Making Sense with Sam Harris - #239 — Yet Another Call from Ricky Gervais

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Ricky Gervais calls Sam to ask if AI will replace comedians. They also discuss the implications of not having free will and if a chimp has ever asked, "what does it all mean?" They agree that bears are dangerous. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

hey hi how's it going yeah good a bit uh sweating i just had a hot bath i was already in it was too i couldn't i couldn't back out. But yeah, good. Judging from Twitter, you're a bath man more than a shower man. I love it. I have two, either two baths a day in the winter or a bath and a shower or two showers in the summer. Sometimes I do it because I'm bored. There's something. I think it's from my upbringing where, you know, we could only have one bath a week when I was little.

Wow. Sometimes secondhand water. Oh, I've had it hard, honestly. It's like a Dickens novel. That is hard. You joke, but that is deprivation. One bath a week. I mean, that's 17th century stuff.

Well, I remember in the winter in our house, we had, this is absolutely true. This sounds like a joke. This sounds like a Monty Python sketch, but we had ice on the inside of the windows when I woke up. Right. Yeah. I used to dream I'd got up and got dressed and then I'd wake up and go, oh, fuck, I haven't got dressed. Oh. I know.

Anyway, I've been, have you got a minute? I've got a question for you. Another question got dressed. Oh. I know. Anyway, I've been... Have you got a minute? I've got a question for you. Another question. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just not in the bath. No, wait.

I've been thinking a lot about the brain, or rather, my brain has. That's sort of a point. Now, this is quite a long question. It would stop me at any point if I've made some sort of fallacious leap. But the brain, I totally understand evolution by natural selection. It's a no-brainer. And the brain is just an organ like anything else. It came from three billion years from a blob of reproductive

protein to this most complex computer right but it is just physical it's you know it goes by all the laws the contingent laws of the universe chemistry physics you know energy electricity all that right but obviously we've talked about this has the epiphenomenon of consciousness we feel like we've got a self we feel like we've got free will even though that's an illusion and and this leads to imagination invention of philosophy art gods so two-part question here one a chimp chimps going through that, do you think? They've got all the rudimentary tools to invent their gods or have spirituality or, you know, all you need is imagination

and, you know, a decent brain or even a sense of self. And two, if that is true, if the brain is purely physical, it can be reproduced. So in the future, will a computer, will we have paranoid computers? Will we have computers that are nice and nasty and don't want to die and want to murder someone? Shoot. Yeah, so that's a great question. And there's so many questions contained in it. Here's what's not controversial. So there are many places where one can try to find a foothold or a handhold to debate some materialist assumptions, and then try to open the door to something that many people in science and philosophy at the moment would consider spooky or Right. safe to assume that everything we know and notice about the mind from the first person side as a matter of experience, you know, what it's like to be us, all of that is a product of what our brains

as physical information processing systems are doing, right? So our brains are essentially computers made of meat, although they're not computers that are all that similar to the computers we currently call computers. I mean, they're different in important ways. Many people will point out that science has been repeatedly confounded by bad analogies. We used to make analogies to water pumps and steam engines, and now we no longer do that because now we have a much better analogy a computer but many people would will be tempted to argue that it's still not a perfect analogy or not even a good one but no but but but the the important thing is that intelligence is basically the ability to problem solve negotiate the world world. And obviously those things, if they work, they're favoured

and they're passed on. And it presumably gets better and better or it doesn't work or a dead end or whatever. So, yeah, I get that. And, you know, it starts worrying me. I came from a science background and i went to do philosophy so all the things like determinism and materialism all those things i sucked them up anything that felt a little bit new agey nonsense mumbo jumbo magic i i sort of rejected but i kept

it in mind i said well prove it to me you know and so And so I am this sort of this hardwired contingent. I need proof. I need physical proof. And so even consciousness freaks me out because... Yeah, well, it should. It should because really we don't understand it physically yet. And there are impressive impediments to doing that, I think. The so-called hard problem of consciousness is genuinely hard because it's not clear why anything we do as minds,

all of our behavior, all of our mental behavior, everything including our intelligence, needs to be associated with experience. We could build robots, and we undoubtedly will build robots eventually, that pass the Turing test, that are indistinguishable from humans, and in fact only become distinguishable from humans by their superhuman capacities. They will be as intelligent as we are in every respect. They'll be conversant with our emotions and display emotions of their own, because we will program them that way, very likely, or at least some of them that way. And I think it's true to say they're already as good, they might even be better at facial recognition than humans are now. And that will eventually include detecting and responding to our emotions. And I mean, just so much of what makes us effective social beings, you know, millions of years of evolution as social primates and, you know, 300,000 years or so of finishing school as Homo sapiens.

We're very good at this and there's no question we're going to build machines that are better than we are. And then literally everything we do cognitively will be like chess, where it will be true to say that the best mind at that is now a computer mind, not a human one. We will never be the best at chess ever again, right? Yeah. And that's going to be true of looking at a person's face and deciding how they feel. Will there be a robot, right,

that's bigger and taller and stronger than me, right, made of steel that can see in the dark and is a better stand-up? Yes, the robots are coming for your job i'll always have that i'll go out i'll fall over and the crowd will go wild they go look at him they go look at that fat bloke he's dying and the robot will go i can't i can't compete with that i'd never thought of that. Ricky and the steam engine. Yeah.

But no, I think it's true if ultimately something like that has to be true if intelligence and even comedic intelligence and comedic timing and everything that gets built into that, empathy. I learned it.

I learned it. I learned it. It was still my brain. Yeah, exactly. If that's just information processing, there's no reason why a human has to be the best at that forever. And in fact, there's no way one will be if we just keep making progress building intelligent machines. So I think that... I totally accept that. I suppose my question is then, what it comes down to is, why in this illusion of free will, is it the same as if it wasn't an illusion? What's the

difference? That's my question. I totally accept it. But so what? We are what we are. What does it matter? What does it matter that there isn't free will? I mean, the reason why it's important is that so much of our psychological suffering personally and so much of our social suffering in terms of the ethical and legal decisions we make is anchored to this illusion. Yes. The feeling that you are you and really responsible for you.

It's not that it's never useful. It's useful in certain cases. But the fact that we put people in prison for the rest of their lives or even, you know, give them the death penalty in certain states in my country, and feel totally justified in doing it as a matter of punishment, not as a matter of social necessity that we have to just keep certain dangerous people off the streets, which obviously we do. Well, that's the difference. And I think that's quite different. Yeah, it is different. And I'd say, what I'd say with them, I think to, and I know you're not saying this, but to say no one has free will, so no one should be punished is a nonsense. Rather like, if a machine breaks down in a factory, you don't go, well, it didn't mean to break down, we keep it on. You get rid of it and get a new one. It's not a punishment. It's, well, we've got to still protect the innocent. And I get that, and I think, yeah, death penalty is something else.

There's loads of... Yeah, punishment certainly makes sense still in many cases, but retribution doesn't, or the vengeance part of it doesn't morally. Yes, it doesn't, no. Once you swallow this pill of free will being an illusion. Once you swallow this pill of free will being an illusion. What are the three reasons for retribution, rehabilitation, and what's the... Restitution? Yeah.

Have you read Ted Hondrick's book on punishment? I think it might be called Eye for an Eye. No, I think it's just called Punishment. It's got a picture of an eye and a tooth on it. It was my professor. No, I think it's just called Punishment. It's got a picture of an eye and a tooth on it. It was my professor. Oh, yeah? He told me about four years ago, I was sold on it as he struggled. And, yeah, he breaks down why that sort of punishment

for retribution doesn't work. And, you know, we totally agree with, and, you know, with the death penalty, you can't go back and say we were wrong. You know, we know that we know the worries about that. My point is, even if everyone understood free will is an illusion, we're hard to work. I don't think it should make any difference because we're not saying, oh, we came from a tough background or it was a crime of passion we're just saying we're all robots let's do what we like which we know isn't acceptable that's why i mean that it doesn't make a difference all the other caveats would still be in place you know a sympathetic you know judicial system and and act utilitarian as opposed to

rule utilitarianism all those things would still be in place. But what I can never accept is that the people that say, if hard determinism is true, no one is responsible for their actions on a societal level. That's the difference I'm making. Once you view people in this vein as akin to malfunctioning robots, right? So evil people, if we built an evil robot, it would reliably produce evil. Nature has built evil robots for us as psychopaths and other people who just reliably create a lot of harm for everyone else. The question is, how should we feel about that?

And whether hatred is the right emotional response? Now, it's a totally natural response, certainly if you've been victimized by such a person. But... I think we should treat it like any other force that isn't our fault. You don't go into morality of an angry bear exactly trying to attack you in the woods right you don't go you might shoot the bear he came from a tough background i love animals but if a bear is attacking me i don't i don't care about his home problems but he did come from a tough background he came from the background of being a bear right like what else what was he going to do and i don't care when it's whether whether should i should i rehabilitate

this bear i get out if i if i can't get out of there i try and stop him it's it's not a moral issue it's the fact that i don't deserve to die by a bear yet that's that's what it comes down to I love bears I love bears I've never heard a bear I absolutely love them and good luck to them and they've got to do what they've got to do but as I say if he's in my apartment I've got other word I don't don't care. Yeah, I don't know where that analogy goes. What I'm saying is, the psychopath is part of nature like the bear. I know it's not his fault he's a psychopath, just like it's not, it's fault that it's a hungry bear. But that's no reason for me not to try and stop things. We've got to do something. Oh, yeah.

But you don't have to hate it, and you wouldn't hate it in the same way you'd hate a person. And this is the crucial piece for me. That's a very good point. Ethically. You're right. Even if it harmed you. I don't know if you got to that part in my... I know you heard some of the audio from Waking Up

where I talk about free will, but just imagine the two cases. One case, you're attacked by a bear and let's say you lose a hand, right? So you really are, you've had a terrifying encounter with near death, but you're saved and the bear gets tranquilized and let's say it gets put in the zoo, right? Yeah. That's one case. The other case is you're attacked by an evil person and suffer the same injury, right? Yeah. But then the question is, what is your subsequent mental state for the rest of your life? You're absolutely right.

I mean, you could be hating the person and fantasizing over killing that person with your bear hands or hand. Yeah. And but with the bear, you might actually laugh, especially if he laughed in court. Yeah. And he said he could he could just play upon your hominid emotions so that you would really hate him, you know, and want to kill him and fantasize. That's totally true.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we've got a sense of self and morality and we feel what's right and wrong, we impose that on another human where we wouldn't do it on the bear. Rather, in a way, if I walk into a tree and I break my nose, I do not hate that tree. You hate yourself.

I hate myself and I'd try and... Why didn't the council put a fence around it? I would want someone to blame. I want someone to blame with the weather. If it rains, I go, well, who didn't tell me to bring out a fence?

Whose job was it? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's a very good point. And we can't, we, it's hard to forgive another human who hurts you for fun for supposed fun even though

in a yeah in a in a naturalistic framework they can't help it as i'm i'm doing i'm putting quote marks around help it but we mean it literally as well don't we if we're determined and honestly that does help me now a fair amount psychologically. I mean, there's so many people out there on social media in particular who, and this is where I tend to see it, I don't see it in my life, who just maliciously attack me and attack people who are associated with me in any way. And it's... Why am I talking to you there?

Good luck on social media after this. I don't know anything about it. I thought you were super popular. Fuck's sake. Fucking hell. Anyone listening, I don't like Sam. I'm asking him some questions. I'm using him, if anything.

That's all, guys. Just if you're listening. Yeah, yeah. That's all, guys, just if you're listening. Yeah, that's a very, very good point. It's much easier to process when you actually recognize that certain people are doing what they do because that's what they do. They're like bears. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's lots of other factors on social media, getting, getting noticed, wanting to be a part of someone else's causal web, heckling. They're not like that in real life. They'd ask you for an autograph, all these things, their box that

there's a, you know, if someone, I get it rarely, but if someone sends a nasty tweet, I think I've told you this before that i thought why they said that and i look back and they've sent 20 nice ones but i didn't notice them and i think i mean why would why would i put this line in afterlife as well why why would people rather want to be famous for being an asshole than not famous what what is the attraction of of being famous saying i was here because cavemen just used to put their hand on the wall and blow wood over it and you know that was i was here and now it's obviously got out of hand but there seems to be i think it's some sort of cachet for eternal life i think that's a very human worry and quest

what's the point, what will happen after I die, will people remember me will myself carry on will I come back as a spirit, is there a heaven have I led a good life was it worth it, will I come back as a cow I think all those things as irrational as they all are

are very human and I don't know why. I don't know. I don't know. Again, they could be upshots, but yeah. All right. Well, we can work that out after you've had your third bath of the day. I'm going to have a tea now. So in conclusion, yes, robots, computers will soon be indistinguishable from humans. Final question. Is there a chimp somewhere that sat down and looked up and thought, where did we come from? Who did all this?

Where are we going? Has that happened yet? As a chimp thought, what the fuck is going on here? I would highly doubt that, but the interesting thing is that there are certain things we do that are really crucial to our being keyboard, like a keyboard on a screen, and many numbers and letters suddenly get illuminated, and then you have to recapitulate. Sure. You have to press all the right keys. Yeah. Chimps are so fast and so much better at it than humans that it really is, it's kind of terrifying. Have you seen that experiment that shows it's not of terrifying have you seen that have you seen that um experiment that that

shows it it's not just the arbitrary test it's it's the the reward that has a a sense of it so they did a thing with a chimp with beads so if it chose the small pile of beads it got a jelly bean right it got it right every time choose the smallest pile get a jelly bean when they gave it the choice to choose the smallest pile of jelly beans it didn't it chose the big pile of jelly beans because it wanted all the jelly beans and it couldn't the experiment was out the window it just went fuck that that's the big pile of jelly beans that's hilarious isn't that great that's fantastic that anyway genius now i don't have a sense of self and i want to be a chimp brilliant cheers man cheers see you later