Decoding the Gurus - Bill Maher: A boozy, stoned, liberal take on classic anti-vax tropes

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Bill Maher is an American comedian, political commentator, and television host from the tail end of the baby-boomer generation. He's principally a centrist liberal in terms of his political leanings, being well known for his anti-religious and pro-animal rights positions, as well as a supporter of things like cannabis legalisation. On the other hand, he's something of a contrarian and styles himself as anti-political correctness and anti-woke, identifying as a disenchanted liberal, like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris.Now, all of that is well and good, let a hundred flowers bloom! But... on the less-salubrious side, he's also a contrarian when it comes to his extreme scepticism of conventional medicine, and vaccines in particular. And as we'll see in the two interviews we cover, with Sam Harris ^ and Richard Dawkins, it never seems to take him very long before the conversation is steered back to vaccines. So, will Maher make the gurometer go 'DING'? Let's face it, probably not. But if not, why not? It is worth checking to tune up the old instrument. And it is indeed something to behold as a boozy, stoned Maher tries (and manifestly fails) to coax Richard Dawkins out of his prim and proper shell.Also features discussions of Chris' run-ins with the rationalists, a new 'Whinge of the Week' segment, and the rhetorical technique of 'pouncing'.LinksRichard Dawkins on Club Random with Bill MaherSam Harris on Club Random with Bill MaherAstral Codex Ten- Contra Kavanagh On FideismMedium Article by Chris - Am I a Fideist?Astral Codex Ten - Trying Again on FideismMaking Sense with Sam Harris - Did SARS-COV-2 escape from a lab?Konstantin Kisin - Reflections on Dealing With Bad Faith CriticismUpcoming discussion with John Vervaeke & Chris Mastropietro at The Stoa

Welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about. I'm Professor Matt Brown. With me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh. He's there in his hoodie. He's looking alert, attentive and caffeinated. Hit me with your rhythm stick, Chrisris what's going on with you i didn't get enough sleep yesterday so i'm surprised i look a lot i probably look a bit probably actually spears out but um look matt you can see in the video that no one else can see what kind of mug is this do you recognize that image um oh very well on the audio broadcast. It looks like, oh, it's a Kerserksakt thing. Yeah, it was a trap to get you to say that. But it is.

I like them so much, I bought a mug from their website. But yeah. You've said it before, it's worth saying again. All of these people out there, like digging into the evidence, doing their own research, they'd be better off just watching a kasurgisak video i'd pronounce it kurzgesagt but you know or probably done that wrong though i took the hack right there but yes and actually matt the theme of doing your own research is is quite relevant because while you were off gallivanting around

the australian outback wrestling crocodiles and spearfishing sharks, as you do in the outback, I was getting into various online tussles with people over this issue about doing your own research. And I had a run-in with Scott Alexander, famed rationalist, over his summary pieces on ivermectin yes yes i won't relitigate the the endless back and forth there but the basic story is i wrote a critical response because scott wrote a new piece about the ivermectin controversy and he was referencing various things that Alexandros Marinos had raised as objections. And Scott's conclusion, you know, was pretty much in line with the expert consensus regarding the evidence for ivermectin and whatnot. But I've said some fairly critical comments about his apparent indulgence for the more

conspiracy prone and his contempt for the scientific authorities or the people that are critical of conspiracy fears and he responded by writing a kind of a critical takedown of my position as he saw it on fideism i think he called it i didn't know what that word meant but basically saying i'm a blue church, trust the science guy telling people, don't you dare look at our secret science textbook. Don't even dare. And while I was writing my rebuttal, which of course I had to do, I made some comments in the space underneath and then scott find them positive and kind of conciliatory so he wrote another blog post before i'd written my response so that was like you know

raising other points or whatever so then i published my response on medium which addressed his first blog post and highlighted the differences between us. And I saw some other rationalists posting blog posts, you know, responding to Scott's blog post about me. And I was like, oh yeah, I remember this era of the internet blog posts and whatnot. So if anybody wants to read them, they are there. And I think one interesting aspect of it was like, Scott and me both came across Graham Hancock in our youth, right?

Our teenage years, I think. Graham Hancock is an alternative historian, you know, the kind who argues that there were ancient civilizations that we have evidence for, Atlantis type stuff, right? And I read his book, Fingerprints of the Gods, and was initially like, oh my God, historians are lying about the evidence for ancient advanced civilizations. But I did, after what I would regard as a relatively cursory level of research, locate a lot of critical material debunking Graham Hancock, including a

BBC documentary that he responds to in the book, you know, chastising it. And I remember going around early internet forums and whatnot, and, you know, locating breakdowns. And so I came away from that experience with an appreciation that the alternative history genre was really appealing superficially. But actually, when you looked at expert rebuttals and whatnot, you kind of find out, oh, no, it's misrepresenting things. And actually, the actual history from people who have spent their whole careers on that is less dramatic, but it's actually more complex and interesting so that was my takeaway but scott on the other hand he basically described that he didn't find any good quality

rebuttals he just found sneering and contempt from skeptics and people accusing people of being racist um which i genuinely didn't see much of at the time. That seems like a later response. But in any case, so he ended up scuba diving in ruins to investigate himself, teaching himself geology or aspects of geology to investigate the science. And eventually it came down that the evidence wasn't that strong for it but he was very upset that he'd spent five years and that skeptics could have helped them skeptics and experts if they hadn't been so dismissive so he came away with like a

a different takeaway that like people need to be nicer to avoid wild goose chases which is what he described it as whereas i keep away with like a very different thing so it's interesting similar experiences but you know uh different lessons yeah very different lessons and he had to go to a lot more effort to actually go scuba diving to check whether atlantis was there that's um that's a lot of work um but you do have to factor in like he went scuba diving in ancient ruins right like that's you know what did i do i sat in the island and read some more i i do i did realize you know because he posted some picture of him in the ruins scuba diving i was like i do regard this as like a waste of effort but it's

it's not the worst no oh look effort that you could engage in look it gets you outside scuba diving i endorse that it's a great great thing to be doing so he had some fun that was the main thing but it is interesting it is reminiscent his approach and you know scott alexander is you know he's not too bad he's definitely a clever. But it is reminiscent of the approach of, say, flat earthers who basically refuse to believe anything that they cannot see and touch themselves physically. You said that. I didn't say that. I don't think he would appreciate the comparison. but i i would expect that amongst the sort of initial people that might find that kind of flat earth theory interesting at least um worth investigating i would say that there would be a

small but measurable number who are just like scott alexander who it actually motivated them to to do some basic uh physics experiments by themselves and investigate the issue. And along the way, they probably learned a lot of good stuff about astronomy and so on, and then could eventually dismiss it to their satisfaction. I think that happens, and I think that's a minority. Yes, that was going to be my point. The unfortunate thing is, is not everyone is as dedicated as Scott Alexander. And in fact, most of them, when they do sort of do their own experiments to see whether the earth is flat, don't come to the right conclusion, sadly.

There was a funny line in Scott's original piece, which accused me of basing my career on ivermectin-related subjects. I just, I think, you know, he was just zinging off and it would have landed better if he had a focus that you know on the wine stains or that kind of thing and he did take a shot at that as well but i just was like it's interesting to imagine the alternative chris kavanaugh who is an ivermectin researcher who's just really upset that people are focused on my drug of choice for the wrong reasons i think the other the other good takeaway from your shared experience with these lost cities of atlantis or whatever the hell the ancient civilizations things was about

is is how like intuitively emotionally and also cognitively appealing like the theory yeah and you know like you as a young person found it super-duper appealing because it is, right? It's fascinating stuff. And there's a whole bunch of details and, you know, huge if true type conclusions. There's a map which seems like it could only have been written with knowledge gained from like an aerial point of view and so on and so forth.

And who of us hasn't seen something on Wikipedia and done some little dive and going, wow, what's the deal with that? That scientists are baffled. Yeah, scientists are baffled type thing. Yeah. So we've all been there. When I was 15 or 16, my friend and I sent away for a set of ancient Nordic runes.

It had an instruction manual and stuff like that. And it was basically tarot cards with a nordic flavor and we we loved it it was fascinating you know you you i forget what they did you the usual thing i think you cast the runes because that's right that's right you cast the runes and and you then you can interpret them right and we sort of treat it as a bit of fun, but we wanted to... Playing with dark forces, Matt. Playing with dark forces.

I know. You can. And it was fun. It was fun. And we wanted to believe, but inevitably we had to ask ourselves the question. Who amongst us has not performed a ritual to the Dark Lord at the stroke of midnight on the eve of the new year

you know these are these are childhood fribaldis that we've all done yeah but when you ask yourself the hard question do i really believe this um and when the answer is no unfortunately it's not fun anymore but you know it's good to just have that self-awareness about one's own motivations and to want to believe something is true because it would be really, really super-duper interesting and fun if it was true. Yeah.

So actually, there's another connection that I noticed from, it reminded me that Graham Hancock in that book, The Fingerprints of the Gods edition that I read, it had an addendum which was dealing with this BBC documentary, the Horizon documentary. It was basically explaining how that documentary was so terrible and they misrepresented them and they lied about the evidence. And that was probably my first encounter or one of my early encounters at a guru type person responding to criticism and calling it a bad faith hit job. And it's notable because like Constantine Kissen, former guest on the show and person whose speech we decoded, also a week ago or so released a short

little episode on Substack where he alleges that we are bad faith takedown merchants wanting to increase our clout by riding on the coattails of him and incorrectly representing his very reasonable speech at the Oxford Union. He's also meditated on other critical coverage that he's got. And he has blocked, like you and i both know uh me in the case for sharing a new statesman article that was unflattering to him and he didn't appreciate and you i don't know why were you blocked no he hasn't blocked me oh sorry well not yet not yet look at that but um but chris i i know that point is blocked oh yeah yeah well i know he hasn't blocked me because somebody was tagging me about him. And it reminded me of something you mentioned, which was at the end of that appearance on Decoding the Guru's concerts in Kissin,

quite graciously, I thought, in a conciliatory kind of way, you mentioned something about promoting or platforming these like the world economic forum trying to make us all eat bugs those sorts of conspiracies and and and you know it's probably a good idea not to do that and he said yeah you know i'm gonna try try to do better with that kind of thing because that's obviously silly that's not something we do on we haven't hosted people talking about that and we we i don't endorse the like extreme conspiracies about that right yes you did say that i would tend to want to push back when somebody like imagine now was or james lindsey introduces this notion of like a grand conspiracy to you know woke up by the world in

order to introduce chinese style communism and i know that you are concerned about the far left and it's, it's blasé nature to the threats of the far left. But I, I wasn't sure if you find those conspiracies like the focus on the WF and Klaus Schraub to be equally concerning, or if you agreed with them, I just wasn't clear. I don't agree with them. I if you agreed with them. I just wasn't clear. I don't agree with them.

I don't agree with them. As you can probably tell from the conversations we've had on Trigonometry, have you ever heard anyone invited on to talk endlessly about the WF? I think one guest mentioned it in the last question we always ask, which is a complete free hit. And generally, we don't tend to debate that one. It's just sort of left as a free hit for them. Yeah, and so it was just pretty funny to me that in the short time

since that interview, there's like two tweets from him. One of them is a trigonometry episode. Are we headed for a one-world government? Will insects really replace meat? Join us for part two of our disturbing interview where he with michael schellenberger on the new world order he argues is being advanced by the mysterious elites of the world economic forum and he's also tweeting stuff like a little jokey thing about aliens can we land yet no it's too early at the moment they are trying to change

the weather by eating bugs so um so that i thought that was a low bar to sort of not be doing the world economic forum bug eating conspiracies so but he he failed to clear it uh with flying colors chris yeah yeah it's not hugely surprising but you know it is quite a marked contrast suspect, from the way that he stated things at the end of the interview. But, you know, if you listen to Konstantin's presentation, his view is that we are just salty because he took us apart with such precision during the interview with him. So, you know, each person has their own perspective on these issues. And I encourage anybody interested to go listen to it.

It's, you know know it's an interesting perspective because to come up with these things so yeah but um so matt we were talking about introducing the concept of whinge of the week and i feel that there will always be hot competition for who who has achieved the master whinge this well this week well chris i feel like every recording we have multiple whinges but i think it's good that we're formalizing it and putting them in it and recognizing in its own you mean our whinges no i'm i'm not talking about that that's just taken for granted we are talking about the whinges that are out there that we don't produce we can't grant ourselves the like whinge of the week champions every week um we have

the you know awarded to the others out there in claiming persecution or or being targeted or whatnot so so i i could be a candidate. That's very funny because when we talked about this segment and I thought it was a good idea, I genuinely thought it was going to be basically giving you a permission slip to just whinge about something. Oh, no, no.

This was Helen Lewis's suggestion because she correctly noted that, you know, Lex Friedman, Joe Rogan, whoever, it happened to Eric Weinstein. There will always be a persecution narrative. And the time that we were talking about this, it was in relation to Brett and Heller responding to being called gurus by Helen on Barry Weiss's podcast, which they did not tick well. But that's, you know, that's in the past, Matt. And I'm, do you have a candidate? which they didn't they did not tick well but that's you know that's in the past and i'm

do you have a candidate does constantine win just just for recency bias or the reference to us is this is this only should we award it to constantine this week or me me for my uh extended back and forth with Scott Alexander. Maybe both of us collectively can win Winger of the Week. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. No, I think I'm going to have to go with Constantine because he is a good Winger. He's got a lot of complaints about bad faith and misrepresentation

and all of those things. He's a good Winger. I'm going to give it to him this week. Yeah. He also, I'll allow it. I'll allow it. I'll allow that. He also, an episode just released

with him and Jordan Peterson talking about his Oxford speech because, of course, of course it did. And the interesting thing, I haven't finished it, but is Jordan Peterson harangues him

for quite a long time about that he's actually religious. Now, Constantine is not non-religious, he's agnostic, right? And he's open to religion being a positive force in people's lives and all that kind of thing. But he basically does not agree with the notion that, you know, Jordan Peterson's But he basically does not agree with the notion that, you know, Jordan Peterson's redefining of words whereby everything is religious or everything is God. So really, everybody who believes in everything, anybody who thinks science is real are religious. Right. And there's a very extended part where Jordan is trying to trap constantine into admitting that he believes in god and constantine will not do it but it's clear that he wants to get out of that conversation but you know jordan is on one of his thing because jordan is writing a book map as he explains in

that his next book is called We Who Wrestle With God. Greco-Roman wrestling? What kind of wrestling? Well, yeah. And this is the last announcement before we get to our episode proper. But there's a thematic connection here because next month, we are going to do an event at the Stowa channel, Peter Lindbergh's channel, which is a little bit sense-making, a little bit.

Leans Woo at time, Woo adjacent. But they also, you know, arrange debates and whatnot. And they have asked us to come and have a discussion with John Vervacchi and his co-author, one of his students about, students, about wisdom and the importance of being critical and whatnot. And I would say Vervaeke and Christopher Mastropietro, but they are in the vein of having Jordan's extended definitions of what is religious or God or that kind of thing.

And so we'll be, I suspect, dealing with those kinds of arguments directly in a matter of weeks. Yes. And people listening to that title, I forget what it is, something about wisdom and also the importance of being critical. You could probably guess, you know, the topic is like a negotiation between the two parties, and you can probably guess which component of that was coming from the Vavacki side or which side was coming from Chris's and my side.

So it's a bit of an odd, it's an unusual pairing of concepts, the importance of wisdom and being critical, but it should be interesting. Yeah, no, according to these people, everything is God. If you believe in anything, it has to be God. And even according to Jordan Peterson, the very concept of truth it's based on the logos and there's no way to even have any concept of things that are true and not true with that reference to good old jesus christ so um yeah definitely we come from different worlds yeah so it's going to be on uh march 13th or 14th depending on where you are and it's john vervacchi and Christopher Mastropietro. And the

title is, What's the Importance of Wisdom and Public Criticism? That's the kind of the framing device. So yeah, so anybody interested could look. But in preparation for that, Matt, I've been reviewing various content by people discussing God in the sense making sphere and it it made me think matt i just want to put something out there and get your reaction to it you know just think about it don't don't dismiss it out of hand right so religion like isn't it the case that going on the school bus is a religion? Now, I know what you're thinking. You're, what? No, that's just a form of transport.

But wait, Matt, let's take a second. Because think about a school bus conceptually. What does it do? It takes you somewhere. You go from one location to another, and you're on a journey to a place of learning, to a place where there's an instilled higher belief in a set of values, that minds can be improved, that people can learn. Young men, young women, they can become adults through their learning experiences. And there

are people in those schools who have mastered various disciplines and information that will share it, much like a priesthood, you know, in certain respects. They have holy texts, sometimes referred to as textbooks, and also the school bus specifically. Yes, it's a form of transportation on a very reductionist level, but inside that, Matt, there are people, people you share emotional connections with, people that you may have spent years together with, that you have a psychic connection with. You're dressed the same,

often in uniforms. You're orientated towards learning this higher value. And in a sense, you're worshiping in the very core meaning of the word, you're worshiping about the idea of learning and education. And if that itself is not a religion, is not something focused towards transcendence, I'm not sure what actually counts. So in a very real way, school buses are by definition a religion or a religious experience, if you want to try to put it into

that conceptual framework and so you know just just wonder what you think about that wow that's amazing because i had you think it does make you think it's amazing you should say that because i had you pegged as this bullet-headed materialist um but i had you've made me think about the layers of symbolism that are there with the school bus. These kids out there yearning to find truth, looking to transcend to a higher level, like actualize themselves as full-blown adults.

And yeah, the school bus is how you get from A to B. The teachers are the priests. The school bus is the church. The pews, Matt. The pews, the seats, they're lined up. Maybe you're not kneeling in physicality, but in mentality, aren't you kneeling? Isn't the driver there to tell you where to sit and what to do?

And you're in a way being instilled into the very bonds of society that we all must learn to find our place, to find your seat, to find your seat to find your place in society and stop stop stop that's enough stop now chris i feel like this is this is some sort of desensitization trading where you are trying to prepare me for this discussion with vivaki et al i wasn't referencing them it's just something that i was thinking about school buses i just you know i just want you to put that in. And so many people have ridden on school buses, Matt.

So just, you know, they may say they're not religious, but we've all been on a school bus. So I'm just saying, just saying. Anyway. I honestly don't know what I'm going to say when I talk to these people. I guess it's going to be shades of, who was the sense maker we spoke to not so long ago? What's his name? Jamie Weal. Jamie Weal. I suspect it's going to be shades of, who was the sense maker we spoke to not so long ago? What's his name?

Jamie Weal. Jamie Weal. I suspect it'll be shades of Jamie Weal, where when people say things like that to me, I don't know what to say except no, no. Huh? What? You mean it's a stretched metaphor that's redefining things

and just relying on symbolic extension of concepts and oh no no no no like runaway allegories strapped to a freight train plummeting into the pacific ocean um yeah anyway well it's funny how people think hey people think in different ways they do all the colors of the rainbow. They're there. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Indeed. And speaking of flowers blooming, the guru that we have for this week. So we were advertised to cover Bill Maher and Dave Rubin in a crossover extravaganza where we deal with two somewhat annoying figures simultaneously. But in preparing for that, I ended up listening to more Bill Maher content and more Dave Rubin content.

And I think it's fair to flag up initially that they are more political pundits in the conventional sense rather than the kind of secular guru types that we might normally deal with. But that's the whole point of this podcast, Matt, is that we put different kinds of people into the gurometer or into our analytical crosshairs. And we see, do they fit the concept, what ways do they or do they not and so forth so we decided for various reasons that it would be better to take each of them separately and we'll

deal with the crossover episode in the next episode where we focus on Dave Rubin but in this case we're mainly going to focus on two conversations that Bill Maher had with Sam Harris a little bit, just a couple of clips from that, and more specifically with Richard Dawkins because there was such a dramatic clash of personalities

and perspectives in that interview that it was, it's interesting. And I think Bill Maher is interesting because he kind of represents something which is a little bit rarer now, which is a liberal type who's uh still remains you know relatively liberal is not queuing on pilled and all that but is is pretty anti-vaccine and and this is you know a significant part of how they see the world so i think it's interesting for that reason to look at him in isolation yeah so let me ask ask you this chris apart from his anti-vax views are you aware of it and he is known for being anti-woke um in a similar vein to i don't know christopher hitchens or sam harris i suppose um apart from that kind of thing as um is he does he have any other notable right-wing, absolutely right-wing views?

Conservative views? No, I mean, I don't know him well enough to say. I think he's just generally regarded as a kind of centrist liberal who is very critical of progressives and who um like occasionally will both sides various issues and whatnot but um but yeah i i i think mainly his lean towards more republican kind of talking points it tends to orbit vaccine stuff or or medical stuff and yeah i think he's maybe more a bit more closer to you know kind of sam harris and that would people would point out you know like a kind of uh maybe a little bit of a naivety to people like douglas murray he called milo yeah yiannopoulos uh you know the potential next christopher hitchens and and so on so like

there's there's that aspect to it but i i think that's like contrarian centrist liberal is is like a fairly accurate description of him yeah yeah i think he could cite a bunch of little specific things and go oh that's not orthodox um liberal slash left but you have to sort of factor in the fact that he is a bit scattergun right he's anti-woke he's anti-woke and that leads him to some of the what you would call it the susceptibilities of the of that area where you know they they can be legitimately critical of various like woke excesses but rather credulous when it comes to like james lindsey or chris rufo um but i think people are getting a bit more canny about that um but yeah okay well there you have it that gives you a bit of a sense

of where he where he lies as you say he's more of a political pundit than anything else most people know his name i knew his name even though i don't often see him on tv whatever part because i'm not on the occasion when his guests there's something like he had a movie called religious he's he's like a noticed atheist um and and i i think the other uh like probably bill maher is politically relatively close to where you and i fall on the political spectrum you know in terms in terms of being like center left and not like super uh in favor of progressivism so i i would just say that that there are various times where i've seen bill maher and been like yeah i agree with that right but yeah that's how he would be somebody who i think rightfully is described as having boomer energy which is a damning indictment of us but yeah all right all right well that's enough

introductory rising let's start getting through the material i'm coming to it pretty fresh because i was mainly preparing for our other guest before the last minute yeah but i have listened to more than half of it especially the dawkins thing but some of it will be new to me um so hit me with it your rhythms yeah so uh here's a little clip from the start of it where it's Dawkins and Meyer talking and I think it highlights the um differences between them a little bit well especially in this setting because like you know we've we've had dinner. I mean, we've been out. We've done shows. But I

really want to talk to somebody. I want to talk to them right here. Smoking pot, drinking, breaking down, whatever barriers. So I'm going to try to get you very fucked up. I know you taught at Berkeley in the 60s, so you must have...

I never did. Weed? No, never. Even in the Berkeley in the 60s? I was never even offered it, actually. Well, you know what? There's no time like the present. No, not in public, not in... I see. Well, you won't mind if I do.

Of course not. Okay. And what about a drink? No, thanks. No? I've got water in there. You don't drink either? I do drink, but only with food.

Oh. But doesn't that... Yeah, that's a good one to start with. I had the strong impression that Bill Maher was drunk and stoned during this interview. And so he's pretty, you can tell by the thickness of his voice, I suppose. He's pretty loose. So it's a fun contrast with Dawkins. that this is from is supposed to be, you know, this kind of like informal, we're not really doing this for, you know, an audience. It's, it's more like an informal chat. And so Bill Maher obviously wants this to be, you know, loose and relaxed, but that's not Dawkins persona, I think in private or in public.

So he's, he's much more buttoned up and kind of like, oh, but you know, you'll have a drink and like, like, no, I really won't. I enjoyed that contrast. And I think it also reflects a little bit the difference in the way that they think about things. Like, you know, the extent to which they are basing their opinions on, you know, kind of like vibes versus like reflections. And Dawkins isn't perfect on this,

but I think he's a lot better than Maher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely a huge gulf in personality. It's kind of interesting that Bill Maher didn't know Dawkins well enough to think Dawkins would be into that. He's never given the image that he's a freaking party man i've never had he's he's on twitter complaining about his honey pots you know being

taken at the airport and whatnot so yeah um that was interesting that you didn't have the kind of theory of mind to but to talkens yeah no not modeling dawkins well at all and it also it's a good illustration of dawkins personality too where he is not like a warm matey kind of guy i have a i have another clip that speaks to that so so here's um dawkins being kind of perplexed by the format i I can watch him. Sometimes he looks up and sees me. It does not freak him out at all. He's not scared. He doesn't move faster.

He just sniffs around and then goes back up wherever he... Is this by day or night? Night. Night, yes. Night, always at night. Have we started, by the way? What? Have we started?

Oh, yes. Okay, fine. I'm sorry. Sorry. I know. I should explain. This is a different kind of... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's the whole point. It's like, have we? What universe are we really in? But no, we've started.

So he was talking about a possum, by the way, at this time. Jessica, you won't do all this. I thought you'd mentioned that. Yeah, Dawkins doesn't do that interpersonal banter. No, Bill should know that. It is funny. The clash of styles is, you know, if you like kind of cringe comedy, I think this is an enjoyable full episode for people to listen to um because it happens throughout so bill bill maher is someone also and maybe you can sympathize with this but he has a very positive impression towards like

the importance of you know being relaxed and getting drunk and how this allows people you know to reveal sides of themselves that they wouldn't otherwise and that kind of thing and i have over there on my bookshelf a book by edward slingerland and ted slingerland called drunk how we sipped danced and stumbled our way to civilization which is similarly arguing that like intoxication is you know very important thing for our species um evolutionary wise yeah they like to write popular books about that i remember seeing some thesis where they thought it was caffeine so you know before before the coffee houses and so on of the was 18th century you know people would just get drunk in places like london right that's that's the only

drink there was and uh this this thesis was that it was the it was the advent of tea and then coffee that kind of like instead of getting drunk the intellectuals in the in these places were actually getting caffeinated and this was responsible for the industrial revolution and science and all that stuff which so you can argue it either way is what i'm saying except Stacks up to me. Who knows? Maybe it's a different drink that's responsible. Maybe it's like a thick shake. Maybe a thick shake is the foundation of modern civilization.

Smoothies. Smoothies. I guess that could be it. But they're hard to make without the machine. So anyway, well, let's hear him outline that perspective a little bit. Well, that certainly was a banner day in human history because it changed a lot, really. Yeah, it did, yes.

I mean, not all bad. No. Right? No. I mean, Romans certainly had bacchanalias and really worshipped being drunk. Yes. You know, I think they understood that it was sort of something that was more important than just having fun.

There's some sort of release there that I don't know if everyone needs it. You don't. Plainly, I do. Well, I enjoy it with food, as I say. Right. But I'm talking about people who get fucking blitzed. You know, there's something about people. Well, people are always trying to not be themselves. What is acting?

What is, you know, I mean, they're trying to escape reality. Do you try to not be yourself? They're trying to escape reality. Do you try to not be yourself? No, but I'm not typical in many ways. I also never got married, never had kids. I'm not sure I do a lot of things that would be considered normal. But we all have masks, don't you think?

Yes, that's right. I mean, some of them are more profound, but I think everybody has... Come on, Bill. Yes. I'm sorry, but there isn't much to say about that except for just the reaction of Dawkins to the various things and especially that part where he's like do you need to be someone else because I I do think Dawkins is like he is what it says on the tin like he he is the little you know puttering professor with very stringent opinions on like what's going on and and and a

devotion to science but like yes yeah whereas bill maher is more like but you know man what does it all mean you know i know i know it's such a contrast it's so funny dawkins is like the very definition of non-plussed for most of the episode he's just like wow okay um yeah like the very definition of nonplussed for most of the episode he's just like wow okay um yeah like the idea of richard dawkins like wanting to escape from himself and just like sort of you know like like escape from reality and just unpot an alcohol billing guests. There's a little follow-up on this, Matt, which is also good. So here's how that segment kind of ends. Now that's kind of fascinating, isn't it? I'm pretty comfortable being who I am, I think.

I don't think I'd try to do that. Yes, you and me, we're comfortable. But I'm talking about others. Yes, yes. You know, there's a lot of that. I mean, you're, what, 81? Yes. Wow, you look great.

Thank you. Yeah. That's, yeah, there's, again, read the room. Read the room. Poor Bill. Bill's trying so hard to get that kind of yeah i do the thing happening didn't he know that was never going to happen with richard dawkins he's the ultimate buttoned down ultra precise prim i see oxford professor that's right he's in he should be in the dictionary um this is

the thing that i like about this in some way is, and maybe people have heard it in episodes that we've released previously, that you can say a lot with the tone of your yes response, right? And there's just that reaction to various wild idea things where he's like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is one. It's very much the same tone that he used when responding to Brett Weinstein's extravagant view. And Jordan Peterson. Oh, yes.

Yeah, that too. And that is one thing I do like about Richard Dawkins is that he doesn't stroke people. Richard Dawkins is that he doesn't stroke people. You know, he doesn't do the social thing where you act like you're on board just to kind of ease the social situation. And he's not very argumentative. He'll just, he'll leave things alone or respond and say it's very silly,

but in a polite way. But what he doesn't do is just go along with stuff, which most of us do. Like I think I do. You know, there's plenty of stuff that we could play from the interview which is kind of this which is you know like it it's it's that dynamic maybe not as awkward as that exchange is because bill does start to modulate as as the interview goes over eventually yeah yeah but that dynamic goes on about they talk a whole lot and they talk about you know the problems with the modern left and woke culture and so on but the part that i want to focus on and why more is often controversial in liberal

spaces at least is is to do with vaccine stuff right and here's an introduction to that point because it does come up in the other content that we've i've looked at with more with sam harris and d brubin in all of them the topics of vaccines come up right so it isn't like this is just it's it's a kind of rogan thing where he's known to have some outlier views and he tries to get ahead of it here exactly which is why i have this point of view yeah i don't know if you know exactly what my point of view is or maybe you're just going by things other people kind of i kind of do okay well i'm not an anti-vaxxer. I believe vaccines are a medical intervention like every other drug, which has some drawbacks, benefits. I don't believe that everybody has the same health profile. So every

medical intervention, just like any other drug, isn't appropriate for everybody. So that's not anti-science. There is something about vaccination, though, which makes it different, which is that it's not just for you. It's for the society. Well, that's not right with COVID. Sorry? That's not right with COVID because we found out the vaccine does not prevent transmission or getting it. So that argument is, at best, out of date. Well, it's certainly right for measles, mumps, and rubella.

Well, I already had measles, mumps, and rubella. So, we don't want to talk about anti-vax stuff too much. It's more just noting Bill Mayer's thing. You're going to be talking about anti-vax stuff, Matt, because it's going to come up a lot. But one of the things there is like, I just wish people would note this, that when somebody says,

I'm not an anti-vaxxer, right? It's almost guaranteed to be followed by an anti-vax talking point, right? Or the most unhinged like jaunt into anti-vax world. And it is surprising how well it works, that people are like, well, they said they're not anti-vaccine, right? And like Bill Maher is doing here, what a lot of anti-vax or vaccine vaccine hesitant people uh do which is to suggest it's only these specific

vaccines that he's concerned about which isn't true by the way because he's he's made various statements on vaccines before that this current set but um but portraying it as you know well look it's just concerned concerned with these specific ones. And we found out that the vaccines don't do anything for transmission. They barely, you know, stop you. They don't stop you getting it and so on. And Dawkins tries to talk about the issue of, well, but if you have, you know, vaccines actually are about the general population. And Maher completely, like, attempts to dismiss that as valid. And he's wrong.

He is indeed wrong. It's a very common talking point now, especially with COVID, that there is no transmission benefits whatsoever with the vaccines. I mean, what's true, I guess, is that they were maybe hoping that there would be even stronger kind of prevention of transmission. Those effects were less than what we might have hoped for. But correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, but I think it does help reduce transmission because it reduces the symptomatology. Yeah, so you can just think of the logic about it.

Debunk the Funk has a good, we'll put it in the show notes on this topic, that the studies actually do show, you know, overall reduced transmission. But even if you just think the logic through, that the symptoms are less severe, right? Very few people argue against that. And symptoms include things like getting sick and being, you know, sick for longer with, you know, you would imagine more coughing and sneezing, longer time in in like unwell condition which would make you more prone to spreading right so if you are less severely ill

and you are you know the symptoms are not as as bad you're not coughing as much you don't have as much problems your lungs you're obviously if the whole population has that reaction or you know overall obviously there's less of where the chance for the virus to spread so it's it's wrong in logic and it's wrong when you actually look at the evidence as well yeah exactly so it's yeah it's wrong in both ways and the other part about it that's wrong is he says it doesn't prevent you from like actually getting it getting it right which is a vague kind of word because of course you you have to get i'm doing scare quotes here you have to get any kind of virus for antibodies to operate on it and dispatch it right so how all vaccines work of course, is that they prime the immune system.

So you are technically infected by whatever it is you're vaccinated against. It's not like you've got some sort of force field that prevents them from entering your body. It's just that your immune response is so much more effective in dispatching it quickly so that you may not even be aware that it has impinged your body, so it's just a kind of a meaningless statement to say vaccines don't stop you from getting it vaccines do the important thing which is stop you from getting sick well yeah so people like this is one of the things where you know recently there's been a paper out which is comparing what people term natural immunity but they just mean you know immunity derived from catching covid without having a vaccine versus having that and we'll see that bill maher does this as well and they they want to contrast that as like the effects being like

more natural and therefore better rather than this like synthetic thing but but the way vaccines are are working is that they're they you know, introducing your body to the virus so that you can produce the antibodies to fight it, right? And nobody is saying if you get infected and recover from an illness that it doesn't, it won't help you. In the same way, your body will produce, you know, antibodies and so on. But you have to go through the infection first and without the vaccines it's likely to be more severe the logic is burning the village in order to save it right the whole point is to is to not get sick so if you do you catch measles for

instance you recover from measles my recollection is is that you've got very very good immunity against measles after that but the obvious downside is that you've already had measles the whole point is to avoid getting measles and suffering the effects of it that's what vaccine you obviously so it's really all the dosage and stuff right like you don't know how severe your infection was it could differ between the viral load whereas like when you're getting a vaccine getting like controlled amounts and set amounts and so on yeah so it's entirely academic whether i don't know the literature but i suspect that in some cases maybe for some viruses natural derived immunity from

getting it is better from in some case last longer or something like that right yeah it's probably at the margins right um and in some cases maybe vaccines are better but it doesn't really matter it's academic the whole point is to avoid getting sick from the illness uh in the first place significantly so yeah i mean like the reason i suppose we went into those details is just to point out that bill maher is kind of mindlessly repeating very well known and old anti-vax talking points while claiming to be not an anti-vaxxer. Yeah. Yeah. And we can see a bit more of this when he references the Great Barrington Declaration. So let's listen to him kind of explain his reasoning.

Well, you know, I'm not an anti-measles vaccine crusader. I mean, do your thing. But the issue now is COVID, and that is an outdated argument. It's only for you. And there's 16,000 doctors and scientists signed something called the Barrington Letter. Did you hear about this? Okay, well, see, stuff doesn't get in other people's silos. But that's an awful lot. And that's just the ones who are brave enough to sign it. Because anytime you go against the prevailing pharmaceutical medical view, you're intimidated, as many doctors are. So the fact that 16,000 doctors would sign this letter, it was a dissent about how we were dealing with COVID and some basic things like thinking natural immunity is superior to pharmaceutical immunity. It wasn't anti-vax. It was just, why are those doctors quacks or wrong? And the CDC and the Western medicine who said the vaccine, no, look look the vaccine obviously saved a lot of lives

but they were wrong about the transmission they were wrong about um getting it why why are those 16 000 doctors why why are your doctors better than i don't know about those 16 000 doctors so chris i don't know like you have guests like richard dawkins who he turns up and the conversation could be about anything and you can find yourself talking about anti-vax stuff without necessarily having all of the information at hand to rebut the points that are coming across. But you also notice Matt slipped in Western medicine there, right?

Oh. Like he said the CDC and the Western medicine who said the vaccine right that's a a slip of the tongue kind of indication of a bill maher's approach to these topics yeah yeah so he's like an anti-vax from way back back when it was kind of much more oriented towards i guess hippie natural health yeah um alternative culture and being against artificial things and western medicine and into holistic stuff crystals and that i mean as the guys on conspirituality have shown that is actually dovetailed with right-wing conspiracism a lot more than i had realized so you you tell me about the Great Barrington Declaration, if you can.

Well, so hold on, Matt. This is kind of a useful exercise in a way. I know a bit more than you about this declaration. So Bill Maher, just from what he framed, he mentioned 16,000 doctors signing a letter, which apparently had an alternative take. And the take, by the way, was basically to push for naturally acquired herd immunity. Just stop lockdowns, let the virus run through the populations, and we'll get immunity. And we can take the higher risk people out, try to quarantine them more. So older people or that kind of thing but at least let the the young and relatively healthy people get back to their lives like quicker this was the the argument right now

so he said 16 000 doctors signed this letter without knowing anything about the great barrington declaration do you have any prayers about what this letter will involve and who might have signed it? Yeah, so without knowing too much, first of all, I'm skeptical that the letter is saying what maybe Bill Maher is implying it does, which is that don't get vaccinated. The vaccines are a bad idea. The vaccines didn't exist when it was published. Oh, okay. Right. So that's a separate thing then.

Well, I'd be very surprised if those 16,000, if there are 16,000, whether they were qualified experts in the area or whether it involved, you know, random people, nurses, pediatricians, all kinds of people that have some tangential association with healthcare. That would be my guess. Yes. tangential association with healthcare. That would be my guess. Yes. So I should say actually that the COVID vaccines did exist at the time, I think, but they were not available to the general public. So this was in October 2020, early in the pandemic. So it was an open letter that could be signed, right? And there are figures on it who are doctors with verifiable credentials. Jay Bhattacharya is the one that is being referenced in the Twitter files and so on. However, there was no actual verification of the people that signed. You just had to tick a box

to say you're a scientist. And people noted that people who signed that included Mr. Bananarama, Harold Shipman, Professor Kaminik Dummings, and so on, right? So like, there's no quality control. It's just an open online thing that anybody can sign and you will get contrarian doctors that sign it, but you will also get just, you you know absolutely random people signed by 800 000 members of the public as well right in total and this is something that robert malone who we covered in joe rogan also a vaccine skeptic person he claims to head an alliance of doctors. 16,000, I think, is the figure that he cites, who support his views on ivermectin and the dangers of the vaccine.

So collecting these signatures, it's the exact same thing as creationists or intelligent design, people collecting thousands of scientists who question evolution. You might be able to collect those signatures, but it doesn't indicate anything except for that there are people with fringe opinions

and also that if you have bad quality control, you can amass more signatures than with more stringent restrictions. Well, if the threshold is merely ticking a box on an anonymous web form, then it is absolutely meaningless, of course. I note that the topic of it is just about the advisability of lockdowns, right?

There's a spectrum of opinion about lockdowns, but even, like, I think you could make an argument at the time for less lockdowns and so on, depending on what your calculus was about the relative impacts economically and socially etc like i think that's an arguable discussion whereas straight up anti-vaxxery which is like absolutely denying the evidence about the efficacy of the vaccines and pretending that they don't work or that they're that they're killing people indiscriminately. Like that's in the Looney Tunes category. But I think there's a lot of overlap because when you see like, for example,

Jay Byer, the charrier, at events with Steve Kirsch, where Steve Kirsch presented the vaccines as this killer thing, and he's on stage with him, not at all kind of pushing back against that narrative. So I think it depends on the audience and it depends on how

the individual concerned that the people that are on the Great Barrington Declaration are at least leaning towards being very tolerant of the anti-vaccine community. And it's not just about the COVID lockdowns could be stopped. It's basically that they said, you know, the burden of letting the virus run rampant throughout the society would be manageable by the health authorities. And pretty much all mainstream health authorities said no, and that that would lead to mass unnecessary deaths.

So you're right that it's within the realm. You can debate about the strict nature of lockdowns and whether there should have been more leniency towards populations that were less vulnerable, which is the kind of generous framing of it. But I think if you do a more critical assessment of the people associated with the great barrington declaration you get very quickly into oh yeah hardcore contrarian

and anti-vax stuff oh no doubt there's like a massive correlation between the people that were and are anti sort of public health measures in general whether it's masks or you know restrictions on restaurants opening and someone and anti-vaxxery right massive correlation between those two opinions i was just pointing out that the way bill ma uses it as as a support for his idea that basically you shouldn't get vaccinated which is just not quite what it was about yeah so let's play uh another clip and this is bill maher talking to sam harris so this is a different interview i don't think sam harris comes up much in this clip but so it's not dawkins that is responding to but see if you can notice

any through lines yeah oh i'm just making the point that humans always have to be break down into two groups like there is always an a and a b it just i don't know but you but you well and so but i don't think that's true of of the two of us i mean so you know but i'm just saying on this issue and it bugs me because i do you know but you love your mind i don't i don't think you understand my situation like so like I don't know. I haven't gotten the bivalent booster because I've had three shots and I've had COVID. Yeah, I wouldn't get the booster. I'm not in a rush to get the booster.

But the CDC is telling me to get the booster. But I see the CDC just rankly politicized and inflexible. Now you're speaking my language. So you can see what kind of gets Bill a bit more happy, right? When you start saying, you know, public health authorities are wrong, aren't they? And, you know, like, I didn't get the boosters when they told me to. And, all right, yeah, you know, we can work on this. Yeah, that's right. We got some some point of common ground um i think i mean i don't know i'm guessing sam's mind

to you but obviously i think a lot of people are confused by this there's obviously a law of decreasing returns when it comes to boosters you sort of asymptotically approach this maximum benefit and you know counterbalanced against that is is the fact that the effects wear off. So, regular boosters are often necessary with many vaccines. And also, the viruses mutate. So, just like with the seasonal flu vaccine, you need a completely new one each year if you want to take it. And look, and it's often the case, like with the seasonal flu vaccine, there can sometimes be like a marginal cost benefit analysis where the benefits it's you know it's just it's just arguable you know what i mean in terms of even the minimal amount of hassle and expense involved in in getting it so so sam is just mentioning there that like he had three

doses and and has had covid and the benefits to him are clearly of getting an additional booster are in the marginal category. Yeah. But Bill Maher obviously is hopeful that that is an indication that that's a leverage point to jump into anti-vax opinions. Yeah. And Matt, related to that, so this is actually back to Dawkins, but you know, you made the point about the fact that you sometimes need to get boosters or you need to get annual vaccines for certain illnesses where we don't have long-lasting immunity, like the flu, for example. And now listen to the way Bill Maher frames that, and this is very reminiscent of Brett Weinstein. There was a heroic scientific moment when they came up with the vaccine so quickly,

faster than they thought. And it is a different technology than the old vaccines. It is a completely different way to do a vaccine. We're calling it a vaccine because it's a shot, but it's a very different way to do it. Okay. So I think it's a superior way to do it. Yeah, I do too. I'm glad they came up with that technology because there could be something around the corner that may be making it in a lab in Boston right now because they've been fucking with that, making a worse version of COVID, where again, I would be first online. But I just didn't think this one merited that for me. And I think I was right. So that just the only point I wanted to make there was, you know, we call these vaccines,

but they're, they're not really vaccines, right? And that, again, Bill Maher then goes on to say, you know, and I think they're good, which is not the standard anti-vax thing but he's consumed that point which is yeah these people are talking about these as vaccines but they're actually you know a kind of experimental new thing which yeah it's not like the old vaccines which were okay of course they weren't okay um you know yeah yeah these these are all very familiar familiar points um and you know you can you can start off with that kind of thing. Oh, I'm just concerned about unknown possible side effects with this new technology to these vaccines

of restructuring your DNA or something. So, yeah, it is like there's lots of giveaways there. Bill Maher is actually quite good at delivering, I guess, more anti-vax talking points because, like you said, he has the openings. Oh, this is a fantastic technology. It was an amazing triumph for science that they came up with this so quickly. But, yeah, it's quite good.

Yeah, there's little wordings as well, like faster than they even thought they could do, which, you know, is fine. That's accurate. But you can hear the implication of like, you know, did they create it too accurate. But you can hear the implication of like, and, you know, did they create it too fast? Were there safety measures taken?

And we'll see that like more explicitly stated. But just before we move on, Matt, there's a little bit more in the Great Barrington Declaration. You can't get away from it, I'm afraid. Cool. Let's go. And again, 16,000 doctors signed this thing. You could see so many doctors,

you see their videos, who are very much dissenting. They're not crazy people. Most of them, all of them, believe that we should have the vaccine and are thankful for it and other, their vaccine. They're not anti-vaxxers. Right. But they are much more on where I've been on this kind of stuff. So like, you know, if it's like, like, I don't do likes, but if I did, it's like, yes, I'd be the... And there's thousands of them. Why are these doctors more... And there's doctors, okay. We wouldn't even pretend.

I think you don't have to be an MD to know as much. People can learn that. People have other... But okay, let's just pretend that's not true. And it's just MDs who have the secret information of medicine. Why are this large group of MDs not as worthy as your group of MDs? That's all I'm saying is that we should just have, there's too many doctors, serious doctors. They went to medical school and they're not on your page. They're more on my page so let's

just well i'm not sure you know what my page is let's just demonize them and say that's it just because maybe you have you know it's 60 40 years or many of them many doctors don't speak out because they're intimidated because yeah and that's not a good place for science to be right yes so it's it's the same talking points but but bill maher is kind of like an old school hippie and an anti-fax from way back then he's he's not he's not a new convert like a new mega q anon type convert no and the interesting thing is you know our friend aaron robinowitz from embrace the void likes to talk as many do about people hiding their power levels or you know where they're kind of making their opinions seem more palatable depending on the audience and i i definitely think

this applies in this case because i've got two clips which highlight where bill maher is actually coming from but i think this is a good one so let's see where this goes and this is him kind of complaining that you know medical science is arrogant and they haven't cured cancer yet. So, you know, but let's hear his rationale here. And then maybe a city will grow back. But like first and, you know, see, this is, again, my thing with vaccines. Like, I don't think vaccines are evil.

thing with vaccines. Like, I don't think vaccines are evil. I just, until they figure out basic things like what causes cancer, and there are so many influences inside my body going on, and we don't know how they mix together, and they don't ask, they don't study how many, what kind of metals are in your body. These things really affect your health. I know you can't quantify them usually on a chart at a regular doctor's office. They don't even ask you what you eat. What are you putting in your body? Do you live near a lot of electromagnetic energy? There's lots of stuff that isn't crazy.

It's scientific. And we don't, again, we don't know what is causing cancer. So I'd like to keep it as natural as I can unless it's an emergency. I have the same basic philosophy about vaccines as I do about antibiotics. Am I glad they exist? Yes. Would I like to avoid them if at all possible? Yes, because I know I'd rather handle it naturally. That's not unscientific. Wow. Yeah. Magnets, electromagnetism that too yeah electromagnetic sensitivity or you know that that's a callback from yeah ye olden days and and also metals map metals in your body can't be detected put on the chart but you know yeah like there's so much we don't until we understand what

causes cancer how do we know that it's not vaccines maybe that could cause cancer? It's an interesting argument there. You can see the themes there. Purity, avoiding contamination, naturalness. Yeah, these are some of the underlying psychological motivations that lead people both towards complementary and alternative medicines and avoiding Western medicines and so on. And also, vaccines are almost like a perfect storm when it comes to that kind of thinking. So yeah, that's Bill Maher. Yeah. And it reminded me, Matt, you probably put it out of your mind, but remember when we did McKillop-Peterson? Or sorry, it was Gwyneth Paltrow.

And she was talking about the doctor who does all these bespoke tests on blood and the body that shows your chemicals are imbalanced and they can detect parasites that aren't showing up on normal tests and stuff like that. And she was also talking about environmental toxins and poisoning, which normal doctors overlook. And it's very much this notion that, you know, the one size fits all model of medicine is not OK for someone like Bill Maher, because he feels that that's not right. Like, you know, he's a special person. He eats different things than other people. So why should he be given the same treatment as everyone else? Yeah, exactly.

In fact, my PhD student, Gabriel Brighton, and I identified that theme in vaccine hesitancy some years ago, well before COVID came along, which is that it seems like a motivation for it is that dislike of that one size fits all type medicine. The idea that you're not being treated in the holistic, special, unique person that is you. You want a bespoke kind of therapy and complementary alternative medicine is very good at giving that impression to people that what you're getting is the product of a deep consultation, which is figuring out the wonderful special snowflake that is you. And that's very appealing and it explains why vaccine hesitancy is actually surprisingly high amongst the more well-to-do

people with higher levels of education, higher levels of socioeconomic status, because these are the people that tend to, yeah, I guess, take a greater interest in their health, even to the extent that it can involve endorsing a fair bit of woo. And it's a callback to what Bill Maher said earlier on in a previous clip, which is that, you know, he's not against vaccines, but, you know, he doesn't like the idea that there's just one vaccine for everybody. You know, it can't be that.

It's got to be that there might be some special circumstances where somebody needs the vaccine, just like you need, I don't know, extract of lotus oil or something. But, you know, the idea of everyone just getting that, I don't like that. No. And so one thing that Bill Maher was criticized for was he cast doubt on germ theory a number of years ago and he he clarified that he does believe in germs but if you read his original sentiment it's quite clear that it's it's not so obvious that that's the case and there was this reference matt that you if you heard it you would just get it in passing and this this is in the Sam Harris interview,

but I have to call it out because it is actually a very extreme thing. So listen to this and let's see if you pick it up. Although, you know, not to get back on this, but again, the point of humans always dividing into two groups, Republicans and Democrats, whatever it was. Terrain theory. You know, Louis Pasteur in his deathbed recanted and said, yes, Beauchamp was right. It's the terrain. In other words, we're always being invaded by pathogens.

It's the terrain they find, the analogy being the mosquito in the swamp. If there's not a swamp, it can't breed. But let's not get back on it. Yeah, I'm looking at that quote here, Chris. And yeah, it's very clear that there's that skepticism of germ theory. And this is, again, related to the holistic woo health, basically, that it might seem like you're being infected by a virus and the virus is to blame but really it's that your body is out of balance your chakras are not aligned or whatever or you've been made more vulnerable because you're being poisoned by your environment there's this toxicity everywhere like there's another quote from him here where he he says why is there mucus it is because your body is toxic and it's trying to create a river to get rid of those toxins.

So this obsession with this fictional concept of toxins, at least in the complementary and alternative health sphere, like our research found again and again and again that the best way to understand people that are susceptible to anti-vax views is really via understanding a more general endorsement of this natural Wu health. Yeah, and terrain theory is an alternative to germ theory. So what he's presenting there, and that story about Louis Pasteur recanting on this deathbed, it's just the same as you see in like creationist intelligent design about, you know, evolutionary theorists recanting that they were wrong about evolution on their deathbed. And if you look into it, you'll see that there's very big question marks around any sourcing of that story and tracing back to somebody in the

1950s or so on and so forth. But in any case, it is Bill Maher implying that it's, you know, germ theory, sure, but actually it's the environment and toxins that we need to be concerned with. And this is him talking with sam harris just you know in the last couple of months so he hasn't changed and he is someone which questions germ theory but he you know this is the kind of thing where if he was more direct i think in a way that like sam harris could understand what he's saying he probably would pull him on it but like you know sam harris doesn't know what terrian theory is or you know what louis pasteur said on his deathbed so it just you know they move on yeah and i got the

same vibe from richard dawkins where richard dawkins is aware that he's got anti-vaxxed beliefs doesn't agree with him but perhaps doesn't have a strong comprehensive understanding of really quite how delusional Bill Maher is about that. I guess they've got positive relationships with him, like they're friends, buddies from way back. And it's something we see a lot in these spheres, which is that personal relationships go an awfully long way. spheres which is that you know personal relationships go an awfully long way yeah so you know at the start you mentioned that dawkins is a little bit less susceptible to that than some other people right because of justice demeanor but there is a clip that kind of highlights that because this is at the end of the conversation, after Mar has said all these quite clear

anti-vax claxon calls, and Dawkins invites him to take part in an event. Well, we enjoyed having you that year very much, and we'd like to get you involved in our setup again. You mean it's an event

out here? Every year. Every year? Yes. So what do you want event out here? Like it was that night? Every year. Every year. So what do you want me to do? Like 10 minutes? Want me to do some God material? We'll write to you. You know, that is so funny about you. People, when they hear the name Richard Dawkins, like I'm sure when, you know,

just the man in the street who knows that name, the thing that comes to their mind at first, atheist. Yeah. So, you know, just the man in the street who knows that name, the thing that comes to their mind, first, atheist. Yeah. So, you know, just inviting Bill to some event which they're going to hold for the Dawkins Center for Reason or for whatever it is. And maybe I could do a comedic set.

But, you know, he's expressed fairly anti-scientific opinions in the conversation, but it's kind of overlooked because well you know you're a funny guy you you can tell should i do some of my anti-god material you know yeah now it's a bad call isn't it i mean no doubt he's a nice guy no doubt he's fun to be around he's a celebrity he's a celebrity the indoor can i'm sure agree on a lot of things like making fun of religion and so on but when someone is that anti-scientific then it's not really a good idea to have them as a as a speaker or a guest at your center for science and reason type thing, right? It does undermine it.

It does undermine it. I think it gives people the wrong impression. Yeah. And so another example of this, Matt, which is Dawkins indicating that he might rely a little bit, I think, too much on personal connections to inform him about topics. So listen to this.

Well, I mean, it's this, you know, gain of function. Is that what they call it? Where they think that that's maybe how COVID started in the lab in Wuhan to begin with, is that there was this gain of function. I think that's the term. I haven't heard that phrase. I've heard the theory, which is which my friend Matt Ridley is keen on that. Have you ever had Matt Ridley on your show? No, should I? Oh, you should. Oh, okay. Well, anybody you recommend.

He's a great science writer. He's at the present pushing, he's written a book together with a woman pushing the idea, which is an unfashionable idea, but he's pushing it, that it did indeed leak from a lab in China. Yeah. So, Chris, what do you think about Matt Ridley and his book about the lab leak?

Yeah. So Sam Harris just had on Matt Ridley and Alina Chan on this very issue. And they are outlier lab leak enthusiasts is perhaps the best way to describe it. They like to present themselves as, you know, people who are just objectively looking at the facts and coming to the conclusion that lab leak was indeed likely. But if you look at Matt Ridley's history, he's bad on scientific topics. Yes, he got a PhD from Oxford, haven't we all? But he also published a series of articles suggesting that HIV AIDS came from vaccines, an alternative origin story, long after that theory had been roundly criticized.

And he tries to prevent it as just asking questions, but if you look at it, it was clearly advocating for it. He was also long-term skeptic of climate change, now climate contrarian kind of perspectives. The interesting thing is climate scientists know very well what Matt Ridley's relationship with scientific evidence is. And so if you see comments about them, they correctly peg him.

But Richard Dawkins, I think, on the other hand, enjoyed a book, as did other science writers, that he read about evolutionary theory. And I think because they get on, it, you know, it's kind of like, oh, he's written this fantastic book, but Dawkins hasn't looked into the topic quite clearly. He's just heard through him and Bill Maher doesn't even know who that is. So, you know, he's like, gain a function. Yeah. Oh, has he written a book about it and you know the amount of research that both of them look to put into contextualizing what's the consensus opinion of experts seems to be very low and i think that's because richard dawkins probably isn't paying attention to this like

he says he doesn't even know what gain of function means so and he's he's in his 80s so that's okay like if you follow his twitter feed he is just kind of bumping along through things that tickle his interest but it's both of them are very reliant on dawkins has a friend who thinks it's a lab like and he recommends the bill maher that he has him on and sam harris has just had those people on i wonder if there's any connection to you know the other people recommending matt ridley and so on because just to be clear matt ridley is not a virologist alina chan is not a virologist she at least has some scientific credentials but they they're very much not virologists they were not people that were studying or talking about viruses prior to the pandemic and you know you could look at any number of experts um so it is interesting and i think sam

has done a like the exact opposite of what he said people should do about you know if you're going to cover a scientific topic make sure you're not just canvassing outlier opinions and presenting it as forbidden knowledge, which is what he just did. Yeah, it is a bit sad to see that the current landscape of people that are meant to be carrying the flag for scientific and a skeptical approach to things do in fact rely on, oh, he wrote a good book about something that i enjoyed and he's clearly a clever person and a friend of mine uh so so it must be good um like this is the heuristics the the epistemic

heuristics you see so often out there which is oh that person they might have a phd they might have gone to cambridge um they they sound very smart i enjoyed a book they wrote so they're probably fine. Couldn't be completely wrong. It's like, we were talking about this before, but if you look at a topic, like my heuristic is, if you take something like this lab leak thing and you get some opinions from people that are specialists in virology that have been publishing on it for decades often before COVID ever came along, then I would trust them to have probably a pretty well-informed opinion. But if you take someone like these two people, Alina Chan and Matt Ridley,

then these are people that are parachuted into this topic. And certainly in the case of Matt Ridley, he's a science journalist type person and a contrarian. Like he's not going to be able to write a book about, oh, about zoonosis, about, oh, it's all very boring. COVID probably came from, you know, nature spillover like a hundred other viruses have before. You can't write a book about that. You can write a popular science book about the lab leak thing. So there's incentives at play, but they don't seem to apply good heuristics

about who they should be taking seriously and when they should be being skeptical. Yeah, and there are times when they do, when at least Dawkins shows awareness of certain issues with like bad evidential heuristics. So in the conversation, there's this bit where Bill Maher is providing various anecdotes and Dawkins is calling them out. This head of the CDC just got like her fourth shot, I think, and then got COVID three weeks

later. Well, that's an anecdote. It's not an anecdote, but it's an anecdote that is very typical. I remember when I got, I was fine for 14 months without it. I got the vaccine. Then like a month later, I got COVID. It's an anecdote. What? It's just an anecdote. Okay. But I'm just, I'm getting to a point. When it happened, people said, oh, wow, that's weird. That's a breakthrough case. And then it became the story changed, the news changed, the facts changed. And the facts changed to that's actually very typical. When it happened to me, people were surprised. In six months, they weren't surprised because that was a more typical. I'm not, again, yes, you're right.

Can I just say, you can hear Dawkins like give up in some points, but also this speaks really to the limitations of Bill Maher and people like him, right? Because he's probably right that when he got sick or initially when people were vaccinated and, you know, there were breakthrough cases that there were people that were surprised, right? But if you listen to the experts they were saying no this this happens in in the case with all vaccines we knew this was going to happen you know it's never clear exactly how much it will be but like if you listen to what the experts were saying they were saying that and the public are the people that are surprised and then over time they they do hear more and realize, oh, so this is

actually more common. But what they often take in that is, oh, all the scientific authorities were wrong and lied. Not, I didn't understand the issue, or I'm now hearing experts explaining this thing which is happening. It's like Bill Maher thinks the science completely changed, and they lied about what they said before. And it isn't like that. There might be various journalists or even some handful of experts who didn't state things exactly perfect in the way that they presented it. But you don't rely on journalists to be the people who represent science very particularly exactly. And you don't expect that experts in every single occasion will always speak perfectly. But if you read the literature, if you look at the long form interviews, it's very clear.

They understand the limitations and what will happen. But it's just Bill Maher's like kind of, it's a very egocentric thing where, and then it all changed because, you know, people around me were surprised. And I remember people being surprised at what happened to me. Yeah. the issue of COVID vaccines as much as Bill Maher should have no excuse for not looking at the data on the degree to which the COVID vaccines reduce death and mortality and morbidity from contracting COVID. Yes, there's going to be some breakthrough. Many people are going to be vaccinated and then they're still going to feel a bit sick after contracting COVID. Some people, it'll sort of bounce off them and that they won't even notice it that they've contracted it

and it'll seem like it's worked perfectly. But all those anecdotes don't mean anything, right? Just because we have the data. We have just reams of data and it's unambiguous, absolutely unambiguous. So for Bill Maher to be relying on those sorts of personal anecdotes and coming to the conclusion that, oh, you know, they lied to us, they don't really work. No, they do work. They did work. The data is there. So if Bill Maher is so interested in this issue,

what's the explanation for why does he not believe the data? Is it all a trick? Or does he not understand how to read data? I thought he was meant to be a science and reason guy. Maybe I can help you, Matt. This might explain that. I think the real reason is because he listens to idiots like Brett Weinstein. But in any case, let's hear him talk they discovered for the first time a bacteria that is visible to the naked eye? I'm not totally surprised.

Really? They said it would be like finding a human the size of Mount Everest. Yes, yes, that's right, yes. Okay, go ahead. No, I don't. Well, when I hear something like that, again, it just says to me, all the people who are saying the science, you know, we have the science. You don't know shit. We know a lot more than we used to. We just don't know very much, like how to cure cancer, and that there could be a bacteria the size of Mount Everest. They just found out all that they were doing therapy-wise with serotonin,

thinking that that was causing depression. Wrong. There was one paper in 2006. It had wrong information. They knew it at the time. They didn't care. Metabolism, they found out, does not slow in age like they thought it did it's like a god of the gaps but for medicine right yeah it's that you know that kind of approach that because science is updating that that means it's completely unreliable and because a hundred years ago we didn't know x, Y, and Z, that means that now we're in the same state, you know, just really, we should be much more humble about knowledge because, you know, they just find this bacteria. But what Bill Maher is in contextualizing there is

it is not the case that there are lots of massively prevalent bacterias that are visible to the human eye that we didn't notice beforehand. There are specific cases of outlier things, and there is things that science keeps learning. It's obviously not done, but he's adopting the very much alternative medicine view that is allowed to just undermine any claim by saying well we you know last week they said red wine causes cancer and this week it cures it and they very much are reacting to headline and media sensationalist presentations rather than the scientific literature which is much more yeah like a slow steady progression of information except with the exception that like you know various people claim hyperbolic statements sometimes in papers

but like overall a steady accumulation of knowledge yeah now this is something we've commented on before with respect to especially like the lab leak stuff and you have people talking about how oh the experts are telling us, and then now it's like a revolution. Now we've discovered it's definitely come from the lab. And then it's this, and the impression that they're getting is that it's flip-flopping. But actually what they're doing is they're paying attention to journalists' articles that happen to be coming into their news feed

and or the discourse sort of swirling around it. And they're thinking that that's kind of, in capital letters, the science. It's like, no, what you're doing is lazily attending to particular articles and things that pop up in the discourse. And the frustration I've got is that when, and I see this with a lot of people who are, I guess, is that when, and I see this with a lot of people who are, I guess, you know, IDW adjacent or sort of centrist-y type institution skeptical people, is when they talk about all the mistakes that supposedly the experts or the scientists have made, what they're really referring to is the

discourse, right? They've read stuff in the discourse, it could be in some newspaper or some online publication and it could have been over the top in whatever direction and then they've read another one debunking that and then the back and forth and so and so said that oh we all have to wear masks forever and ever now whatever and that's ridiculous like what they what they're complaining about the discourse that they are enmeshed in, they're not referring to the scientific literature at all. No. And you can hear a little bit of pushback from Dawkins, like trying to make this point about the way that science progresses, but you can then also hear how Marr reframes it.

Metabolism, they found out, does not slow in age like they thought it did. We just don't know science progresses for me from ignorance right so it's important to recognize what we don't know thank you also what we do know and yes there are things we do know and um and way more than we used to i mean can you can you imagine being somebody in the middle ages or even, you know, only really up until 100 years ago. And the things that doctors did to you made it so much worse. Bleeding you and... Well, putting dirt like in wood.

That presentation there, the thing that I took from it is kind of the Bill Maher wants to draw a through line between medieval medicine, bleeding, and I'm rubbing salt in the open wounds or whatever the case might be, and modern medicine. But obviously, there's a difference, right? Once we had clinical trials, once modern medicine began, we did start to improve life expectancy and deaths and childbirth and, you know, surviving infectious diseases and whatnot. So it isn't like we are still rubbing dirt in wounds or that the scientific method leads you there. In fact, it's the opposite. Science leads you out of those treatments. And it's not perfect. There's plenty of errors that have been made in the modern era of medicine. Treatments that were unnecessary, lax standards in clinical trials that led to evidence being

presented in the way, thalidomide, famous cases cases so it is not that modern medicine is beyond criticism but it isn't what bill maher presents which is you know just like a a slight evolution from medieval medicine yeah i guess so bill maher's point of view would be that look you know science was obviously very imperfect in the past. Medicine was very imperfect in the past. We can see that clearly now. In the future, we may well look back on today and shake our heads in wonder that people were injecting COVID vaccines or MMR vaccines into our bodies or whatever.

And, you know, I get lots of different versions of this argument from time to time. But I think what they miss is that when they are skeptical of whatever the current consensus in science and medicine is, it may well not be perfect. It may well, you know, we don't have 100% confidence that whatever that consensus is saying is right. they're doing is they're substituting that their own alternative contrarian take guess at what the truth is based on their hunches and what their friends said or some article they read in some thing and they're letting it slosh all around their head and they're they're taking their own shot right they're taking their own guess about what the truth is based on that which happens which is different from now how is that better now i i like you i perfectly will accept that whatever the medical and scientific consensus

advice is may well be wrong it's an imperfect science as they say but they're they're substituting it with something worse like it's inevitable that you have to substitute with something worse unless you think that that you spending a sunday doing your own research on this topic and feeling out your friends and reading a couple of articles unless you think you're some kind of astounding genius you're not going to do better why would anyone think that they're going to be doing better bill knows his body better than those pencil necks matt that's the that's the thing it's it's all vibe based and uh yeah so look i don't have more clips that relate to the anti-vaccine stuff we will hear more of it whenever he's speaking with ruben

on the next one but it's just it's another one of these cases. I do feel a little bit like there are some things that we always come back to, which is people who are un-self-aware of, you know, how far they are promoting a particular perspective, right? And Bill Maher's view is clearly that, well, he's not a vaccine skeptic. He's just, and he's pro-science, right? And he's skeptical of everything as he should be. But like, no, like listen to his comments. He's a guy that is skeptical of germ theory. And he's, you know, weighed by,

well, 16,000 people signed a document. And, you know, why are they not better than your experts? And it's just, his heuristics are broken. And he is indeed very strongly skeptical of vaccines. And he was before COVID. And yeah, I wish there was a more, you know, a self-awareness of like where you actually are but nobody wants to say they're anti-vax well none of us know what we don't know right we all can't by definition

can't have self-awareness about the ways in which we're confused but it would be like matt me saying well you know matt you're a supporter of Manchester United and you're going well no you know it's not really fair I you know I I don't classify myself as a supporter I don't think I've really even mentioned it and then doing a podcast later where you're like Manchester United are the greatest team uh they all other teams feel in comparison and then someone said oh so you know you're a supporter and like well I don't know where you got that idea from it's like that because he says i don't doubt germ theory then he references terrain theory and then he said oh science doesn't know all these things and it's it's very clear what he's getting at but it's not like terrain theory is something you accidentally cite you have to be deep in the

african rabbit hole to even know that word yeah i think bill maher is to use aaron's phrase hiding his power level in that in those little giveaways he he has gone deep down some some rabbit holes and yet he presents himself as a as someone who's casually interested in these topics. The nicest thing I can say about him is that he's not a grifter in this sense. He genuinely is an anti-vaxxer, right? He's genuinely not good. His heuristics are not good. He's not good at processing the information available to him and weighing it appropriately.

good at processing the information available to him and weighing it appropriately he's genuinely confused that people that he likes and admires like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris aren't seeing what he's seeing yeah and he's obviously not the only one like so many people are in this situation and I share your frustration like it it doesn't doesn't seem to me to be that hard like there's just a few basic heuristics that you could practice. You don't need to be a science-y person. You don't need to have specialized knowledge of spike proteins and things like that. You just need to apply social sort of heuristics, like normal everyday street sense, in understanding who you should be lending credence to and spot the difference between and understand people's incentives in speaking out or writing on a topic

and figuring out who are good people to trust like it's not really that hard but my my goal is even low i have an even lower bar than that because all i want is for people to recognize yeah i'm sort of sympathetic to anti-vaccine perspectives because of x y and z you know just that just that self-awareness that actually you are you're repeating the things that all our anti-vaxxers say you know that you're you're skeptical of mainstream medicine and so on that's all i want i think bill maher does know that he's he's an anti-vaxxer in that sense but i think he's like like all anti-vaxxers he's aware that is it is a stigmatizing term it's a pejorative and it's very similar to people look it's a bit like the people that say look i'm not a racist but i just think it's better if we strictly control immigration and

people of other races are not as hard working or as smart as us and blah blah blah right because in the in their mind they don't want to be associated with these hateful skinheads who are punching people and stuff like that because they'd never do that right that yeah and so i i understand the social psychological motivations for not wanting to identify with those labels. But I think in their heart of hearts, they know what they are. So you should be happy, Chris. I think Bill must.

Okay, fine. I think he's just lying. I'll accept that. So there's two little clips to end on that aren't entirely related, but I think they're nice. You know, we used to end, but I don't know if you forgot,

we used to try to find positive things to end on so i i do have a positive clip it's it's really dawkins but there was one clip that's like on a slightly different topic that i i had to include my because i just wanted to rant a little bit so please indulge me so like the kids who are like um playing twitch do you know what twitch is no um now you put me on the spot i have to fucking explain it to you and i it's a game you know what it's not a game it's people watching people play a game it's a it's i yeah that's what it basically is. That's like a sport to them, watching other people play a video game. Can you believe that? I cannot. So, like, how do you get someone away from Twitch to read a book?

That's my question. I feel like we are devolving into a completely brain-rewired society because of the phone. The phone is the portal to evil i really believe that yeah well strong strong boomer energy as you said before so strong i want to draw a line between us and them there i'm not that bad give Give it 20 years, Chris. We'll get there. Have you seen the kids playing the Twitch? They're playing the Twitch.

Is it a game? With the hip hop and the jim jam. Have you seen the size of the pants the kids are wearing these days, Chris? It's ridiculous. They do a bit of this. They do various other parts of this in the interview. And I kind of, older man grouching about the youth of today fine you know it will as it has always been this will happen again

but i just the thing that annoyed me about that is you know i think i had a similar reaction the first time i heard about twitch like a long time ago but he mentions it's like a sport to them, watching other people play games. And I was like, come on. So there's no, you don't see a parallel there. It's like a sport. Do you enjoy watching football? Are you playing the football? Like, no, you're watching it. And in the same way, as many people have noted, people like to watch their friends play video games right that was experience that people had and that is kind of what twitch is but it's it's also this is a podcast bill maher is a talk show host where people watch him having conversations

with other people they're not having the conversation they're just listening and i'm like come on yeah like if you exercise just a tiny little bit of empathy you might be able to understand why kids might be watching other kids play computer games right just it doesn't take much to to grasp it's like they're so close i mean dawkins isn't what's this twitchy game uh yeah well i i will give uh dawkins a pass with the boomerism because he's 83 um yeah he shouldn't be on twitch no anyway that would probably be pretty popular i just i'm gonna say it now chris if i'm still giving my opinions about popular culture when i'm 83 could you could you promise here and now to stage an intervention just like

stop me take take take the microphone take take my phone away from me it's not doing me any good whatever reputation i've built up during my life is i'm ruining it. Just put me in a home. Did you hear what the kids are today doing with the sleeper slobber? They're flipping them around. It's unbelievable. My day, we had VR. I fully intend to be that old guy saying that kind of thing, but it's better from just saying it to my bored grandchildren than to hundreds of thousands of people beyond decoding the the ai gurus by that point it'll

just be ai matt and chris talking about what happened to me versions of us but um but that wasn't matt the hello i quite enjoyed that clip actually but But this is the final positive clip to end on a nice note. I was lamenting people for lacking self-awareness. This is a rare moment on this show of pure self-awareness. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, colleges are... What was your experience in academia? Did you find it too ethereal, a little too pie-in-the- sky, where people were in their ivory towers.

They weren't realistic enough. That's the reputation. Yes, probably true. I like ivory towers. Of course you do. I like, I'm fascinated by things that are for the whole universe and for all time. I mean, I'm not interested in parochial little frivolous things that concern humanity. No, you're probably, John McWhorter always says, you know, I'll do your interview.

I love doing your show. But I just know I'd always really rather be sitting in my chair reading a book. Yeah, that's cute. That's cute. I like that. Richard Dawkins does. I like my ivory towels. I like ivory towels.

He does. I like ivory towels, too. So I like that. I'll tell you just a little anecdote that I thought was quite nice. I went to a conference once. It's probably one of the best conferences I went to because it was at the top of this ancient monastery of at the top of a mountain in a riche in like this italian town and and the people the academics were staying at the monastery i can't remember the guy's name but

the the person who like set up the institute or whatever he's dead now uh but he had a room at the top of a tower and you could wander around. And when you went up this winding staircase up to the top of the tower at night, there was a big telescope looking out into the sky. And there was also an old-fashioned record player with Pink Floyd's the wall. Just imagining, you know, this academic guy blowing his pipe and, you know, writing his equations while he listened to Pink Floyd on the gramophone and stared at his telescope. So yeah, I like that. That was a nice ivory tower. That's nice. Well, in Australia, at least in my nick of the woods, our ivory towers are built out of Bessel blocks, so they don't really have the same magic about them. But what's our takeaways from this? I think for me, the little takeaway is that, look, you might like Bill Maher's comedy, you might have great opinions about atheism or have other scientific topics that don't have anything to do with health, medicine or vaccines. But you should be able to recognize that someone who you might generally like for other reasons

can be absolutely shockingly terrible on specific topics that they have monomania about. Also, people that have done great things, and I think Richard Dawkins' early books on biology and evolution were great. I'm a big fan of them. Hawkins' early books on biology and evolution were great. I'm a big fan of them. You know, they can also sort of be lazy or just a bit at sea and are not necessarily – basically, you shouldn't be putting anybody on a pedestal.

So there's no end of American TV celebrities that have woo health, anti-vax beliefs, and have promoted pretty stupid stuff, whether it's Oprah Winfrey or Jim Carrey or whoever. And even people that associate themselves with being skeptics and atheists and agnostics or whatever, they can totally lose the plot when it comes to some political ideological thing or something that causes them existential angst or something something like vaccines so uh don't rely on like your friend networks or because they sound smart or because they've got a phd from cambridge or whatever you've gotta use different heuristics for figuring out

um who's a reliable source on an issue. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we are stacking the deck in a certain respect by focusing on this topic, which Mar is bad at, right? And like you say, he covers a wide range. And actually, he kind of wants to just, you know, roam around in this club random stuff. You know, it's not even super political he more just wants to waffle and drink um but but it doesn't matter because he can't switch off

the way that he approaches information and stuff and like uh i think there's lots of ways that he probably doesn't fit neatly into the secular guru mold. He's much more like a pundit, right? A traditional entertainer, comedian, talk show host, pundit. And I think the extent to which he endorses conspiracy narratives and all that, they're all secondary to that identity as an entertainer. conspiracy narratives and all that they're all secondary to that identity as an entertainer so he's a bit of an ill fit but i i do think it's important and we were talking about this about doing some figures who are prominent left-wing people in various different sectors of the left and i think bill maher's position is is one that is interesting

because he does represent a kind of approach, and especially around vaccines and stuff. This is the traditional anti-vaccine, sceptical, alternative health side of the liberal left. And it's just interesting to see it. Yeah, I think it's valuable to public because as i said at the beginning like someone at a broader level or in general you know bill maher isn't that far away politically from where you and i are which is just sort of center lefty

but not hyper progressive a bit skeptical of some left-wing stuff but still you know basically liberal and so on and uh he could still be really very terrible on on certain issues um it's not the preserve of the right wing to be stupid and conspiratorial about things it's it's something that can happen across the political spectrum and i'll also just agree with you um we'll I guess we'll dig into it when we record the Garometer episode on Bill Maher, but I don't think he'll ding many of the alarm bells on the Garometer because it is, as you say, secondary. He's just a genuine anti-vaxxer. He's an entertainer who happens to have some stupid opinions and beliefs

rather than someone who's going about it in a much more strategic way. Yeah, he's not RFK Jr. He just probably has a lot of sympathy for what RFK Jr. says. So yeah, that's important to keep in mind. But just to remind people, part of the whole point is that we take various figures

that may or may not be secular gurus. So if you want to hear our more detailed breakdown as to how well he fits with our template, you can listen to the bonus episode if you join the Patreon. Yes, so that will be forthcoming. But now, Matt, now that we're done

with the coding for this week and we know that Dave Rubin is coming shortly after, maybe relatively more shortly since we have everything prepared. I've got some feedback and it's a review of sorts. You know, we have the review of review segment, the wisdom of Makila,

which is complete now. We're exhausted of wisdom. But this is a bit of an unorthodox review, it's a it's a subreddit post and it's by anki steve who is an individual on twitter that we both know and and there's a a wise chap but he wrote a what is it a reddit thread and the title was constant kissing's brilliant riposte to decoding the guru's takedown of his Oxford speech. And I think it's worth reading in full. It's a little bit long, but I'll try to make it a dramatic reading for you and see what you think.

Okay? So it's a review of Constantine's riposte to us. If I'm going to be completely honest, I didn't want to like what Constantine Kissin said about decoding the gurus in his recent response to their takedown of his recent Oxford speech on wokeness and climate change. When I saw Chris Kavanagh's tweet today, I wanted to hear how ridiculous Kissin was to claim that Chris and Matt had low IQs and were arguing in bad faith. So I clicked through and gave it a listen. At first, I was underwhelmed. He spent the first 10 minutes or so of his reflection explaining how he reasoned his way through all the bad faith arguments he's had to endure

and the outright lies made about him since becoming a public figure. Anyone who follows the modern day gurus of our time knows this spiel well, but I muzzled through and i'm glad i did it was right about the 12 minute mark he dropped an absolute bomb on chris and matt for their bald-faced misrepresentation of his speech constantine never said poor people don't care about the environment like chris and matt claimed he said they don't care about climate change i didn't want to believe the coding the gurus would get something so wrong and misrepresent Kissin that dishonestly. So I went back and listened to his Oxford speech just to check to

make sure he wasn't representing what Chris and Matt said. Actually, Kissin got things kind of wrong himself. Kissin didn't say that poor don't care about climate change. Neither did he say the word care. What he actually said was, poor people don't give a shit about saving the planet. He said this twice, in fact. At any rate, let's not quibble over Kissen's word choice. However, there is an absolute world of difference

between don't give a shit about saving the planet and don't care about the environment. The first phrase is eight words, while the second phrase is just five words. That's almost half as many words as what he actually said. And Kissin didn't even mention the blatant censorship of don't give a shit to the more politically correct, don't care.

If you don't see the magnitude of the distortions here by Chris and Matt, consider you may in fact be caught in an ideological bubble. Kissin has opened my eyes to make sure I look at Chris and Matt more skeptically. I have to give him credit, if begrudgingly, for pointing out an important distinction that somehow slipped my notice. I think Chris and Matt should swallow their pride and apologize for this gross distortion of his words with an eye towards helping us all argue in good faith so we can find common

ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was very good. There's nothing we can say. Caught red-handed. He nailed us. Hoistbar and petard. Yeah, I mean, we talk a big game about good faith criticism, being accurate and stuff, but really, are we any different?

Are we not really just like the gurus ourselves chris i mean five versus eight map it speaks for itself it speaks for itself that's uh that's a world of difference and the political correctness on this show has run rampant indeed taking out the the word ship, you know. No. Oh, God. Yeah. Well, in case anybody missed that, that was satire. But it was good satire, very good, because this is very much what Constantine Kissin

and many of his ilk do, isn't it, Chris, with the so-called rebuttals, which is they will exception hunt, find some niggling little discrepancy sort sort through whatever is said and and find a way to make out that they have been misrepresented they've been straw manned and uh it's completely in good bad faith and can be totally disregarded it's it is a it's a trick, but it's a trick that seems to work pretty well. Yeah, stealing again from WordSafred,

a user called StrictAthlete discussed this in a lengthy post and described it as like pointing on incidental details that maybe are wrong or like an overstatement, but are completely irrelevant to your argument. It happened to you when you talked about elon musk and you know we made a a large array of criticisms and then somebody was like well matt claimed that you know the cost of the rocket that this wasn't a big leap forward and

reusable what space tech or spacex had said and that isn't exactly what you said either, but that is almost completely irrelevant to the $900 points that were made. So yeah, it happens quite a lot. And with Lex Riedman, he mentioned people commenting on his diet, that that is superficial and he doesn't care. But that's the kind of thing that he mentions

roller than the criticisms of him encouraging joe rogan to interview trump with alex jones president yeah exactly it's a it's a good rhetorical move because you know you you pull out a criticism that is very small and tangential but it is easily rebutted and focus on that to the exclusion of everything else does work well so i like that idea of pouncing and you know of course it's kind of like a different variation of what the conspiratorial do your own research people like alex marinos do with research articles right they'll take an article and they will pour through it and and they'll find some really tiny little thing, and whatever, I don't know, their pre-registration didn't mention specifically this,

and they did this other little thing. Like, it may well be a point, but it's a tiny, tiny little point, and they will blow it out of all proportion, as if so they are able to dismiss the entire study, right? Yeah. There are cases where what you just described could be a very valid critique of a study. I know.

I'm just my open science alarm is going off. No, no, no. Because I mentioned pre-registration, so that's going to trigger you. No, no. Sometimes a detail can be super important, right? Like if you accidentally treat all the minus signs as plus signs or something, it's a small detail, but it has a big impact. But that's not what I'm referring to now.

I knew that. I knew that. I've just been pedantic. And yeah, so like in the recent kerfuffle with Scott Alexander, I recommended a paper that we covered about conspiracy cognition because he was saying that there's no difference in the way that conspiracy theorists think about things than normal people. And I was saying, oh, that's generally true, but there actually are some of the ways that they approach evidence which seem to be different and also not good at detecting actual conspiracies. And then the response from some of the people in his community were to punt

immediately for that academics Twitter timeline for any statements that were, you know, kind of negative of Trump and then declare him like he wrote some critical stuff about an episode of question time he was watching and they were like, so what we can trust this part as an ideologue. And there was also citations of studies that didn't really read the studies and that's exactly what you're saying right like it looks like at first superficial glance it can look like the people are digging into that person in detail but really they're just immediately looking for something to discredit the source of information that they

don't like so they just immediately go and the first thing they hit upon is like okay just just ignore that and you it could even be the case that he is a rank partisan the academic guy cited that he's a you know he's an idiot in his analysis of question time but he wrote a good paper about like conspiracy cognition the two things could be independent but they don't decouple that shit matt they're not high decouplers when it comes to wanting to dismiss someone that says something they don't like so selective decoupling we can't have that but but i like those terms we gotta gotta remember that pouncing and uh yeah and the other one is just us being bad for youheads. Yeah, that's fine. That's all right.

So thank you for that, Steve, and the strict athlete, which is the username of the pouncing person. So last thing for today is to thank Patreon members, the people that support us, that put up with our distortions of guru positions and our rampant mainstream institution bias defense are just love for the blue church. Yeah. Or maybe they love the blue church too.

They probably do. They're NPC drones, so that's the kind of thing they would do. Okay. It's quite right. So enough insulting of them. But we have conspiracy hypothesizers, Anne Scheele, NoUsername34,

Ian Serro, John Ross, Just a Brazilian, AJ Bantley, KTO, Appleyard, Laura Renger, Hirsch Singh, Evan Kress, and Samantha Ray.

That is our conspiracy hypothesizers for this week. Thank you, everybody. I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions, and they've all circulated this list of correct answers. I wasn't at this conference this kind of shit makes me think man it's almost like someone is being paid like when when you hear these George Soros stories well he's trying to destroy the country from within we are not going to advance conspiracy hypotheses yeah yeah it always that you will a couple then of of revolutionary geniuses not so many on this particular page that i've landed on but we've got Jack Hogan, Andrew Demos, and Eliza Millican.

Oh, thank you. And Robert T. Weltsian Jr. Okay. Just the few. The few. The brave. Well, one more. Enchant-o-matic, if you want, as well.

Oh, one more. One more. Well. Yeah. It's just like the Battle of Britain. Never before was so much given to so few by a relatively small number ali shaughnessy the cn weinstein and uh maggie oh you snuck in some more just add them in oh samuel brooks another one well okay there's more of you that i thought

they're getting in on the line daniel Bingham, Eleanor Curry. Come on. Like, just William Borscht, William Borscht and Andy Seaton as well. Wow. Okay. Thank you. What can we do? Thank you all.

I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time. And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm. I'm someone who's a true polymath. I'm all over the place. But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption. Now, that's just a guess. And it could easily be wrong.

But it also could not be wrong. The fact that it's even plausible is stunning. This is so good. That guy guy who was the sense maker guy at the beginning jordan hall jordan hall i i came across a clip on twitter that was jordan hall at his absolute finest i wish i wish i thought to find it and you could play it chris because it's it's only short and it's just champagne jordan hall it's so perfect well we'll try to locate it for the dave rubin episode that can be our like our little hunt so yeah that'd be a fun thing for the intro yeah i'll try to find it um if anyone knows my twitter

handle or whatever and you know what i'm talking about flick it to me because i've i tried to find it before i couldn't find it galaxy brain gurus matt the most intellectually impressive figures in our patreon supporters the ones who really understand what true value is yeah they know that religion is a school bus financially impressive it's the most impressive way to be impressive impressive correct so i hear um so we have hustletron 9000 j77 jack olsley jack w janet neuter jason truck jedi mishap jennifer nelson and jesta And you might have noticed a theme in those names. Yeah, I'm in the Js. I'm in the J section. So those are all Galaxy Brain gurus.

I'm so curious how you manage that database. Like it's alphabetical, but there must be new people coming in and people going away. How do you stay up to date? How do you keep it organized? It's a freaking nightmare. It's so badly,

it sounds like eight overlapping things which i'd anyway um find these these people mart this is a get bank it's a lottery it's a lottery system so there you go thank you to them uh one and all thank you we tried to warn people yeah what was coming, how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and in everything. Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense. I have no tribe. I'm in exile. Think again, sunshine. Yeah. Ah, there we have it. There we have it. Got a great note to end on every week uh well thanks chris uh this was fun bill mars seems like an open and shut case but still had to be done got to catch them all that's right that's right into the pokedex he goes or the guru decks i guess but um another another week and we probably won't be so long with the next episode because

ruben is just sitting there he's ready to be dissected so it will appear soon and for patrons there will be a decoding academia release soon on pseudo profound bullshit a variation of that related to like workplace bullshit right like corporate bullshit um i believe so there you go yep yep more recording for us thanks everyone good to see you chris um don't be an anti-vaxxer um no just be just be normal i'll try i'll do my best and uh yeah yeah watch out for the desk not the gen accord that get it institutional narrative don't you know okay we'll do ciao respect and and the twitchy pops keep an eye on the kids what to turn with don't you know. Okay. Will do. Ciao. Respect. And the Twitchy Pops. Keep an eye on the kids.

What to do with the Twitch and do with the chicken. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you.