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The Sherminator 3: Rise of Genisys Salvation
456 Plays8 months ago
Josh and M review the final part (part 3) of Michael Shermer's 2022 book, "Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational." It's nota lot of sound and fury, and it signifies... Well, you will have to listen and find out!
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Setup
00:00:00
Speaker
Alright, going by how long the previous two episodes were, this epic conclusion to Michael Schumer's book will surely be at least two and a half hours, so I'd better get reading. These notes are going to need to be lengthy, in-depth, and I'm probably going to need to look at the examples he uses to push his points about proxy and constructive conspiracism. Right, let's crack that spine! And we'll take a look from this book. Ah, huns.
00:00:28
Speaker
Chapter 12 isn't particularly in sight. Well, that's End's chapter. I'm sure Chapter 13 will bring us home. Probably the real meat is to be found in Chapter 4. Hold on, that's it. That's the conclusion of the book. All this sound and fury signifying nothing. It's going to be an interesting episode. I wonder how Aem's getting on, Aem?
Hosts' Introduction and Academic Endeavors
00:00:53
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Addison and Em Denteth. Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and in Zhuhai, China, be afraid, be very afraid. It's Dr. Em R. Extenteth. Not necessarily afraid of you, just in general. Just as a general point. Grrr.
00:01:21
Speaker
So I'm now legally obliged to ask you, what have you been up to academically speaking? Well Josh, today I went to the bank, and because going to the bank is a lengthy process, I wrote a short paper whilst I was waiting at the bank.
00:01:36
Speaker
So today I basically drafted and wrote a paper at this stage called Infinite Conspiracy Theorising, which criticises the idea that for any event there's going to be a large number of conspiracy theories generated.
Reflecting on Past Episodes of Shermer's Book
00:01:55
Speaker
So it's a first draft, it's a very short paper, it's only about 1600 words in length, which means that there's actually very few journals such a paper could be submitted to, the primary one being Analysis, which only publishes papers of up to 4000 words in length, but prefers papers to be even shorter than that.
00:02:17
Speaker
So the task of the next few weeks is to probably ignore this paper entirely because I'm giving a presentation in Xiaoman next Friday, which I still need to finish writing. But once I get back from Xiaoman, I'm going to edit this paper within an inch of its life and submit the shortest paper I've ever written in philosophy. So that's why I've been up there. And that's just today. That's just today. Well, last week we spent two hours looking at part two
00:02:45
Speaker
of, uh, Conspiracy, Why the Rational, Believe the Irrational by Michael Shermer. And can I just say, let's never do that again. It's only two hours. It felt so much longer. So finally, it's, it's, it's the final part, part three, Shermanator.
Debating Terminator Sequels
00:03:01
Speaker
What's your favourite Terminator sequel apart from Terminator 2? Of the crappy ones, which is the best one?
00:03:07
Speaker
I mean, so I have to say I've never seen Terminator Salvation. So thus I've only seen Rise of the Machines and Terminator Genisys. And Terminator Genisys. And Dark Fate? Oh yeah, I have seen Dark Fate. The problem is I don't actually think of Dark Fate as a Terminator film because even though it stars Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger,
00:03:30
Speaker
And it also stars killer robots from the future. They're killer robots from a different future, and it doesn't actually feel that much like a Terminator film. It feels like the problem was that it felt exactly like a Terminator film and did nothing new at all.
00:03:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, I also get that as well. It is it is an it's an it's an unusual film and that it's it's a bad. My favorite is Genesis anyway. I mean, it's just they're just throwing so much crap at the wall, having lots of fun. It's just silly. It's it's not trying to be clever. It's just dicking around.
00:04:07
Speaker
And that's the point where I lost Josh completely. I mean, it was to be expected. Josh was making a ridiculous claim that Terminator Genesis is better than Terminator 3 Rise of Machines, which is admittedly not a very good film. So I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but the problem is I'm really hoping Josh is going to come back, but I also have a horrible feeling
00:04:29
Speaker
I'm suffering from bad internet today. Quite curious to see how it copes with the recording of that, because I can, I can, I continue talking about how it's a stupid idea to be saying that Terminator Genesis is better than Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines, even though I cannot defend Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines. I think they're both...
00:04:50
Speaker
They're both on a par. I appreciated the fact that... I mean, right so that she's had clear names. Yeah, it does. But even she can't save that. No, I just like the fact that there's the point in Terminator Genesis where they basically say, yeah, we've just screwed up the timeline so much that anything goes. When he's like, they're like, you can't kill us with your parents. And if we die before you're born, you'll never exist. And he's like, actually, I think I probably can, because the timeline is just so screwed by this point. And I'm like, yes.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yes, that's the way to handle time travel paradoxes. Just say, ah, shit is so crazy, none of this even matters. And they relax and have... Now, you have seen salvation? I have. It's... yeah. It's just a bit of a nothing, really. Not helped by the fact that, as I understand it, the original ending, which was stupid, got leaked onto the internet, and so they had to come up with another ending, which was equally stupid, so...
00:05:44
Speaker
It's all just a bit silly. It's one of those classic cases of where technically I would say the original Terminator is a film that never needed a sequel. And the problem is they made a sequel and the sequel was so good.
00:06:04
Speaker
that it ends up being impossible to ever match that kind of energy. Because Terminator 2 shouldn't have worked, and yet it works really well. And the problem is, it's very hard to then make an even better or even equal sequel.
00:06:21
Speaker
to something like Terminator 2. And it is interesting that Cameron didn't try until he was willing to be an executive producer on Dark Fate. And I think this goes to show that modern-day Cameron just doesn't have the pizzazz.
00:06:37
Speaker
of a young 80s Cameron. The kind of Cameron who likes to drown his actors on set. Yes, yeah. On multiple films. I don't think Cameron drowned anyone in Dark Fate, so what even is the point? Now, it seems to me that perhaps we might be stalling here. We might be discussing fun pop culture because we're trying to put off getting back into the dry
Analyzing Shermer's Acknowledgements
00:07:01
Speaker
uh Michael Sherman stuff but in the interest of not recording for another two hours yeah yeah let's play a sting and see where we go welcome to conspiracy theory
00:07:21
Speaker
Well, initially where we go is to part three. Part three of this book, which is called Talking to Conspiracists and Rebuilding Trust in Truth. And my immediate thought reading that title was... Ah, but you're actually going to skip. We're going to skip right to the end and look at the acknowledgements, because I think there's something really interesting about a kind of person that Michael Shermer thinks has been essential for building his understanding.
00:07:48
Speaker
of these things called conspiracy theories. So yes, we will talk about part three. But let's go to the acknowledgments, which is unusually located at the end of the book rather than the beginning. And I have a theory about this, which is even Shermer realizes that some of the people he's thanking, if you read about them at the beginning of the book, you might just put the book down, leave the bookstore, leave the planet Earth and hope to never, ever experience English language ever again.
00:08:18
Speaker
So, in the acknowledgements found at the end of the book, Sherma states,
00:08:48
Speaker
and conspiracy theories in particular. I've selected some of the names.
00:08:54
Speaker
from the acknowledgements here. I'm not gonna read through the entire list because some of the people on that list, I don't know. But he thinks people like Peter Pagosian, Deepak Chopra, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Andrew Doyle, Niall Ferguson, Jonathan Haight, John McWhorter, Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, Helen Pluckrose, Dave Rubin, Gade Saad, Debra So, Cass Sunstein, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Barry Weiss. This is not a great selection of people.
00:09:22
Speaker
I mean, I only recognize about half of those names. Some of them I have no strong feelings about, but some of them, yeah, a little bit. Douglas Murray. Douglas Murray. One of the names I do not know. My problem is I just don't have enough exposure to assholes on the internet. I really don't. And yet somehow you're still on Twitter. Yeah.
00:09:46
Speaker
Again, stay away from the assholes. They're not all of them, but there are more. Yeah. So, you know what I'm saying? The acknowledgement is a... it's an indictment of a kind to show the people that Shermer refers to, and they're mostly right-wing, they're mostly contrarian, and some of them have been involved in generating conspiracy theories about liberal or left-wing causes. So...
00:10:16
Speaker
It is interesting the company he keeps, and this has actually nothing to do with part three, because part three has very little to do with conspiracy theories.
00:10:28
Speaker
No, it talks in very general terms. Platitudinous terms, Josh. Platitudinous terms. Nothing wrong with it, but a platitude, the noble monotreme, the native of Australia that we should all emulate. Now, the first thing I thought when I saw the title talking to conspiracists and rebuilding trust and truth was, he's going to mention the sunstone of the mule paper, isn't he? He's going to say, that's a great idea, and we're going to be back where we were a long time ago. But he doesn't.
00:10:55
Speaker
Doesn't quite. He doesn't. He doesn't. We'll see. I don't want to spoil it, because first, before I get to talk about my bit, you must talk about chapter 12. So take it away. Yes, how to talk to conspiracy theorists engaging with people with whom we disagree. A chapter
00:11:11
Speaker
that on one hand, delightfully short, on another hand says very little, and on the third hand, because we're dealing with a lot of different hands here, is just another list, because Michael Shermer loves a chapter, which is just a succession of lists. It seems that he can simply go, look, how do I write a chapter? I'll find a list online, and then I'll just write a paragraph, every item on a list. And look, the chapter's already written. I can move on to the next chapter.
00:11:40
Speaker
this seems to be the way that he writes a book. So he starts off with 9-11, because almost all of the chapters in part two and part three, Michael Shermer going, look, at the beginning of the chapter, I want to point out to you, I'm a really important person when it comes to talking about these things
Shermer's Conspiracy Theory Experiences
00:11:58
Speaker
called conspiracy theories. I'm always been asked to be an expert witness about things or being accused by people who believe in conspiracy theories, just not being open-minded enough.
00:12:08
Speaker
So he talks about how he's been involved in critiquing 9-11 inside job conspiracy theories, both of the Lee Hop and Me Hop variety, and how that when he talks about these things he gets lumped in as being part of the conspiracy. And I thought what he was going to try to do in this chapter is to show how he's a much more
00:12:32
Speaker
even-handed and nuanced thinker than that. And yes, he's criticized conspiracy theories in the past, but crucially, he's going to show how he's engaged with conspiracy theorists and actually talk them down from their conspiracy-theoretic world views. But instead, he's just going to give us a list of things you might do to have a conversation with someone with whom you disagree.
00:12:59
Speaker
whether it is a conspiracy theorist or not. And so he states, I have in my files hundreds more such letters, such as the ones that accuse him of being involved in a conspiracy. But the gist of this chapter, and this book in general, is that once conspiracy theorists get a particular explanation for an event into their heads, it is very difficult to change minds regardless of the facts.
00:13:24
Speaker
Nevertheless, it can be done. It begins with learning how to have difficult conversations with anyone about anything, skills that I have honed over decades of talking to people whose views do not perfectly align with my own, as well as understanding how to reason and think, and how to teach other people to do so. And my immediate thought here was that, despite what he claimed,
00:13:50
Speaker
in Part 1, which is that sometimes it's rational to believe in conspiracy theories. And despite what he claims in Part 2, which is actually constructive conspiracism, is a rational response to a variety of different bits of evidence about the kind of cultures in which he lives.
00:14:09
Speaker
He's still doing that generous thing of saying, look, there are some really nasty conspiracy theorists out there who've said some really nasty things. Therefore, that shows that conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theorizing are a nasty group of people, and we need to learn how to talk with these nasty people in order to get them to believe irrationally, like myself, Michael Shermer, and the readers of this book are going to think.
00:14:36
Speaker
So it seems that even though he's spent a lot of time in part one, part two, trying to argue that, look, sometimes being a conspiracy theorist is a rational response to things. In this last section, he's reversing back to the kind of norm we get by skeptics of his type and saying, look, conspiracy theories are bad. We just need to know how to talk with those conspiracy theorists. And how do we talk with those conspiracy theorists? Well,
00:15:04
Speaker
we've got a list, a set of tools that Michael Shermer has developed over the years to talk to anyone who holds opinions different to our own on important topics, especially if those topics are emotionally salient, which he claims most conspiracy theories are. So Josh, do you want me to go through this list? Oh please.
00:15:29
Speaker
I've been starved of lists this past fortnight. I need to get my hit. Well, that is a lie because you've got some lists to go through. So many lists. You've been actually very careful with the numbering of these lists because the next chapter is very confusing. It really is. So how do we talk with conspiracy theorists? Number one, we must keep emotions out of the exchange. I suppose that's fair.
00:15:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that actually is a start. I mean, this, well, I mean, I don't say start good start. I mean, it's not necessarily the case that keeping emotions out of the exchange is always a good idea, because there are some particular issues, say, over racism in a authoritarian society, we're actually
00:16:12
Speaker
it's very hard to keep emotions out of the exchange and it might look really odd to be debating the merits of racism without expressing some degree of emotion as to why racism is bad. But generally people think for
00:16:28
Speaker
a polite conversation, at least keeping your tone as level as possible is a good idea. I don't know whether you should keep all emotion out of the exchange, but maybe yes, you should curb some of the more extreme reactions and able to get a conversation
Strategies for Talking with Conspiracy Theorists
00:16:44
Speaker
going. Although that being said, as I said, I think there are going to be examples where that might seem rather odd.
00:16:52
Speaker
The next one, discuss ideas, don't attack people. So this is the classic case of attack the argument, don't attack the person giving the argument. And that normally is, I think, a fairly good rule of thumb if you're engaging in a productive conversation. You want to say, look, Josh, I think the idea you're expressing is bad.
00:17:16
Speaker
where I'm saying, Josh, I think you're a bad person and your views are even worse, because you might be a good person with bad ideas. And so we want to kind of keep the idea that, look, I think the best of you, I just think the arguments you're presenting happen to be a little bit slipshod and, dare I say, a bit rum. And I suppose the opposite of that, it's possible to be a bad person who nevertheless comes up with a good idea.
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah, this is the argument we use in critical thinking courses, which there's a very long history of doctors in the middle of the 20th century, smoking in their consulting rooms, telling people don't smoke, it's bad for your health. Okay, so look, hypocrites can still be right, just because they lack the character to follow through on their own arguments, doesn't mean their arguments are bad.
00:18:10
Speaker
The next one is acknowledge that you understand why someone might maintain an opinion you don't hold. And this is where he actually admits to having been a global warming skeptic in the past. So he uses that to say, look, in a situation where you can say, look, I thought like you once upon a time, so I can understand why you have these particular views.
00:18:33
Speaker
That is a good way to show that you are able to understand why people might hold positions you don't like. And that's a nice bit of sympathetic conversational work if you can do it. Fair enough. What's next? He also wants us to practice active listening.
00:18:53
Speaker
active listening. It's a bit of a buzzword, isn't it? What does he mean? Well, as in you are actually paying attention to what people are saying as opposed to, uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh. So you want to be able to repeat back what people have said. Look, so Josh, when you said, I think that all dingoes eat babies, what you meant by that is the claim that dogs in Australia which are wild have a predilection towards
00:19:20
Speaker
Eating small children, is that correct? So it's the idea of listening actively and going, look, I just want to be really sure what you're saying here is a claim of this particular time. And he states, listen, he says, listen to others in a way that enables you to comprehend what they're saying, convey through both your words and your actions that you are really hearing what they say and make sure they are aware of this.
00:19:44
Speaker
don't stare but often look at their faces especially into their eyes instead of looking away or down at your feet, not attentively when they are speaking. This also shows respect which we all want so perhaps they will actively listen to you in turn. Now this is
00:20:02
Speaker
good advice in certain Western situations. In some cultures, staring to someone's eyes when you're having a conversation with them is considered to be incredibly rude. So active listening of this kind is going to work in some situations and in some societies, but it's not going to be a useful bit of advice generally for all human societies.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yes, in fact, when I was in Thailand just over a year ago, while my house was being flooded back in New Zealand, we were seeing a friend there who had a Thai nanny, and she was saying that at one point she talked about how rude she found it, or at least strange, the way we should be talking to English speakers, we'd constantly be going,
00:20:58
Speaker
Mmm, yeah, mmm. Which, we were like, yes, people do that to show that they're listening to what you're saying, but in her understanding, in her culture, that she found that rude and distracting.
00:21:14
Speaker
It was weird. Yeah, because you were constantly interrupting her. Yeah. See what I just did there. Feels perfectly normal to me, but... That's true. Also, because it's a podcast and we're in different locations, we're talking over one another all the time anyway due to this thing called lag. So, carry on. What's the next option? The next option?
00:21:36
Speaker
Ah, the old steel manning. Does anyone actually do that? I see people advocating for it. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone actually do it. Philosophers are keen on steel manning. Yeah, no, philosophers are keen on steel manning, which is presenting the best possible version of someone's argument, in part because philosophers love to steel man a position that they can then show is still bad. Because, look, the best possible version of the argument you're presenting, Josh,
00:22:05
Speaker
is this and it's obviously wrong because look here's an obvious objection you idiot. So yes philosophers like to steel man or at least technically philosophy should be all about steel manning other people's positions or we probably should say steel person in other people's positions but I've read a lot of articles and review and many people still straw man the other person's position because it's a lot easier to defeat a bad argument than is to try and come up with a response to a good one.
00:22:35
Speaker
Right. You've just done this as a list of bullet points, I've lost count already, but there's a bunch more to go, so give me number whatever this one is. Channel your inner Socrates.
00:22:47
Speaker
Ah, so you mean corrupt the youth and die of poison? Yeah, that doesn't seem to be what he's claiming here. So here he cites the book How to Have Impossible Conversations with Peter Bogosian and Arch-Anti-Semite James Lindsay, which just seems like a particularly
Criticism of Shermer's References
00:23:04
Speaker
poor choice back in 2019, but a particularly poor choice in the year of our Lord 2024. Yeah, yeah. Doesn't mean to cite his sources perhaps so much.
00:23:17
Speaker
No, and seriously not those particular sources, when he could actually have just gone to a standard philosophical critical thinking primer and found the same claims about Socratic methods without having to cite bad people who are talking about it. He also claims we should identify flawed or dishonest arguments, and he goes into quite some depth as to arguments he takes to be bad. And one of these I think is interesting, so
00:23:47
Speaker
He talks about claiming membership in a group to gain authority, and he claims this is a kind of authority boasting, implying that only someone who is a member of X is qualified to speak about X. Again, conversation should focus on ideas not on one's affiliation with a particular group or on which groups are the most qualified.
00:24:08
Speaker
The latter in itself is a form of stereotyping or prejudice. This is an especially sensitive topic when we're talking about assemblages based on race, gender, religion, or political party, making this an even bigger problem for smooth conversations. To which I have to say, that is precisely what a middle class white man would say.
00:24:29
Speaker
it's oh, I think it's really, really awkward that you're claiming that because as a woman, you have a better understanding of the kind of problems that women suffer in a society. I mean, that really just seems to make it a very prejudiced conversation in case of no, there are people whose standpoint does give them more access to information about particular problems that you cannot you can you can theorize about your heart's content, but there seems to be something different in the
00:24:57
Speaker
quality of the evidence of the person who is marginalised as the person who can just pretend they are marginalised in a situation. So I know people make arguments of this kind, but I really do think there are some situations where it is appropriate to say, look, as a member of X, I had slightly more information about the experiences of being X than you can ever possibly speculate about.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yes, yeah, I mean, I can certainly see going the other way, saying you don't understand this because you are whatever is a good way to get yourself in trouble, especially when we're talking about race and religion and what have you, but yeah, yeah. Does he actually say this is a bad thing that you should never do, or does he at least say it's generally a bad thing that you probably shouldn't do?
00:25:47
Speaker
It seemed, I mean, he's hedging his bets here because he's claiming that claiming membership in a group to gain authority is prejudicial. He's saying, oh, but you know, it is it is sensitive. So he's kind of trying to have it both ways.
00:26:02
Speaker
Good for him. I had it both ways. No, no. Really? No, I do. I did not know that. You keep so many secrets from me. All right. You also need to determine how confident really your doctor. Wow. Interesting consultation. Anyway, you need to determine how confident your conversational partner is in their beliefs. Fair enough. I guess.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, so basically, it's the claim here that if you're having an argument with someone, actually check to see whether they're actually confident about their position or actually asserting the claim you think is at stake. Because if it turns out the person you're having an argument with is going, well, I'm not committed to that view. I just think it's interesting. Your argument might actually be pointless or overly emotional in a way that it doesn't need to be.
00:26:54
Speaker
Are we at the end of the list yet? Surely. Surely they can be in the water. No, not yet. Very, very... I mean, I'd say it's very platitudinous. Be willing to change your mind and suggest to your conversational partner that it's okay if they change
Encouraging Open-mindedness
00:27:08
Speaker
their opinion. I mean, in general, I think it's a good... Or at least I think it's a problem that in so many situations we stigmatise the changing of one's opinion.
00:27:19
Speaker
You know, we always say it's a problem that politicians, you know, people refuse to admit that they're wrong, because when they do, they get pounced upon for either changing their mind and being a hypocrite, or if you treat this sort of thing as a game, that means they lose, but sound a little bit patronising when he puts it like that.
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think if you'd stuck with be willing to change your mind, that would be fine. But then going on, but you know, you should also be willing to change your mind as well. Because I'm actually right, you're the one who is wrong. I mean, I practice this kind of thing in my teaching. If I make a mistake, I make a point of pointing out to the class,
00:27:57
Speaker
I said x, x is wrong, I'm willing to admit to that mistake because it's good modeling of how we should actually show we change our minds given new evidence, all the realisation mistakes are made. So it is a generally good position, but you're right, there's a slight hint of condescension in the way he's phrased this.
00:28:16
Speaker
He also states, try to show that changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews. This is one of those things where the philosopher in me is going, what do you mean by changing facts? Facts are factual. Don't you mean that try to show that changing your view on things doesn't necessarily mean changing your worldview? Changing what you believe the facts are is...
00:28:38
Speaker
Yeah, and he ends this section with a quote from Jefferson. So when asked how Jefferson managed to maintain friendships with people who were often his political foes, Jefferson responded, I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as a cause for withdrawing from a friend.
00:29:01
Speaker
And I don't know, maybe it's because I'm an extremist, but I don't really agree with that kind of sentiment. I do find it very difficult to maintain cordial relationships with people who, for example, are racist, or anti Semites, or a variety of different positions that I take to be a difference of opinion in politics, religion and philosophy.
00:29:25
Speaker
Yes, I suppose it depends how great a difference we're talking about. I mean, there's the stereotype. I believe he was, yes. Yeah, I don't know whether you should actually take the word of slave owners as a good case for we should model our political views and our friendship views are based upon this bad person over here. I mean, there is the stereotype of the left, the whole people's front of Judea thing where any tiny difference is cause for a
00:29:54
Speaker
for a lifelong grudge. So I think there definitely has to be room for some difference of opinion. But yeah, there are limits, surely. So yeah, and that basically is where the chapter ends, which is a platitudinous list, which also seems to fly in the face of his discussion of constructive or proxy criticism earlier in sections or parts one and two.
00:30:20
Speaker
In that, in the earlier sections, he's saying, look, people sometimes hold their beliefs for a-rational or non-rational reasons, and yet this entire chapter is predicated on being able to change someone's mind by an appeal to rationality. And given that most of the chapter isn't about conspiracy beliefs at all, or belief in conspiracy theories,
00:30:45
Speaker
It's simply a chapter on how to talk with people who have views against you. This chapter very much feels like my book's a little bit too short about conspiracy theories. I need to say something. Let me just rehash how a skeptic should have a conversation.
00:31:07
Speaker
But maybe Josh, maybe this chapter is a bit weak because it's all going to come down in chapter 13 where he's going to close the book on conspiracy theories and give us some concrete takeaway messages as to how we should deal with the conspiracy theories that we find problematic. Well, well.
00:31:27
Speaker
Well, let's just have a look, shall we? Chapter 13, How to Rebuild Trust and Truth, Reason, Rationality and Empiricism in Reality-Based Communities. So he starts by talking about how these days there's a real lack of trust in, as he puts it, traditional institutions and authorities.
00:31:44
Speaker
and points out that which institutions are trusted and which aren't tends to be something that breaks down along political lines. Which particular media outlets you think are the unvarnished truth and which are horribly biased, which particular institution, societal institutions you think are all a big line of lies or not.
00:32:05
Speaker
He talks about Trump. Trump has told an insane number of lies. One of the fact-checking things lodged like 30,000 different untruths through his initial campaign and presidency. But he does point out that other presidents
00:32:24
Speaker
historically and other politicians in the here and now do lie plenty as well to the extent that fact-checking organizations like Open Secrets and PolitiFact and Snopes and Factcheck.org have only become sort of more prominent and he talks about how
00:32:43
Speaker
news organisations will refer to fact checking in various things now. I've got a fact check which has just come in. Earlier in this episode, co-host of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, Professor M.R.X. Denters, made the claim that the book, Conspiracy, How the Rational Believed the Irrational, was published in the year 2019. According to my records here, actually, this book was published in the year 2022. I think it's 2002 as I've stated on numerous occasions.
00:33:12
Speaker
So when Dentith is making the claim that it was a poor choice to be quoting people like Peter Bagossian and James Lindsay in 2019, this is the year of our Lord 2024, actually, it was a really, really poor choice to be citing them in 2022, given what was known about James Lindsay at the
Fact-checking Interlude
00:33:31
Speaker
time. So we would like to point out that Dentith did make a mistake there, and we are hoping that Dentith is going to be willing to take responsibility for that mistake going forward.
00:33:40
Speaker
uh we take you back to your erroneous podcast where the other co-host of the podcast is Guide to the Conspiracy claims this book was actually published in 2002 which is as is a book that cites dentists before dentists ever publish something on conspiracy theories is a very problematic claim. Back to you. Yes uh so Schumel points out if
00:34:01
Speaker
Before we go overboard and say that it's never been as bad as it is now, as he puts it, before you say the truth has never been so distorted, he does point out that politicians have been lying about significant stuff forever and proves this with you'll never guess. You'll never guess what he puts in.
00:34:21
Speaker
If only no, it's a list. He gives a list of presidents from Trump going back all the way back to Jefferson and how basically every president, you can come up with an example of them lying about something fairly significant to the American public and finishes by saying, you know, Trump remains worse by orders of magnitude, but he didn't invent the practice.
00:34:40
Speaker
and points out that lying, to be able to tell these sort of lies, that requires a receptive audience. Politicians don't necessarily create a situation where nobody trusts things or can't agree on the truth, but they definitely exploit it. And it compares commentary about McCarthyism at the time, how McCarthy didn't create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust and reads under the bed and all that, but he very much exploited it and hyped it up.
00:35:10
Speaker
So within mine, he says, there's this climate of distrust that's around at the moment, which has been building for some time. What can we do about it? Sherma has a bunch of suggestions, a bunch of suggestions he presents in a list. In a list? A list of how many items, Joshua?
00:35:26
Speaker
Um, I don't know, and we'll get to this in a little while. So the first item though, the one is definitely number one, is reinforce the norms of truth telling and honesty. This becomes a bit of a problem through some of these sections. He sort of says this is a good thing to do. We should reinforce that it's good to be honest and it's good to tell truth. Doesn't really say how you might do that, just that it's a good thing.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, but he also notes that one way to tell whether someone's probably being sincere or honest in their views is that when people are contrarian, because he goes, when their minds operate in some other direction, so he's talking here about people like Christopher Hitchens and the like, which goes against the grain of expectations. It not only surprises us, it grabs our attention and makes us wonder if maybe we should give this latter mode of perception a little more credence.
00:36:21
Speaker
Elevating such a concept to a virtuous principle of rationality would go a long way towards reinforcing such norms. Which is why I have to say, when Naomi Wolf started making really weird claims on what used to be called Twitter, we really should have been listening to her, right?
00:36:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, if I could push back on that a little, you're the one who's said that when people say aliens are conspiring to take over the world, or things about furies, that someone should at least pay attention, and paying attention to them doesn't mean that they've done something I'm saying. But he's saying we should elevate such a concept to a virtuous principle of rationality. I'm simply saying, if someone makes an unusual claim, somebody should go and check just to make sure we know why they're wrong.
00:37:05
Speaker
I'm not saying that this is a we should treat people making unusual claims as a kind of virtuous signal in our society. I mean, sometimes that might be good. Sometimes it might be bad. It's going to be on a case by case manner. He's making a general claim. Look, if people go against the grain, they're probably worth listening to. And this is a man who's quite happy to go on Rokin's show. He is.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, I read that slightly differently. But nevertheless, I think the main thing is that it doesn't actually say how we should promote these things that he thinks need to be promoted. You just kill people who tell lies.
00:37:44
Speaker
Ah, okay, that might do it. Well, that's that sort of thing. We can move on to point two. In a Jim Carrey film, or is it also a Jim Carrey film or is a turfy British comedian, the invention of like, I can't, I can't remember. A whole bunch of comedy films. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But also there's A Lion Liars starring Jim Carrey. So you've got a choice between a turf or an anti-vaccine advocate. What a world we live in. What a world we live in.
00:38:09
Speaker
So, point two, practice active open-mindedness, by which he means you should be prepared to accept new evidence, even if it contradicts your existing views. So again, this is very much a personal thing. Maybe he thinks we just need to do things by example, I'm not sure.
00:38:26
Speaker
Moving on to number three, we should valorise norms of reason and rationality. And at this point, he does actually acknowledge that bringing things like this about can be tricky, but he quotes his good buddy Steven Pinker, who points out quite correctly that social progress has occurred.
Societal Norms and Social Progress
00:38:42
Speaker
Things, thing, attitudes have shifted over time about things. So it's obviously possible.
00:38:47
Speaker
for societal attitudes to change, still doesn't exactly say how we can make that happen. Pinker apparently said we should pressure institutions such as the academia and the media to do things like valorising the norms of reason and rationality, but again I don't know.
00:39:05
Speaker
how effective that would be, but it's an idea, I guess. And should we point out, Pinker says we should valorise norms of reason and rationality, but valorise his norms of reason and rationality. So Pinker has quite strict views as to what he thinks is acceptable within the academic setting.
00:39:24
Speaker
which isn't necessarily the norms of reason rationality, they're Pinker's preferred norms of how he thinks reasonable debate should go and what he thinks counts as good evidence. So, on to point four, avoid group participation and echo chambers by talking to people with different opinions. And here, here is where Sunstein and Vimeo come in. I was like, ha ha, I knew it. I knew it. They could not not mention their paper. But
00:39:54
Speaker
To be fair, the paper is brought up in the context of quoting what they had to say about echo chambers. So he doesn't actually mention or advocate for their particular strategies for how we should deal with conspiracists. So that's something. He simply quotes what they said about people and echo chambers and says that people should probably get out of the echo chambers and expose themselves to opinions they disagree with.
00:40:23
Speaker
Now, point five. Point five is a bit interesting. Point five is develop a scout mindset. So he says a scout mindset as opposed to a soldier mindset. The soldier mindset is all about defending your territory. So they defend their beliefs against anything that might threaten their beliefs as opposed to the scout who goes out looking for evidence.
00:40:45
Speaker
He brings up the point. He quotes Julia Galef, who was the co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality. He says, she had first-hand experience in running workshops to teach people how to use the tools of rationality, probability, logic, and especially ways to avoid cognitive biases. Only to discover that this wasn't enough. Learning about cognitive biases does no more to improve your judgment than reading about exercise improves your fitness.
00:41:11
Speaker
Which I think was quite an interesting point. You can teach people that are cognitive biases as much as you want, but it possibly needs more. You need the mindset of wanting to go out and look at information and examine things to be able to get any good out of them. Now, he does say... This is the point that gets made in the pedagogical literature on teaching critical thinking skills, which is that
00:41:37
Speaker
At the university level, we're typically teaching people to be critical thinkers at the youngest about the age of 18, but probably on average between the ages of 19 and 20. And that's just too late, because critical thinking skills are language skills, and they're best picked up and applied when a person is actually still in their language acquisition phase. So yes, you can teach people about critical thinking skills, and you can give them documents, you can give them tests, you can give them little tasks to do.
00:42:07
Speaker
But it doesn't actually mean they become critical thinkers. They need to be a kind of active inquiry. And like languages, you need to be constantly using them for them to become useful. Now he says, if you aren't genuinely right about something,
00:42:23
Speaker
then the soldier mindset can be a good thing. If you're definitely right, then yes, defending your opinions is a reasonable
Technique vs. Topic Rebuttals
00:42:33
Speaker
strategy. But then there's the idea that do we even know 100% that we're right about anything? So you'll say, you know, it's hard to come up with a situation where you really want to take that strategy.
00:42:46
Speaker
This moves on to point six. Employ a technique rebuttal strategy rather than a topic rebuttal strategy when dealing with conspiracists. So he says... And if pain persists, see a doctor. He says you should rebut techniques by saying, yeah, there's this person, they're cherry picking their data, they're using illogical reasoning, they're requiring impossible standards of alternate theories or something. You should do that sort of stuff rather than going point by point on facts. Now he says that,
00:43:16
Speaker
And then he immediately quotes a study where people looked at people using either no sort of technique to rebut stuff, a technique rebuttal strategy, a topic rebuttal strategy, or both. And the study didn't actually show that either one technique was better than the other. They both seemed
00:43:38
Speaker
equally effective. But possibly the point he was making is that it's harder to properly do a topic rebuttal strategy because you need a lot of information at your fingertips, which you may not have. And he ends up basically just saying, you should rebut topics if you have the knowledge to be able to do that. And you should rebut techniques if you can see the strategy that the other person is using and you can see why it's wrong.
00:44:03
Speaker
or something like that. So his point says one thing, and then the discussion of that point doesn't actually say that so much. So not quite sure where he was going there. So maybe he'd better run back on. This is a weird thing for him to say, because, yes, it's hard to rebut things point by point, but it's also really, really easy to accuse someone.
00:44:25
Speaker
of cherry picking their data or engaging in a logical reasoning. So I don't know whether you followed the discussion about the interview of Elon Musk by Don Lemon that occurred either early this week or late. I'm aware it happened but no, no I haven't.
00:44:43
Speaker
So Lemon makes some explicit claims about things which Twitter has done or failed to do and things which Musk has said or failed to act upon. And Musk's response is, well, I think you're just cherry picking data there, or I don't think your reasoning is particularly strong.
00:44:59
Speaker
And that's all he would fall back on. He wouldn't actually react to the claim. He'd simply go, oh, no, I think the technique you're using to question me is bad. And so, yeah, it's nice to say, look, that you're cherry picking the data, but you then have to back that up by going, look, you're cherry picking the data because you're only looking at the subset of the data here. And actually the full data actually indicates something very different.
00:45:25
Speaker
So if you're going to accuse some of cherry picking data, you've then got to explain why it's an instance of said cherry picking. Otherwise, it's a very easy way to derail an argument by simply claiming that people are failing on technique without actually explaining, but how.
00:45:45
Speaker
Well, yes, I'd assume that's that's what a proper technique rebuttal is. It's not just to say, you're doing this, you're making this mistake, but to actually show that they're doing it and prove it. But yeah, that requires you to go point on point with some facts. Well, possibly. Yeah. So so, yeah, the whole thing.
00:46:01
Speaker
The whole point just ended up being kind of messy and not really saying much at all in the end. So let's go on to point seven. Reinforce the foundations of the constitution of knowledge, the reality-based community, and justified true belief.
Idealized Community of Truth-Seekers
00:46:15
Speaker
God bless America. Exactly. So he talks about the reality-based community, which he says it contains people such as academics and journalists and government agencies and lawyers.
00:46:29
Speaker
all based firmly in reality, every single one of them. I think it seems to be very much an idealised conception of each institution. These are all people who care for nothing but the truth and devote themselves to finding it.
00:46:47
Speaker
Sorry, lawyers, the lawyers? Yes, lawyers. All they care about is the truth. It was a discussion on Blue Sky earlier today about the lawyer whose last name is Epstein, which is a very awkward thing for anyone in this day and age.
00:47:05
Speaker
He was the person who claimed early on the pandemic that only 500 people were going to die of COVID-19 and became a darling of the right in America, but particularly the Trump administration, as being justification as to why lockdown and other imitative measures towards COVID-19 weren't necessary.
00:47:24
Speaker
And his argument was that as a lawyer, he's used to dealing with evidence in a better way than actual epidemiologists and health professionals are used to. And people are pointing out, yeah, lawyers like to make the claim they're in the business of truth. But actually, when you look at what they do, they're actually not very good scientists.
00:47:45
Speaker
They're very good at rhetoric, but they're not very good at science. Anyway, so having mentioned this idea, the reality of the US community and the constitution of knowledge, so he wants to say what the constitution of knowledge is, and he does this with a list. He's got a list within the list. It's John's inception.
00:48:09
Speaker
Listception. Jonathan Rauch lists ten features that establish the constitution of knowledge or the social rules for turning disagreement into knowledge. Ten features. Ten features, it says. He lists out these points, each with a one sentence describing them. They are.
00:48:28
Speaker
One, fallibilism. Two, objectivity. Three, disconfirmation. Four, accountability. Five, pluralism. Six, civility. Seven, professionalism. Eight, no bullshitting. And then at this point he says, and so he then starts to talk about the constitution of knowledge. It's a good thing why we need to have it and so on.
00:48:48
Speaker
which made it sound like the list had finished, even though it was at point eight and he'd already said there were ten. And then he starts with another list, then he starts bringing up more points, only instead of where the ones in that previous eight had been one word with a sentence or two describing them, he now has big long ones, big points which are a long
00:49:08
Speaker
topic with a very long discussion of them that makes it seem like he'd gone back to his original list and that those eight were for some reason he did miss two of them and that was just... But then the next item on the list is number nine.
00:49:25
Speaker
The main list was at seven, so it should be eight, but the sub-list was at eight, which would make sense. I got to this point, I stopped, I flipped back, and was like, have I missed point eight? Was there another point in between the seven and the nine? No, there definitely wasn't, and I think he just got himself confused.
00:49:44
Speaker
Either points 9 and 10 that round out this chapter are actually the last two points of Jonathan Rauch's features of the Constitution of Knowledge, and for some reason he's expanded on the last two enormously. Or he got himself confused by putting a sub-list into his main list and messed the numbering up when he got started again. So, yeah, did you look through this bit? Could you make head nor tail of it?
00:50:09
Speaker
I have to say, I read through this chapter with glazed eyes going, you're going to make any interesting point. Knowing that I was going to be the one writing the lines, yes, no quite fair. Well, so point number nine, whichever list this is point number nine of, point number nine is, make a commitment to scientific naturalism and enlightenment humanism. And he describes these things as saying... Ah yes, the renaissance.
00:50:33
Speaker
Most of the moral progress that unfolded over the centuries, the abolition of slavery, torture, cruel and unusual punishment, capital punishment... Sorry, torture's still going on, slavery's still going on, cruel and unusual punishment's still going on. Yeah. Well, depend on which part of the world you're on.
00:50:48
Speaker
Exactly. It's much less of it and much less legal. I mean, they bring that cap... Sorry, caporial, as opposed to corporal. Corporal. I don't know. Maybe that's just what I'm doing. Witchcrazes, inquisitions, pogroms and violence in general, along with the recognition of and legal foundation for civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, children's rights, workers' rights, and even animal rights. All of these are being kind of rescinded in the United States.
00:51:15
Speaker
well, they're being weakened, yes, was ultimately the result of the application of reason and science to understanding causality and solving problems in order to increase the survival and flourishing of more people in more places. Which, reason and science? That was it. That was the only thing. It didn't involve, like, compassion, human empathy, actually coming to see people as people where previously they had not been.
00:51:43
Speaker
To say it was all the scientists working in the ethics minds, digging up chunks of morality that finally proved these things wrong. That's what he actually believes. He believes that ethics is actually a scientific discipline. He would bite that particular bullet.
00:52:01
Speaker
A, there were good arguments against slavery in ancient Athens. People were saying slavery was bad all the way back then, with arguments we consider to be reasonable and rational now. And two, slavery in the US did not end because people made some rational arguments saying, look, slavery is bad. Slavery ended in the US because there was a war.
00:52:25
Speaker
the North had to enforce anti-slavery movements on the South via a war. And largely, the North gave up on slavery, not necessarily because of good arguments against slavery, but because slavery wasn't popular in the North because there weren't that many plantations in the North. So it was actually quite convenient to go, well, we don't need slaves here. It was a economic argument that we've kind of backported
Role of Science in Moral Progress
00:52:53
Speaker
with it. Oh, but of course it was wrong.
00:52:55
Speaker
But slavery ended in the US because of a war. Yes, so he does seem to have quite a rose-tinted view of the history of moral progress. When he talks about scientific naturalism, that means the idea that everything is governed by natural principles that can be studied and understood, which includes, in his words, human cognitive, moral, and social phenomena.
00:53:19
Speaker
He contrasts this with religious dogmatism at least, saying these are things that we can study and learn about, not things that are imposed dogmatically upon us. And he gives a list of ways in which scientific understanding has made things better. And the one that jumped out to me, which I think, from what you just said, makes more sense now,
00:53:39
Speaker
He says, instead of treating women as inferiors because a holy book says it is a man's right to do so, we discovered natural rights dictating that all people should be treated equally through the moral sciences. So you're saying this is a thing he actually believes that science, ethics is a science, and we discovered
00:53:57
Speaker
that everyone should be equal through reason. Yes, he's even written a book on this. Okay, that does not seem right to me. No, and most ethicists will go, yeah, it's a very bad book. But so he finishes up basically saying, the constitutions of nations ought to be grounded in the constitution of humanity, which science and reason are best equipped to understand.
00:54:20
Speaker
I like the idea of the constitution of Nathans ought to be crowned as in the constitution of humanity. We should do an experiment on the Nathans and see what happens. That Nathan Fielder guy. I think he needs some sort of a constitution to keep him in line.
00:54:36
Speaker
So finally, point 10, accentuate norms of free speech and open dialogue, as well as attenuate censorious behaviour that silences or cancels people who disagree with you. This is where he got quite sort of old man yells at Cloud, because he starts off by talking about
00:54:56
Speaker
those, the cancel culture on campuses, those university students these days cancelling people at the drop of a hat and what have you. Whereas what he wants to say is that hate speech can only be countered with free speech and gives a bunch of reasons for what he calls his free speech fundamentalism. And I mean, reading through his case for this,
00:55:19
Speaker
The ideas aren't, they're not silly, they're not crazy. They make sense at first. A lot of it's along the lines of, you know, we don't ever know 100% that we're wrong about something and that we're right about something and the other person has to be wrong and things like that. But they're all, they all sort of make sense in the abstract, I think. And it never, the myth that stuck out to me is that it never addresses the situation
00:55:45
Speaker
where people say something and we engage with it in good faith and look at it and say, okay, no, this is wrong. This is just 100% wrong. It doesn't make sense. It conflicts with everything we believe. It's a bad thing to believe we reject it. And then they or other people who agree with them keep saying that, because that's the thing we see so much, all these racist ideas and all sorts. I mean, I've talked about in the past how a long time ago when I had much more
00:56:13
Speaker
time than I could do constructive things with. I used to look at creationist versus evolutionist stuff, and it was depressing there how these creationist arguments, which had been brought up and considered and thoroughly debunked decades previously, still keep coming up.
00:56:35
Speaker
So he never says, what do you do with people whose views we have done his proper nice objective rational assessment of and decided that they're rubbish. What do we do with those when they keep coming back? Are we supposed to give the people a fear hearing every single time or are we actually justified in saying, no, no, this person can get out of here. We know what they're saying and we know it's nonsense slash harmful.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's you say it's it's a nice platitude. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Nice in theory. Seems to be the theme here. Also, which is free speech absolutism to a T. Nice in theory. Kind of this is the fact that we live in a world with a society. Yes. So that's the end of his list. I did notice that all the way through this list, he's sort of saying we should do all these all these reasonable worthy things.
00:57:34
Speaker
He never talks about how we might square this with all of these cognitive biases. He spent the previous couple of parts pointing out that people all exhibit especially conspiracy theorists. So I don't know. It seems like, sure, you can adopt all these things yourself, but he's already made the case that a lot of that sort of stuff is going to bounce off people because of their implicit cognitive biases. So I don't know. He doesn't really talk about conspiracy theories at all in this chapter.
00:58:02
Speaker
Well, no, he doesn't. He doesn't. It's just about reason in general. And so in the spirit of his free speech fundamentalism, he concludes part three and technically the book, sort of, by saying, after reading this book, if you object to any of my arguments, disagree with any of my conclusions or dissent from my point of view, the norms and customs of free speech and open inquiry are what allow you to do so.
00:58:27
Speaker
Nonetheless, the volume is at least a start to re-establish trust in the institutions we depend on for determining the truth about the world. It remains not just the domain of conspiracy theorists, but instead belongs to anyone who is curious and desires to understand the truth, call it the truth-based community, one to which we should all belong. And then there's a footnote saying if you want to be a member of the truth-based community, subscribe to Skeptic.
00:58:50
Speaker
The it. Yeah. None of part three seems to relate to belief in conspiracy theory. Not specifically, no. No.
Concluding Advice on Rational Discourse
00:58:58
Speaker
Here's a way to talk with people and to work out what a truth-based reality might look like, although putting fallibilism in there is really undermining your truth-based. Yes.
00:59:10
Speaker
conception. Very little of this seems to be about proxy conspiracism, tribal conspiracism, or constructive conspiracism. As you say, he's completely given up on talking about the, in his terms, the cognitive biases that might lead people towards what he takes to be irrational beliefs by rational people. This section is about how to be rational. It's not about how to deal with irrationality.
00:59:38
Speaker
Yes, and to the extent that it is, it only relates to conspiracy theories if you take it as read that all conspiracy theories are irrational, and need to be dealt with in this way, which is argued against. So that's the end of the book proper, but then there is another sort of almost hundred pages, I think,
00:59:58
Speaker
of, um, survey results, which I wasn't particularly interested in, to be honest. And not very interesting survey results. No, I mean, we've looked at, we've looked at the Joe's survey, or actually, is it just Joe Jusinski who does the survey, or does Joseph Herrett doesn't do that with him as well? No, it's Joe and other people in Pew Research. It's not, yeah, it's, it's, Joe is not Pew Research. But when we talk over here...
01:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, but anyway, he does have other people working with him. Yeah, we've looked at we've looked at lists of what people believe in conspiracy theories before. And it's interesting enough. But it's, I don't think it's interesting enough to spend a lot of time when you did anything stick out to you about about the I mean, not much, not much. I mean, it's a whole lot of survey results, most of which are interesting. Oh, sorry, my watch is deciding to have a little bit of a jump in there.
01:00:48
Speaker
So yeah, it's a lot of survey results, most of which aren't that interesting. So they polled 3,139 random Americans, about 53% identified as, and he was able to hear, females, to do a Deep Space Nine reference, with 47% being manuals.
01:01:11
Speaker
That's interesting that there's no discussion here about people who might be not on the binary spectrum. In 2022, you'd kind of expect people to do a much more fine-grained gender breakdown these days. And the education basically goes from a high school diploma all the way up to a professional degree. And the wage range is basically what you'd expect in the US as well.
01:01:36
Speaker
They survey 29 theories, one of which is fake, and the fake one is interesting. So they made up what they call the COVID vaccine magnetic reaction conspiracy theory, that COVID vaccines make you magnetic. And I was going, but that's not a fake conspiracy theory in the sense of
01:01:56
Speaker
You may have made up a conspiracy theory that says that people believe Covid vaccines make you magnetic, but people also did believe that Covid vaccines were making them magnetic. There were endless videos of people claiming if you put a piece of metal on a person's body after they got vaccinated, the piece of metal wouldn't fall off because people don't understand how
01:02:21
Speaker
surface tension and moisture on human skin works. So they thought they were discovering something interesting when actually they were discovering something we already knew.
01:02:31
Speaker
So it seems weird that they got, oh, there's this fake conspiracy theory in there which people believed in case of, but that was an actual conspiracy theory during the pandemic. So why did you not actually check to make sure your fake conspiracy theory was an actual fake conspiracy theory that had never been mentioned? Don't know.
01:02:53
Speaker
I did a whole bunch of statistical work to basically work out the thresholds and
Critique of Conspiracy Theory Surveys
01:03:00
Speaker
the like, and he used this work to talk about the idea that there are paranoid conspiracy theories and realistic conspiracy theories, which is something he talked about a lot in part one of the book.
01:03:15
Speaker
a little bit in part two and not at all. No. In part three you'd expect if you're doing something about how to talk to people about conspiracy theories you might want to demarcate between how do you talk to someone about a realistic conspiracy theory and a paranoid conspiracy theory. But that was only important at the beginning of the book because this book is basically diminishing returns part by part. He also has
01:03:41
Speaker
Two theories that he marks down as woke race and woke gender, which is basically there is structural racism and there is structural sexism in our society, which does make me wonder, what does he mean by woke? Surely the woke race one would be denying structural racism.
01:04:03
Speaker
and woke gender would be denying structural sexism. But he's talking about woke racism as the belief that there is structural racism and the belief that there's structural sexism. Yeah, I skimmed over those ones, to be honest. And yeah, I assumed that when I saw woke race conspiracy theories, he was talking about the right wing type conspiracy theories that there's all this woke business trying to end.
01:04:29
Speaker
So I don't know, that's... No, he does think that these are realistic conspiracy theories because of you, but why call it woke race and woke gender? That's a really weird way to phrase it, as is his discussion of Jeffrey Epstein. So Jeffrey Epstein comes up with the discussion of child sex trafficking rings and his description of why people believe
01:04:54
Speaker
in child sex trafficking rings is. One possibility is that people are equating Jeffrey Epstein's predilection for nubile teenage girls and his affiliation with prominent politicians, public figures, financiers and celebrities with a child sex trafficking ring.
01:05:11
Speaker
Which does suggest that Epstein was a pedophile when no one was looking, but just a celebrity influencer when he was around his pals. As opposed to, well no, I mean the whole thing about the island he had. Prince Andrew all that.
01:05:32
Speaker
we actually think that it wasn't just he had a predilection for nubile teenage girls, he was supplying those nubile teenage girls to other people he knew. So he's really downplaying Epstein here. I do wonder whether possibly he knows people who have associated with Epstein.
01:05:53
Speaker
and is going, I'm just going to describe this in the most generous way possible to make my friends not look as bad as possibly they would do for associating with a pervert just like that. Well, who knows, yes. It was just by itself a weird way to characterise the whole thing.
01:06:15
Speaker
And then he does a little bit of a breakdown as to who believes which particular theories, and he points out that in his words, black and Hispanics have more negative interactions with the government than whites do. So there's an understandable form of reasoning behind believing that powerful elites conspire to gain a moral or legal advantage over others.
01:06:39
Speaker
But then he says, look, race is also positively correlated with paranoid conspiracy theories, some of which are conspiracy theories that may well be false, but would be rational to believe if you have a long history of being predated against by powerful institutions.
01:06:59
Speaker
So it kind of goes to something I said back in part one, which is his distinction between paranoid and realistic conspiracy theories is a binary. This will be a really helpful way to understand what's going on here, but it kind of requires you to know
01:07:16
Speaker
which theories are actually paranoid as opposed to which ones are realistic. And the whole point of constructive conspiracism surely is that you don't know which ones are realistic and which ones are paranoid. And so you're making judgments about the threat of a conspiracy based upon past instances, not upon the plausibility of the theory in Western.
01:07:42
Speaker
So I think it just goes to show that his distinction between the realistic and the paranoid conspiracy theory classes just isn't actually very useful and flies in the face of his thesis about the different types of conspiracism which people plausibly use to detect threats in our society.
01:08:00
Speaker
And so that's the book. So yeah, it felt to me like this is his shtick, this promoting reason and rationality, which a lot of the time is a perfect idea and a perfectly nice sensible thing to say, but also ignores the actual reality of
01:08:24
Speaker
situations in general. And he's kind of chucked, he's just chucked that on top of the conspiracy theories topic and gone with it. So yeah, it says a lot, but also doesn't say a lot. And part three wasn't actually necessary. I mean, actually, I mean, part three was necessary. The book needed a conclusion.
01:08:46
Speaker
But the book still needs a conclusion. Part three, you can get rid of it and you don't change anything in the book at all. You just realise that he doesn't know what to do with his three types of conspiracism. He doesn't know how to get to the end. He's gone, look, here's an issue.
01:09:03
Speaker
How do you resolve it? Oh, you resolve it by thinking critically. But no. The point was there are irrational forces that make people believe in conspiracy theories. Having arguments with people about irrational forces is not going to change those cognitive biases if they indeed exist.
01:09:26
Speaker
So, poor showing, Michael. Poor showing. So that's three of the longest episodes we've ever done, devoted to this book.
01:09:36
Speaker
Let's not do that again. Oh no,
Episode Wrap-Up
01:09:38
Speaker
but we are. We are, Josh. I've got more books for us to read. But we will at least take an episode off from reading books. I think we will. We should, yes. So it's the end of this episode, but of course we are about to go and record a bonus episode for our beloved patrons, the wisest and sweetest smelling of all individuals.
01:10:00
Speaker
Sorry, if I remember they said Swedish Smelling. They asked, we all know the Swedes smell sweeter than anyone else, so the Swedish Smelling people, delightful. One of our, at least one of our listeners is a Swede. Well, they know exactly what I'm talking about then.
01:10:15
Speaker
So what are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about an update with the good old Havana Syndrome. It's back in the news again. Just won't quit. We took a little bit about the ship crashing into the bridge in Baltimore that happened yesterday as of the time of recording this episode. And the latest season of the White Vault Goss Walk has come to a close. Which may be the last time we've ever stopped ourselves.
01:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. But I mean, given that you have very little interest in listening to further seasons, and I probably will, but that's because I go running and I like to listen to podcasts as I run. We might never mention this again. Probably. You could make the argument that we shouldn't spend as much of our bonus time talking about other people's podcasts, but it's fun. So what are you going to do? Yeah, precisely.
01:11:09
Speaker
So that's the end of this episode. That is the genuine honest-to-goodness end of this episode and I can prove it. I can prove it's the end of the episode because I'm going to say
01:11:18
Speaker
Goodbye. But am I going to say that word or am I just going to continue vamping until such time that we basically have to force the episode to come to an end, say, with the heat death of the universe or one of us slowly starving to death? I mean, I could just keep talking and make this episode go on for a very, very long time. Josh, how are your hands coming out of my, no, no, no, no, no, no. All right. I'll say good.
01:11:48
Speaker
had to be done.
01:12:17
Speaker
And remember, keep watching the skis. Now as you should also put in a few seconds of silence here so that I can actually get rid of the chirping sounds in the background. Now sit here quietly for a few seconds. That's enough silence here, that'll be enough. I mean, if it were me editing the episode, I'd leave them in for ambience, for a bit of vocal colour. If it's you editing the episode, you put in additional sound effects. I might, I might do that.
01:12:43
Speaker
and pans, a plane crashing into the house. I know what our audience wants. Your children screaming in pain. I just give them what they ask for. Are you sure? I'm not gonna do that anyway. Yeah. Okay. Okay.