Episode 152: Ruthlessness, Public and Private

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having

[00:00:06] an informal discussion about issues and science and ethics.

[00:00:09] Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and

[00:00:14] knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Misanthrope!

[00:00:18] I don't hate my fellow man even when he's tiresome and surly and tries to cheat at

[00:00:23] poker.

[00:00:24] I figure that's just a human material and him it finds in it calls for anger and dismay

[00:00:30] is just a fool for expecting better.

[00:00:32] The Queen in Oz has spoken!

[00:00:38] Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

[00:00:44] Brains and U.S.

[00:01:02] Anybody can have a brain?

[00:01:12] Very Bad Men!

[00:01:16] I'm a very good man, just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:21] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:01:22] I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:25] Dave, a group of academics including Peter Singer are going to start a new journal of controversial

[00:01:32] ideas.

[00:01:34] What's your most controversial idea?

[00:01:37] Oh shit.

[00:01:39] No, I can't say them.

[00:01:43] I can't say my most controversial idea.

[00:01:45] I don't have a pseudonym.

[00:01:46] You're chilled.

[00:01:47] Everybody will know that it's coming from me.

[00:01:50] Do you fear repercussions?

[00:01:52] Professional repercussions?

[00:01:53] Yeah, I do.

[00:01:55] Let me guess that your real one involves Jews.

[00:01:58] It's not controversial at all.

[00:02:03] That's true.

[00:02:06] No professional repercussions for your anti-Semitism.

[00:02:10] If anything there are professional rewards.

[00:02:13] It's only some slightly mean stares.

[00:02:15] Put that in your full professor promotion file.

[00:02:20] Yeah, no.

[00:02:21] I feel like my ideas are all reasonable.

[00:02:23] I've said this before.

[00:02:24] I feel like the most controversial part of me is that I have reasonable, very, very

[00:02:28] reasonable ideas.

[00:02:29] It's ironically controversial.

[00:02:31] Well, so on this first segment we're going to talk about this new journal, the need

[00:02:36] for it, the benefits and perhaps the costs of it.

[00:02:43] And then in the second segment we're going to talk about two essays from Thomas Nagel's

[00:02:48] Mortal Questions that he wrote in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

[00:02:58] But certainly the ideas are still relevant today.

[00:03:03] The first is war and massacre, and the second is an essay called Ruthlessness in

[00:03:09] public life.

[00:03:10] What are we going to do when we finish this book?

[00:03:16] Mortal Questions.

[00:03:17] Well, just end the podcast.

[00:03:19] No, I think then we'll become a full movie podcast.

[00:03:25] We should have been from the very beginning and you know.

[00:03:30] Good luck with that.

[00:03:31] Thank you.

[00:03:34] Well, until that sad, sad day comes.

[00:03:37] I'm actually really nervous about finally having to talk about what it's like to be a

[00:03:42] bat because I have nothing to say.

[00:03:44] It's like pretty cool.

[00:03:47] Like, I don't know.

[00:03:48] Pretty fucked up though, you know.

[00:03:54] So here's a question about that essay which I haven't read maybe ever but definitely

[00:03:59] not since grad school if I did.

[00:04:04] That's unbelievable.

[00:04:05] The whole fucking paper on zombies and consciousness, how could you not have read that essay?

[00:04:10] I mean, you know me, right?

[00:04:13] If you just all of a sudden had a glimpse into being what it was like to be a bat, like

[00:04:20] you were just turned into a bat and then turned back into a human, would you be able

[00:04:24] to remember that and articulate it?

[00:04:27] I think you wouldn't be able to describe it very well because bat language is so

[00:04:31] different from our own.

[00:04:34] Is that right?

[00:04:36] I don't know.

[00:04:38] There's no what do you call that thing that, you know what I'm talking about, the CDs

[00:04:46] or the website.

[00:04:47] Oh, the Rosetta.

[00:04:48] There's no Rosetta Stone for bat.

[00:04:49] There's no Rosetta Stone for bat.

[00:04:51] I could tell you but you wouldn't even hear it because it would be ultrasonic.

[00:04:55] We're both a little tired.

[00:04:59] We're not like stoned or anything.

[00:05:02] Hopefully it's giddy entertaining tired and not boring rambly tired but we make no promises.

[00:05:07] Definitely no promises.

[00:05:09] All right, so let's talk about this journal of controversial ideas.

[00:05:13] It was announced earlier this week and it met with predictable responses I think.

[00:05:27] So I guess Peter Singer, Jeff McMahon and an academic from University of Ghent.

[00:05:37] Francesca Minerva.

[00:05:39] Yes.

[00:05:40] Of course you would forget the only woman on the board.

[00:05:42] Well I didn't.

[00:05:44] I know Jeff McMahon and Peter Singer.

[00:05:46] Yeah, well that's my controversial idea, forgetting the woman.

[00:05:51] It's being started because there is a group of professors, academics, researchers who feel

[00:06:00] intimidated by defending controversial views and so this journal will be both open to

[00:06:08] publishing controversial research and also will give the option.

[00:06:14] They won't, it's not required but they'll give the option of publishing pseudonymously.

[00:06:20] So you can use a different name.

[00:06:23] Yeah, so what do you think?

[00:06:27] I'll give you my take but what do you think first?

[00:06:31] So I saw the tweet about this.

[00:06:35] I read exactly one article about it from the Chronicle of Higher Education which I'll link to

[00:06:41] and I read, I've read no reaction.

[00:06:44] I don't care.

[00:06:46] No, I mean it's perfectly fine.

[00:06:50] That's great.

[00:06:51] I'm looking forward to reading what people write.

[00:06:53] I'm curious.

[00:06:55] Like I, yeah.

[00:06:59] I mean I'm already preparing my hoax article to get in.

[00:07:04] Your hoax of controversial ideas.

[00:07:06] Exactly.

[00:07:07] Yeah.

[00:07:08] It'll just be a bunch of reasonable ideas and I'm going to mock them.

[00:07:14] I'll admit so I think that it's good to be able to have, to feel if you feel unsafe publishing

[00:07:20] controversial ideas then great.

[00:07:22] It's good to have a place to publish it, a K.A. a blog which would serve the same purpose.

[00:07:33] I don't know what.

[00:07:37] Well it wouldn't have peer review.

[00:07:39] Like this is going to be a peer reviewed journal.

[00:07:41] Yeah.

[00:07:42] I mean it's like blog comments but before you post it.

[00:07:48] Well no because it will presumably be curated and I mean I guess the idea is they're going to have rigorous peer reviews

[00:07:59] and so unlike a blog.

[00:08:02] Yeah, I understand that wasn't part of the analogy that I was trying to carry forth.

[00:08:07] But part of it out like what I was trying to point at was that like is it so much the case that controversial opinions and even controversial statements that are written up formally are not safe such that there needs to be yet another journal introduced.

[00:08:25] You know, if you don't get to publish in an academic journal because your ideas get rejected from peer review then.

[00:08:37] Then, you know, I don't feel as if your ideas aren't getting heard they're just not very popular so I'm not against this like I just don't.

[00:08:45] You know, like publish pseudonymously that's great I'm actually curious as to what people think is so like these singer for instance and clearly Minerva have all written very very controversial articles that have been published.

[00:08:59] And if the fear is that they couldn't write those articles now.

[00:09:04] I don't know. Like I don't have any data on it. I don't know if people have gotten their things rejected.

[00:09:10] I think that most of the outcry from controversial ideas has come after publication.

[00:09:15] So I have several reactions my first reaction I think somewhat predictable based on what I've said about this stuff in the past but essentially is look.

[00:09:28] Grow a set of fucking balls and put your name on research you stand behind and try to submit it like when did we when did we stop expecting that tiniest amount of professional courage from academics like just the modicum of professional courage.

[00:09:46] Publish the thing and if there's blowback deal with the fucking blowback.

[00:09:51] But they can put their name on it.

[00:09:53] Yeah, but I just the point of this what sets this journal apart I take it is that there is that option there that's its raison d'etre as we say.

[00:10:08] Is that Hebrew?

[00:10:13] I think that this is encouraging people to not have what I think is a expected level of courage like there was this someone tweeted out and this was actually evidence of a free speech crisis.

[00:10:31] This psychologist he was a like a well known psychologist full professor he signed a petition on the issue of gender differences and IQ.

[00:10:42] And he signed the petition even though he thought that that was false right but he said he was scared not to sign it now this is a guy who is a full professor he had tenure.

[00:10:56] And he didn't have the tiniest bit of courage that is required not to actively endorse a scientific position he's a scientist a scientific position that he thought was false.

[00:11:10] Well that's not on the climate that's on him that's on that guy that's like what tenure is for that is why we have it we have a responsibility to endorse positions as as as a person.

[00:11:25] We have a responsibility as philosophers as scientists that we think are true and if we don't do that then we're not carrying out our responsibility.

[00:11:34] Well that's just because this guy is scared they like you don't get to be scared of of like these amorphous things like that.

[00:11:43] I disagree about the reason that as you said I think that this that the point of this isn't to allow anonymous publication it is to print papers.

[00:11:57] That would not presumably be published in other places and whether or not someone chooses to use a pseudonym.

[00:12:07] You know may reflect on their character or not but this certainly this could be a journal where everybody publishes with their name and they are able to publish ideas that they think wouldn't get published otherwise.

[00:12:18] So I think that hanging it all on the claim of pseudonymity or anonymity is is not getting at least the spirit of what they're doing right.

[00:12:29] Well I mean I think that that's why this is even a topic that people are talking about.

[00:12:36] Perhaps but it's not why the journal is being proposed.

[00:12:39] Well I don't think that's true like this is what Jeff McBan said.

[00:12:46] There is greater inhibition on university campuses about taking certain positions for fear of what will happen.

[00:12:55] Now this is his defense of why this journal needs to exist.

[00:13:00] Now that only makes sense if he's talking about the option to publish pseudonymously right.

[00:13:07] That there are people who are worried about the repercussions of publishing controversial research and they're going if if anything it'll be more obvious if it's in a journal of controversial ideas it will be it will more likely come to light.

[00:13:25] So if there is inhibition about that then it's got to be for that.

[00:13:31] Like I disagree with you I don't know why you think that that's not the goal of this journal or at least a big part of it.

[00:13:39] Because it's not I mean it may be that that's what's required for people to feel protected but it's like it's not at all obvious that what they're not looking for is just to publish ideas that might not be published otherwise.

[00:13:54] I guess right like part of it is to protect from the backlash but another part of it seems to be to get the idea out there in a way that wouldn't otherwise be gotten out.

[00:14:03] And I don't like the whole anonymity thing like it seems as if not a whole lot of work would have to be done to figure out who the actual author was like I don't know how they can how they could even I mean if I wrote an anonymous article it would be obvious that it was me because I'd be citing myself so much.

[00:14:23] It would be obvious from the lucid yet lively prose style.

[00:14:30] So let's say they removed the option to publish pseudonymously then yeah I mean then it really just depends on whether there are certain kinds of ideas that really don't get an outlet because they are deemed out of bounds or they're deemed too controversial and like I'd like you I don't know the data on that.

[00:14:49] Here's what I would request though for people who keep talking about the negative repercussions the fear the professional consequences of publishing this stuff which really has been what the debate has been about is been about that for this journal and one of the things I was thinking about

[00:15:08] and thinking about talking to you about this is I think people if they're going to lean on that they need to say exactly what they're afraid of like what what negative repercussions in particular are you worried about what are you afraid of is it losing your job.

[00:15:28] Well if it's losing your job we can look at data and see how many people have lost their job because they've published controversial research.

[00:15:36] If it's not getting hired that's a little trickier but at least we if that's the thing we can at least look into that we can look into whether departments are not hiring people who are defending certain controversial claims in the

[00:15:57] research area. But right now that it's just this amorphous we're intimidated we're afraid there are professional consequences without ever really specifying what the thing is that they're afraid of and often it sounds like what they're afraid of is just people criticizing them on Twitter

[00:16:16] or you know like people talking behind their backs at parties or meetings or and that's just like that that I think just comes with the territory of defending a come a controversial idea like that's the kind of blowback that you have to suck it up and take if you want to defend a controversial idea which you should.

[00:16:41] Yeah I guess like that untenured professors might be so there is so but then like is there are there examples of people who didn't get that that's fine if that's the fear are there examples of people who didn't get tenure because they their research was too controversial.

[00:16:58] There's probably data on that there's probably people who've sued over that and we could look at those cases and see but there is you know it you're not allowed to just say you're afraid of something so my neighborhood wants to have a like a constable program where we all have to contribute money

[00:17:18] and they say they're scared will say well what are you scared of while we're scared of like house breakings or muggings or sexual assault you can look at the data you can at least try to see is are these fears justified but if if they're if they're not then you're you're being scared doesn't justify this new thing coming in to address that.

[00:17:46] So more your personal problem.

[00:17:50] Well so apparently Minerva is stated in this chronicle article.

[00:17:54] Received threats for her paper on afterbirth abortion.

[00:17:59] So if there's it's certainly the case that pro lifers have engaged in violence against people who are pro choice.

[00:18:07] So so this is just an exercise that I know that's not true.

[00:18:13] There's not a single academic who's published like Judith Jarvis Thompson have to get like an escort for what I said was that pro lifers of engaged in violence against pro choicers.

[00:18:24] That's all I said right you're not denying that.

[00:18:28] Yeah I am denying it.

[00:18:29] I'm not talking about academics.

[00:18:32] I'm just talking about like you mean like no they've they've performed violence on people who perform abortions.

[00:18:38] People who are pro choice people who are going to get abortions that's right who are pro choice.

[00:18:45] But it's not because they're pro choices because they're actually performing the abortions.

[00:18:50] Well yeah fair enough like this is all this is all just to try to get you to to imagine before you resist my argument that if your claim is that they not they're not clarifying what they're afraid of.

[00:19:05] If they do clarify what they're afraid of I don't know that that would make you change your mind because all you would do is say like the base rates are so low that you ought not be afraid of it.

[00:19:12] But like well right or there would be the base rates would be higher that I would say that's OK to be afraid of.

[00:19:21] I changed my mind for you don't just get to be afraid of nothing just say that you're afraid for no reason and like that's more something that you deal with with your therapist.

[00:19:33] But you but you but you also don't get to call people cowards because you don't agree with what they're afraid of.

[00:19:42] It's not no there's like objective basis.

[00:19:45] You're being quite a busy body about these people accusing them of cowardice and telling them what they're not allowed to do all they're doing is starting a fucking journal like that's it.

[00:19:53] Like no I don't care about the people.

[00:19:56] I mean that's fine but I think that as a professional academic one of your responsibilities is to stand behind and put your name on controversial research and when you don't do that what you are doing is a you're contributing to this ridiculous paranoia that makes everybody else cry babies about like oh my God I can't I can't say anything or the.

[00:20:22] I'll get death threats and Twitter mobs will come after me and my and I'll never get tenure or I'll never get I'll never get promoted or I'll never get this job you're contributing to that whole climate.

[00:20:35] And worse than that like so you think of that psychologist who signed that petition imagine if he had taken a stand against it now other people who are secretly also wanting to take a stand against it.

[00:20:52] Might feel a little bit more comfortable doing that now that somebody who is prominent and totally protected had had done it as well.

[00:21:03] Like I want to get at the general view that that you think that publishing with a pseudonym is cowardly because certainly there have been a ton of cases in history where people have published on with pseudonyms because they thought the idea was so important to get out.

[00:21:20] And they wanted to get the idea out without getting say like burned at the jail.

[00:21:28] Yeah, I'm burned at the stake.

[00:21:30] And so again obviously these aren't going to be people who are burnt at the stake but I don't know that that so you might say their fear is irrational but is the act of publishing under pseudonym itself irrational.

[00:21:41] I mean is itself cowardly.

[00:21:42] If only if the threat is largely imagined then it's not just irrational I think it's like you know immoral non-virtuous.

[00:21:53] I don't know about immoral but like I just think you should stand behind your research and you know at the very least have the decency to say what it is that you're scared of and back it up if you're not going to do that.

[00:22:08] If you're really going to publish if you really think I can only publish this not with my real name because of the consequences then say what those consequences are that you're afraid of.

[00:22:21] That's all it's not too much tax.

[00:22:23] But we know we know what they're afraid of I think your claim is more an empirical one.

[00:22:26] I don't know.

[00:22:28] Yeah, they're afraid of not getting tenure and of getting death threats and of getting you know their career ruined.

[00:22:33] That's what they're afraid of like you could disagree with that.

[00:22:37] That's going to happen but they're afraid of getting their career ruined.

[00:22:39] It's like that's at least the stated fear that I'm sure it's not a mystery.

[00:22:43] So then but okay if that's the stated fear then just there's data how many people that's happened to sure and then you can figure out whether it's a rational fear or a completely irrational fear.

[00:22:55] And that I think is important.

[00:23:00] There's one thing that I will agree with you on that if you are at the level of expertise where you can write an informed good journal article that could that could withstand peer review in any kind of journal then publishing anonymously seems a little odd to me.

[00:23:22] Like it seems as if this is this is your life's work.

[00:23:27] And if for instance I was studying something if I were studying something that was controversial to the but I was an expert in then I would probably find other ways to communicate these ideas you know and and stand behind them because I was certain in my scientific expertise.

[00:23:51] On the matter so plus you know like don't you care about getting that other publication on your CV.

[00:24:00] How are you going to say are you going to put that on your age index.

[00:24:05] Yeah I mean I guess one of the things that they floated was you could publish it anonymously until a certain thing happened you got that job offer or you got tenure and then you would reveal it was me all along.

[00:24:20] I can't wait till you talk to your mother over Thanksgiving about this.

[00:24:24] Your stepmom.

[00:24:26] No I mean like you know that I disagree with her about the general climate and so I'm going to disagree.

[00:24:34] I mean I think she'll agree that people should strap on a you know.

[00:24:40] What's the metaphor there.

[00:24:42] That clockwork orange dildo and publish that paper on race and IQ.

[00:24:49] Yeah so you know maybe suppose that Hurdstein and Murray had published under a completely anonymous name.

[00:24:57] You know maybe maybe their ideas would have gotten out there as as much as people might disagree with them but they wouldn't have gotten personally attacked.

[00:25:08] So you're saying it's just a better world in which they are willing to get the personal attacks.

[00:25:14] They're willing to have like some Middlebury people rock their car but to like that's to put their name to that to that piece.

[00:25:25] Now of course they rocked their car like 25 years later but.

[00:25:30] It's an old grudge.

[00:25:33] Yeah I mean I don't disagree that I think if you have a controversial idea like what that's sort of what I was saying in the beginning.

[00:25:40] I don't think actually there's a lack of outlets for publishing controversial ideas.

[00:25:44] Like I think that it would be interesting.

[00:25:48] I bet you in many cases where people think that they weren't published because their idea was quote unquote controversial.

[00:25:54] It might just be because their idea was crappy.

[00:25:56] And so so but what I am sort of interested in is whether or not this journal will publish more than just sort of you know Google memo style shit about you know the gender pay gap and race and IQ.

[00:26:14] Like will they publish really well they publish like a Marxist take on something you know or or like any idea that's controversial or are they just saying we need this particular set of ideas about race and gender.

[00:26:31] I like to think that they're sensitive to that worry and that they will publish also sort of radical left not just like the hit list like the top 10.

[00:26:45] Right.

[00:26:46] Things that people say you're not allowed to talk about anymore but but yeah some truly radical ideas and if that happened that would be I guess a good thing.

[00:26:57] I mean look I wanted to take a slightly more extreme position than I actually have like it'd be interesting to see just the first few issues see how the papers are and see how and if anything my beef is less with the journal and more with the people who are publishing under pseudonyms because I really do think they're contributing.

[00:27:21] One thing that Justin Weinberg at the Daily News.

[00:27:27] Like one worry about this that we haven't talked about but I thought was somewhat interesting and is that people if you start this journal it's it's like a proclamation that there's a need for it and then people will use it as evidence as I'm sure they already are look.

[00:27:48] They need this journal out there because that's how bad college campuses are right now where you can't say anything or you'll get fired and or you'll get a Twitter mob and death threats and and so this is the only way to get certain ideas out there.

[00:28:08] There's no academic freedom anymore like so so it's contributing to that media industry of complaining about the climate on college campuses.

[00:28:22] Right by the way now now I see where I got my emphasis in that chronicle article there's a sentence that says one unusual feature of the journal will be giving authors the option to use a pseudonym though the journal is editors say they hope most will feel like they're

[00:28:37] comfortable using their real names and those really are two different issues.

[00:28:43] It really is the case that one is the fear of repercussion and the other one is that there is no outlet to publish articles and those I think are separable and they're they're both empirical questions but if the if that if the part that's if the part of the claim or the reason for starting this journal is that controversial ideas are getting rigidly

[00:29:06] rejected from journals where just because they're controversial in a particular way there should be a backlog of wonderful papers just ready to go because people haven't found any anywhere to publish them and I suspect that that's not true.

[00:29:24] I think that whenever there is outcry it's because those articles have been published.

[00:29:30] That's the part that I'm skeptical about that there really is a need in that sense.

[00:29:34] Well I think so what what the rebuttal to that they would say is well people don't even bother writing on those topics are doing the research on those topics because they know but this is how the snowball effect happen it's this manufactured like feedback loop where it just it's it just creates the myth creates itself right like.

[00:29:58] Right you hear that you're never going to get this paper on IQ and whatever published so you shouldn't even try to write it you shouldn't even try to run that study develop that argument.

[00:30:14] And so that's what they'll say.

[00:30:17] Yeah yeah maybe that's that's.

[00:30:22] Like I sort of suspect that if you really really care say about IQ and you have these controversial theories about racing you're an expert on IQ.

[00:30:33] I more suspect that whatever people sentiment is is that they kind of have a view that's not really part of the scholarship is just this view secret view that they hold that they're afraid to say because like whatever I don't study gender I don't study race but I kind of think there might be biological you know.

[00:30:51] And and they are imputing this fear on this actual scholars of that field which I haven't found to be you know they haven't tried to I don't think it's obviously hard to know the file drawer but there are plenty of people who haven't shied away from making those claims.

[00:31:06] And the one thing that Minerva says is that or at least in this chronicle article it says that it's the journals that have sort of pulled their articles.

[00:31:21] You know like when they say like oops oops we shouldn't publish this that that that's happened like twice I know I know it seems that's never happens think of every journal article that is published and they have a lot of articles.

[00:31:36] They don't pull it and like I happened. It happened like with a poem in the nation. We need that. That's what we need is a journal of controversial poems. Yeah exactly.

[00:31:48] A journal of white guys writing Ibonic in Ibonics like Nordic Ibonic literature but.

[00:31:59] No I mean like like Rebecca Tuvelle is not surprisingly a name that you hear in these contexts and yeah that was bad but that happened one single time. Yeah. Yeah well well you know once is in one one bicycle accident can get you to work.

[00:32:18] There your helmet Tamler one bicycle accident 40 scholars on the editorial board so there are people who sympathize with their aims. Yeah because this whole thing is this it's like a self fulfilling prophecy it's like people just talk about it and then that makes the fears

[00:32:36] greater and that confirms the fears and this whole thing just pretty soon no more dildo jokes pretty soon. All right we've spent so much time on this. I know it. Someone asked me to Sarah Hader who I really like actually said I should write up my ideas on this.

[00:33:01] Yeah I feel like I can do that. Why not because of fear of repercussions. Yeah I just think that you know like I'll get death threats. Publish under Sam Lertomers Sam Lertomers and Pave D'Azaro have written a hot new article.

[00:33:19] Yeah we were going to we're going to collaborate on an op ed right one day one day. We might disagree so much that it's just not for the sake of like especially on this. I think we disagree for the sake of disagreeing.

[00:33:35] I wanted to make it entertaining for our listeners. Yeah I don't know about that though.

[00:33:43] All right shall we take a break and come back to do some more naggle gazing. Yeah. Nice.

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[00:36:07] Welcome back to very bad wizards at this time we like to take a moment to thank all the people who interact with us who engage with the very bad wizards community.

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[00:40:05] And if you want to support Tamler and buy by sort of contagion support very bad wizards check out his new audiobook.

[00:40:15] Narrated by Tamler Summers himself.

[00:40:18] I have not downloaded it because I do not think I could listen to your voice for that long.

[00:40:22] It's already been about 300 hours of listening to you.

[00:40:25] I definitely couldn't but I appreciate all the people who have downloaded so far.

[00:40:31] There's been a good amount of support just from Twitter.

[00:40:36] I'm really thankful to everybody who has downloaded it and I apologize for when you get to the part where I try to recite a few battle rap verses.

[00:40:50] Oh yeah I got it.

[00:40:51] I just got to download that just so that I can sample it.

[00:40:55] Gosh.

[00:40:57] Like I think it was bad enough that I didn't want to then go back and redo it which you have the option when you're writing a book like I can always go can I do that again but I was like I just I don't want to keep like it's just too embarrassing so yeah.

[00:41:16] Yeah we'll forget that that ever happened.

[00:41:17] Somehow I think that I'll be reminded of it but we'll see.

[00:41:24] So yeah thank you.

[00:41:26] Okay so for this episode even though we spent way too long talking about something that we weren't going to spend that long talking on we have once again dipped into the Nagel well and chosen a couple of articles essays from his book Mortal Questions which if you've been a listener for any time you know that.

[00:41:47] We've been working our way through this book.

[00:41:49] This time we chose two chapters for all I know we won't get to both of them but they are chapters five and six war and massacre and I feel like I'm leading out of Bible study if you turn to chapter four verse 12 war and massacre and ruthlessness in public life do you mind I think I want to start with ruthlessness in public life do you have a preference.

[00:42:13] No.

[00:42:14] Okay let me give a quick summary to the extent that this can be summarized because it actually is arguments with a number of steps.

[00:42:22] The problem that Nagel starts out with is one of the I think is really interesting it is that crimes that are committed by by say members of government have a funny property which is that while we get very easily outraged by say the murder that an individual committed.

[00:42:44] Like a private private crime like the kinds of murders that are ordered by people in positions of powers or other crime crimes that are ordered by people in a position of power like presidents and generals and prime ministers seem to be those people seem to be insulated from the same moral condemnation that individuals are.

[00:43:06] And so so one way to think of it is as Tamela said in the intro this these both were written sort in the aftermath of the Vietnam War one way to think about it is.

[00:43:18] There were people who are directly responsible for what we might consider complete moral atrocities moral atrocities on a scale that is unimaginable as an individual but who and I think this was a really nice way of putting it who.

[00:43:35] Nagel says even the staunchest of anti war protesters would not have that big of a problem like meeting that person and shaking their hand and having a conversation.

[00:43:46] So one of the examples he uses McNamara Robert McNamara and at the time that he was writing this McNamara was president of the World Bank.

[00:43:55] And this was after arguably being responsible he was what secretary of defense at the time of the Vietnam War.

[00:44:06] And so behind arguable I mean I don't know I'm not a Vietnam historian so I don't know to what extent Nagel is right about McNamara's role in these crimes but yeah.

[00:44:19] In other words but he did not suffer any professional consequences.

[00:44:21] Yeah there are people who have done what I would consider to be horrendous things are responsible in a really direct way for horrible things who don't seem to suffer the same consequences that an individual would for even a fraction of that.

[00:44:38] And so the question that Nagel wants to ask is what is it about being in this public role that seems to insulate you from the kind of moral condemnation that you would have as an individual.

[00:44:53] What does this say about the nature of public morality.

[00:44:56] Is it derived from our notions about individual morality personal morality.

[00:45:01] And if so why do we seem to give have such a different reaction to those two kinds of crimes.

[00:45:06] Or is it the case that public morality is just a different beast that it actually it actually is not derivable from personal morality.

[00:45:15] So it's like a separate sphere of morality like incommensurable different set of moral principles apply to public rather than private.

[00:45:26] Right so they might derive from a common source but because of the differences in the way in which public life is structured and public institutions are structured they sort of go through a different filter.

[00:45:37] So even though they're based on the same foundations.

[00:45:40] They look very different by the time they get to our moral judgments about those people.

[00:45:46] And so it's not as if those people are incapable of doing wrong like so they might be involved in a personal scandal for instance like they they might be shown to have had an affair or did something shady in their personal life and and we might condemn them for that.

[00:46:01] But it seems that in their capacity as a public figure the actions that are part of their duties as a public figure seem to be somewhat insulated for moral condemnation right.

[00:46:13] In fact there he says it's kind of a trade off the way we do it right now like we criticize that we wouldn't just criticize some stranger for having an affair.

[00:46:23] Right but we will criticize Bill Clinton for doing that.

[00:46:27] But in exchange for that we don't criticize him for being responsible for certain moral atrocities that he is committing if I'm not saying Clinton did but I'm saying a public official would do while he's exercising the power of that office.

[00:46:49] So it could be the fact that you are placed under a special obligation when you serve a public role.

[00:46:56] You might think of this as a power that just corrupts or that because you're in charge say of protecting the American people maybe you should maybe we believe that you could protect them by any means necessary.

[00:47:09] But he says that's not right like just because you have this new special obligation it doesn't at all seem intuitive that you would have the ability to do whatever.

[00:47:20] And here's I think the critical part when you're taking on the responsibility for a larger group.

[00:47:28] All of a sudden you're shifted toward impartiality in a way that's really different from your personal requirements.

[00:47:35] Right. I think that's the crux of this difference that impartiality and more consequentialist.

[00:47:43] Exactly and impartiality in the way that everybody counts for the same like if you're responsible for say an entire group of people say say a nation of people.

[00:47:54] You have to treat everybody in your decisions as if so long as they're in your group you have to treat them as if they are equal.

[00:48:03] You're not given the privilege of like we as individuals have of favoring somebody who's your friend or favoring your family members.

[00:48:14] And that requirement that requirement of impartiality kicks into gear if I understand the argument right it kicks in the gear a way of having to make moral decisions that is ultimately consequentialist.

[00:48:27] But so this is the thing that confused me about this essay right.

[00:48:31] That seems true but it seems true more when we're evaluating you know like judges prosecutors DA's people who deal with domestic issues.

[00:48:47] The issue that he leads off with is like what do we think of someone like Robert McNamara responsible in large part for escalating the Vietnam War.

[00:48:58] The fact that he is bound by certain impartiality requirements that private people aren't I don't see how that is is relevant to that question.

[00:49:13] Right because you're right that he does start by saying like the special obligations are to the in group right to the group that they are protecting the group that they've been right.

[00:49:21] And that seems the salient thing right is that that's your job is to promote the interests of your country in this case if you're a secretary of defense.

[00:49:31] Yeah so he says perhaps the most significant action centered feature of public morality is a special requirement to treat people in the relevant population equally.

[00:49:41] Public policies and actions have to be much more impartial than private ones since they usually employ a monopoly of certain kinds of power and since there is no reason in their case to leave room for the personal attachments and inclinations that shape individual lives.

[00:49:54] So suppose that you are in charge of a public utility you are serving the entire population your obligation is to serve the entire population.

[00:50:03] You have to make decisions based on the welfare of that everybody in that public population as sort of equivalent.

[00:50:13] You are your obligation is different than that what you would have as an individual like if your power was out and I only had one candle or whatever I would take it to you Tamler my friend as opposed to taking it to some stranger I wouldn't feel that equivalent pull to help.

[00:50:33] A stranger as I would to help you the reason that is important and why it gets to the question of decisions made during wartime is that.

[00:50:41] This demand placed on you to to be a consequentialist in your decisions for the relevant group that you're protecting.

[00:50:50] Shifts your orientation your moral orientation from a more deontological constraints on action view you're constrained against doing certain things no matter what.

[00:51:01] That being serving everybody equivalently means that you have to the best way to make that decision is to say what will help all of these people will maximize the help for all of these people.

[00:51:14] And I think that what he wants to say is that when you're say making wartime decisions is very easy to fall into a consequentialist form of reasoning that ignores the constraints that we have as individuals and that.

[00:51:31] When you're trying to maximize the protection on your people it's very easy to say well if I torture the enemy or if I napalm them or if I committed these other atrocities like like destroyed entire village because even though there's 100 people in the village there

[00:51:45] two soldiers there that it allows you to justify it on the basis of your need your motivation to protect everybody in your in group and your relevant population.

[00:51:56] Keep them safe. So the consequentialism and the impartiality here is not a universal impartiality that you know the will mcascals of the world are promoting the Peter singers of the world are promoting it is a consequentialism and an impartiality.

[00:52:14] I mean it's not even it's a local impartiality it's a local consequentialism and it is it is it exists only because you have you have taken on the obligation of protecting whatever your relevant party is.

[00:52:27] And you're and you're right to distinguish that he's actually part of what I found confusing about this essay at the I think that you could write this essay about people whose primary obligations are to the domestic population.

[00:52:42] That would be one question and then the obligations and actions of people whose when we're talking about moral atrocities or immoral actions they're primarily to people who are not part of the population not part of the in group.

[00:53:01] That's a different question right and he puts them together. And I don't totally get how why we shouldn't analyze those two kinds of cases differently separately the secretary of energy or the secretary of education or something.

[00:53:23] We're going to look at them differently than we're going to look at somebody like Henry Kissinger that's that's a different kind of dilemma. See what I'm saying. Yeah yeah I think that what he's trying to say is that in both cases.

[00:53:39] You might be motivated to act in a way that violates the normal constraints you would have on action and the way that you would do that is by making arguments about the overall consequences of your action.

[00:53:54] And therefore ignoring the constraints on harm that that sort of common sense the ontology requires so that might actually mean shitting on one segment of your population to save a larger segment.

[00:54:06] So you could actually hurt people in your own group because you're trying to save the majority of the group. And you could you know commit atrocities I mean in some sense you might argue that this is you know you could argue that say Native Americans or African Americans are that they were willing to for the sake of the larger population do things that would normally be considered immoral for an individual to do to another individual.

[00:54:33] I think that he thinks that it's the same mechanism it's like kicking you into the consequence based reasoning and sacrificing the constraint based reasoning that is that is allowing this and.

[00:54:48] And.

[00:54:49] I'm not saying that this is a mistake he's saying that is exactly what your obligation requires you to do saying you have to think in that way because.

[00:55:00] That's just what it means to make moral decisions when you're when you have an obligation to an entire group you kick into this local impartiality and local maximization.

[00:55:11] And that's not in and of itself wrong because you'd actually be a shitty leader if all you were doing was like you know protecting the people that you cared about.

[00:55:20] It's just that this is exactly where he thinks the distortion can come in where you start being able to justify things that do that are really really immoral because you have let yourself lapse into purely consequentialist reasoning.

[00:55:38] Yeah.

[00:55:39] There's one other element I think that is worth mentioning which is when you are part of and this applies both to international and domestic officials.

[00:55:51] You are part of a larger machine and you are just doing your role to contribute to some sort of law.

[00:56:00] I mean this is you can certainly relate it to the consequentialist idea but this idea that while you might be doing something wrong in isolation you are contributing through your office to some sort of greater good.

[00:56:15] That that idea is and that's a little different than just kicking into consequentialism.

[00:56:20] Yeah.

[00:56:21] It's this thing that I'm doing seems wrong but that's just because you're not looking at the larger consequentialist machine.

[00:56:29] And once you see that and you see how all these parts are interrelated then you will see that what I'm doing is right.

[00:56:38] So maybe you know you can think about this in criminal justice.

[00:56:41] Maybe this prosecutor is charging some some kid from the inner city with seven different crimes to get him to accept a plea deal that will save the court a lot of money and that would be just totally wrong and inequitable and unfair.

[00:56:57] But the prosecutor can justify it by saying I am part of this larger system that is contributing to making this city safe or something like that.

[00:57:06] That's right.

[00:57:07] And you're right to point this out as a different thing.

[00:57:09] The constraints of public morality are not imposed as a whole in the same way on all public actions around all public affairs because public agencies itself complex and divided.

[00:57:18] There is a corresponding ethical division of labor or ethical specialization different aspects of public morality are in the hands of different officials.

[00:57:26] This can create the illusion that public morality is more consequentialist or less restrictive than it is because the general conditions may be wrongly identified with the boundaries of a particular role.

[00:57:35] So we don't have an ethical division of labor when it comes to our personal actions.

[00:57:40] Yeah, it is you.

[00:57:41] You are the agent.

[00:57:42] You decide what is good and what's bad.

[00:57:44] But the division of labor in something as complex as the government or the military or anything like that.

[00:57:49] It really does require everybody to make sure that they're playing their part in the overall system that might itself be maximizing consequences.

[00:57:59] And then the question is what if the overall system is morally fucked?

[00:58:03] It's you think about the flow of information that's necessary to evaluate the system as a whole.

[00:58:11] Right.

[00:58:12] The military is a great example for this where if you're on a need to know basis and you're taking orders, you're putting an implicit trust that the system itself is acting morally.

[00:58:23] And that would mean that very few people have the bird's eye view that you're trusting that everything is coming together in a way that is going to be justified, even if it's justified by the outcomes.

[00:58:34] And so you could see why it would be very easy to not question the actions that turn out to be pretty fucking bad.

[00:58:45] Because right, that's your job.

[00:58:47] And so if you're already in a consequentialist mindset and people tell you this is going to lead to the best consequentialist outcome, again, this could be consequentialist for your country, not as a whole world.

[00:59:01] And you don't have the knowledge or ability to discover whether that's true or not.

[00:59:08] Then you are going to perform your duties in your capacity and not be inhibited because you can be somewhat confident that you are performing that duty for some sort of greater good.

[00:59:29] Right.

[00:59:30] And again, this is not Nagel mounting an argument against the public institutions being consequentialist.

[00:59:37] He's saying this is a natural result of what it means to be in charge of so many people and it has this ethical division of labor.

[00:59:48] It's just what happens.

[00:59:50] So the question is, but not everything is permitted.

[00:59:53] Restrictions on the treatment of individuals continue to operate from a public point of view and they cannot be implemented entirely by the courts.

[01:00:00] One of the hardest lines to draw in public policy is the one that defines where the end stops justifying the means.

[01:00:06] If results were the only basis for public morality results being outcome based, then it would be possible to justify anything including torture and massacre in the service of sufficiently large interests.

[01:00:18] Whether the limits are drawn by specific constitutional protections or not, the strongest constraints of individual morality will continue to limit what can be publicly justified even by extremely powerful consequentialist reasons.

[01:00:29] So that's the structure of the argument.

[01:00:31] But he's basically just saying that consequentialist outcome based reasons are a natural result of the particular obligations we have when we take on leadership roles.

[01:00:44] And they can be very different for good reason than private moral obligations and the constraints we have on action.

[01:00:53] But he ends up just saying like, well look, the moral cushion that insulates your actions, the consequentialist based actions that might violate your private morality, it can't just insulate you from everything.

[01:01:13] And that just because you have a public obligation to a group does not mean that that is the only consideration that you have.

[01:01:21] You don't get some blank check to be only a maximizer of the interests of the group.

[01:01:27] You still have to balance other interests, which for Nagel are these constraints on action.

[01:01:37] That just leads me to the beginning.

[01:01:41] Like how do we know under what conditions is justified or not?

[01:01:44] And just pointing to the different pressures we have and how they can be in tension with each other and these sort of vague suggestions about how to keep it in check.

[01:01:59] I don't know.

[01:02:01] Yeah, I mean, I think the charitable way to read it is be on the lookout for these potential errors.

[01:02:09] The fact that when you take a public office, you are obligated to your group that that's your job is to serve their interest.

[01:02:18] It doesn't mean that you have no other moral obligations besides that.

[01:02:23] And people can and you know, that is an error that people can naturally make.

[01:02:28] Look, my job was to serve the U.S. military and so I performed this action because it was I was informed that this was going to be in the interests of the U.S. military.

[01:02:44] And I think he's saying but you also have to remember that you have these other obligations too.

[01:02:50] And I guess this sounds right to me says let me return finally to the individuals who occupy public roles even if public morality is not substantively derivable from private.

[01:02:58] It applies to individuals.

[01:03:00] So I think part of what is called is that your taking on the role does not prevent you from moral condemnation for what you've done.

[01:03:10] At a certain point they're going to they can ask you this is possible.

[01:03:15] It's happened.

[01:03:16] It's actual.

[01:03:17] They can ask you to do something that you recognize is immoral and at that point your duty to private morality overrides your public morality duty.

[01:03:30] I mean, this I guess this is the technical philosophical question is how to you know what's reducible to what but at some point you're duty to do something.

[01:03:39] Your duty to your fellow human being outweighs your duty to your particular in group and then your your obligation.

[01:03:50] Your all things considered obligation is to resist or at least refuse to participate.

[01:03:56] So he says you somebody who's committed public wrongs in the exercise of his office can be just as guilty as a private criminal.

[01:04:02] Sometimes his responsibility is partly absorbed by the moral defects of the institution through institution through which he acts.

[01:04:08] But the plausibility of that excuse is inversely proportional to the power and independence of the actor.

[01:04:13] So, yeah, and really what he ends with this.

[01:04:16] Unfortunately, this is not reflected in our treatment of former public servants who have often done far worse than take bribes.

[01:04:21] So this brings us back to this this what he starts out with which is why aren't we like a board?

[01:04:27] Like suppose that you thought Ronald Reagan was like, you know, cause like the suffering of countless people.

[01:04:33] Like why isn't it that when you meet him, you're just like, even if you agree, like say you're the staunchest liberal who agrees that like Reagan might have been responsible for just like the suffering of countless people.

[01:04:44] When you beat him, you're still kind of like, oh, I'm eating wrong.

[01:04:47] Yeah, I mean, partly that's just his personality and you know, maybe there was a genio Stalin like figure, you know, maybe.

[01:04:57] I mean, who knows what would have happened if you'd meet Mussolini or something like that.

[01:05:02] Right.

[01:05:03] But you might, oh, he's funny, Italian little dude.

[01:05:08] But I think also like that there is this feeling like, like so say Cheney is a good example because he doesn't have the sort of affability of someone like Reagan.

[01:05:20] So he doesn't have that.

[01:05:22] It seems pretty charming to me.

[01:05:24] Yeah, I know. You've always had a weird attraction to him.

[01:05:28] But if you can maybe convince yourself, look as horrific as I think the consequences of what he was doing were, did think that he was doing it.

[01:05:45] He didn't do it for private gain.

[01:05:47] He thought he was helping the interests of the American people.

[01:05:54] And so it's harder at least to get me, not that people have so much trouble condemning Dick Cheney.

[01:06:03] But like, you know, he wasn't doing it.

[01:06:07] Ted Bundy, right? Like you don't treat him like Ted Bundy and Ted Bundy arguably like whatever your politics are, whoever has been in whoever the leader is that's been in charge of the deaths of lots of innocent people or whatever.

[01:06:22] He would have killed. He would be responsible for 5000 times the number of deaths that the worst serial killer has, right?

[01:06:34] So this is like what the starting of this and the ending of this was just about this very point.

[01:06:41] I don't know if it's because of what Nagel says it is.

[01:06:46] Like I buy the tension between public and private morality and the need to have outcome based morality and sort of this action based morality as a person and outcome based morality as a leader.

[01:06:58] But I don't buy that that's what's driving our intuitions.

[01:07:01] Like I think it's the fact that that the violence wasn't personal and that there are plenty of other people sort of diffusing the chain of action that led to the deaths of thousands.

[01:07:12] I think that's what actually is is serving as the buffer, not any real difference between.

[01:07:18] Well, that's also the cog. That's part of the cog explanation, which he sort of floats, but then it just goes away a little bit like but I think that is a primary thing is we're part of this larger

[01:07:30] machinery and if you're president, you're elected president, you inherit all these wars and problems and you do the best you can with that with limited information and limited opportunities.

[01:07:48] And you have all these political constraints and you have all these.

[01:07:51] And so we just think it's so complicated to it's not like complicated not to go out and kill people like the Zodiac killer.

[01:08:01] Like it's not like, well, what else was I going to do under the circumstances?

[01:08:06] But you feel that to some extent.

[01:08:09] I mean, I remember in my interview with Zimbardo, I was saying now this was before we learned the revelations but I was asking him.

[01:08:19] Why are you so hard on Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld?

[01:08:25] Why are you so hard on them?

[01:08:28] But not hard on the ring leaders and Abu Ghraib.

[01:08:31] And he's like, well they created the situation.

[01:08:34] I was like, well aren't they part of some larger situation which is 9-11 happened?

[01:08:41] There's all these calls, there's all this fear, there's all this, you know, they're now in power.

[01:08:45] They have to do something.

[01:08:47] They have to act.

[01:08:48] Isn't that a situation also that's like a rotten barrel that will get people to act immorally when they otherwise wouldn't?

[01:08:57] You know, like I don't think he gave us in the interview his last factor, he answered that.

[01:09:02] No, I think this is actually like a deep inconsistency in many people's views.

[01:09:07] Like a lot of psychologists will be very, very quick to excuse or at least provide a defense of some version of situationism for certain people.

[01:09:22] The people on the street, the functionaries are low level people.

[01:09:30] But like they save all their moral outrage for the people at the top.

[01:09:34] Yeah, I mean I think that what's going on like it's not independent of that explanation that there are cogs, that they're getting the machines moving.

[01:09:45] It is just I think that there is an interesting psychological aspect to it that of course, why wouldn't, you know, Nagel's not going to write about that.

[01:09:55] But it's that your hands aren't tainted in the same way as a serial killer you are.

[01:10:03] And so yeah, you made a decision that caused a decision, that caused a decision that killed people.

[01:10:09] But in a real dumb way, I don't like I'm not like abhorred by your presence.

[01:10:21] Because somehow you didn't wrap your hands around that person.

[01:10:24] Maybe I take it that if you really, really are a good consequentialist, you, well maybe this is unfair.

[01:10:35] But it seems as if you ought to be outraged more.

[01:10:39] More.

[01:10:40] And it's not like there aren't people who are outraged more at war criminals than they are low level criminals.

[01:10:50] Those people do exist.

[01:10:53] But I think there is a natural inclination to cut them, not just more slack but magnate orders of magnitude more slack based on you know that what they did and the amount of suffering that they've caused relative to the people that you're not coming cutting slack to.

[01:11:14] Yeah. And I think that it's informative like, I think I've talked about this, the set of studies that Eric Alman and David Tannam on did where basically they, they ask people to make judgments about a CEO who spent like some ungodly amount of money on like a golden toilet like a golden

[01:11:39] in their office like say it's like $10,000.

[01:11:42] People are just more upset about that than like a CEO who caused like, you know, people to lose their their life saving and and force them into retirement because there is an action that you can ping your blame on like there is this very clear, direct

[01:11:57] abhorrent thing that somebody did and I think it's just really hard psychologically to represent the consequences the outcomes.

[01:12:05] Like if there's like so many other links in the chain between what you, what you the order that you issued and the actual like horrible morally atrocious outcome.

[01:12:17] Yeah. It seems nebulous and probabilistic to and even if you're convinced it doesn't seem like it. Yeah.

[01:12:24] And that's actually, that is a problem because I think that's why a lot of things like, you know, the criminal justice system drone policy like it's really hard to analyze how these steps tie them to specific decisions that people have made based on the information that they had at the time.

[01:12:47] It's really hard to assign responsibility for that.

[01:12:50] Right. If you're constructing a robot that was just make moral judgments, maybe you would want them to like be able to calculate that and like solely based on the outcomes of people's actions like calibrate their outrage.

[01:13:02] But we didn't evolve to be able to do that.

[01:13:06] We did it.

[01:13:07] AI will do this.

[01:13:08] Yeah.

[01:13:09] AI will judge solely based on consequence.

[01:13:11] All right.

[01:13:12] AI overlords will clean all this up.

[01:13:17] All right. Do you?

[01:13:19] I think we should have Warren massacre for another time.

[01:13:24] I agree.

[01:13:25] I did want to say one other thing about ruthlessness and ruthlessness in public life, which we didn't talk about, which is he has this brief little sort of, I don't know if it's a detour, but he talks about the intoxication of power and how good it can feel to be, to exercise power.

[01:13:45] And I don't totally know where that fit in the overall structure of the argument, but it was both interesting and also something I don't.

[01:13:57] I believe that people actually have this, but I don't feel it's true about me.

[01:14:04] Like I don't like being in positions of power and I don't like exercising the power if I do have it.

[01:14:13] I absolutely had the same intuition.

[01:14:16] Like, I'm trying to find the quote.

[01:14:18] It's like almost weird.

[01:14:19] He's like fetishizing it.

[01:14:20] He's like, let's just admit that we all get boners from power.

[01:14:24] Like, let's just call a spade a spade and just say like I jerk off to the thought of control.

[01:14:30] Because among others things such a picture disguises the fact that the exercise of power and whatever role is one of the most personal forms of individual self-expression and a rich source of purely personal pleasure.

[01:14:47] The pleasure of power is not easily acknowledged, but it is one of the most primitive human feelings, probably one of with infantile roots.

[01:14:56] Those who have had it for years sometimes realize its importance only when they have to retire.

[01:15:03] Despite their grave demeanor, impersonal diction and limited physical expression,

[01:15:08] holders of public power are personally involved to an intense degree and probably enjoying it immensely.

[01:15:20] It's not, I felt dirty reading it.

[01:15:22] I did. Yeah, like, but I really think this might be one of these personality differences.

[01:15:29] Like there's just a lot of individual differences in this.

[01:15:33] Because it's clearly true of some people, right?

[01:15:36] It's clearly true of the Harvey Weinsteins of the world.

[01:15:39] It's clearly true of some people in academia, right?

[01:15:42] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:15:43] There are some people who just love it.

[01:15:46] Their dicks get hard when they get to write a bad review and reject a paper or deny somebody 10-year or whatever.

[01:15:58] But I also think there's a group of people, and I think I'm one of them, maybe I'm deluded,

[01:16:05] that really don't like that position and really try hard to avoid exercising power.

[01:16:12] And that's why I don't think I'm a particularly good leader is I don't like to be in that position in the first place.

[01:16:19] I don't want to say anything. I like to be respected.

[01:16:21] I don't want to say anything, but I agree with you.

[01:16:24] No. Okay, so I had the same intuition and I was trying to get a little out of my own perspective

[01:16:32] and maybe give this a fair sort of consideration.

[01:16:41] Maybe I actually have quite a bit of power in my life and maybe I am completely taking for granted

[01:16:51] that it is a source of pleasure to me.

[01:16:54] And maybe when that power is removed, I will be upset by it.

[01:17:00] But actually, it's not that I deny that I have power.

[01:17:04] It's clear that I have power over plenty of people.

[01:17:10] It's that I don't think that I care much to have it.

[01:17:19] I think you're right. It's more money, more problems.

[01:17:24] Like it's more of a headache than it is a source of pleasure at all.

[01:17:32] Intense pleasure?

[01:17:34] Yeah, he turned into a Freudian for a second.

[01:17:36] I want to distinguish the pleasure that comes with having autonomy.

[01:17:43] Not coerced.

[01:17:45] Which I think to me is the most important quality of life aspect that I enjoy is people in power have limited ability to fuck with me.

[01:17:57] But like, I think what he's talking about is our ability to fuck with other people who are below us.

[01:18:03] And that's the part that I don't get.

[01:18:06] I love whatever autonomy we're able to have in our professions and in our lives.

[01:18:13] I love that, I treasure it.

[01:18:15] But that's different than exercise of power.

[01:18:19] That's just exercise of freedom and the freedom from other people in power.

[01:18:25] How about maybe it's not just the fucking with part.

[01:18:30] Maybe it is sort of your, and you've probably had this,

[01:18:34] like your feeling that you're now in a position to help out somebody who's like up and coming.

[01:18:40] Right?

[01:18:41] Like you don't disb any block open the Bronx.

[01:18:44] Like you actually take him under your wing.

[01:18:46] That's the sort of power that maybe is pleasurable.

[01:18:52] But I don't think it's because of the power.

[01:18:54] No.

[01:18:55] It's just because of helping.

[01:18:58] And that's not what he's talking about.

[01:19:00] That's like, I think he's talking about the exercise of power,

[01:19:04] not in a way that it helps people,

[01:19:07] like that you're mentoring people or something like that.

[01:19:10] Yeah.

[01:19:11] Yeah.

[01:19:12] Do you think that people who are drunk with power are more likely to go see a dominatrix once a month to get whipped?

[01:19:20] Well, I have to think that because I don't do that.

[01:19:26] It's just because you can't afford it on salaries.

[01:19:29] Not yet.

[01:19:30] Yeah.

[01:19:31] If I had more power, I would.

[01:19:33] That's the only thing I've always thought that like those,

[01:19:36] those like those power games that like I have this stereotype of like a rich old powerful British man like going to a dominatrix.

[01:19:42] I have no idea if that's empirically accurate or not.

[01:19:44] I totally agree.

[01:19:45] Like I think Louis CK, if he is exercising power,

[01:19:48] if he was like, you know, if he's power drunk,

[01:19:51] like jerking off in front of women,

[01:19:53] like he also seems like the type who's going to go get whipped by a dominatrix.

[01:19:58] Like get whipped?

[01:19:59] Yeah.

[01:20:00] It's a sort of a paradox that it's like,

[01:20:02] it's not until you have enough power that you can submit to somebody else.

[01:20:07] Yeah.

[01:20:08] I just want to be left alone.

[01:20:10] I don't want to be whipped.

[01:20:11] I don't want to be like whipping.

[01:20:13] I don't want like, I don't,

[01:20:15] I don't want to be the whippy or the whipper.

[01:20:17] Like I just want,

[01:20:23] Now we'll try to shake those images.

[01:20:27] All right.

[01:20:28] On that note.

[01:20:29] On that note.

[01:20:32] Yeah.

[01:20:33] Join us next time on Very Bad Widgets.

[01:20:38] Oh God.

[01:21:25] Thank you.