Making Sense with Sam Harris - Absolutely Mental Season 3

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Sam shares an episode from the third season of Absolutely Mental, his audio series with Ricky Gervais. All 10 episodes have been released today (Wednesday, March 2, 2022) and are available for purchase now at AbsolutelyMental.com. 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.

Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay, well we have released the third season of Absolutely Mental, so today I'm previewing that for you, so you get to hear from Ricky Gervais. It is always great fun for me to speak with him. Anyway, if you enjoy this, the other episodes in Season 3, as well as the first two seasons, are all available at absolutelymental.com. Enjoy.

Hey, how's it going? Good. How are you? I am good. I actually have a question for you that I've been forgetting to ask before we move to anything that's on your mind. We're at the moment where we're deciding whether or not to get a pet. My two girls want a pet, and it's the dog versus cat conversation. I notice you're always uh tweeting pictures of your cat but i know you're you're also a dog lover do you not have a dog yeah no we uh we cover

other people's i go walking every day just to meet dogs i think i told you i i talk about this in my stand-up that i know about 200 dogs by name. Right, right. And, you know, they're an absolute joy, a dog. But there's two reasons why we don't have a dog. One, I travel too much. You can leave a cat sitter and it's happy. It gets fed. That's it, you know. With a dog, I can't stand that look on their face.

Right. And they go, why are you leaving me? They're just too... When I was growing up, I used to go on holiday with my mum. My dad just looked after the house and dogs it. And that was his holiday too, because he could get drunker. And when we came home, our dog pretended to be ill, like come out limping or something. And the vet said, yeah, it's just, he doesn't want you to go away again. So they do have, It's just, it doesn't want you to go away again, you know?

So they do have, I mean, they do have emotions, very human-like, very close to us, that attachment, that, you know, what looks like, you know, fear, shame, gratitude, unlike a cat. The other reason, if I'm honest, I don't think I can live through 15 years of knowing I'm going have to say goodbye to that dog it's bad enough with cats and it's it feels just as bad you know I've every cat I've had to put down I've I've been

in a state it's like but you can't you do think you do think you're there's less of an emotional attachment to a cat in the end no matter how attached you are it's worse with a dog no i think there's less of an emotional attachment from a cat so you know i i can personify pretty much i can feel i can feel sorry for a car that's left in the road for too long um but yeah i i uh i do think because there's a genuine it looks like human camaraderie from a dog more than a cat right there's still something about the cat that sits on you because it wants to be warm and i feel with a dog and i could be totally wrong and and you know more about than me but i feel there's genuine love from a dog yeah you know so that's my pros and cons that's no reason not to have a dog that's like saying you

you shouldn't have friends or family or i shouldn't have had the kids in the first place yeah exactly well yeah well yeah there's something else in the world we're leaving them but um you know i i don't know if i'm honest that that would be the reason it you know i i think the traveling too much. And if you're going to have a dog, I feel you've got to have a dog 24-7. It's your friend and you've got to be with it. You know, and as I say,

it's okay to leave a cat for a couple of days if it's in its own environment or whatever. But I mean, I'd always say get a pet though. For all the pain you eventually go through and the inconvenience and remembering to walk it feed it every day or whatever it is i i think that's i can't imagine not being around animals or pets do you know i mean i just genuinely it sets me up there is something you don't you don't think that's the toxoplasmosis talking i don't know what that is but tell tell me. It's a brain parasite you get from exposure to cat feces.

Oh, yeah. No, you know, I honestly still try and keep away from pets' feces. I try and distance myself. That's a good policy. I go for the other end. I like to, you know, I'll let a dog lick my face but that's that's where that's where i draw the line well that's putting a lot of faith in the dog's behavior here the dog dogs famously don't draw the line too well themselves so now well i think i think it's

a no-brainer of course of course children should have pets yeah i think it's a no-brainer. Of course children should have pets. I think it's also a learning process as well, that attachment and then that early loss, I think. Well, the thing for me is I always grew up with dogs, so I don't have a very clear sense of what it's like to have a dog and how great that is as a kid. But I've never lived with cats. No, well, I mean, it's very different, obviously. Cats have got sort of one mode. You know, with dogs, there's degrees of stuff and lots of... Cats are either alive or dead.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you don't know until you open the box. Yeah, so they've got to get one of each, if they're puppies and kittens. That's the longer negotiation that I've noticed, directed at my brain. I think it also teaches them duty. You know, you can't suddenly go,

I don't feel like doing this today, or feeding them, or walking them. I do have another question about cats, though. So I don't know, I guess some people are allergic to dogs but I never seem to encounter people who admit to a dog allergy but I do know people who are seriously allergic to cats

so what happens when someone with a cat allergy shows up at your house I think you know don't you by then it's very rarely that one of you gets it and suddenly realizes. You just killed your best friend? Yeah, exactly.

The EpiPens expired. It's the actual dander, isn't it, of the cat and dog? No, dog are quite common. That's why the Labradoodle was invented, because they found out that poodles are sort of hypoallergenic. So they bred poodles with everything, and then you can get most breeds of dog if it's bred with a poodle and uh i think that's mostly for the shedding though people just like not having the hair all over their clothing oh is it it's a fashion thing

is it i thought it was because it that there were there were you were less people were less allergic to them i could be wrong i think well we sorted that out in los angeles i think it's all about the hair right okay yeah you've got your black clothing that you don't want well that's uh that's the other thing as well about cats and dogs um that the uh black cats are the last one to be left in rescue homes people don't want them and i thought it was superstition and it was to a certain degree but now the worst the worst crime right is people don't want black cats because they don't instagram well which is like the most infuriating shallow reason i've ever heard i mean i just if there's if you want to get more annoyed at the world just know that fact

just filter by by instagram yeah oh god wait a minute so and so what kind of breed of cat do you have that's a good looking cat you keep instagramming a moggy a big old normal rescue cat a big fat healthy tabby just uh yeah so yeah but that's what that's called that is a tabby cat tabby yeah with a bit of tortoiseshell. I mean, yeah. But always get a rescue as well. Don't buy these 5,000 pounds designer dogs that have been from sort of horrible farms and stuff. Always get a rescue. Go to a pound.

Right. Get a big old moggy or a big old mutt. Okay, I have another question that was on my mind to ask you. Have you watched any of this new Beatles documentary? I haven't yet. No. Oh. I haven't. Let's talk about that when you do, because it's pretty interesting.

It's an interesting experience of anthropology, watching these guys interact and create. Oh, really? Yeah. All right. Okay. I'll have a look. I'll get around. It's one of those things that you get around to five years after, I think.

When there's too much hype, I dig in. I go, no, I i'm not gonna watch it because everyone else is i'll watch it in five years okay i'll have a look well i've um my my question i think this might be right up your alley because i remember a few years ago i think when we first came in contact with each other you sent me you've done a sort of an epic essay as i remember or a small book whatever you'd call it on lying hadn't you yeah yeah yeah you blurbed it i think that was our first connection yeah i sent it to you as i remember it was mostly about the morality of lying yeah i i sort of i watched this thing that was more about the anthropology and the psychology of lying and the evolution of lying and uh uh do you know the lying experiment

they did with different sample groups i know some experiments but i don't know that i don't know what you're referencing i'll try and explain it right so they got a group of people a lot of people they told them they were doing a test but not what it was or what what they were testing obviously and what it was to answer as many questions, I think they were just maths questions, as many as they could in a certain time. And then they would- And they could grade themselves? Yeah, they would market themselves

and then shred the papers. Now, what they didn't know was they weren't really shredded so people could tell if they were telling the truth. So they got a dollar for every question they got right. And 70% of people lied, but only a little bit. They could have lied a lot more, but they made it realistic. And we all lie, apparently.

And then they did another experiment where instead of getting a dollar per question, they got a token per question, and they had to go somewhere else to cash it in. And because of that one-step removal of responsibility, like they weren't ripping off the person they were talking to, they lied even more, right? And then they did another experiment where before they did the test, they just said, oh, we're going to do this, right? They're going to tell them what else is going to happen.

They said, please promise not to lie. And they didn't. They lied a lot less yeah so i think it's about it was about social responsibility and guilt and which is fascinating that if you're going to lie and i just wonder where it came from because it's obviously part of our evolution it's obviously due to group selection where i suppose it was it was more important wasn't it it was more important, wasn't it? It was more important to lie to survive. Very rarely now lying is a matter of life and death. And I think a lot of our moral decisions

are conscious sort of minds suppressing our instincts that might be bad or might have been more useful before. But apparently it exploded with the advent of language but there's always been lies in our evolution even down to you know camouflage is a lie in the end you know uh pretending you're poisonous when you're not and things like that and i just um i wonder if you know more about the the psychology of why we lie? Because I think everyone does, apparently. Yeah, well, I had a total change in my outlook on this topic. It's really one of the, I can count on, I think,

one hand and even just a couple of fingers, moments in my life where my relationship to a whole set of behaviors and norms and just, you know, something that was kind of background became suddenly foreground. And, you know, just I had a change in how I decided to live as a person. And it was based on this course I took in college and as a freshman. And it was just a course that analyzed whether lying was ever ethical. And it was just this machine for producing people who came out the other side of it convinced that lying was basically always wrong right now i carve out that's a tricky one i mean there's a kind of self-defense situations i view lying now as sort of the first step on the continuum of violence, so that when you're dealing with someone who you really can't collaborate with, this is not a rational

interlocutor anymore, this is somebody who is to one or another degree your enemy, and you're now deciding how much violence you need to use to get them out of your life. A lie is ethically permissible and even necessary in that case. So if you're thinking about whether you have to punch this person in the face, well, then obviously you could be thinking about whether to lie to them first. But generally speaking, everyone who took this course, it was really a fantastic professor at Stanford, Ron Howard. It was a very influential course in the lives of many people because he just deconstructed this background assumption that everyone had that some amount of lying was not only normal, but inevitable and socially desirable. That white lies were

an expression of compassion generally, and you just have to lie there's no way to navigate social space without you must agree that white lies are from empathy and compassion where you want to protect someone's feelings you don't have to i mean there's a lot there's lots of steps here isn't there because telling the truth doesn't mean blurting it out when you're not you don't have to so right you So if a little kid says to you, you know, am I ugly? I mean, whatever you think, surely the better thing to do is no, of course you're not. I mean, who would argue that that's the ethical answer? Well, so there are situations where, yeah, so first, as you point out, a commitment to telling

the truth doesn't require that you just blurt out everything you're thinking like you have some neurological disorder. Yeah. And it also doesn't prevent you from kind of curating the kinds of truths you will tell. Because you can't say everything on any given topic. So there is no burden to say absolutely everything you think or could possibly think about someone or about a situation. So you're filtering by what's true and what's useful, right? And so sometimes it's not useful to say something and there's no need to say it. And some things can be kept private. I mean, so you can keep a secret, for instance, although, you know,

I'm not a fan in general of keeping too many secrets, but you can be honest about that. If someone says, how much money do you have in your bank account? The truth could be, I don't want to tell you. So you can just say, that's none of your business. It doesn't require a lie to carve out different zones of privacy. But in the case you reference here, there are situations where you're not in a relationship among equals right so if you you've given me a kid right yeah exactly no i went straight to that because i think parents lie all the time for the child's own good whether they're right or wrong but actually no but the truth is i have found that we have really never needed to lie to our daughters i I'm only aware of once telling a lie to one of my daughters, and it was really by accident. It was kind of like a malapropism. We'd done a Google search for

photos for something. I forget what the search was, but she was very young. Maybe she was, you know, seven. And we came upon a, a, an old woodcut, uh, you know, like a 14th century woodcut of, you know, somebody, you know, somebody being decapitated. And she said, well, what, what was that? I just got to try to move by it as quickly as possible. She said, well, what, what was, what's happening there? And I said, oh, that was, um, that was a was a very old and impractical form of surgery. That was my life. Well, that's nearly a joke. Well, then we get into what's a lie.

I mean, okay, well, that's interesting because, so have you never pretended there's a Santa? No, no. And that was actually the most common question I got in response to that book, Lying. What about Santa? So I have a whole argument about why you don't need to lie about Santa. But the interesting thing is I heard from dozens and dozens of people who remember what it was like to learn that Santa didn't exist and to realize that their parents had been lying to them about it. And they remember how betrayed they felt by their parents. Yeah. And it was actually a wound in the relationship.

They just felt like they never quite trusted their parents. I can't imagine. I mean, I just, you know, what about, like, I could say my mom lied to me about there being a God, but I wouldn't, I mean, it's ambiguous whether she was lying or she believed it or not, but as an atheist, I think it's a lie. She probably believed it. Also, I did hear from many fundamentalist Christians who said, oh yeah, my parents never lied about Santa because they didn't want us to think they were lying about Jesus, right?

So they were scrupulous about Santa. That's interesting as well, isn't it? That's interesting as well. To give another comparable piece of information more credibility, that's really good. But hold on, though. Okay, I think that we've got to decide what constitutes a lie, because I think you'll be very, you're being very strict what a lie is when it comes to talking to kids. What is that? It's something else.

Or I don't know. I mean, because if they ask you something and you say, I don't know, and you do know, that's lying, isn't it? Well, yeah. So it's changing the subject line. It's pretending not to have heard their question lying. You know, I think there's an ambiguity to what lying is. I wish I could think of something. I mean, it's incredible.

It's incredible that you say that confidently, even that you say it, whether it's right or wrong. And I'm sure it is. But that blows my mind that you don't lie. And I only ever mean white lies of course you know because i mean here's the thing it it almost never i mean the truth is i'm almost never in a situation where it's remotely tempting where i even see it's like we live in three dimensional space and it's impossible to visualize you know the fourth dimension for me the dimension you know where i'd have to point where it's tempting to lie it has almost

been lost in my experience like i can't even i can't even find it i mean i mean i can recapitulate what would you say when um they say like, when someone dies, a family member dies, where are they now? What do you say? Well, I mean, so the honest truth there, and so this is just kind of a happy accident because you and I are in slightly different camps here. My honest truth is I don't know, right? Like, I can get into the details of why it's intellectually credible to think that nothing happens, that there's no further experience. Oh, I see what you mean. Okay, I see what you mean.

But I just, that's a big blank spot on the map for me. So you genuinely say, you genuinely and honestly say you don't know. Yes, right. And so, yeah. These poor kids have got to ask the right question to get an answer haven't they they've got they've got they've got about 15 questions to put you on the spot right i've become a very good lawyer right asking this asking this it's a deposition the endless endless deposition. That's incredible. I'm like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates in a deposition.

It depends what the meaning of is is. Do you ever take the fifth when your kids are asking you about stuff? But in truth, once you recognize that you're on the same team, and you have the interests of this person at heart, then it's just a question of how sort of thing that came up later. You know, like one of our daughters would hear us talking about something that's something horrible that had happened out in the world. And she would ask, you know, what are you talking about? And the honest truth is, listen, there are all kinds of things that happen in the world that you don't need to know about now. And this is one of them. But that's sort of my point, because your argument is a bit of a

circular argument if we're trying to find out what's best to tell a child that includes whether the truth is the best thing to tell a child because we don't know the reaction so you might find out that sometimes lies are better for the child in the greater scheme of things in the world yeah i just don't know because there's lots of other factors i think there are a few cases either there are cases in extremis right where you're in some sort of emergency where it's easy to imagine at least it's plausible to argue that a well-crafted lie is the compassionate and and even life-saving you know artifice that you need whereas the truth however well-intentioned is going to run risk of serious harm but generally

i just have not been in that situation and it's it's always honest to say uh listen you know we're your parents and there's all kinds of things we know that that you know we'll eventually tell you but right now you know you don't need to know that that you know we'll eventually tell you but right now you know you don't need to know that or that's no that i think i think it's fair enough and i think that i think that's probably erring on the side of caution and you're probably and you've still got you know a lot of maneuvering at your disposal there it's not it's not like you you know you haven't gone to the point of no return on in way. So I think you're right, I think in general. But I think that if you take lies by themselves,

in general they are wrong. But when they're connected to the rest of the world, all those knock-on effects, what you've said before, what caused it, I think it is ambiguous whether always, and I only mean in the sense of like act versus rule utilitarianism right do not walk on the grass very good rule right it's for everyone it ruins it don't want someone having a heart attack on the grass of course you walk on the grass so take taking that as a as a metaphor there be many, many situations where certainly immediately, it's better to lie.

And I feel that we know that. And again, I'm only talking if it's a compassionate lie, if you're protecting the feelings of someone else. I think that if you're protecting your own feelings and your own reputation, giving yourself an advantage, because that's what a lie does, isn't it? It gives you an unfair advantage in the world over someone else who's left in the dark yeah that's why it's morally wrong well it is it is the very i mean psychologically speaking it is the temptation a lot to lie is always born of the sense that your interests and the interests of the other person have now diverged, right? Like you have a view of the world that you now can't share, or it would be too awkward to share, or you're now, for whatever reason, not disposed to share it with this other person.

You don't want to give them access to reality as you see it, because you think in some way it would be bad for you. And so it is the very definition of selfishness, even if you have told yourself this story that it's also compassionate. Rarely do people, in my experience, think it all the way through to the end and actually believe that if they were the other person, they wouldn't want to know. Usually the so-called compassionate lies are born of just this feeling of awkwardness that it's just, you don't want to be the one to say this. I agree. But if you were the other person, you would want to know, right? Like if, you know, I mean,

the great example in my life that came pretty early for me was I had a friend who was a screenwriter who had been working on a script for probably a full year. And he asked me to read it and he asked me what I thought of it. And I thought it was terrible, right? I mean, I really thought it was bad. But the truth is, I also thought he was very smart and a very promising writer. And he has gone on to have a great career as a screenwriter and a television writer and the the net effect of me telling him that i thought that script was terrible was that forever after he knew i was being honest with him whenever i said i

thought something was great right it's like like he now now i'm someone i mean this is now decades old but i've always been someone he could trust to calibrate, you know, what he, and it's not to say that my opinions are always right, but he knew I wasn't bullshitting him ever. And that's something that he saw with my, you know, with our daughters. I mean, given, given how, how much we've emphasized the value of honesty, they just know we're not going to lie to them. the value of honesty, they just know we're not going to lie to them. And it's such a refuge emotionally. It's like, because you have to, what you have to price in is how meaningful praise becomes from someone who you know will not lie to you. That's a very different kind of praise you're getting from people who are just giving it because that's what they do, because it's too awkward to say anything critical so so your decision outside your own personal integrity is that this is better for the child isn't it to learn the lesson that never lying is a reward for

all those things would there ever be a would ever be a case could you imagine where you'd want them to lie yeah in in a self in some kind of self-defense situation when you're dealing with someone who you know you can't trust and who's who you don't you're treating this person as a a kind of dangerous object because that's the you know that's what they've become you count it almost as self-defense so the metaphor is violence with yeah and i get that and even there there are you know it's worth considering whether the truth might not be better i mean so like the classic cases you know the nazis show up at the door and you have anne frank in the attic the nazi at the door says

we're looking for a little girl uh have you seen her now obviously the in the general case the ethical thing to do there is is and say, no, sorry. But if you were actually in a stronger position, the truth would be better. I mean, what you actually would want to happen. You could say, yes, I got to fuck you. Yeah, fuck you. And if you take another step, I'm going to put a bullet in your face, right? Yeah, exactly.

Of course. But we know that's great. I mean, that's probably the best example we could ever have here but to take it as a metaphor as well the world is full of us not being in charge of the outcome right it's full of that isn't it and i i sort of agree with you in principle definitely that i don't lie i never lie for for gain. I never lie criminally. I never lie. I just never lie to take an advantage. I never do, right?

Because I know it's wrong, but also I couldn't stand it. I couldn't. But I do lie. As I said loads of times, when you come to my party, I can't come to your party. Now, the reason I can't is because it's awful

and I don't want to be there, right? But I haven't said that. I just reason i can't is because it's awful and i don't want to be there right but i haven't said that i just said i can't so so that's that's no yeah but that's an interesting uh i'll remember that next time i invite you to a party no i i'd make up a really good reason for you with you i'd say i would not detect it yeah i i can't i'm giving blood at the orphanage again and you go oh he always gives blood at the orphanage so that'd be a really believable he must not have any blood left that's why that's why he's so pale and weak yeah he fainted on i heard he fainted on stage at wembley yeah you really couldn't come to the party. Oh, dear. Okay, but this is a great example, which is, yes, it is tempting to lie in those cases. But, you know, once you set yourself the rule that you're just not going to lie, even in those socially awkward situations, two things happen. One is it holds a kind of mirror up to your life where you are then

forced to recognize, okay, one, I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to go to these kinds of parties. I mean, do I want to be that kind of person? What does this say about me that the truth is I don't want to go to this party? that's worth reflecting on and two it holds a mirror up to all of these relationships that you might not want to have right you maybe you just don't want this person to think they should keep inviting you to the party you don't want to go to right yeah well it does depend whether it's like yeah friends family best friends acquaintance annoying acquaintance somebody exactly of course there's a sliding scale of of wanting to go to the party or not but it was just that i was the only reason i came up with that was that i'd say i okay no you i know what you're saying really yeah i think

that's a white lie because it's for their good and the truth would hurt i'd say no i don't i don't like you enough or your party will not be as good as me sitting in my pants watching netflix right but i suppose i'm really protecting myself aren't i that i'm doing i'm getting the best of both worlds i'm staying in and watching netflix in my pants which is what i want to do and i haven't heard their feelings so they might like me still so it is it isn't but also that you know it's interesting i mean there there are certainly relationships i have where i could honestly say i'm sorry i just i really just don't feel like going i just wanted to stay home and watch netflix right and that would not be

because of the nature of the you know all past communication that would be fine i mean the person's not going to take it personally. No, exactly. And I mean, actually, this reminds me of something that Annika discovered when she was, when we, I think we just had our first daughter and, you know, she's being asked to various situations. And because she was never telling a white lie to get out of, you know, having lunch or going to parties or whatever it was, she was just constantly being honest about how exhausted she was, how overwhelmed she was, how just like, sorry, I don't want to go. I'm just too tired.

And she realized that most people don't do that. And you get a false picture. You almost get like an Instagram fake image of how good everyone's life is and how much they're holding it together when really they're just they're they're telling they're busy telling white lies to get out of situations that they're just too exhausted to be in and once you start telling people how exhausted you are you you unmask that in in the in your network of friends and everyone confesses yeah i just i couldn't go i just couldn't bring myself to go because i was so tired i just felt like watching netflix yeah but i mean the script example that happens to me a lot right as you read this right and my my heart sinks but i already know however bad it is

i'm never gonna say anything too terrible about it what i do is i try and find one good thing about it and i just say that i go oh i like the uh so and so good so and so good luck with it you know um i could never say i mean how honest were you i mean i know again this is not my best friend i'm assuming this is not this is not my best friend no no on the content flip it around the so you're so you're saying you would be honest with your best friend i'd be much more honest i'll go oh i don't know there's a thing about that i wouldn't do that it's a bit clear i'd still be i'd still do it with compassion but i'd be a lot more honest because i care more i'd want my my best friend to make it more okay but what if you had a friend what if you had a friend who

was spending all their time trying to do something that you really thought they were not cut out for right let's i mean you could let's take it yeah i think that's a very good one the example i use in the book i think is with an with an actor you know someone who wants to be an actor wants nothing more than to be the next you know leonardo dicaprio but for a dozen reasons you think this whole project this whole life course is doomed right like there's no way this person is going to make it as an actor yeah what what do you say well i'd still keep my mouth shut because i could be wrong i wouldn't want if i was the person to say you'll never make it give up if i could see that alternative reality if i was god and I suddenly see that in five years, he actually does something,

and he gets a lucky break, and he's massive. I don't want to be the one in my reality that destroyed his dreams, because I don't know the truth. But that's part of it. So that uncertainty is an accurate description of the truth as you see it, right? So you can always discount your opinion. You could say, listen, truth as you see it right so you can you can always discount your opinion you could say listen i this is just my opinion but honestly i think you should you should find another game to play right like that you know but you've established that the more you tell the truth like that the more brutally honest you are people the more they respect your opinion so now me being brutally honest about how terrible he is has much more chance of him believing that and giving up.

All I'm saying is, is my. Yeah, I know. That's a good thing. So but you just have to think of what might be a good thing or he might be depressed not doing because people can do the thing they love and never get anywhere. That's true. Actually, I've had a had a happier life doing it, you know. Well, OK, but yes, but that's, again, this is a conversation and that's more of the truth you're putting out.

Yes, I know. I'm agreeing with you. I'm just throwing up little, I suppose, counter examples or upshots really because it is a tricky one. But also it comes down, I mean, it comes down to the shoot one person and the other nine go free or all 10 get shot.

There's a certain amount that goes, it's not up to me to shoot anyone. It's not up to me to save the other. It's not up to me. This isn't my problem. You know what I'm saying? I think it's totally valid morally to go, who the fuck are you handing out? Okay, but you just have to visualize you just have to visualize the complete situation here we're talking about someone

who has asked for your opinion right and you if you if you imagine this is just the golden rule what would you want to know in there if you were in their place if you were trying to be an actor and you actually didn't have the talent for it or the people closest to you thought you didn't have the talent for it and they weren't telling you right ah but now i'm an expert in the know that can genuinely help him you see i think the important thing is here that i'm not well people come to me and show me their scripts because they know i'm in i've made my way i'm quite high up in that industry so it's not just my opinion it's how useful i am because i could give them golden nuggets i could give them you know so i think we have to take that out of it yeah i think i think we have to

i don't know what's the uh i can't think of an example something i don't know about and my honest opinion i think that is more interesting because it's just purely my opinion and when that's hurtful or not i'm glad we've we've had this conversation because it's been something i've been wanting to tell you and i'm just going to be brutally honest i don't think this stand-up comedy thing is going to work out for you you know what though when you started like that it was very well done and there was a little it was a little adrenaline rush what the fuck's he gonna tell me i actually for one second then i thought this is gonna be a joke this is gonna be a joke but for one second i thought what the fuck is he gonna say so that

so but that's my point i don't want to be the one to brutally hurt someone's feelings for one second yeah no even if in five years they might appreciate it more but the thing i just do i do think the golden rule is that right heuristic here because you just it might be the case that you wouldn't want to know if you were in their shoes and then then it becomes more interesting to consider whether you should tell want to know if you were in their shoes. And then it becomes more interesting to consider whether you should tell them anything. But if you know you would want to know, I mean, I've seen situations where

all of the friends of this person are having a conversation behind their back and no one is telling the person. Yeah, well, that's... And we're talking about their closest friends. It's crazy. I know. That's really unfortunate and awkward and a little bit sad.

And because we're assuming they're delusional now, aren't we? Yeah, on some level. It's not nice to be delusional, yeah. But you say the golden rule. And I think there's a bit of a luxury to saying that. Because when you say, I'd want to know it, so so do do you that's arrogant because everyone's different and just because i can take like i can take insults i can take trolls for me to suddenly go well i can take it so i'm going to just troll someone on twitter and do a devastating thing then i'm going to go

what you're crying for i can take it i think that's a i don't know but that's too that's a, I don't know. But that's too, that's an adversarial situation. I think the, yeah, I mean, you can correct for what you know of the difference between yourself and another person, but I mean, the truth is you very quickly train the people in your life. I mean, once you start being rigorously honest with everybody, then people don't ask your opinion anymore unless they actually want it. I'm almost never in a situation where someone's asking me my opinion, and then I discover this mismatch between my valuing honesty and their expectation of me just blowing smoke, know they walk away unhappy like that hasn't happened for decades that i'm aware of in my life at this point i know i know now if

i ask you something and you go you're gonna get it i don't i don't know i know you're lying sam just think i'm losing my hair i don't know well look i don't know you're not looking sam i don't have eyes ricky i'm blind sam you're not blind i've been I don't have eyes. Ricky, I'm blind. Sam, you're not blind. I've been having problems with my vision. I can see you juggling. Am I going bald? Yes or no? Well, that's very interesting as well,

because just going back to your kids asking you, you know, where do dead people go? I don't know. Again, that's very convenient for you, because this is my thing with um when people mistake agnosticism with atheism right that one's one's knowledge and one's belief so no one knows so your kids could say what's your best guess though dad what do you believe you're a smart you're a smart bloke dad what do you believe

so so you don't know no one knows what do you believe say my friend ricky over here believes yeah exactly yeah yeah and that's why we're not going to invite him to the next party exactly yeah yeah i mean i am a in general i'd say if anyone asked me i'm i think you know lying is wrong for all the reasons we've discussed i i do try and be brutally honest i think it's something to be proud of but i still i still wield that with a bit of well the compassion and i put it in i put it in fiction as well like the the film you know i did with our mutual friend matthew robinson the scene in that where i lie to my mum because there's nothing to gain from that i can suddenly lie she. She's terrified of death. She's definitely going to die in 30 seconds.

What would be the point of saying you're going to the ground, you're worms meat? Bye, mum. So that's an example there of clearly, I could say it's a good lie, even though you could also say it made me feel better that I didn't have to go through that awkward thing and see her in fear i think that's that's quite clearly and distinctly an example of what we we have to agree on is a good lie well again yeah there are situations where you're not you're now no longer relating to someone who is an equal i mean it's a paternalistic situation where you're saving a child or you're saving an old person or someone with with dementia you're saving them some emotional distress yes and that's that's where it becomes tempting okay yeah and i think yeah and i

think in those cases yes you're it is sort of like you know it's different but it is like the self-defense situation where you're it's no longer i agree you know you're just putting a fire out well with those two caveats with nothing to gain or lose whether yeah and uh self-defense i think i'm in agreement there's there's one variable here which we haven't mentioned which is is probably the biggest certainly one of the biggest reasons not to lie is that it eliminates a kind of cognitive overhead that people have that is completely unwieldy and and it is it's a serious it's a continuous basis for embarrassment and reputational harm which completely goes away which is you when you know you're going to tell the truth in any situation there's nothing to keep track of. You don't have to remember what

you said last time. You don't have to think about what you told some other person who may have told this person. There's just a seamlessness to your life where, so if your story changes, honestly, well, then it's like, it doesn't matter what I said last time. I might've believed that last time, but now I'm just telling you how things look to me right now. I agree, but I don't think we can treat morality and lying and all those things like a science. I still think there's a certain amount of dogma to it, that

if you say it's always wrong to lie, I think there's... No, it's not always, but it's not always wrong to shoot someone in the face either. I mean, that's... No, it's not. No, it's not. It to shoot someone in the face either. I mean, that's... No, it's not. No, it's not. It's definitely not.

No. I think we've both agreed on that one. Yeah. In fact, it's probably better to lie to them and then shoot them in the face. Yeah. No, okay. Yeah, we do agree.

I think there's an ambiguity of what lying is as well. I think there is a convenience of sidestepping the lie that isn't totally honest. But with all those caveats, I think we're in agreement that in general, it is always better to tell the truth. And I think the truth will out anyway because there's delusion as well, isn't there?

And there's people denying the factsusion as well isn't there and there's like you know people denying the facts that are in front of them so that i mean that's that's never good on that scale it's dangerous to humanity of course but on a very personal level i think yeah you probably do have a better life and everyone around you has a better life if you're all if if they're all honest and everyone knows they're honest that yeah that is surely the best society we could have because we only have to undo all these fears of heaven and hell because we started them in the first place you know a secular society from the the last living person you know the oldest person in a society who was brought up secular and logical and that probably wouldn't have those

we probably wouldn't see those fears starting would we be it would be i don't know i i don't know about that psychologically is it is it better to tell kids there not know, to not give your best guess, not to give the whole truth, nothing but the truth? I mean, what does death mean to a child? What does death mean to a 10-year-old? The lie is always the stark lie of certainty about heaven, say. You know, grandma is definitely in a better place and we're going to see her again. Yeah. It doesn't even make sense given the fact that people are still assimilating every death

as though it were a genuinely bad thing. I mean, people are bereaved. They're sorry to not see the person again in their life. But if it were actually true that you were sure that she went to a better place and that you will be reunited, it's just not a bad thing. Death is just, I mean, and so insofar as you can, I mean, the temptation to believe this is that insofar as you actually can believe this about death, is that insofar as you actually can believe this about death, it does remove the sting in death.

I mean, there is no problem. It's a promotion. I suppose I can't get over that. I can't, you know, I don't even, I care less about humanity and society when we're talking about this sort of thing than I do about what does it do to one six-year-old when you're brutally, I keep coming back to that. I don't know whether we know it's good or bad yet.

I think we know that the thing you actually want to be able to teach a child in order to equip them to be a sane and well-integrated human being is not that there's this fictional world or this world about which no one can be sure that rectifies every problem, every apparent problem in life. The good people go to the good place, the bad people go to the bad place, and you get everything you want after you die. It's not to teach them that. It's actually to equip them emotionally to deal with reality insofar as we have every reason to believe it exists. So you want a child who learns that grief is part of life, and it's an expression of one's love for that person, and it's totally healthy and predictable

and understandable, and it bonds you to other people with this force of compassion. I mean, we're all in this circumstance together. And it's, I mean, the very interesting thing about the pretense of certainty about the afterlife that religious people indulge is that it isolates truly grieving people. I mean, when you're a fundamentalist Christian and your husband dies and you're just, you are actually miserable, right? And insofar as you're paying lip service to the idea that they might be in heaven and you're going to see them again, you are actually bereaved, right? You're actually devastated. You're surrounded by people who are just aiming their happy talk at you

saying, you know, it's all for the best, and he's with Jesus, and you're isolated in your grief. You're not actually getting real compassion from them. You're getting a fantasy that is not meeting you in the moment of your grief. Well, okay, well, in conclusion, if, you know, you want the truth and you want kids to grow up knowing that the harsh realities of of life to prepare them i think you should not only get him a dog but get him a very sick dog mission accomplished good that was great that was great. That was great.

That's hilarious. It's great. Daddy is dead. Merry Christmas. Good.