#482 — More From Sam: The Iran Deal, College in the AI Age, Mamdani's DSA, and More

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0:02

Welcome back to another episode of More from Sam. Hello, Sam.

0:25

Hey, Good to see you.

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Good to see you as well. This time we're not taping live in front of subscribers. I'm traveling and didn't want the stress of whether the Internet would hold. So if you're. If you're hearing this, obviously it did Making Sense. Community now has over 26,000 people in it, and it's humming along nicely. I've really enjoyed many of the exchanges with so many thoughtful people there. Everyone has been behaving and I think it's because they too wanted to see this succeed. And you've been getting some good feedback and push back in there. It's definitely not been an echo chamber.

0:30

No, no. No worries of that. No.

0:59

And you've. You've been in there quite a bit yourself. It's almost like an Easter egg where I'm reading a thread and then I see a comment from you and we don't have a follow feature, and I think that works out better because we didn't want to build this community to be dependent on you, and it certainly hasn't been. So for today's episode, I'm going to try something a little different. Rather than running down a bunch of topics related to the news cycle, I'm going to grab a sampling from the posts in our community and get you to comment on them here. We'll also get your reactions to the Iran deal, whatever's happening over there, and to whatever current events are necessary. So for those of you who are looking for that, don't worry. And just a quick note before we get going. If you want to join Community or become a subscriber to the podcast, you can find subscription options by going to samharris.org subscribe okay, let's get started. One world government. Is global political unification inevitable? And would it be good should nation states eventually operate the way US States do under a federal umbrella?

1:01

Yeah, actually, this is not something I've thought about recently, but now that you mention it, this is probably something I've changed my mind about. I think in my first book, the End of Faith. I wrote somewhere, probably in an endnote, that it was just obvious that the end game for civilization is some version of one world government. What we want in the end, if things work out, is for the prospect of war between China and the US say to be just as ridiculous and therefore unthinkable as the prospect of war is now between, you know, Vermont and Massachusetts. Right. It's like it's just not going to happen. Nobody's worried about it. And it's, that's the case because they're unified under a single government that has a monopoly on, on the use of force. So something like that for the entire world must be where we're headed unless we're going to keep killing one another. I don't think I believe that now. Or if I, if I do believe it, I, I think that goal is far enough away and, you know, quixotic enough that you really can't argue for it in the current environment. The idea that, you know, in our case, the United States could ever be truly subordinate to the political whims of Europe, or to say nothing of going further afield and greater cultural distance from us, our own society is so dysfunctional politically at this point that the idea of a global version of this just seems genuinely unthinkable to me.

2:02

You don't think some super AGI of some kind would be able to solve that for us? Or you're saying maybe.

3:33

Well, I could imagine the dystopian version of this. I mean, you know, one world totalitarianism, like, you know, tech enabled. I could well imagine that being in our future. But in terms of a desirable future where we, we realize that we, we have converged so fully on our cultural priorities that we're just going to, you know, unbrexit the whole world because it's just obviously good and we, we really trust our, our brothers and sisters over there in Belgium and Congo and just everywhere else. I mean, it's just, it's not going to happen in the lifetime of, of our children or their children or any of their robots. I just don't, don't see it.

3:39

Really. You just, you really think there's just no version where AI comes up with like all the best answers and we've all just gathered around and said, oh my God, this is just, it's not comparable.

4:22

You can't, if you're going to put it all on AI, then the successful perfect superintelligence that then I really don't know what the world looks like. And then the whole thing perhaps becomes A self driving car and we forgot we ever wanted a steering wheel. But the dystopian versions of something like that are, I think, so much more numerous and easier to think about that I just don't see us overcoming our political fragmentation to a degree that makes even the aspiration for one world government something that you can talk about with a straight face.

4:31

Okay, next topic. Are you a hard materialist or do you leave room for genuinely unexplained phenomena? How do you handle people you trust who report experiences science can't account for?

5:04

Well, those aren't mutually exclusive. You could be a hard materialist and freely acknowledge that they're unexplained phenomena. Right. You just think that the, the explanation, you know, should we find it will resolve itself within the materialist frame. Right? So it's just not. I don't think there's anyone who's denying that they're unexplained phenomenon. I'm not a hard, I mean, I wouldn't consider. I'm certainly open minded with respect to some other ontology other than materialism. Are you more commonly called physicalism at this moment to remind people if you're a physicalist, you think that we live in a physical universe and that everything, including minds and their subjective experiences are by some mechanism we don't currently understand emergent properties of all of those physical forces and structures that really exist out there in the world. I think it's totally plausible that physicalism as currently thought about can't explain consciousness in particular, and that consciousness either is just something we can't understand in terms of normal physical reductionism, or it requires some other discussion about what is, what is real. And maybe everything that we're considering physical has some mental properties or some interior dimension on some level. But if it is just in fact the case that there's really just a universe of quote, physical and insentient fields and forces and consciousness emerges out of some combination of blind unconscious events, information processing or otherwise, that may in fact be true. That's not an explanation that is ever going to be intelligible to anyone. So I think the hard problem of consciousness is very real intellectually. And I don't know what the answer is to it. So I don't know. I can't say. I may quote a hard materialist. I simply don't know how consciousness emerges out of the physics of things.

5:14

All right, I'm way out over my skis, so we're moving on. Does philosophy deserve its prestige or is it mostly sophisticated opinion making? Where's the line between genuine intellectual rigor and pseudoscientific hand waving dressed up in academic jargon.

7:14

Hmm. I feel like that question has it backwards. I don't think philosophy has much prestige in. Neither in science nor in popular culture. Does, you know, certainly a degree in philosophy give you much gravitas. Right. That's not. When on the list of, on the short list of useless degrees or imagine degrees that are imagined to be useless by entrepreneurs and academics and just toss one out there. Philosophy is usually on the tip of everybody's tongue. I mean, they just like you're going to get a degree in gender studies or, I don't know, dance or philosophy.

7:28

Basket weaving.

8:08

Yeah. So as to be unemployable. I think it's actually one of the best degrees and selects for some of the best people in a university campus. And I think that's been true for a very long time. But increasingly I think it's one of the best degrees if you want to be a generalist who can just think clearly and write clearly and speak clearly. I just think it's good training for all of that. Under the shadow of AI, I think it only becomes a better degree rather than worse. I think it becomes more practical. And we've talked about this. I just think we're going to want to. The human curation of digital products ultimately more and more. If anyone's going to be left standing, it's going to be the massage therapists and the. And the people with good taste intellectually who can kind of point in the right direction toward the robots that make more sense rather than less sense. I mean, I've always felt it was a. It was a good degree to get and prepared you for anything else that you might want to do pretty well. Even if you're going to go into science. Because when you go into science at the graduate level, you have to. You basically have to relearn everything anyway. I mean, take all the same basic courses to get started. So, yeah, I don't think it has much gravitas. I think it. I think it should have more. It's true that it depends what philosophy you focused on. I think there are corners of philosophy that are just word salad or mostly word salad. And yeah, those are, I think, rightly denigrated. But yeah, I've averted my eyes from most of that stuff.

8:09

All right, thanks for that. Why are we here? Can you live a genuinely examined life without arriving at a satisfying answer to that question? Or is the asking itself the point? Or is neither?

9:39

I think it's the wrong question. I don't think you can extract much of value out of that question. It's certainly not the question that science asks. I mean it's much more of a how question. How are we here? How did this happen? That's a scientific question that the why question attributes a, or seeks to attribute a reason behind all of this and perhaps an intention. I mean it's a very theistic framing of the nature of the problem.

9:50

What about the what, what is the meaning of life?

10:18

Well again, that just sort of smuggles in the same question under what it's there need not be a meaning to life. It's just why should there be? You know, without people, you would never be tempted to ask that question. It's like, you know, just let's say people become extinct. You know, there's just a world filled with, with non human animals. You know, look at, look at that creation. Look at the wolves and the owls and the cockroaches. You would never be tempted to wonder, well, what is the, what's the meaning of this? You know, why did this happen? It's no less interesting to consider how it happened and what's actually happening. But purpose, that's a very anthropomorphic lens to look at all of this through. There's just the fact that the cosmos exists and you are part of it, right? And why ask why in the face of that mystery, the mystery isn't resolved. I mean just imagine the answer that if you could believe it, if an answer were given to you, would it really resolve that mystery? You know, if a voice boomed out of the heaven saying oh, why because I wanted to or why because this is what I thought was beautiful. Does that really answer anything? Certainly just, it just throws up more questions then you want to ask that maniac in the sky, you know, what about smallpox? It can't possibly satisfy that. It's not going to scratch the itch that anyone thinks it's going to scratch.

10:21

So what is the right question to ask? Or is there just no question to ask?

11:49

Yeah, I think that, I think this questioning mode, so the emotional question, you know, the, the feeling that there's a problem here emotionally that has to be solved, you know, on the other side of which your happiness and tranquility will be found, that's an illusion and that's, that's the cramp introduced by the question itself, right? I mean that, that's a failure for, of your attention to actually contact the mode of feeling good enough in the present moment. Right. Like you're distracted enough. You're. You, you don't recognize thoughts as thoughts. You don't recognize any space around thoughts. You don't know how to meditate. You don't know what your mind is really. You know, you're just being used by it in each moment. You know, you're, you're, you're effectively asleep and dreaming and now you're dreaming that you're sitting in a classroom wondering, you know, what's the point of it all? It's not the place from which you're, you're going to answer this question and it's not the place, place where you could receive an answer that would be satisfying. I mean, you, your problem is you just don't feel as good as you might feel if you paid closer attention to what it's like to be you in each moment, right? If you broke the spell of your identification with thought, it can actually rest, right? And you glimpse that kind of experience, you know, when you, you know, are really working out hard or you know, thrown into the, in some, you know, collision with the beauty of nature or you're having sex or you're, you know, appreciating art or something has moved you out of yourself and, or you've taken the right drugs, right? Something has placed you in a quote, non ordinary state of consciousness or a peak experience. And then you just this, you've forgotten. You've certainly forgotten this question. You're not asking any questions. You're just, you know, if the mind is going to come online again at that moment, you'll be asking questions like, well, why can't I feel like this more of the time? Or how do I maintain this experience? Or maybe is it possible to move here where I can have this beautiful view of the ocean? Or the thing you think that has moved you into that profound embrace of the present moment, you think it's exogenous to yourself. Again, it's the landscape or it's the relationship or it's the, you know, whatever it is, the fun you're having in the company of friends, it's, you're going to attribute that as its cause. And then you'll be left thinking, how can I get more of that? And again, that's a failure to understand the attentional basis of these changes and experience.

11:52

So how do you answer this question? If your 7 year old nephew says, Uncle Sam, why, why, why are we here? What is the purpose of all of this?

14:15

Then I would say I don't know, but that the, the mystery isn't the problem. And the mystery can be the source of a very fun exploration of the world. Right. That's everything. Everything. You know, whether you're going to explore, you know, the mountains or you're going to explore a jungle or you can explore science or. I mean, it's just your. Your curiosity is not something you're ever going to get rid of. Right. So this curiosity is not a problem. All right.

14:25

In a recent episode of Making Sense, Noah Smith says, fixing the debt means cutting health care for the poor while the wealthy give up a vacation or two. Is that the we're all in this together, or is it obscene? And is this exact frustration what's actually driving the populist wave?

14:50

I guess I don't understand the connection there. We think the populist wave might. You're asking whether wealth inequality is driving.

15:08

Well, he's saying in the recent episode, I believe the question is, is that when Noah was talking about saying, look, we're all going to have to be in this together. The poor are going to have, you know, not the poor, but the middle class are going to have to handle this, and the wealthy are going to have to give up a vacation or two. And he's. I think he's. The question is, is that really what it means, we're all in this together? That the wealthy are gonna have to give up a vacation or two? And that's.

15:15

I forgot he said that. I mean, I would quibble with the definitions of the cohorts here. I mean, the wealthy. When you're talking about the wealthy, you're talking about wealthy people who are not gonna give up anything. Right. No matter how much we tax them, they're not gonna have to give up a vacation or two. I would draw the line at wealth where you're not. You're. There's not a conceivable change in your style of living that could matter. I mean, that most of your money is always just going to be numbers on a spreadsheet. It's never going to be implicated in how you spend your money. Right. That's the true. Those are the truly wealthy people in our society.

15:37

The question, I think, is directed toward those people. Why can't those people bear more of the burden?

16:12

I think what Noah was saying, though, is that even if you manage to tax those people quite onerously, it's still not enough money. Right. Like, the middle class is going to have to pay more in taxes, too. Right. And the. And the almost wealthy. Right. The people who will feel it, there's just not enough I mean, it's just, that's not, we're not going to tax our way successfully out of a $40 trillion hole. And I think he was saying, as many people have, that really it's going to require growth and inflation to get us out as well. Right. It's just not, you can't redistribute your way out of it. But there's going to be, have to be a fair amount of redistribution too.

16:18

A 26 year old is about to start medical school and wondering if it's a mistake. In eight years, will there still be a meaningful role for human physicians or is this the wrong career bet at the worst possible moment?

16:56

It seems as good a bet as any really. I mean, if you're, if you're going to worry that being a doctor is, is a dead end now, I think almost, almost everything else is on that list at the same level as it's just as likely that there will be no lawyers and there'll be no, you know, even, you know, CEOs of companies. Right. It's like, do you want to found a company? Well, what's to say that two years from now that company won't even be more successful if a robot were running it? Right. So it's not, I think, I don't think you can close the door on most professions like that at this point. It's just there's going to be some way of being a doctor and using all the AI tools. And if there's not, there's going to be some role for a person who almost became a doctor to use those, you know, use these tools better than most other people. I mean, there's got, there has to be some human layer to this, otherwise we're going to have to solve everybody's problem all at once by just spreading, spreading the trillions of dollars around that the robots have produced for us. So it's. Yeah. I mean, I, I can't say that you should be pessimistic about whether being a doctor is even going to be a thing in a few short years. Because if, if that's, if that happens, basically everything is gone. I would say.

17:09

Well, but if the doctors are gone, that's probably, I mean, there's, there's an upside to that or a silver lining as well. That would, that would mean that.

18:24

Yeah, well, it's, but again we, then we've, we have to confront this at every level of employment. Right. It's just again, there'll be a few things that are probably more impervious than Being a doctor again, things like being a massage therapist or you know, something where you could just. There's this categorical difference between whether there's a human doing it or a robot doing it and it's. You could imagine a preference for humans. But I mean, now that, I mean maybe even that is not real, that preference.

18:30

I could just imagine where people would want the, the analog version still and they'd want their doctor to show up with the black bag coming over like they used to many years ago. All right, with, with AI reshaping every career path. This is a related question. Is a six figure degree still a reasonable bet?

18:56

I hope so. I mean, just culturally it seems like we want, we want our kids to still have that experience. There's something great about the college experience because it gives you four years to be a student and to just be interested in anything that you find interesting and to be surrounded by people doing the same thing. It's not that there's no pressure, but it's a very specific type of pressure. It's not the pressure to make your life work out in the world. It's not the pressure to find a career immediately. It's a very useful crucible and it's over far too fast for most kids, I think. And just culturally I think it's valuable. I mean, there are other things that are valuable that I haven't experienced. Being in the military, I'm sure is valuable and is, is, is, you know, imparts its own lessons for people and, and I think probably having mandatory public service that we, we, you know, we've never had in my lifetime, which you could certainly make the case that that would be a good thing for our society. I mean, over. As a way of overcoming hyper partisanship and building culture, you know, intelligently and intentionally. But I think college is a, is very useful for some people. You can certainly make the case that we have a lot of miseducated people out there now starting to run our institutions, right? I mean, if I'm sure we'll get into the, the Zoran Mamdani of it all. But I mean, the people who are finding the Democratic Socialists of America to be credible voices for the future of democratic politics. I mean, all of that's frankly terrifying and it is, you know, perfectly correlated with being a miseducated dummy coming out of a school like Columbia, right? So it's like it's possible for the whole college experience to sum to something that's truly embarrassing intellectually and morally. But in the general case, I just don't think that's. That's the outcome and shouldn't be, and we can certainly guard against it. And I think it's, if not college, I do think we want a stage in life that's kind of, you know, a monastic immersion in the good parts of culture for people. I think that's good.

19:13

So I wasn't planning to bring up Mandani, but do you want to get into that now?

21:30

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