to criticism, okay?
[01:31:38] Bruce: If that's the case, I don't think you can easily declare, we got rid of racism through rational debate. I think it's far more complicated than that, historically and in real life. And I think the real question is, did we need the intolerance? Did intolerance play a positive role? You keep talking about this intolerance like Nazis, where we know they're wrong, okay? But what if you're intolerant about something that is right? And I think that's the way the steelman version of an intolerant, woke person would look at themselves, is that, yeah, I agree with you that intolerance is a bad thing if you're wrong. And I agree the Nazis were intolerant and it was wrong, right? But I'm right about this is how we need to take care of, quote, white supremacy or anti-racism or whatever. Let's even consider the possibility that by chance, they are right about something.
[01:32:37] Bruce: That's really the question we're asking, is in real life, there's always this mix of tolerance and intolerance. And the intolerance does play some sort of role, but is it positive or is it all negative? Is it something in between? And what do we mean by tolerance? You brought that up, right? What exactly is tolerance and not tolerance? They're kind of vague terms. And I think one of the things I like about... So first of all, I don't believe you can say anti-racism is rational meme or it's an irrational meme. I think in real life, the meme had elements of both, and that's just the way it was, okay? And I think that's going to turn out to be true for wokeism too. In fact, I think it's going to turn out to be true for everything, at least until we get to the point where we do have a better way of understanding what counts as tolerance, what counts as intolerance and things like that, okay?
[01:33:33] Bruce: One of the ways that we did spread anti-racism was by being intolerant towards people who were racist.
[01:33:39] Unidentified speaker: That's just a fact, right?
[01:33:41] Bruce: And it did, to some degree, do something. It caused those people to shut up. They kept their opinions to themselves and etc. So now here's the question. If it's actually true that we don't need intolerance, which is exactly what I want to believe, I don't know if that's true or not, but that's certainly what I want to have be the truth. And I think there's a good case for it, even if I'm not sure if it's the truth yet or not. Then how would you go about trying to fix this? Well, I felt like Jonathan Rauch's version was probably the better of the two. Deutsch is kind of assuming we are rational, whereas Rauch is trying to come up with how to define things in such a way that we know where it's okay to be intolerant and where it's not, what we might call intolerant. And he made a distinction between sharing an opinion versus sharing knowledge.
[01:34:36] Bruce: Now, this is a tough thing, so I don't really know if he's got this thought through all the way yet or not, but the idea that we will go after a false statement as false and not even allow it to be in a textbook and shut it down, okay? That is what science does. And if we want to call that intolerance, that might be a good form of intolerance. But that's probably not what people generally mean by intolerance, right? We usually have something like silencing people in mind. And Rauch is arguing for, we can silence people in the sense of we don't allow a textbook to contain [unclear: non—] things that are false, right? But we do allow you to share your opinion and we don't try to silence you. I love this as a vision. I don't know how true it is or not, but as a vision of how I wish the world was, this is the vision I would like to see win, right?
[01:35:37] Bruce: Especially since I think there's a good chance it's going to turn out to be correct, that we don't really need intolerance. And I think even like Popper's paradox of tolerance, it's such a problematic statement where Popper said that we have to be intolerant towards the intolerant. Every single time I've come across someone who wants to silence people, they quote Popper, right? The Wokes quote Popper on this. And they say, of course, we're being intolerant because you have to be intolerant to the intolerant. And to some degree, that just seems right. I mean, even Rauch is kind of arguing that. He's saying that we're going to be intolerant in the sense that we're not going to allow racist false statements in textbooks, right? We're going to silence them in some sense, right? Just not in terms of sharing personal opinion in the public. And I think this is where we really have to get down to is that Popper's paradox of tolerance really failed because he did not know how to define things precisely enough that it couldn't just be used for any side you want, right?
[01:36:44] Bruce: One thing I've suggested in the past is that we see him as only talking about violence. He's saying, yes, we will use violence against those that are violent.
[01:36:53] Peter: Well, I mean, you know, I think it's really sad overall that his that idea seems to be something that so many people is the main thing they associate with Popper. I mean, for one thing, it was just a footnote in it in a, you know, 800 page book or something.
[01:37:09] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:37:10] Peter: And also, you know, he was writing in in the context of Nazis, you know, tearing apart the world.
[01:37:20] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:37:22] Peter: You know, he wasn't talking about when I just it really rubs to me the wrong way when people use it as if he was talking about banning some kind of center right speaker from speaking at a university. So we can't have any tolerance for this. It's just, oh, it's just such rubbish.
[01:37:41] Bruce: Well, but I think that's the problem.
[01:37:43] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:37:44] Bruce: Is that like, I just suggested we see it in terms of violence. But I'm not even sure I'm right. Like, Jonathan Rauch may have this better than me that there is a certain sense in which intolerance is OK. If we're talking about within the context of certain institutions. So let me even steel man what we just read from Taleb. It might be completely OK from a Popperian standpoint to be intolerant of whatever the group he suggested was. Where he says they deny other people's rights to have their own religion. OK, it might be OK to set up the system to be intolerant in certain ways that people find acceptable.
[01:38:26] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:38:26] Bruce: Because there's—[unclear: it's fair how] you go about it. You are not allowed to be against freedom of speech. Say, OK, that we will be intolerant of a person trying to argue against the freedom of speech.
[01:38:40] Unidentified speaker: We will.
[01:38:42] Bruce: This is a made up example.
[01:38:43] Unidentified speaker: I don't even know if it's a true example or not.
[01:38:45] Bruce: OK, that there are certain there are certain values, liberal values that we will intolerantly defend. Maybe that's even what Rauch is getting at.
[01:38:56] Unidentified speaker: Right.
[01:38:57] Bruce: That we are going to accept science as the determiner of what is true. Even though that may sound a bit scientism, right? But it is the process that we trust the process. We trust that the process actually gets at the truth because it works. And therefore, we are going to let science have its say. And that's what goes into the textbooks. And we are not going to be tolerant of putting creationism into textbooks. Because that's just the way our liberal society. We've decided it's going to function. This is one of the beliefs that we will not be tolerant over. We will, on the other hand, allow you to believe in creationism. And you're even allowed to set up your own meetings to talk about it. It just isn't going to be in the public schools and the textbooks. You can set up your own private schools, and you can argue in favor of it. But it's going to get marginalized.
[01:39:53] Bruce: This is something he brings up in his books over again. Yes, we absolutely have to be able to marginalize certain ideas. And maybe what we need here is a better understanding of exactly what it is we're allowed to be intolerant of. And once we accept that, that there is going to be some level of intolerance, but it's going to be narrow. It's going to be solely in protecting liberal values, let's say, the things that we are based on. Then maybe Popper's paradox of tolerance makes more sense to me. Maybe even not as a statement about violence, but as there are certain values that we are going to defend, and we're going to institutionally defend them. We're going to find ways to allow you to express them and live them if you believe otherwise, but you just get no say in the public square. In essence, you're silenced under certain circumstances.
[01:40:50] Bruce: And I think the creationism is a good example. Like creationists are not silenced, right? They're not silenced in the same sense that Charles Murray... Now, obviously, he's not really silenced either. He's shown up in interviews and things like that, right? But there was definitely an attempt to silence him that I think the open society did not allow for, right? Creationists are definitely not silenced in that sense. You can [unclear: pick at/picket] them if you want. Probably nobody's going to bother. The one thing they can't do is they can't put their creationism into textbooks, right? It just isn't going to show up there. And even then, I've got some questions. I've often wondered if it would really be so bad if in textbooks you mention in passing intelligent design or something like that. I don't believe in intelligent design at all. But is it so awful to include it in a scientific textbook?
[01:41:42] Unidentified speaker: I don't know.
[01:41:42] Bruce: I think John Rauch makes a case that it is and that it just has no place there. But it's not immediately obvious where to draw the line, if that makes any sense. Intelligent design believed so much in evolution and accepted so much of evolution as true. Did it actually have to be banished from textbooks?
[01:42:01] Unidentified speaker: I don't know.
[01:42:03] Bruce: Maybe a lot of times all they're doing is raising issues that are actually legitimate issues, places where we don't have answers yet. Maybe that is the part I would be okay with, if we were to admit evolution doesn't answer. Evolution does not explain today. Bobby Azarian is trying to make an argument otherwise. It doesn't have a good explanation today of how life got started in the first place. That might be a completely legitimate thing that we put into a textbook, and it may be the intelligent design people who make us put it there, but it's actually a scientifically correct thing to raise as a problem, so it probably belongs there.
[01:42:39] Peter: And Paul Davies and many other very credible scientists make similar kinds of—ask similar kinds of questions.
[01:42:46] Unidentified speaker: Yeah.
[01:42:50] Peter: But yeah, I guess my other main argument against the effectiveness of intolerance, other than what I was saying about my individual ideas about humans, my crazy optimistic ideas about humans, is that I just think if you looked at history in general, I think it would look quite a bit different if intolerance was such an effective way of controlling people. One of the conclusions of history, I think, at least the last 500 years or so, is that humans thrive under freedom, that open societies are successful, societies where a diversity of viewpoint is allowed and encouraged. And children are raised to consider different ideas. This is where the innovation happens. Big picture in the world. It didn't really happen in the Soviet Union or the most Middle Eastern societies. It happens where there's freedom. To me, that just is another data point to indicate that humans do care about truth.
[01:44:09] Peter: And we should probably wrap this up soon.
[01:44:11] Bruce: Yeah, you know, this is... I think that was a great summary, though. I don't know the answers to this question. I know where my beliefs lie, that we should really... that ultimately we're going to find, at least with the right institutions in place, that there actually is no good intolerance. Other than maybe what I just said, if by intolerance you mean creationism doesn't go into textbooks, then I guess I'm in favor of that kind of intolerance. But the distinction that Rauch makes is that we will call it out as non-knowledge, but we will defend their expression of an opinion. And I think that's a beautiful distinction, that maybe we should rethink the word intolerance around that. If you're afraid to express an opinion that you think is true, even though you're wrong, I suspect in the long run we're going to find that is a problem and that our society has not done...
[01:45:10] Bruce: I mean, we've gotten better at it over time. This is like everything, right? But I think even our true things that we've made real moral progress on have all come with a heavy dose of intolerance. And that's why people keep using that as their playbook, because it's worked in the past. Taleb's giving a compelling case that it works mathematically, that it's a part of the way the system works, and that there's no easy way to get rid of it. But I suspect we could find ways to be intolerant in a positive way, like textbooks calling out things as not true, having certain liberal institutions and ideas that we will not challenge. This is the basis for society, liberal ideas, and yet still find ways to let people who disagree with it express their opinions and not feel like they're under threat all the time. And I suspect that there is a way to get to that point, and that's the right point to get to, and we're not there.
[01:46:13] Bruce: And we've never been there, by the way. The idea that wokeism is some new challenge is just not true.
[01:46:22] Unidentified speaker: It just isn't.
[01:46:22] Unidentified speaker: Oh, yeah [unclear ending].
[01:46:23] Unidentified speaker: No, no.
[01:46:24] Unidentified speaker: I mean, like...
[01:46:25] Bruce: And Rauch points this out. He says, it's counterintuitive. It seems like if you've got the right idea, that what we should do is you should just go shut down the wrong ideas. And you have to read his books. He does this so much better than me. He says, so we have to go out and we have to reconvince people every single generation to go against their intuitions and tell them, no, we want people to express bad ideas. That's exactly what we want. And we want them to leave them untouched to do it, because otherwise people with the correct ideas that are currently unpopular won't be able to make progress. And this is really his point of view, right? So you absolutely must, after you win the day for gay marriage, you must now protect people who don't believe in gay marriage. And you need to make sure that they are completely safe expressing their ideas.
[01:47:20] Bruce: You know, I don't know, is that the truth or not? I don't know, right? But it's a compelling moral case. It's a compelling case. And I don't know entirely how to respond to the Taleb viewpoint.
[01:47:32] Peter: Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's a good example, because the way they made progress for gay marriage wasn't by trying to shut people down who disagreed. It was by trying to convince people by showing people movies with gay people in it and TV shows and just talking it through with people and people just... The court of public opinion came down on the side that gay marriage is fine. And, you know, that's exactly how progress actually happens.
[01:48:06] Bruce: You know, that was almost a summary of what Rauch says. So you've read his books, right? So you're not just...
[01:48:13] Peter: I just read the first one.
[01:48:15] Unidentified speaker: Okay.
[01:48:16] Bruce: Yeah. And since he was someone who was actively doing that, he talks about how it was his belief in liberal values and the fact that he was protected and that allowed him to raise things. I think it was Rauch. He said that he was on a radio show arguing in favor of gay marriage, and somebody called in and they said, I think I'm going to have to declare you the most dangerous man in America. And he goes, why is that? He goes, because you're actually making sense. So his point was that's exactly what we want to have happen, right? Okay, so enough of that. I don't have any strong answers. I think that Taleb does make a compelling point that intolerance does have some very real power. And I think that when people use it, that's what they're after, right? Is that it actually is effective to some degree. And the real question is, if we're not in the world where we can do away with intolerance, then how do we get there, right?
[01:49:21] Bruce: Because that's where we really need to be. That is going to be the ultimate error-correcting society, is the one where everybody feels free to express their opinions, but there is a process in place where we can filter through the true ones and the false ones. And you don't get to claim knowledge, you only get to have an opinion.
[01:49:40] Peter: Well, I agree with that. And I thank you for all your thoughts. You've asked. There's a lot to think about here. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to fill up a podcast with this essay, but it's been wonderful.
[01:49:54] Unidentified speaker: All right.
[01:49:54] Bruce: Well, thank you very much.
[01:49:56] Peter: Okay. Thank you, Bruce.
[01:50:01] Bruce: The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others, so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player, or you can Google The Theory of Anything Podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system, and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that.
[01:50:46] Bruce: The first is via our podcast host site Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is four strands dot org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal.
[01:51:11] Unidentified speaker: Thank you.