Episode 153: Progress in Psychology: A Reply to BootyBootyFartFart

[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 in 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.

[00:00:32] I'm tensioned to that man.

[00:00:57] Things that you have.

[00:01:05] Anybody can have a brain.

[00:01:12] Very good man.

[00:01:13] Just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:16] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:01:17] I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:20] Dave, how does it feel?

[00:01:22] How does it feel to be swept up in the replication crisis tsunami with one of your studies with

[00:01:30] former friend of the podcast, now enemy of the podcast, YOL Inbar, not replicating?

[00:01:36] As a social psychologist I've been swept up in the crisis.

[00:01:41] This is nothing.

[00:01:42] This is nothing.

[00:01:44] Yeah, no.

[00:01:46] I'm glad they replicated us.

[00:01:48] I was honestly starting to get my feelings hurt that nobody had bothered to replicate anything I'd ever been on.

[00:01:53] I'm like, come on!

[00:01:55] You didn't think it was because they knew that it was going to be rock solid everything that you did and

[00:01:59] it would just be a waste of their time?

[00:02:01] No, I knew it was because no one gives a shit about most of what I do.

[00:02:05] This was an attempt at replicating a paper that we did with YOL, Josh Knob and Paul Bloom on implicit attitudes towards gay people.

[00:02:15] And the study that failed to replicate was the one where we used the Knob effect so I blame Josh Knob.

[00:02:20] Yeah, well that's always a safe bet.

[00:02:22] On Reddit, a Redditor, booty booty fart fart posted.

[00:02:28] Best name ever.

[00:02:30] It really is.

[00:02:32] Posted something saying that this large scale replication project found that one of the discussed sensitivity and homophobia that result is

[00:02:46] quote not real, he walked that back, booty booty fart fart, walked that back afterwards.

[00:02:56] And one of the Redditors on that post, we're going to talk about your response which I thought was pitch perfect.

[00:03:03] Thank you.

[00:03:05] It's rare that I get a compliment from you so I'm like very happy right now.

[00:03:09] I know you're bullshitting.

[00:03:11] But another Redditor said, second reason to be glad they did this replication, when Tamler begins his next intro segment,

[00:03:19] how does it feel?

[00:03:21] So I thought I would just take that suggestion.

[00:03:26] Okay, so that's what we're going to talk about in the second segment.

[00:03:29] In the third segment, three segments, we had our annual Thanksgiving, me and my stepmother discussion,

[00:03:39] drunker than usual this time.

[00:03:41] And like I pre-

[00:03:43] It's just escalating.

[00:03:45] Pretty soon.

[00:03:47] Yeah.

[00:03:49] So just be, it'll be an hour of silence in the microphone as you guys snore.

[00:03:53] I haven't listened to it.

[00:03:55] I don't remember it all that well.

[00:03:57] I remember pre-gaming for it because we were going to talk about standpoint epistemology and there's no way I was going to do that sober.

[00:04:05] So anyway, and then in the third and then then the third and the first segment, one of my colleagues, Justin Coates,

[00:04:13] sends me stuff every so often things that don't necessarily paint academic philosophy in the best light.

[00:04:23] He sent us the Vox piece on Inside Out.

[00:04:28] Good movie, bad metaphysics, remember that?

[00:04:31] Right, right.

[00:04:33] The biggest thing that my colleague sent me is this was a recent winner of the Mark Sanders Prize in Philosophy of Mind,

[00:04:41] which carries with it a $10,000 award, which is pretty substantial.

[00:04:48] Especially for a philosopher.

[00:04:50] For a phil...

[00:04:52] We don't get thrown $10,000 usually under any circumstances.

[00:04:57] But the abstract of this prize winning paper in philosophy of mind was something that I thought we could read and talk about briefly.

[00:05:07] I am looking forward to reading.

[00:05:11] You have read it.

[00:05:13] No, yeah, I mean I'm looking forward to reading it on air.

[00:05:18] Why don't you read it? Because you're better at reading than I am.

[00:05:22] Okay, I was going to say what's the name of the guy from Boardwalk Empire who read the sorority letter?

[00:05:27] Michael Shannon.

[00:05:29] Michael Shannon, it would be great to have Michael Shannon read this.

[00:05:31] The cunt punt.

[00:05:33] Exactly.

[00:05:35] So this is paper entitled Experiencing Left and Right in a Non-Orientable World.

[00:05:42] Consider the totality of your phenomenal experience right now.

[00:05:46] Your total experience.

[00:05:48] A total experience which is phenomenally different from yours, but which differs only by a mirror symmetry.

[00:05:54] The way that a picture of a left hand differs from a picture of a right hand.

[00:05:58] Or is there no phenomenal difference between a total experience and its mirror reversal?

[00:06:03] Do you understand that question?

[00:06:05] No, he already lost me. I was just going to answer no until I realized it wasn't really a yes or no question.

[00:06:09] Why is it not a yes or no question?

[00:06:12] Because it's that there's an or in there.

[00:06:15] Oh, I see, right.

[00:06:17] Is there a total experience which is phenomenally different from yours, but which differs only by...

[00:06:22] Or is there... Well, it's kind of a yes or no right? Or is there no phenomenal difference?

[00:06:28] Right.

[00:06:30] So I would argue it is a yes or no question.

[00:06:33] That's a metaphysical question. By the way this is a prize in philosophy of mind.

[00:06:40] Yes.

[00:06:42] And these are special people.

[00:06:46] Okay. If you think that there is a phenomenal distinction between an experience and its mirror reversal,

[00:06:51] a position Chalmers dubs e-categoricalism, then you may find it intuitive that your mirror twin,

[00:06:58] someone who is a molecule for molecule mirror reflection of you, in general has a different experience than you.

[00:07:05] The idea that you would have an intuition about this.

[00:07:09] Just like a bare kind of intuition is hilarious.

[00:07:14] That's right.

[00:07:16] You might find it intuitive, just kind of obvious, self-evident almost,

[00:07:20] that someone who is a molecule for molecule mirror reflection of you has...

[00:07:25] I don't even understand what the...

[00:07:27] I pride myself in having a super high tolerance for stuff.

[00:07:31] And I can't...

[00:07:33] And even an ability to understand dense writing, but I don't know what this is.

[00:07:38] It's better than me.

[00:07:40] After all, if you're looking at your left hand, she is looking at your right hand.

[00:07:47] Wait, so it is my mirror twin, a girl? A woman?

[00:07:52] Always. That's what it means. The opposite of a boy is a girl.

[00:07:56] Lee 2006 argues, however, that your mirror twin must be your phenomenal twin

[00:08:05] if relationalism about space is correct.

[00:08:09] Paired with e-categoricalism, which sounds like a bad web startup from the late 90s,

[00:08:15] paired with e-categoricalism, this has puzzling consequences.

[00:08:19] Here I begin by challenging Lee.

[00:08:21] He's opening up a can of whoop ass on Lee.

[00:08:25] I argue that even given relationalism about space, your mirror twin can fail to be your phenomenal twin.

[00:08:32] This result is limited. That's where the humility comes in.

[00:08:36] It only applies where you and your mirror twin both live in a universe with an orientable topology.

[00:08:42] Oh, okay.

[00:08:43] Yeah, because if your universe has a non-orientable topology in the sense

[00:08:48] in which Mobius strips and Klein bottles have non-orientable topologies...

[00:08:52] Then the result fails to replicate.

[00:08:57] Yeah, and your mirror twin must be your phenomenal twin after all.

[00:09:01] Moreover, this moral applies even to those who reject relationalism about space.

[00:09:10] The upshot is that everyone, non-relationalists included,

[00:09:15] must either abandon e-categoricalism or choose between puzzling consequences along the lines Lee outlines.

[00:09:23] The most promising of which may be...

[00:09:26] Get ready for it.

[00:09:27] Property dualism.

[00:09:29] Okay, I think you missed a key sentence though when you're reading.

[00:09:32] Otherwise, very good reading.

[00:09:34] If your universe has a non-orientable topology in the sense in which Mobius strips and Klein bottles have non-orientable topologies,

[00:09:45] then your mirror twin must be your phenomenal twin.

[00:09:48] Or did you read that?

[00:09:49] I read it.

[00:09:50] I was crazy.

[00:09:51] What are you smoking, man?

[00:09:54] I'm sorry.

[00:09:55] I was still trying to capture my intuition on whether...

[00:10:00] Oh yeah, you were appealing.

[00:10:02] What's a Klein bottle?

[00:10:04] I have no idea.

[00:10:06] Is that like bourbon?

[00:10:08] It's a German bottle of some sort.

[00:10:11] I emailed this to a friend who's not at all a philosopher and she said,

[00:10:17] when I gave her the upshot is that everyone must abandon e-categoricalism.

[00:10:21] She said, fuck that.

[00:10:22] I love e-categoricalism.

[00:10:24] Yeah.

[00:10:25] That was my...

[00:10:26] Actually, that's what I replied to Justin when he sent this,

[00:10:31] that I'm loath to give up e-categoricalism.

[00:10:35] But I also hate to cheat.

[00:10:37] This is the dilemma that's posed to us.

[00:10:41] This is the $10,000 dilemma.

[00:10:43] The Sophie's choice of philosophy of mind.

[00:10:46] Yeah, exactly.

[00:10:49] You either have to abandon e-categoricalism

[00:10:53] or choose between puzzling consequences along the lines that Leigh outlines.

[00:10:59] Leigh can't be happy about this.

[00:11:02] You know what?

[00:11:03] I think I disagree with your friend.

[00:11:05] I might bite the bullet and abandon e-categoricalism.

[00:11:08] I can't believe you're as irrational as I thought.

[00:11:11] I think we just have different intuitions about mirror reverse molecule

[00:11:17] for molecule, mirror reversal replicates of us.

[00:11:22] What does it mean to be a molecule for molecule?

[00:11:26] Mirror reflection.

[00:11:28] Mirror reflection.

[00:11:29] To be fair to Jonathan Simon, Dr. Simon,

[00:11:38] I really tried to read the actual paper.

[00:11:41] And here's an example that he gives.

[00:11:45] Leigh in 2006 considers the following case.

[00:11:50] At the possible world, W1.

[00:11:52] In case you're going to have trouble keeping track of two worlds.

[00:11:55] There's a notation for you.

[00:11:56] Righty is looking at a sign that says MIT.

[00:11:59] The possible world W2 is the mirror reflection of W1.

[00:12:03] Accordingly, righty's counterpart at W2 is lefty.

[00:12:05] And lefty is looking at a sign that says TIM.

[00:12:09] Now you'd expect that righty and lefty would have distinct experiences.

[00:12:13] Let's not over-sell the point.

[00:12:14] You might also expect righty and lefty to say different things

[00:12:16] when asked what their signs say.

[00:12:19] But they wouldn't since they're molecule for molecule,

[00:12:21] mirror reflections of one another.

[00:12:23] And mirror reflection doesn't affect what sound you make.

[00:12:25] So if righty is going to utter the word MIT, lefty will too.

[00:12:28] Presumably if righty reads English from left to right,

[00:12:31] lefty reads it from right to left.

[00:12:34] We have no way of distinguishing the mirror universe.

[00:12:38] I like this.

[00:12:39] Lee goes on to claim that relationalism has some very surprising consequences.

[00:12:44] For example, if our brains and bodies were perfectly symmetric,

[00:12:47] we'd be unable to have asymmetric experiences.

[00:12:51] So we can deduce transcendentally in parentheses

[00:12:55] from the asymmetric character of our experience

[00:12:58] that our brains or bodies are asymmetric.

[00:13:04] I really don't want to make fun of something

[00:13:06] when I don't understand it.

[00:13:08] Because for all I know, Jonathan Simon is a genius and I'm an idiot.

[00:13:13] But do I don't have asymmetric experience?

[00:13:17] So I think both of us are wondering whether it's

[00:13:24] a total fucking cheap shot to read an abstract,

[00:13:28] scan through a paper about a literature that we don't know

[00:13:33] and start making fun of it.

[00:13:35] And let's assume for the sake of argument that it is maybe.

[00:13:40] Anyway, that's what we do.

[00:13:43] I mean, we took shots at grad students.

[00:13:47] We don't give a fuck, right?

[00:13:49] We're not ethical.

[00:13:51] I am.

[00:13:53] And by the way, I have a guilty confession for later.

[00:13:55] We forgot to say that that's going to be part of it.

[00:13:59] But one guilty confession is clearly that we have no problem

[00:14:02] making fun of things we don't understand.

[00:14:04] I will say, I mean, you're making fun of something

[00:14:08] that you don't understand.

[00:14:10] But I have published in the philosophy of mind.

[00:14:12] That's true.

[00:14:13] I have published a paper on zombies.

[00:14:15] So I kind of resent the implication that I might not be

[00:14:19] a specialist in this field, that I might not be an expert in AOS.

[00:14:23] I'm man enough to apologize to you.

[00:14:28] And Chalmer is, you know, my paper was a critique of Chalmers.

[00:14:32] Now, I will say that some of my best friends are philosophers of mind.

[00:14:35] So I feel like I have the right to say whatever I want.

[00:14:38] Yeah, yeah, right.

[00:14:39] My friend of the podcast, Josh Weisberg was on this show.

[00:14:43] And was he was it?

[00:14:47] Here's my question though.

[00:14:49] Is this all like this could be a hoax, right?

[00:14:52] As far as we know, like this could be a hoax article.

[00:14:56] Somebody who has steeped in the Chalmers property dualism

[00:15:01] zombie literature plus the Lee, whoever this Lee is

[00:15:06] and the relation is losing about space.

[00:15:09] All of that like you just you spend six years.

[00:15:14] I mean, as far as we know anyway, this could be a hoax.

[00:15:18] It makes no more sense than one of those crazy gender studies

[00:15:23] or whatever essays that you would publish in the Journal of Fat Poetry.

[00:15:31] I generally big bone poetry.

[00:15:35] I genuinely don't know.

[00:15:37] I think this part of my discomfort is, you know, I took philosophy

[00:15:41] of mind in grad school.

[00:15:42] You've read about zombies and I don't.

[00:15:46] I think maybe there is a world of metaphysics that I just am

[00:15:49] lost about about what questions they're asking.

[00:15:52] Like I'm so lost about what questions are asking that clearly

[00:15:55] this is built on someone's argument about an argument about

[00:15:57] an argument or something where I've just completely lost track

[00:16:00] and it gives me a little bit of anxiety to not be able to grok

[00:16:03] this like to it.

[00:16:05] And I for like I genuinely have zero way aside from knowing

[00:16:10] who this person was in their reputation, I would have zero

[00:16:13] way of distinguishing between a hoax article about this

[00:16:16] and this I like epistemologically I'm at all.

[00:16:21] But I want to ask you this because I like what is your

[00:16:26] credence that this is all a, is because none of this depends on

[00:16:31] any kind of empirical result.

[00:16:34] It is just spun out of thin air out of, you know, very

[00:16:39] complicated conceptual analysis and appeals to intuitions

[00:16:45] that nobody would possibly have unless you were already steeped

[00:16:50] into these puzzles in these things.

[00:16:52] You don't nobody has, you couldn't run like an X-Fi

[00:16:55] study, you couldn't take Josh Knob and go out and pull people

[00:17:00] about this in Washington Square Park.

[00:17:03] So it's really just intuitions, conceptual analysis and various

[00:17:08] theories that have been built out of, you know, all a priori.

[00:17:14] So I mean that's not, I don't think that's where the problem

[00:17:19] lies.

[00:17:20] I know that you probably think so like I actually think that

[00:17:22] that some intuitive basis with conceptual analysis that follows

[00:17:27] can yield really interesting things.

[00:17:29] I'm not saying that that's the problem.

[00:17:31] I'm saying that what's your credence given that, this was

[00:17:35] just a description of what this is, given that this particular

[00:17:41] literature and debate, if it's a debate, I mean clearly it

[00:17:45] must be because this won the big prize.

[00:17:48] Well he's definitely starting a debate with Liam.

[00:17:51] Starting some shit with Lee, starting a beef.

[00:17:54] Somebody's going to get shot, somebody's going to get killed.

[00:17:57] I don't know if it's righty or lefty.

[00:18:00] Like could this just be total bullshit?

[00:18:04] Like what's your credence that it is?

[00:18:07] That this is not yielding anything interesting unless you're

[00:18:13] like part of this weird club.

[00:18:16] This is not going to reveal anything useful or illuminate.

[00:18:22] It's not going to illuminate anything.

[00:18:24] I mean I think what I was resisting in my interruption was

[00:18:27] that it's not why I think, but to answer your question, I

[00:18:31] have very low credence that this is actually, and I do feel

[00:18:36] harsh saying this, but I actually just, you know, I have

[00:18:40] an opinion about this.

[00:18:41] I actually think that this, if this is a problem that has,

[00:18:45] that is even analytically interesting, then this paper

[00:18:51] doesn't do a job of telling me what that problem is.

[00:18:55] Like if you can't, I'll give you an example.

[00:18:58] So in fact I wanted to pitch this to you the other day.

[00:19:01] There was an article that came out on the philosophy

[00:19:05] of holes in Eon.

[00:19:07] It was the metaphysics of holes.

[00:19:09] What is a hole?

[00:19:10] Right?

[00:19:11] And that, I think that it's ludicrous that people spend

[00:19:16] their time trying to figure out whether, you know, if you

[00:19:19] break a donut, is there still a hole in the middle kind of

[00:19:22] thing and where they mean like actually like metaphysically

[00:19:25] a hole.

[00:19:26] Like an object is a whole object.

[00:19:27] I think that it's sort of ridiculous, but I understand

[00:19:31] it.

[00:19:32] Like they actually went out of their way to like, I don't

[00:19:35] know.

[00:19:36] Are we not talking about that right now?

[00:19:37] Because we didn't read it.

[00:19:39] But I understand, like I can understand the problem and

[00:19:43] reject its importance.

[00:19:45] This, like I can't even understand.

[00:19:47] And given that in our episode on thought experiments,

[00:19:51] we talked about the zombie problem.

[00:19:55] And I think I concluded in that that I really think

[00:19:59] that it might be some sort of just pyramid scheme and

[00:20:02] philosophy where you know you're just training people

[00:20:05] to make an argument, a sub-argument of a sub-argument.

[00:20:08] And that I think it's completely lost its way given the

[00:20:11] original publication.

[00:20:13] But so I feel like this is spun out of control into

[00:20:16] being fake problems.

[00:20:18] And I'm not convinced otherwise because unlike say

[00:20:21] reading, you know, what we're not doing is reading

[00:20:23] a physics paper and mocking it because we don't

[00:20:25] understand the math behind it.

[00:20:27] This is something that I think we ought to be

[00:20:30] able to understand.

[00:20:31] If it's a problem then we ought to be able to

[00:20:33] understand the problem.

[00:20:35] I have a fear that a lot of modern metaphysics is

[00:20:38] going down this route where they've just lost touch

[00:20:41] with what real problems are.

[00:20:43] And again, I say that with like, you know, who the

[00:20:46] fuck am I?

[00:20:47] But I can say that is true for a lot of sub-fields

[00:20:50] of psychology too where it's like, wait, there's

[00:20:52] not enough metaphysics to be talked about so they

[00:20:54] have to invent problems.

[00:20:56] There's no attempt to make this relevant to

[00:20:59] anything outside like commitments, you know,

[00:21:04] whether you're a relationalist or an e-categoricalist

[00:21:08] or whatever.

[00:21:10] There's no attempt to make this something that

[00:21:14] would matter in any way to any other field to

[00:21:18] any like to anybody who didn't have some

[00:21:21] commitment to something in this sub-sub-sub

[00:21:24] field of philosophy.

[00:21:27] Anyway, I think that the truth is we're both salty

[00:21:30] for not having received $10,000 awards for our

[00:21:33] painters.

[00:21:34] Yeah, we're all just jealous and I'm sure Jonathan

[00:21:37] Simon.

[00:21:38] I mean here's the thing, David Chalmers is a

[00:21:41] really good guy.

[00:21:42] He is so good for philosophy, so generous, he's

[00:21:45] smart.

[00:21:46] He's kind of a genius in that old school

[00:21:48] philosophy way but in that old school philosophy

[00:21:51] like Saul Kripke way that also has been kind

[00:21:56] of detrimental or at least you might think if

[00:21:59] you are inclined in a certain way like me.

[00:22:02] When I read the Stoics and when I read Plato

[00:22:05] and even when I read Aristotle who's not a

[00:22:07] good writer, really dry and somewhat technical,

[00:22:10] I can grasp on to the importance of it

[00:22:14] and a lot of the students can too.

[00:22:18] And I think that that's a really valuable

[00:22:23] thing and even as much shit as we give

[00:22:28] the Mary problem or at least that is

[00:22:33] something that you can talk about and debate

[00:22:38] over drinks to some degree and joke about

[00:22:41] and understand.

[00:22:43] And it seems like this has sprouted to

[00:22:45] some next level obscurity and it's like

[00:22:50] willful obscurity.

[00:22:51] You keep coming up with these new positions,

[00:22:54] these new sub-positions, e-categoricalism,

[00:22:57] non-orientable typology, orientable typology.

[00:23:02] You can't be an e-categorist and have a

[00:23:05] non-orientable and to be a relationalist

[00:23:07] and all this stuff and it's just...

[00:23:09] Yeah, I don't know if somebody wants

[00:23:13] to defend why this is a problem feel free

[00:23:16] to do those.

[00:23:17] Absolutely, tell us. Tell us why this is

[00:23:19] something that anybody should care about

[00:23:21] if they're not directly steeped in this literature.

[00:23:26] I don't even want to know whether anyone

[00:23:28] should care about it.

[00:23:29] I want to know what exactly is being said.

[00:23:31] I just have zero idea about what the claim is.

[00:23:35] So maybe we disagree a little bit.

[00:23:39] I'm not convinced that this isn't the

[00:23:42] clearest exposition of whatever this

[00:23:46] position and argument is.

[00:23:49] I don't know if there's a clearer way of presenting

[00:23:52] what the argument that the person is making.

[00:23:56] He doesn't seem like he's a terrible writer.

[00:24:00] It just seems like it's the debate itself

[00:24:03] that's out of control, not this particular

[00:24:05] contribution to it.

[00:24:06] But do you understand what the debate is?

[00:24:09] No.

[00:24:10] So that's what I'm saying.

[00:24:11] Maybe my claim is more charitable

[00:24:14] that I think that there might be something

[00:24:17] like an obscure problem that is of interest

[00:24:22] to people who care about these sorts of things.

[00:24:24] There, I just can't tell what it is.

[00:24:27] Because I feel like I would have much more

[00:24:29] confidence if I understood what the claim was

[00:24:32] and then said, but this is a stupid claim.

[00:24:35] Right.

[00:24:36] And I don't even know what it would be

[00:24:39] for to have a spatial topology

[00:24:41] that's not non-orientable like a mobius strip.

[00:24:44] And a Klein bottle.

[00:24:45] So the Klein bottle analogy doesn't do it for you?

[00:24:49] I was just offended that he said non-orientable

[00:24:51] when it's non-Asian American now.

[00:24:53] It's not.

[00:24:54] Entable.

[00:24:56] Let's do our guilty confessions very quickly.

[00:24:59] Mine's not very long.

[00:25:00] All right.

[00:25:01] Do you want me to go first?

[00:25:03] What do you want?

[00:25:04] I will do, here's my little musical interlude

[00:25:06] to guilty confessions.

[00:25:16] Guilty.

[00:25:17] Guilty.

[00:25:18] Guilty.

[00:25:19] All right.

[00:25:20] Here's my guilty confession.

[00:25:21] I was struggling because I realized that I actually

[00:25:23] view myself as such a good person that it's hard

[00:25:25] for me to generate examples of doing anything wrong.

[00:25:28] But I finally thought of one today.

[00:25:31] I have, on more than one occasion actually,

[00:25:35] received and accepted gifts that I knew were stolen.

[00:25:44] Yeah.

[00:25:45] In one case, I'll give this specific example of one case.

[00:25:48] I became mild friends with somebody who worked at

[00:25:50] Barnes & Noble while I was in grad school.

[00:25:53] And this is actually when the translation of

[00:25:57] Borges that I use, the fictions,

[00:26:00] when that had just come out in hardcover.

[00:26:04] And I really wanted it.

[00:26:05] But I was kind of a poor grad student at the time.

[00:26:08] But nonetheless, I was like, no,

[00:26:10] I really want to buy this.

[00:26:12] And I had a sort of, you know, just,

[00:26:14] I just stomached it.

[00:26:15] I was like, I'm going to pay the money for this book.

[00:26:17] The guy who I knew, like really just from being

[00:26:20] at that Barnes & Noble a few times and talking to him,

[00:26:23] when I got to the cash register,

[00:26:25] I had that and I had a couple of magazines,

[00:26:27] probably The Source, the hip-hop magazine that I used to read.

[00:26:30] He puts it in a bag and says, you're all set.

[00:26:32] Yeah.

[00:26:33] And I was like, what?

[00:26:36] Like it took me a second to realize what was going on.

[00:26:38] And he was stealing on, you know, he was stealing for me.

[00:26:42] But it was obviously still stealing like an employee.

[00:26:46] It's not an employee discount.

[00:26:47] It's not free.

[00:26:48] And I took it.

[00:26:49] How is this different than all the movies you've downloaded

[00:26:53] for free and all the music?

[00:26:56] Because digital things can be copied

[00:27:00] in an unlimited number of times.

[00:27:03] Yeah.

[00:27:04] And so something about that.

[00:27:07] Something about that.

[00:27:08] Yeah, something about there.

[00:27:10] The principle is I steal something and it's still there.

[00:27:14] I suppose to a book.

[00:27:16] Oh, I see.

[00:27:17] Right.

[00:27:18] You prevented somebody from...

[00:27:20] Yeah, exactly.

[00:27:21] I see.

[00:27:22] All right.

[00:27:23] Did you come with a real one like I did?

[00:27:24] I did.

[00:27:25] This is going to be hard to confess,

[00:27:29] but you played the music, so I guess I have to do it.

[00:27:33] I watched the movie as good as it gets.

[00:27:37] So this was a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.

[00:27:41] So that could be my guilty confession right there,

[00:27:44] just that I saw it.

[00:27:46] And I saw it by myself.

[00:27:49] And it's not like I was on a date or I lost a bet

[00:27:52] or anything like that.

[00:27:53] When you say you saw it,

[00:27:54] you're using a passive verb in a very weird way.

[00:27:58] You watched it.

[00:28:00] You chose.

[00:28:01] It was seen.

[00:28:03] It was watched.

[00:28:05] No, actually, so it was...

[00:28:08] I was coming back from Dartmouth to Boston.

[00:28:13] There was a conference, a moral psych conference in Dartmouth.

[00:28:17] And that was where I interviewed John Haidt

[00:28:19] for the original Very Bad Wizard book.

[00:28:22] And I was coming back because my friends got Red Sox tickets.

[00:28:26] As good as it gets was on the bus.

[00:28:29] And I was hungover and I watched it.

[00:28:32] And I watched it on purpose, like voluntarily.

[00:28:35] I didn't lose a bet.

[00:28:37] I wasn't forced to.

[00:28:39] And at the end of the movie, they're on some bridge.

[00:28:43] I cried like a baby.

[00:28:47] Like I was weeping.

[00:28:49] And I was hiding my tears from the people on the bus

[00:28:52] because it was so embarrassing.

[00:28:54] So I was literally like tears.

[00:28:57] My face is just wet with tears.

[00:29:00] I think this is partly because I was so hungover and under slept.

[00:29:03] But I was just...

[00:29:05] And you know, and this was as good as it gets.

[00:29:08] Like Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson meeting on a bridge

[00:29:12] and probably kissing or something.

[00:29:15] It's Helen Hunt.

[00:29:17] Well no, but Diane Keaton is the one that he ends up with, I think.

[00:29:22] Oh, spoiler.

[00:29:24] I think he starts out with Helen Hunt or maybe not.

[00:29:27] Maybe he ends up with Helen Hunt.

[00:29:29] I don't know.

[00:29:30] I blocked a lot of this out.

[00:29:32] Yeah, no, Diane Keaton is not in the movie according to IMDB.

[00:29:37] She is in the movie.

[00:29:39] You saying she's not in the movie at all?

[00:29:42] I think you're wrong about that.

[00:29:44] I'm looking through the IMDB.

[00:29:46] Holy shit.

[00:29:49] Was it as good as it gets?

[00:29:52] So maybe it wasn't as good as it gets.

[00:29:55] No, it was something like this.

[00:29:57] So it was...

[00:30:00] Was it something's gotta give?

[00:30:03] I don't know.

[00:30:04] This has now become the most boring, guilty confession segment we've done.

[00:30:08] Yeah, it was sorry.

[00:30:09] It was something's gotta give.

[00:30:10] That's what it is.

[00:30:12] Can't even come with a...

[00:30:13] Even your fake stories suck.

[00:30:15] Yeah, so something's gotta give, I think.

[00:30:18] Possibly as good as it gets,

[00:30:20] but it's likely something's gotta give.

[00:30:23] We'll be right back.

[00:31:20] We can get three months of Audible for just $6.95 a month.

[00:31:24] That's more than half off the regular price.

[00:31:26] Great deal.

[00:31:27] It is a great deal, actually.

[00:31:29] Give yourself the gift of listening.

[00:31:31] And while you're at it, think about giving the gift of Audible to someone on your list.

[00:31:34] For more, go to audible.com slash verybadwizards

[00:31:38] or text verybadwizards to 500-500.

[00:31:42] That's audible.com slash verybadwizards.

[00:31:45] I love Audible Tamler.

[00:31:47] Tell me a book that you have picked.

[00:31:49] My recommendation is a book that I am almost done with right now.

[00:31:55] Not on Audible, but I think it would be a perfect audiobook.

[00:31:59] And I looked it up and it's there and it's available

[00:32:02] and it looks like it has a great narrator and great reviews.

[00:32:06] It is All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

[00:32:10] It is a book I read over Thanksgiving almost entirely.

[00:32:14] I still have like 40 more pages to go.

[00:32:17] And I've just been swept up in it and I love it.

[00:32:21] And I think you go on a road trip.

[00:32:24] You're going to your family's house for the holidays

[00:32:28] or you're just driving to work.

[00:32:30] It's a perfect audiobook.

[00:32:33] It'll put you in a trance.

[00:32:35] You might drive off the road, but as long as you don't do that, you'll be happy.

[00:32:41] I have a pick.

[00:32:43] I love the author Neil Stevenson.

[00:32:46] He's just a fucking smart guy who is, I guess, works in speculative fiction.

[00:32:52] He wrote a book called Snow Crash a long time ago,

[00:32:55] which was super influential as a cyberpunk book.

[00:32:58] But the one I'm going to recommend is called Cryptonomicon.

[00:33:01] And it's just a well, well done book that covers the sort of the history of World War II

[00:33:10] and ideas in cryptography all like sort of wrapped together in a plot.

[00:33:16] And it's long as hell.

[00:33:19] It is the audiobook itself is 42 hours and 53 minutes.

[00:33:25] So you can, you could drive across the country a couple of times

[00:33:30] and still not be done with it.

[00:33:32] But it's a great book.

[00:33:35] He is one of my favorite authors I recommend it.

[00:33:39] Any other recommendations?

[00:33:41] Yeah.

[00:33:43] My number two pick is Tamler Summers, Why Honor Matters.

[00:33:50] I haven't listened to the audiobook.

[00:33:52] I'm an audible member and I think that I have credits where I could download it.

[00:33:57] So I have to just decide whether or not it's worth it.

[00:33:59] It's definitely worth the narrate by you.

[00:34:01] And actually I definitely am going to download it because I need to get your rap verses put a beat.

[00:34:06] So again right now limited time three months of Audible for 6.95 a month

[00:34:11] more than half off the regular, more than half off the regular price

[00:34:15] go to audible.com slash very bad wizards or text very bad wizards to 500-500 to get started.

[00:34:33] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:35:48] At this time we like to take a moment to thank all of our listeners for the way they interact with us.

[00:35:56] All the emails that we get people tweeting us, people posting about our episodes on Reddit

[00:36:05] and on Facebook and Instagram when that is posted regularly and at the proper times.

[00:36:18] So yeah we'd like to thank all of you.

[00:36:21] It's kind of amazing.

[00:36:23] People think social media is such a cesspool and it can be, but it really just almost all of the time isn't with the community that we've built.

[00:36:36] People have sent us great ideas, great criticisms and sometimes they even agree with us and thank us.

[00:36:45] And we really appreciate that.

[00:36:47] You can email us verybadwizardsatgmail.com, tweet us at tamler at peas or at verybadwizards like us on Facebook.

[00:36:58] Go to our Reddit, our subreddit which is very Bad Wizards one word and follow us on Instagram.

[00:37:08] And you can support us in more tangible ways by going to our support page verybadwizards.com.

[00:37:17] You can give us a one-time donation on PayPal.

[00:37:21] You can click on the Amazon link and then do your normal shopping.

[00:37:26] If you could get in the habit of doing that, that would be awesome.

[00:37:29] Especially now around the time of the holidays and the time of maybe buying books next semester.

[00:37:37] If you're a student, that would be great.

[00:37:39] Big purchases, we'll get a small cut of that.

[00:37:42] Small purchases will also get a small cut of that.

[00:37:45] It all adds up and we appreciate that.

[00:37:47] And finally, you can become one of our Patreon patrons.

[00:37:52] We love our Patreon patrons now that the semester is winding down.

[00:37:56] We're going to have some free time.

[00:37:57] We're going to do our Sorry to Bother You bonus segment fairly soon.

[00:38:02] I think also within the next few weeks, I'm going to be recording with Jesse and Natalia.

[00:38:09] A follow-up Twin Peaks bonus spot.

[00:38:12] And we're going to do our listener selected episode.

[00:38:16] I think it's right around the time that we should do that.

[00:38:20] And that's worked out great both times that we've done that.

[00:38:23] Have we done it twice?

[00:38:24] Yeah, I think we've done it twice.

[00:38:26] Yeah.

[00:38:27] No, two or two more.

[00:38:29] We did the intelligence and we did...

[00:38:33] Yeah, twice.

[00:38:34] Yeah, what was it? Personality psychology.

[00:38:37] That's right.

[00:38:38] So have we done it twice?

[00:38:40] And by the way, I feel like we've done it one other time.

[00:38:42] Yeah, maybe we're good at forgetting what we've done.

[00:38:46] If there's any interest, somebody posted on Reddit that they'd love to hear us do an AMA.

[00:38:50] So if there is any interest in that, let us know or go on to Reddit and tell us.

[00:38:56] Yeah, we can either do it on Reddit or we can do it for our Patreon.

[00:39:00] Patrons.

[00:39:01] Yeah.

[00:39:02] So a lot of...

[00:39:04] So look out for that and thank you so much.

[00:39:08] We really appreciate it.

[00:39:10] Full of gratitude.

[00:39:11] Thank you.

[00:39:12] All right.

[00:39:15] They like us.

[00:39:16] They really like us.

[00:39:18] That's your Sally Field.

[00:39:20] Exactly.

[00:39:21] They like me.

[00:39:24] Okay.

[00:39:25] Did you cry at the end of Officer and a Gentleman?

[00:39:28] Is that what...

[00:39:29] I don't remember what she won for.

[00:39:32] That was her Oscar acceptance speech.

[00:39:34] Yeah.

[00:39:35] Yeah, but I don't remember what she was winning for.

[00:39:37] And I never saw Officer and a Gentleman.

[00:39:39] And we have won no prizes to be clear.

[00:39:43] Yeah, when is somebody going to give us a podcast prize?

[00:39:47] Yeah.

[00:39:48] You know, Daily News, Justin Weinberg, your boy,

[00:39:51] he posts about hi-fi nation and congrats to hi-fi nation for

[00:39:56] getting, you know, to be part of Slate's whatever network.

[00:40:00] Congrats to him, to Barry Lamb.

[00:40:02] But it was like finally we have a breakthrough philosophy podcast.

[00:40:06] It was like, wait what?

[00:40:07] Hello.

[00:40:08] We're here.

[00:40:09] And then he gives us download numbers which are impressive,

[00:40:12] but let's just say not quite or anywhere near as impressive as our download numbers.

[00:40:17] Like, who do we have to blow to like be considered a breakthrough philosophy podcast?

[00:40:23] I feel like we're too old.

[00:40:26] If we were going to be a breakthrough podcast, it would have happened by now.

[00:40:31] So fuck Pride, Tamler.

[00:40:33] Fuck Pride.

[00:40:34] Yeah, but like it just seems like the playing field is not level for what is

[00:40:39] considered a breakthrough podcast.

[00:40:41] Hi-fi nation is so well produced.

[00:40:45] Do you really think we have a shot at breaking through?

[00:40:49] They don't have awesome beats.

[00:40:51] I wasn't even, I wasn't at all being sarcastic.

[00:40:54] He deserves that.

[00:40:55] I don't know that we'd be a good fit.

[00:40:57] I think that we could have 10 million.

[00:40:59] I'm not saying we should be on Slate's network.

[00:41:00] I'm saying that Justin fucking Weinberg should call,

[00:41:03] should not say that that's the first, like to the extent that he's a

[00:41:07] breakthrough philosophy podcast.

[00:41:09] We are a breakthrough philosophy podcast.

[00:41:12] We're a psychology and philosophy, Tamler.

[00:41:14] This is the true offense to this conversation.

[00:41:17] I feel like you just completely forget that moral psychology is what we're doing here.

[00:41:23] But that's, wait, but you care more about philosophy.

[00:41:26] I actually, you know who really defended is the partial examined life.

[00:41:33] Like let's be honest.

[00:41:35] That's right.

[00:41:36] They broke through before we did.

[00:41:39] We would never say that.

[00:41:41] Yeah.

[00:41:42] Speaking of saltiness.

[00:41:43] You know what?

[00:41:44] I'm taking lighter side.

[00:41:45] I love their beef, the Brian lighter Justin Weinberg beef.

[00:41:49] What's their beef?

[00:41:50] I don't know about it.

[00:41:51] Yeah, they're the two sort of rival philosophy blogs and lighter.

[00:41:55] More than why Justin Weinberg doesn't take as many shots at

[00:42:00] lighter, but later takes a lot of shots, including calling him

[00:42:04] Weinberg, W H I N E and calling it the philosophy safe space blog.

[00:42:11] And something like that.

[00:42:14] Yeah.

[00:42:15] It's fun.

[00:42:17] I feel like we need to start, but it could end in tragedy.

[00:42:19] I could see it ending in tragedy.

[00:42:21] This we have, we not learned anything from the two of us.

[00:42:25] Have we not learned people?

[00:42:28] All right.

[00:42:29] Are we going to talk replication?

[00:42:32] Booty, booty, fart, fart.

[00:42:34] Booty, booty, fart, fart.

[00:42:36] I mean, first of all, I don't know how he got that username.

[00:42:40] I tried and it was like booty, booty, fart, fart 431 was the only one I could get.

[00:42:46] So props.

[00:42:48] Yeah, props to the real booty, booty, fart.

[00:42:54] So he said that he starts out, we still love you though, Dave.

[00:42:58] A large scale replication project finds that Dave, Dave's and colleagues.

[00:43:04] I like that.

[00:43:05] Isn't Yoel the lead author on that?

[00:43:07] Yeah.

[00:43:08] Fuck you Yoel, fuck you Paul, fuck you Josh Knob.

[00:43:10] It's me and my friends.

[00:43:12] Yeah.

[00:43:13] It's like Diana Ross and the Supremes.

[00:43:17] You're retinue.

[00:43:19] Most cited, one of their most cited findings, association between disgust, sensitivity

[00:43:26] and homophobia is not real.

[00:43:28] We still love you though, Dave.

[00:43:30] Seriously though, the methods that dominated the field just 10 years ago

[00:43:34] put even the most rigorous social scientists at risk of false positives.

[00:43:39] It seems to be implying that you're one of the most rigorous social scientists.

[00:43:45] Well, evidence.

[00:43:48] Though Dave's conscientiousness percentile does raise some red flags.

[00:43:54] I don't know what that is.

[00:43:55] I think it means that I care so much about being, no, I care so little.

[00:44:01] I'm very low on conscientiousness.

[00:44:03] Anyway, a lot of the failed replications in the project didn't surprise me much,

[00:44:08] the priming studies for instance, but this one hit kind of hard.

[00:44:14] I would have put a lot of faith in this association and I mentioned it.

[00:44:17] A fair amount in my social psych classes.

[00:44:20] Oh, Booty Booty Fart Fart is a professor I guess, or grad student.

[00:44:26] So the link to the paper there, he grudgingly recognizes,

[00:44:31] YOL in bar as the lead author.

[00:44:34] Then he also edits and he says...

[00:44:37] Basically he says that it could be that it failed to replicate now

[00:44:43] because the homophobia that was present in whatever year we published this

[00:44:51] was...

[00:44:52] Yeah, and now it's gone down quite a bit, which there is evidence for.

[00:44:56] But the fact that they examined it across a large number of cultures may undermine that a bit.

[00:45:04] So you want to read your response?

[00:45:06] I read it over Thanksgiving break and I thought it was great.

[00:45:13] I thought this is how people should respond to these kinds of things happening

[00:45:18] as they are going to continue to happen.

[00:45:21] Yeah, so I wrote...

[00:45:23] I'm super happy that they did this.

[00:45:24] Kathleen Schmidt spearheaded this replication attempt,

[00:45:27] props to her and YOL and I shared our materials to get things going.

[00:45:30] This is a much more robust test of the hypothesis we tested in the original paper,

[00:45:33] which was using the NOBA effect as a sort of implicit measure.

[00:45:36] We flipped the traditional finding that...

[00:45:38] Well, it's not important.

[00:45:39] The many labs project did not attempt to replicate the second study we reported

[00:45:42] using the IAT as an implicit measure finding a similar effect of disgust sensitivity

[00:45:46] on implicit anti-gay attitudes.

[00:45:48] But resources are limited and that first study was likely underpowered

[00:45:51] and more surprising so they chose well.

[00:45:53] Let me just quickly describe...

[00:45:55] Before I go on, let me quickly describe the finding because it's...

[00:45:57] I think that it's, as I said, I think it's a good idea even if it was wrong.

[00:46:02] The NOBA effect is the finding that side effects that are negative

[00:46:06] are seen as more intentional than side effects that are positive.

[00:46:09] So if in the classic example, if there is a CEO of a company

[00:46:15] who's manufacturing a product and it has a side effect of harming the environment

[00:46:21] and the CEO says, I don't care about harming the environment,

[00:46:23] let's make the product anyway.

[00:46:25] People say that he intentionally harmed the environment.

[00:46:29] But when you compare that to a side effect that is positive,

[00:46:34] say the side effect is that it helps the environment.

[00:46:36] The CEO says, I don't care if it helps the environment,

[00:46:39] I just want to make a profit, let's manufacture the product.

[00:46:41] People view that as non-intentional.

[00:46:44] So there's this asymmetry in what people consider intentional.

[00:46:48] There's been a whole bunch of work on why this finding is the case.

[00:46:55] And what we did, and I think this was Paul's suggestion,

[00:46:57] but I thought it was great, was use intentionality ratings

[00:47:01] to see if they could track something that's morally wrong

[00:47:06] that people might not be willing to admit.

[00:47:08] So the idea was if you describe a music video director

[00:47:11] who makes a music video that encourages gay men to kiss in public

[00:47:16] and he says, I don't care about that,

[00:47:18] I just want to make a good music video.

[00:47:20] And we say did the director intentionally promote gay kissing in public?

[00:47:25] And what we found was that people who were higher in disgust sensitivity

[00:47:30] tended to view this as more intentional in act compared to a music video.

[00:47:35] Which was inferred then.

[00:47:37] Exactly, so we flipped it to use the intentionality rating

[00:47:41] as a way of maybe tapping into an implicit view

[00:47:45] that homosexuality or specifically gay kissing in public would be wrong.

[00:47:51] This pattern was not present if you just said

[00:47:54] that it was a straight couple kissing in public.

[00:47:59] So it's not that they're just anti-PDA.

[00:48:04] That's right.

[00:48:05] So I do something very annoying by talking in questions.

[00:48:09] Was the many labs replication a fair test of the hypothesis?

[00:48:11] I think yes.

[00:48:12] They used our materials and ran the exact same studies as far as I know.

[00:48:15] As far as I remember, is the truth that there is no effect?

[00:48:18] I can't see how I could possibly conclude otherwise in good faith.

[00:48:21] As the original post states, the one thing I might think a possibility is the public attitudes,

[00:48:26] especially of the sort of people taking an online test, have actually shifted.

[00:48:30] There's evidence for this from longitudinal data on the gay straight IAT,

[00:48:34] which Side Note basically shows that over time,

[00:48:36] people's implicit attitudes towards gays are getting less negative.

[00:48:41] So now the IAT is a good measure?

[00:48:45] Well, whatever it's tracking, it's tracking that.

[00:48:47] Who knows what it's tracking.

[00:48:49] It's a different world now that was in the early 2000s when we ran this test.

[00:48:52] So it's not out of the question if that's the case, then awesome.

[00:48:55] But the truth is we now have a much better set of standard practices,

[00:48:57] and I wish I could go back in time and run a few hundred rather than only 44 participants,

[00:49:02] which is shameful.

[00:49:03] Only then could I know with any confidence.

[00:49:06] There's probably data by countries that I haven't seen that might address this issue.

[00:49:10] And it seems that in their data,

[00:49:11] discuss sensitivity simply predicted intentionality judgment,

[00:49:13] something that might be interesting.

[00:49:15] But Joel and I and Josh and Paul want to know true things,

[00:49:18] not simply protect our findings.

[00:49:19] We've been waiting for a few years to find out these results,

[00:49:21] and here they are.

[00:49:22] I'll never understand the reaction of some scientists to respond to results

[00:49:25] that undermine their findings with defensiveness.

[00:49:27] I mean, I will kind of understand it, but we'll talk about that.

[00:49:30] Yeah, this is what I wanted to talk about this.

[00:49:33] Yeah, sure.

[00:49:34] The idea was good and interesting in my opinion,

[00:49:36] but it turns out likely not right.

[00:49:37] So hopefully this gets out there and some young student isn't puzzled

[00:49:40] why they can't find what we found.

[00:49:42] Then I have a little side note, but I end in short,

[00:49:45] glad they did this and the information we're getting is getting us closer

[00:49:48] to knowing what is true about how these judgments work.

[00:49:50] How could a scientist not welcome such a thing?

[00:49:53] This is where the reply says,

[00:49:54] second reason to be glad they did this in response to you.

[00:49:58] Tamler begins his next interest segment.

[00:50:00] Dave, how does it feel?

[00:50:02] The reason that I read this and proposed this,

[00:50:06] pitched this to you as an idea is there's something about it

[00:50:10] that seems kind of obviously the way you would want to respond.

[00:50:16] If there was any kind of good faith attempt on the part of psychologists

[00:50:23] to find out the truth about psychology, the things that they study.

[00:50:30] And yet it seems so rare that people do react this way.

[00:50:35] They react defensively.

[00:50:38] There's the famous Susan Fisk methodological terrorists memo.

[00:50:45] There's a lot of hostility and there's a lot of bad blood

[00:50:49] that this stuff has generated.

[00:50:53] So obviously there are professional reasons for this

[00:50:57] that aren't that mysterious,

[00:50:59] but what I was curious about is to what extent

[00:51:04] this is so different from other fields where say,

[00:51:12] somebody comes at like Frank Jackson for example

[00:51:14] has renounced the Mary color scientist argument for dualism

[00:51:20] and did not react with the kind of defense.

[00:51:25] He's like okay, yeah he just gave it up.

[00:51:27] That's a good argument.

[00:51:30] I didn't know that he had abandoned it.

[00:51:32] Yeah he has I think.

[00:51:34] I'm pretty sure.

[00:51:36] And that happens in philosophy.

[00:51:40] Or at least there's a difference in the way people react

[00:51:44] to somebody coming up with a similar sort of case

[00:51:50] that the person used in philosophy say like the kind of intuitive case

[00:51:56] to prove, to generate intuitions about their argument

[00:52:00] and then someone else comes up and undermines that principle,

[00:52:04] whatever principle they thought they established

[00:52:06] with a different kind of case.

[00:52:08] And that's just like considered part of the game

[00:52:10] and it's considered like all something that we're all doing

[00:52:14] in an attempt to search for the truth.

[00:52:16] And you know sometimes the truth is about a pseudo problem

[00:52:20] that never should have been debated to begin with

[00:52:22] but set that aside there's not this level,

[00:52:26] I don't know it seems different

[00:52:28] but that social psychologists are react to this stuff

[00:52:32] as if it's an attack on their professional integrity

[00:52:36] rather than just an attack on a result that they supported.

[00:52:40] Right, yeah I've actually thought a lot about this difference

[00:52:46] because I mean it's not as if there isn't professional beef in philosophy right?

[00:52:50] There are people who hate each other.

[00:52:52] You know I'd say probably Dennett and Cyril is an example of people

[00:52:56] who have been here and have carried their beef for years.

[00:53:00] But in general I've always been sort of impressed by the way

[00:53:06] ever since I started getting to know philosophy and philosophers

[00:53:10] thanks in large part to Josh Knob actually.

[00:53:12] I was always impressed with the way they would handle criticism

[00:53:16] so you know oftentimes in a philosophy talk

[00:53:18] where there's when there's question and answer

[00:53:20] somebody raises an objection and people will say

[00:53:22] oh yeah that's a good objection I have to think about that

[00:53:26] and they'll even take notes and they'll add that comment to their paper

[00:53:30] and they'll thank somebody for pointing it out.

[00:53:32] So there are a few things going on that I think makes

[00:53:35] social psychology and maybe psychology in general different.

[00:53:38] One is that maybe you don't even have the language to say it

[00:53:43] but there is epistemically it's less clear

[00:53:49] what somebody failing to replicate your work means.

[00:53:54] And in this case I actually think that because our study,

[00:53:58] original study was underpowered and there's methodology,

[00:54:01] methodological and statistical concerns

[00:54:03] that I trust the many labs finding more than my own finding

[00:54:07] but it really is a little weird if you run a study

[00:54:11] that's say robust and somebody else does the same thing

[00:54:14] and doesn't find it.

[00:54:16] It's very hard unlike say a counter example

[00:54:20] it's super hard to know what's going on

[00:54:23] and that buffer of epistemological insecurity

[00:54:29] I think can lead you to defend

[00:54:33] because it actually might be true that you're not wrong.

[00:54:39] And so that's one thing but the second thing is

[00:54:43] that I think often if you attack a psychologist's work

[00:54:48] and try to show that their findings aren't right

[00:54:51] what it means is often years and years of work

[00:54:56] and grant money and a lot of effort put into this

[00:55:03] and I don't know that it would be that different

[00:55:09] than if you hinged your philosophical career

[00:55:11] on a particular idea.

[00:55:12] On the categoricalism.

[00:55:14] On the categoricalism.

[00:55:15] All of a sudden this punk at NYU, John Simon.

[00:55:20] Who is he?

[00:55:23] Benny Blanco from the Bronx.

[00:55:26] Methodological terrorist.

[00:55:27] Yeah so you know it's sometimes I think

[00:55:32] more might be at stake.

[00:55:34] You have the careers of your students

[00:55:36] you have the grant money.

[00:55:38] So you're saying like you have your silly little positions

[00:55:42] and so if somebody refutes it it's not a big deal for you.

[00:55:45] No we actually have like grant money and like this is.

[00:55:49] I mean I think it is a big deal

[00:55:51] but what's controlled for is that in both cases

[00:55:53] your intellect might be harmed

[00:55:57] but only in the case of psychology

[00:56:00] might it be the case.

[00:56:01] It's not true for me in this case

[00:56:03] but it might be the case that you have had

[00:56:06] careers built on this finding.

[00:56:09] I mean this is happened with the ego depletion stuff

[00:56:13] and the stereotype threat stuff.

[00:56:15] You take that down and you're taking down

[00:56:17] a whole bunch of people who have built a career on this.

[00:56:20] Staked yeah.

[00:56:22] Yeah.

[00:56:23] And all research program on that stuff.

[00:56:26] Right and so maybe that's why they carry it.

[00:56:29] In truth my career has never felt

[00:56:31] that my career is so built on any given finding

[00:56:35] that taking them down.

[00:56:37] And I don't have the $100,000 well not anymore NSF grants

[00:56:43] where I'm chugging away at this particular theory

[00:56:47] and trying to prove it.

[00:56:48] Here's another disanalogy or difference.

[00:56:52] There are cases of fraud in social psychology

[00:56:56] like the Stemple maybe the Staple.

[00:57:00] Staple.

[00:57:01] Staple.

[00:57:02] Why don't we just name it Stemple.

[00:57:04] Staple and then also who's the guy at Harvard Mark Hauser.

[00:57:08] Yeah.

[00:57:09] So there is that possibility.

[00:57:13] Now of course that's not the case here

[00:57:17] but the fact that that's even a put like there's no

[00:57:20] there's no way you could fraudulently do a counter

[00:57:23] like a thought experiment right like there's no

[00:57:28] there's no fraud there.

[00:57:29] That's right my guess but there's no

[00:57:31] there's no even conceivable way you could do

[00:57:35] fraud you could give fraudulent like intuitive.

[00:57:38] That's right.

[00:57:39] I mean actually I mean actually you know it's

[00:57:43] so it's always lingering in the claim that you didn't

[00:57:46] that your study doesn't replicate it might be a

[00:57:48] lingering doubt in somebody's mind and it

[00:57:52] and you might be wary that that might be a

[00:57:55] lingering doubt in someone's mind and be worried

[00:57:58] about your reputation because you think it might

[00:58:00] it might carry with it the implication that you

[00:58:03] that you were dishonest.

[00:58:06] So that's true but I kind of feel like

[00:58:12] like I actually didn't even think that somebody

[00:58:16] might think that about this.

[00:58:18] Well because if you were going to fabricate

[00:58:21] data you would have had more than like 44 people

[00:58:24] in your study.

[00:58:25] Exactly and it would have been about something

[00:58:28] more interesting.

[00:58:29] No it's an interesting result like I mean the

[00:58:32] thing about this result I think this is why

[00:58:34] the guy posted it right if it's a guy booty

[00:58:37] booty fart fart is that it's you know like oh

[00:58:45] yeah that's that seems right but also cool

[00:58:49] right yeah people hire and discuss sensitivity

[00:58:52] would also find homosexuality to be immoral

[00:58:55] just because of the visceral ickiness they feel

[00:58:58] seeing two guys kissing.

[00:59:01] Yeah and really like what's what is failed

[00:59:06] to replicate is that in using intentionality

[00:59:08] as a measure of this because there's plenty

[00:59:10] of evidence that being hired and discuss sensitivity

[00:59:12] actually is related to attitudes toward

[00:59:14] things like gay marriage like that is

[00:59:16] actually super robust.

[00:59:18] Oh so it's just the no effect as mediator.

[00:59:22] Exactly exactly you know nowadays we have

[00:59:27] data across across the world in different

[00:59:30] languages that discuss sensitivities

[00:59:32] associated with political conservatism and

[00:59:34] in many cases just in general so the

[00:59:38] aspect of conservatism that has to do with

[00:59:40] traditional views on things like sexuality

[00:59:43] so that that's it's just the use of the

[00:59:45] intentionality measure as arguably maybe

[00:59:51] was not the best way to measure it.

[00:59:54] Exactly I mean I I think it was clever

[00:59:58] and it sounded right and there are all

[01:00:00] kinds of reasons why it might not be I

[01:00:02] mean it might be you know I don't even

[01:00:04] think Josh no believes that the

[01:00:06] intentionality effect is about moral

[01:00:08] beliefs anymore so has the no effect

[01:00:12] on the way it's being used as a

[01:00:14] way to measure it.

[01:00:16] Yeah I mean it's pretty well

[01:00:17] replicated pretty well.

[01:00:18] Yeah it's pretty robust.

[01:00:20] Yeah it's robust I mean people tend

[01:00:22] to use the same example over and over

[01:00:24] again so it's hard to know whether

[01:00:26] you know an example.

[01:00:28] Yeah yeah I mean I'm sure people have

[01:00:30] tried other ways but it is in it's

[01:00:32] a pretty intuitive effect I think

[01:00:34] what's up for debate has usually been

[01:00:36] like what's going on with it like why

[01:00:38] are you getting it I think actually

[01:00:40] like he's dropped off the face of the

[01:00:42] earth I haven't seen him have you seen

[01:00:44] him recently.

[01:00:45] I have I saw him I gave a talk at Yale

[01:00:47] not too long ago and I did see him.

[01:00:49] Is he alright?

[01:00:50] Is he doing okay?

[01:00:51] He seemed fine he says

[01:00:53] Timmer how could you say that?

[01:00:55] We need to have Vlad on again.

[01:00:58] Do you really want Vlad on?

[01:01:00] Shout out to Vlad.

[01:01:02] Our SJ friend of the Cpl.

[01:01:05] Exactly so I think that those like

[01:01:09] they're real differences between

[01:01:11] the culture also just the culture of

[01:01:13] philosophy encouraging disagreement.

[01:01:16] I worry about this in psychology where

[01:01:18] we tend to in social psychology

[01:01:22] especially we tend to raise as

[01:01:23] graduate students people who are

[01:01:25] bit snowflake snowflakey who

[01:01:28] take it really it's so it's less

[01:01:30] common in social psychology that you

[01:01:32] would challenge somebody directly in a

[01:01:34] talk you would find some roundabout

[01:01:37] way of criticizing them you're like are

[01:01:39] you sure this had enough?

[01:01:41] Well you would have alternate

[01:01:42] explanations that you do.

[01:01:44] Yeah we definitely do yeah

[01:01:47] but I've sat in talks where I just

[01:01:50] don't believe the finding and I would

[01:01:52] never say I like I would never say

[01:01:54] I don't believe if I raise my hand

[01:01:56] and be like this is bullshit.

[01:01:58] I was just at a talk I was just

[01:02:00] at a talk with somebody this was a

[01:02:01] behavior like an economic seminar

[01:02:03] and somebody was giving a talk

[01:02:05] and a person raised their hand

[01:02:08] this older professor and he's like

[01:02:10] do you really think this would

[01:02:11] replicate? And I was like

[01:02:13] why would he be presenting it if he didn't think?

[01:02:16] What do you think because on the one

[01:02:18] hand you have you raise snowflakes

[01:02:20] but on the other hand there does seem

[01:02:22] to be this group of somewhat

[01:02:25] combative I don't know if you call

[01:02:28] them outsiders because they a lot of

[01:02:30] them have good jobs that are really

[01:02:33] emphasizing replication and really

[01:02:36] interreforming you know the anti

[01:02:39] Susan Fisks. Yeah yeah there's a good

[01:02:42] group of these you know good

[01:02:44] researchers who have pushed for this.

[01:02:48] But they're pretty combative is my point

[01:02:50] they're not and there's a lot of so I

[01:02:54] was scanning around on the internet

[01:02:58] and there's some blog where they do

[01:03:02] audits of psychologists and

[01:03:06] actually they did one of Susan Fisk and

[01:03:08] she did pretty well in her audits.

[01:03:13] Yeah like she had like 59% of her studies

[01:03:17] seemed robust and held up whereas

[01:03:20] like a bowmeister had 20%

[01:03:23] poor. Yeah yeah no he's really bummed

[01:03:28] about it. He got depletion stuff.

[01:03:31] Yeah. Mick Yinsliked on Two Psychologists

[01:03:34] for beers our rival podcast was talking

[01:03:37] about seeing him recently at a conference

[01:03:39] and how bummed he was. It's sad I mean

[01:03:42] it's sad when you built your career

[01:03:45] on something and it seems to be falling

[01:03:48] falling apart. What extent is that his

[01:03:50] fault or to what extent is that just

[01:03:52] the fault of where the methods were

[01:03:54] at the time? It's really hard to

[01:03:58] know because when I look back at the

[01:04:01] standards that we used to use in

[01:04:03] social psychology it's embarrassing. So

[01:04:05] there is a point at which I would you

[01:04:08] know you would hope that you would

[01:04:11] start really realizing that what you're

[01:04:13] doing is shoddy and after that

[01:04:18] point it would be culpable ignorance

[01:04:20] but having been at a time where we

[01:04:24] were encouraged I mean we had a very

[01:04:26] small subject pool at Yale and we

[01:04:28] were encouraged to just use 12 people

[01:04:30] per cell. That was enough like you

[01:04:33] know 24 people for two conditions

[01:04:36] and that's just embarrassing not

[01:04:38] embarrassingly not enough and it was

[01:04:40] well known that that's embarrassingly

[01:04:42] not enough like by many people there's

[01:04:44] plenty of people who talked about the

[01:04:46] problems with this kind of methodology

[01:04:48] before I went to grad school and I

[01:04:50] just wasn't taught that. But to answer

[01:04:53] your question about the... So it's

[01:04:55] exactly...

[01:04:57] about the cantankerous ones I think that

[01:05:01] it required a bit of the cantankerous

[01:05:04] personality to make this movement get

[01:05:07] off the ground and I was just having

[01:05:09] dinner with Brian Nosik who I went to

[01:05:13] grad school with good friend and he's

[01:05:16] now the head of the open science

[01:05:17] foundation and a lot of this

[01:05:20] movement of replication and open

[01:05:22] sciences come from his good work and

[01:05:25] we were talking about the

[01:05:27] crazy shit that we were trained to

[01:05:30] believe. And so there's a layer

[01:05:33] like a metaphorical sort of layer

[01:05:37] of generational divide let's say where

[01:05:42] there are the people I think of my

[01:05:45] generation who we had to bite the

[01:05:47] bullet and say you know a lot of this

[01:05:49] stuff that we did was just wrong and

[01:05:52] there are people in our generation and

[01:05:54] above ours who are really resistant to

[01:05:56] this they just don't they just won't

[01:05:59] accept that that there is value in

[01:06:01] things like pre-registration and

[01:06:03] replication. And then there are just

[01:06:06] people just like graduate students now

[01:06:09] it's obvious to them it's like

[01:06:11] incredible I was we were talking about

[01:06:13] how just within the span of two three

[01:06:15] years even you know I even feel like

[01:06:17] one from one year to the next new

[01:06:19] incoming grad students were really

[01:06:21] serious about being methodologically

[01:06:23] robust and I think it's a credit to

[01:06:25] the ideas themselves if they weren't

[01:06:27] if they weren't right people it wouldn't

[01:06:30] have such a strong uptake in

[01:06:33] graduate students so I think we're

[01:06:35] going the way of the dodo with our

[01:06:37] like old methods. So I mean what's

[01:06:39] interesting about this is and to

[01:06:42] bring it to tie it back to parallels

[01:06:45] with other fields but how often

[01:06:53] like so you say the stuff that you used

[01:06:56] to do it should have been obvious to you

[01:07:00] and that it was fundamentally flawed.

[01:07:03] I mean should is a strong word because

[01:07:05] I Jen yeah in retrospect it's like

[01:07:09] right should but but that's the point

[01:07:11] like when you're in it it doesn't seem

[01:07:14] obvious right it seems yeah like you

[01:07:17] guys are just doing what you're supposed

[01:07:19] to be doing you're not and how many

[01:07:23] things are like that now so to tie it

[01:07:27] back to fall out like maybe a lot of

[01:07:30] philosophy is like that in a lot of

[01:07:32] the philosophical debates like it should

[01:07:34] have been obvious that this was not

[01:07:36] a worthwhile debate or it should have

[01:07:40] been obvious that you know for me

[01:07:43] like I've totally changed my mind about

[01:07:45] so much in philosophy since I went to

[01:07:49] since I was a grad student and published

[01:07:51] my dissertation published my first work

[01:07:53] like I just completely changed my mind

[01:07:56] about Strossen completely changed my

[01:07:58] mind about you know I was a skeptic a

[01:08:01] lot of the things that seemed obvious

[01:08:03] to me then just seem obviously wrong

[01:08:06] to me now and there's gotta be stuff

[01:08:09] like that right now right but is there

[01:08:11] is there is there is there an equivalent

[01:08:13] that the field has changed its mind about

[01:08:16] not like the method like yeah no there

[01:08:23] hasn't been this methodological well I

[01:08:28] don't know awakening yeah like there to

[01:08:31] be like I think that one day this will

[01:08:34] happen where people start to question

[01:08:36] conceptual analysis and the the

[01:08:40] you know the use of cases and thought

[01:08:42] experiments encounter I think one day

[01:08:45] there will be I think I don't know but

[01:08:48] I think that that will be something that

[01:08:50] people wake from like it was a bad dream

[01:08:54] I mean you know what I can think of is

[01:08:56] the the use of the the the dream of

[01:08:59] once being able to use formal logic

[01:09:02] you know to to test the truth of

[01:09:06] statements in in you know the sort of

[01:09:09] Bertrand Russell yeah but that was a

[01:09:12] dream that was very limited to you know

[01:09:15] it's a small group of philosophers yeah

[01:09:18] maybe but it but but it seemed yeah

[01:09:21] yeah I'm not yeah I don't have a good

[01:09:24] understanding of the scope of it but it

[01:09:25] was a very sharp divide between before

[01:09:27] and after that right we're no but

[01:09:30] nobody know logical then the logical

[01:09:32] positivists come in and then I mean

[01:09:35] there have been a lot of philosophy

[01:09:37] of science kind of overhauls but yeah

[01:09:42] no I don't think we have in the

[01:09:44] contemporary period and I think you know

[01:09:48] we should in a long time ago when we

[01:09:50] were talking to Valerie Tiberius we

[01:09:52] talked about this and I talked about

[01:09:54] this also in my interview with her that

[01:09:56] maybe there was some movement a

[01:09:59] gradual reform building towards

[01:10:02] focusing philosophy less on epic

[01:10:06] apicyclic engineering and more on you

[01:10:10] know stuff that's actually mattered but

[01:10:12] right so you asked you asked before like

[01:10:17] in psychology how much of what we're

[01:10:19] doing now will we then abandon yes and I

[01:10:22] think that that I'm you know and I

[01:10:26] sort of asked this of Brian Nosek last

[01:10:28] night I was like yeah you know how to

[01:10:29] what extent are you an optimist or a

[01:10:31] pessimist about the future of this

[01:10:33] stuff I think the the only way that

[01:10:35] we can plug away at the only way that

[01:10:37] we can actually figure out what's

[01:10:39] what's wrong is for people to keep

[01:10:42] doing this stuff and I think that I'm

[01:10:45] an optimist about the fact that

[01:10:47] that progress has been made and I

[01:10:49] actually am am am somewhat bullish

[01:10:53] about the role of social psychology

[01:10:55] is played I know that it's taken a

[01:10:57] hit and you know like the hit

[01:11:00] really just means that the Malcolm

[01:11:03] the Gladwellian style of finding

[01:11:06] sexy findings and and putting out a

[01:11:09] press release that's what's taken a hit

[01:11:11] social psychology lends itself really

[01:11:13] beautifully to the reform of

[01:11:17] scientific practices because it's

[01:11:19] really low hanging fruit to try to

[01:11:21] replicate a study like the one I did

[01:11:22] you can get you can get on the

[01:11:24] internet posts posts some of these

[01:11:27] materials and find out within hours

[01:11:29] you know what the results were

[01:11:31] and and I think that's why so many of

[01:11:34] our findings have sort of just fallen

[01:11:36] like dominoes the truth is this

[01:11:39] problem is just deep in a whole lot of

[01:11:42] branches of science and we should

[01:11:45] have Paul to talk about this because

[01:11:47] I think that cognitive development

[01:11:49] developmental psychology that's a

[01:11:51] field that's going to start seeing a

[01:11:52] lot of hits the problem is it's

[01:11:54] very hard to replicate studies with

[01:11:55] babies but they for a long time were

[01:11:57] running studies with you know these

[01:11:59] very very small samples and nine

[01:12:03] babies yeah and just doing like the

[01:12:06] vision methodologically a little bit

[01:12:08] a little bit fishy statistically a

[01:12:10] little bit fishy and it's just

[01:12:13] harder same thing with you know Mark

[01:12:16] Hauser it was hard for people to find

[01:12:17] out that he was committing fraud

[01:12:18] because nobody's going to you know

[01:12:20] go study that thing that he was

[01:12:22] studying on non-human primates

[01:12:24] because it takes a lot of work in

[01:12:26] social psychology you know much of

[01:12:29] it doesn't take a lot of work you know

[01:12:30] it's scary like think of how often

[01:12:32] this must happen in medicine and you

[01:12:35] just can't get like there's no way to

[01:12:37] replicate a cancer drug results

[01:12:40] and it's becoming very clear that

[01:12:42] you know we've talked about Ionitis

[01:12:44] is paper most research findings are

[01:12:47] published that are published are

[01:12:48] false I think it's super clear that

[01:12:52] a lot of that shit is just not

[01:12:55] going to be true and that has real

[01:12:57] like the implications for people like

[01:12:59] no nobody's going to die because my

[01:13:01] intentionality finding didn't work but

[01:13:03] people are dying because of shoddy

[01:13:05] practices and so so good good for us

[01:13:08] for being at the head there is I think

[01:13:10] there it's no coincidence that the

[01:13:12] head of the head of open science is a

[01:13:14] social psychologist and and so I'm

[01:13:17] I don't mind taking the hit let us

[01:13:19] make us go back into our office and

[01:13:21] get less grant money and get less

[01:13:23] like I'm all for it we don't need we

[01:13:25] don't need to die for sciences sins

[01:13:27] we we are willing to spread our arms

[01:13:31] and you rise again slow down but you

[01:13:37] know I think the crises like this are

[01:13:39] assigned that field has the ability

[01:13:41] to make progress and if you don't have

[01:13:44] a crisis like this in philosophy then

[01:13:46] I don't think there's any progress to

[01:13:47] be made yeah well I'm not holding my

[01:13:50] breath like you are but I will say that

[01:13:52] I don't know we've talked about this I

[01:13:54] would refer people to our which

[01:13:58] discipline is more fucked psychology or

[01:14:01] philosophy but we talked about this

[01:14:03] but I do sometimes wonder about social

[01:14:05] psychology whether the problem is

[01:14:07] deeper than you weren't using enough

[01:14:10] subjects or you weren't your p-values

[01:14:12] were too low or too high or whatever

[01:14:15] like that that there's something

[01:14:18] fundamentally mistaken about trying to

[01:14:21] approach the topics you approach using

[01:14:25] this kind of controlled studies

[01:14:27] methodology and thinking that lab results

[01:14:31] generalize to real life in the way that

[01:14:35] sometimes you typically do but that's

[01:14:37] harder to that's that's a different

[01:14:40] kind of problem that's not one that

[01:14:43] will that you can expose by running

[01:14:46] those same kinds of studies because once

[01:14:50] that gets shorn up there'll still be that

[01:14:53] question yeah and there's like it's not

[01:14:57] the time right now to talk about this

[01:14:59] but there is I have a lot of thoughts

[01:15:01] about some of the more fundamental

[01:15:03] problems in trying trying to capture

[01:15:06] something as complex as human behavior

[01:15:08] in in the basic experimental paradigm

[01:15:11] I also I also had really think that

[01:15:15] the way in which psychologists make

[01:15:19] inferences about the mind based on this

[01:15:23] method is often mistaken so so we're

[01:15:27] very bad so many people have asked us

[01:15:29] to talk about falsification is a man I

[01:15:31] don't want to I don't want to talk

[01:15:33] about that but really the case is that

[01:15:35] that I think we're we're making

[01:15:38] inferences wrong about what labs that

[01:15:40] he's show even if they're showing a

[01:15:42] different kind of behavior than what we

[01:15:45] what it says about the human mind in

[01:15:47] general and and so I think their flaws

[01:15:50] there and I actually think that by the

[01:15:52] time we get to a robust science of

[01:15:55] behavior it's going to require people

[01:15:57] who are a lot smarter than me and

[01:15:59] modeling of of variables that is much

[01:16:02] more complex than what we're doing

[01:16:04] now and we can get there but I think

[01:16:07] the next generation of behavioral

[01:16:09] scientists going to have to come

[01:16:11] physics and engineering like real

[01:16:16] scientists exactly well engineers aren't

[01:16:19] real scientists but but yeah but they

[01:16:23] build bridges that work and I don't know

[01:16:24] how many bridges bridges we've built

[01:16:26] that work in a metaphorical sense

[01:16:29] alright well on that note we'll be

[01:16:32] right back with me and my stepmother

[01:16:36] probably making way less sense why

[01:16:40] can't you be that drunk when you talk to me

[01:16:44] I was I was trying a couple of bourbons

[01:16:48] very sobering that's shit got real

[01:16:54] today's episode is also brought to you

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[01:17:10] all want to do good that's why that's

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[01:18:24] interested I just tend to trust them

[01:18:27] because they know a lot more about this

[01:18:29] than I do and this is the time of year

[01:18:31] where a lot of people are grading Peter

[01:18:33] Singer papers number one objection is

[01:18:35] these charities are all corrupt these

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[01:18:39] people and give well org makes that

[01:18:43] objection no longer viable so you're

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[01:18:49] find some other way to object to Peter

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[01:18:58] goes a long way to helping people I

[01:19:01] just want to say I love the nerds

[01:19:03] that give well I think that they're

[01:19:05] doing the Lord's work if you are so

[01:19:07] motivated to tell me came from very bad

[01:19:09] wizards but I care less about that than

[01:19:11] you go and use some of that holiday

[01:19:13] money and give to people who really

[01:19:15] needed that's all I care about so

[01:19:17] definitely mention that welcome back

[01:19:20] to very bad wizards this is our

[01:19:22] annual special Thanksgiving episode

[01:19:25] where I welcome my stepmother

[01:19:29] Christina Hoff summers and thanks to

[01:19:32] the sex panic we talked about last year

[01:19:34] or the fabricated sex panic

[01:19:37] was it was it fabricated what are we

[01:19:40] talking about here it's a post

[01:19:42] Thanksgiving chat between us a step

[01:19:45] mother and her son why are we talking

[01:19:47] about a sex panic because have positive

[01:19:50] top that's why we're here affirmative

[01:19:52] topics okay oh really

[01:19:55] normally you lecture me about like

[01:19:58] what's going on about caught on college

[01:20:00] like how that you can't say anything

[01:20:02] anymore if you use one micro aggression

[01:20:04] you'll be banned from colleges for life

[01:20:07] yes but no I'm going to talk to you

[01:20:10] about in an affirmative way another

[01:20:13] podcast that's rather like very bad

[01:20:16] wizards but I think they deal with my

[01:20:18] topics more responsibly and I don't

[01:20:21] I'm I hope I'm not not being disloyal

[01:20:23] can I name them I won't name them I'm

[01:20:25] not gonna say to psychologist for

[01:20:28] beers oh are you thought I thought

[01:20:31] they made a lot of sense and they

[01:20:33] talked about the sex panic and

[01:20:36] no they talked about the campus follies

[01:20:39] and they address the underlying issues

[01:20:43] it's about intersectionality and

[01:20:46] white privilege this is like what

[01:20:48] people say about Sean Hannity I

[01:20:50] think he makes a lot of sense actually

[01:20:52] I kind of speaks to me but you

[01:20:55] just like them because they will

[01:20:58] they were and they're but no they

[01:21:01] did and they'll hand her to the IDW

[01:21:05] crowd at great I they so what they

[01:21:09] did was they talked about for example

[01:21:12] microaggressions now I know if I bring

[01:21:14] up examples of people being ridiculously

[01:21:17] persecuted for you know a mere lapse

[01:21:20] of not even a lapse for saying

[01:21:23] something completely reasonable you'll

[01:21:25] just say that's just one example in my

[01:21:27] students at the University of Houston

[01:21:29] never do that and then you just dismiss

[01:21:31] it so I'm not going to bring up an

[01:21:33] example I want to talk about the ideas

[01:21:35] behind the all of these all of the

[01:21:38] cisteria on campus and just to see

[01:21:40] where we agree and disagree because

[01:21:42] it's possible that we have a more

[01:21:45] you know only a superficial disagreement

[01:21:47] so what do you think for example of

[01:21:49] the idea of someone saying arguing

[01:21:52] from identity that you really can't

[01:21:55] speak and or even understand wait

[01:21:58] identity politics yeah but I want the

[01:22:01] concept of identity just want to make

[01:22:03] sure our Sam Harris listeners they

[01:22:05] do you think that it's sort of like

[01:22:09] standpoint epistemology that you have

[01:22:12] a unique point of view as a

[01:22:14] marginalized person and that someone

[01:22:17] a white male cannot understand your

[01:22:20] experience and really shouldn't be

[01:22:22] speaking about it but I mean that's true

[01:22:24] to some degree right like I can't

[01:22:26] understand what it's like to be a black

[01:22:28] man you understand what it's like to be

[01:22:30] me but can you understand what it's

[01:22:32] like to be swimming in all that IDW

[01:22:34] money I mean it must be awesome where

[01:22:37] is the money in the IDW I haven't

[01:22:39] found it where's the money show me

[01:22:43] the money no you know first of all it's

[01:22:47] things that people just haven't thought

[01:22:49] these ideas through and what I liked

[01:22:51] about you L and Michael is that they

[01:22:54] took the time to question these ideas

[01:22:57] that that someone because they're from

[01:22:59] a group what does that imply that

[01:23:01] everybody from the group has the same

[01:23:03] experience that and that other people

[01:23:05] can't compassionately identify and now

[01:23:08] these ideas are taken so seriously that

[01:23:10] they hesitate to take roles in movies

[01:23:12] like Scarlett Johansson was driven out

[01:23:15] of a film because it was thought that

[01:23:17] she really couldn't understand the

[01:23:19] identity of a trans person so she

[01:23:22] was pushed out of this movie and it

[01:23:24] could only go to a trend so increasingly

[01:23:26] people are faulting you if you write

[01:23:28] about another person because you can't

[01:23:30] identify and understand them do you

[01:23:32] agree with that okay so standpoint

[01:23:34] epistemology I have probably

[01:23:38] way more sympathy with then you would

[01:23:41] feel comfortable with I actually think

[01:23:43] that there's a lot to that so you think

[01:23:47] there's such a thing as the woman

[01:23:49] standpoint I not the woman state

[01:23:52] standpoint I just think there is it is

[01:23:54] very name one I think it's very hard

[01:23:57] I don't think it's necessarily per

[01:23:59] gender or per like I agree that

[01:24:02] that's a problem it's a huge problem

[01:24:05] problem for as I said for understanding

[01:24:07] anyone and do you know what it's like to

[01:24:09] be anyone else I mean no right but I

[01:24:12] mean I I think that it's all a spectrum

[01:24:15] I mean God we're having kind of a serious

[01:24:17] conversation I given how drunk we are

[01:24:19] but I think that it really is

[01:24:23] difficult to think of what it would

[01:24:26] be like to be a black person or a

[01:24:29] real somebody who's grown up in

[01:24:31] poverty and has had very little

[01:24:34] education and only reaches you know

[01:24:37] eighth grade education it's very hard

[01:24:41] to understand how they see the world I

[01:24:43] will agree with you that I think that

[01:24:45] for some reason gender and race

[01:24:49] and I guess lately trans identity

[01:24:53] issues seems to be getting a privileged

[01:24:56] position well over things like class

[01:24:59] and things like just coming from a

[01:25:02] different kind of background with

[01:25:04] different kinds of parents but I think

[01:25:08] the problem they're identifying is real

[01:25:10] but I think what they they pick and

[01:25:13] choose who gets to have the privileged

[01:25:15] standpoint and who doesn't and that's

[01:25:18] the problem if you take women or you

[01:25:20] take trans people you take African

[01:25:22] Americans they don't all the people

[01:25:25] in those groups don't all agree so

[01:25:27] as you said there's some that have

[01:25:29] taken it upon themselves to speak for

[01:25:31] everyone and say well you have to take

[01:25:33] my standpoint seriously well why them

[01:25:35] and then it's just not true that people

[01:25:38] can't imagine themselves in the

[01:25:41] position of someone else we do what is

[01:25:43] literature for what are films for and

[01:25:46] I don't see that race and gender or

[01:25:49] class or any category is insurmountable

[01:25:53] people who are say speaking on

[01:25:55] trans issues or speaking on race issues

[01:25:58] it's not like they've seen the best

[01:26:00] films that will trigger the empathy

[01:26:03] for that particular group not necessarily

[01:26:06] so but I want to separate a couple of

[01:26:08] issues right I agree that somebody from

[01:26:12] within those groups shouldn't claim to

[01:26:14] speak for everybody because they have

[01:26:16] diverse opinions so I agree with that

[01:26:18] well that's a big concession because

[01:26:20] it's not a concession like I never would

[01:26:22] think otherwise like that's I've

[01:26:24] always thought that I think it I think

[01:26:26] that's do you think that a white

[01:26:28] author can write about an Asian or

[01:26:32] no that's not what I'm saying I'm

[01:26:34] saying that one black man can't speak

[01:26:37] for all black men and one woman can't

[01:26:42] speak for all women one lesbian

[01:26:45] can't speak for all lesbian but no it's

[01:26:47] I don't think it's a matter for all what

[01:26:49] I will disagree with with you so I

[01:26:51] agree with that and when they claim

[01:26:52] to speak for everybody and they say

[01:26:54] that you can't you can't know what

[01:26:56] it's like from my perspective that's

[01:26:59] true but they also that doesn't mean

[01:27:02] that they have the right opinion about

[01:27:05] it that there might be other people

[01:27:08] from that same perspective that

[01:27:10] disagree with them exactly so that's

[01:27:12] fine but that still doesn't mean that

[01:27:14] I can get what it's like to be them

[01:27:17] but I think there's a so you're

[01:27:18] saying they can't necessarily get

[01:27:20] each other and you know they can

[01:27:22] get each other they might just come

[01:27:24] from different they just might have

[01:27:26] different opinions about the same

[01:27:28] experience and I just don't have that

[01:27:31] experience and so my opinion I this is

[01:27:33] where I think standpoint epistemology

[01:27:35] is right my experience just is not

[01:27:39] it's not as informed I just don't see

[01:27:43] how you can deny what with which

[01:27:45] person who who what person can you

[01:27:47] mention that your experience is

[01:27:49] sufficiently informed that you know

[01:27:51] what it's like to be them well no like

[01:27:54] not sufficiently like people who are

[01:27:57] like my people from my family my friends

[01:28:00] my like I mean I've known you all your

[01:28:02] life and you're a mystery to me how

[01:28:04] you turned out the way you are I don't

[01:28:06] know what it's like to be you right but

[01:28:09] here's where let me turn this around

[01:28:11] because I think you guys are very

[01:28:14] inconsistent about this so who's you

[01:28:16] guys you by the way my group do

[01:28:19] not take guys when there's a woman so

[01:28:21] so here's where you're not consistent

[01:28:23] so I was not denigrating the

[01:28:29] journal of controversial ideas but

[01:28:33] saying how people should like stand

[01:28:35] behind your research if you think it's

[01:28:37] good research put your names on it

[01:28:39] don't just like claim to be scared of

[01:28:42] some like ooh the big boogie man of

[01:28:44] political correctness okay let me stop

[01:28:46] boogie boogie person sorry boogie and

[01:28:51] so then I get criticism from a certain

[01:28:54] segment of your people who say I think

[01:28:58] it's very disingenuous when someone who

[01:29:00] has no controversial ideas claims to

[01:29:04] speak for how people who do have

[01:29:08] controversial ideas should act now as

[01:29:11] I understand that my point of view I

[01:29:14] don't have controversial ideas but I

[01:29:16] can sympathize with those who do my

[01:29:18] point is that this guy is telling me

[01:29:20] that it's disingenuous for me to even

[01:29:23] have an opinion about how controversial

[01:29:25] people with controversial ideas should

[01:29:28] behave because I don't have some guy

[01:29:31] has a bad argument you throw out the

[01:29:33] whole thing I have better arguments

[01:29:35] okay let's engage with those so but

[01:29:37] right just because somebody on Twitter

[01:29:40] says something you're right you're

[01:29:42] absolutely right about that you're

[01:29:44] absolutely right to call me out about

[01:29:46] that but I think that's how a lot of

[01:29:48] this stuff gets generated there was

[01:29:50] some person on Twitter who said and

[01:29:52] then you feel bad I'm sorry that you

[01:29:54] feel bad but let's move on to the

[01:29:56] fact that the thing about the

[01:29:58] Journal of controversial ideas it

[01:30:00] isn't really about the authors it's

[01:30:02] about the ideas and it doesn't

[01:30:04] matter I mean there are people that

[01:30:06] are may feel that they would end up

[01:30:08] with you know people protesting

[01:30:10] and they just don't want it but they

[01:30:12] may feel that there are certain

[01:30:14] discussions let's say let's say not

[01:30:16] that we're going to discuss it because I

[01:30:18] don't want you to lose your job but

[01:30:20] let's say for example debates around

[01:30:22] trans identity and how

[01:30:24] you know what should be the rules

[01:30:26] about pronouns that can get you in a

[01:30:28] lot of trouble and so not really

[01:30:30] though not actually it

[01:30:32] can't like they like if you make

[01:30:34] a huge deal like Jordan Peterson

[01:30:36] or something about how you're not

[01:30:38] going to just make an announcement but

[01:30:40] if you just talk like you've always

[01:30:42] talked your whole life it actually

[01:30:44] nothing happens to you

[01:30:46] what do you mean are

[01:30:48] you kidding me I mean yeah no

[01:30:50] no like this is the thing

[01:30:52] here's the thing that I don't understand

[01:30:54] I have a lot of people telling me that

[01:30:56] I don't understand what goes on on

[01:30:58] college campuses I don't

[01:31:00] go and tell lawyers

[01:31:02] like oh you don't understand what goes on

[01:31:04] in law firms like no you

[01:31:06] know what no stop you have no idea

[01:31:08] what's going on in law firms these days

[01:31:10] like I don't go to some

[01:31:12] like app like guy that works at

[01:31:14] Applebee's and say

[01:31:16] trust me no you think you know what's going

[01:31:18] on at Applebee's around the country but

[01:31:20] you have no idea yeah I don't

[01:31:22] like people keep telling me that I don't

[01:31:24] know what's going on at college campuses

[01:31:26] when I've been like non-stop

[01:31:28] working at college campuses

[01:31:30] for since 2004

[01:31:32] 2003

[01:31:34] okay so let me ask you a question this was

[01:31:36] at UCLA

[01:31:38] it got in the news but it was also at Santa Cruz

[01:31:40] UCSD Berkeley have you heard of those

[01:31:42] schools I've heard

[01:31:44] of you've heard of them

[01:31:46] like two of them and it's also

[01:31:48] University of Pennsylvania

[01:31:50] Vanderbilt definitely heard of

[01:31:52] University of Pennsylvania so

[01:31:54] it recently came out that

[01:31:56] at UCM got that David

[01:31:58] faculty

[01:32:00] at these these UC

[01:32:02] campuses have to sign a written

[01:32:04] pledge anybody who wants

[01:32:06] promotion or anybody who wants to get a job

[01:32:08] a written pledge

[01:32:10] expressing their commitment to

[01:32:12] equity diversity and inclusion

[01:32:14] and they will be

[01:32:16] evaluated for

[01:32:18] tenure not just on teaching research

[01:32:20] service but also on

[01:32:22] I just wrote down the names of the schools

[01:32:24] Santa Barbara

[01:32:26] I mean sorry UCLA Santa Cruz UCSD

[01:32:28] Berkeley all job

[01:32:30] applicants and all professors up for

[01:32:32] promotion must submit

[01:32:34] a statement

[01:32:36] a declaration of

[01:32:38] allegiance to a Maoist

[01:32:40] no it's not Maoist

[01:32:42] it's just stupid now how do you feel about

[01:32:44] would you sign it? No

[01:32:46] are you serious? Maybe

[01:32:48] I

[01:32:50] was once that's how I got started

[01:32:52] being politically incorrect I was one years ago

[01:32:54] a dean sent around

[01:32:56] a forum asking us

[01:32:58] anytime you want to teach a new course

[01:33:00] she changed it

[01:33:02] and instead of just saying what you were going to

[01:33:04] read and you know

[01:33:06] what it was going to cover you had to say how it was going to

[01:33:08] incorporate the new scholarship on race

[01:33:10] class and gender and

[01:33:12] I found it intrusive

[01:33:14] wait hold on

[01:33:16] I said I wouldn't sign but what does it actually

[01:33:18] say? It says that

[01:33:20] if they're up for promotion they must submit statements

[01:33:22] a written pledge

[01:33:24] a testing to their commitment to equity diversity

[01:33:26] and inclusion

[01:33:28] I am committed to equity

[01:33:30] and diversity

[01:33:32] and inclusion

[01:33:34] I'm not committed to those things

[01:33:36] I don't like

[01:33:38] that I would have to sign a statement I think

[01:33:40] that's bad but

[01:33:42] I think that shouldn't be

[01:33:44] a policy but I am

[01:33:46] I do

[01:33:48] I do you think that professors should have to sign

[01:33:50] declarations? I don't

[01:33:52] I don't think they should absolutely

[01:33:54] okay so what about the fact that's going on at

[01:33:56] major universities and do you think

[01:33:58] if you were an assistant professor you were applying

[01:34:00] for a job don't you find it creepy

[01:34:02] that you'd have to sign

[01:34:04] this kind of loyalty oath to

[01:34:06] this set of values which

[01:34:08] actually as they go on to describe them

[01:34:10] it's a

[01:34:12] clearly

[01:34:14] did you have to say your

[01:34:16] you know what you have to sign a lot of shit

[01:34:18] a lot of bullshit not like this

[01:34:20] this violates

[01:34:22] let me again turn this around

[01:34:24] so

[01:34:26] you sent out a tweet

[01:34:28] so there I could apparently there was some guy

[01:34:30] in political science who was in

[01:34:32] an elevator and someone said

[01:34:34] what floor and he

[01:34:36] said lingerie lingerie

[01:34:38] lingerie please lingerie please

[01:34:40] an old joke it's an old like

[01:34:42] like a dad like an old

[01:34:44] dad joke and

[01:34:46] like you'd have to get like

[01:34:48] department stores and your dad

[01:34:50] was capable of that joke yeah

[01:34:52] like you'd have to get all of that

[01:34:54] and apparently some woman complained

[01:34:56] right a feminist sociologist

[01:34:58] feminist sociologist who else

[01:35:00] and so

[01:35:02] there was some to do about

[01:35:04] it and you tweet that he said

[01:35:06] that and then you write in all caps

[01:35:08] fatal mistake

[01:35:10] right how is it

[01:35:12] a fatal mistake now I could be wrong

[01:35:14] about this so this is I am putting

[01:35:16] myself out there right now I am

[01:35:18] throwing myself out on a limb

[01:35:20] and it's dangerous

[01:35:22] and intoxicating but

[01:35:26] here is my read of the situation

[01:35:28] thus far you say

[01:35:30] it was a fatal mistake

[01:35:32] for him to say that they demanded

[01:35:34] that he apologized

[01:35:36] he refused to apologize

[01:35:38] and it's fine no it's not

[01:35:40] now he's been

[01:35:42] it's been it's escalating he just

[01:35:44] wrote a piece it's escalating how is it

[01:35:46] escalating the lawyers you know sent

[01:35:48] four different things that he had to do

[01:35:50] and what they find especially troubling

[01:35:52] is that he sent her a letter

[01:35:54] saying come on it was just a joke

[01:35:56] I'm you know I didn't want you

[01:35:58] to be offended but you know

[01:36:00] it was still just a joke so he tried to justify himself

[01:36:02] that was revictimizing

[01:36:04] the survivor

[01:36:06] but what are the repercussions

[01:36:08] he could be thrown out of his

[01:36:10] professional association he could be

[01:36:12] but he's not going to be right

[01:36:14] it's now

[01:36:16] here Tamler it's now

[01:36:18] this big deal in his association

[01:36:20] at the international studies association

[01:36:22] and this is Richard Ned LeBau

[01:36:24] he's a professor of political theory

[01:36:26] at King's College in London

[01:36:28] he's an

[01:36:30] excellent scholar he has

[01:36:32] no history of any

[01:36:34] have you read his work?

[01:36:36] no

[01:36:38] well he's at King's College

[01:36:40] not one of these

[01:36:42] he's one

[01:36:44] he has received his association's

[01:36:46] distinguished scholar award

[01:36:48] and he's not

[01:36:50] you almost seem like you're reading from something

[01:36:52] well I have my

[01:36:54] iPad here and the professor is

[01:36:56] Simona Sharone

[01:36:58] professor of women's and gender studies

[01:37:00] at Merrimack College she was

[01:37:02] mortified by his remark she said

[01:37:04] I'm still you know trying to come

[01:37:06] to terms with the fact that we froze

[01:37:08] and that we didn't confront him

[01:37:10] because somebody said okay but never mind

[01:37:12] that let's get to the larger

[01:37:14] it's a big to do

[01:37:16] and now he's been

[01:37:18] and they're going to be like

[01:37:20] trials are they going to be no here's the thing

[01:37:22] here's my point

[01:37:24] this has always been my point

[01:37:26] and I'm so glad that he's standing up

[01:37:28] no that if you just

[01:37:30] do the thing that you did

[01:37:32] and then when people ask you

[01:37:34] to apologize you don't

[01:37:36] and then you leave

[01:37:38] it there that's it

[01:37:40] the story goes away it's over

[01:37:42] no he got a letter

[01:37:44] to the person that was like

[01:37:46] once don't write a letter to them

[01:37:48] he did it was the human thing to do

[01:37:50] he just wrote and thought that would be

[01:37:52] the end of it he wasn't just don't write a letter

[01:37:54] like you said something in an elevator

[01:37:56] you said an innocuous thing in an elevator

[01:37:58] you don't need to write a letter to somebody

[01:38:00] you just said it

[01:38:02] it was a joke they didn't

[01:38:04] get it or they got offended I see how

[01:38:06] your mind works and you're telling yourself

[01:38:08] a story that has nothing to do

[01:38:10] with the lived experience

[01:38:12] of people who get

[01:38:14] I can't understand I knew it

[01:38:16] I knew

[01:38:18] no just because you can't

[01:38:20] doesn't mean others can't it was never

[01:38:22] my claim that everybody understands

[01:38:24] everything it's just me it's kind of just

[01:38:26] you

[01:38:28] no and in his case

[01:38:30] he's

[01:38:32] now has this big outpour and the thing

[01:38:34] is what what upsets me isn't even the stupidity

[01:38:36] of his association

[01:38:38] and these these

[01:38:40] these people going along

[01:38:42] with this absurdity but just

[01:38:44] that this woman

[01:38:46] this professor and there's so many

[01:38:48] like her that are so

[01:38:50] willing to take offense and just

[01:38:52] you know trigger happy ready to just

[01:38:54] I mean it's absolutely absurd

[01:38:56] and

[01:38:58] but you give them power by even like

[01:39:00] making them out to be these

[01:39:02] like you if you just

[01:39:04] don't if you just don't engage

[01:39:06] it's fine you and you get a letter

[01:39:08] saying either you

[01:39:10] do this you apologize

[01:39:12] you swear you will never do this again

[01:39:14] or you will be

[01:39:16] taken out of the association that's what

[01:39:18] he got something like that now we'll see if they follow

[01:39:20] through maybe they won't worse comes

[01:39:22] to worse he can write a bestselling book

[01:39:24] or have an $80,000 a month

[01:39:26] YouTube channel he can have it because

[01:39:28] what happened to him is insane

[01:39:30] but it hasn't happened that's the thing

[01:39:32] it doesn't happen this woman

[01:39:34] overreacting and now men

[01:39:36] what men are going to

[01:39:38] want to work with women if women

[01:39:40] if we come up become typecast

[01:39:42] by women like this they were all just

[01:39:44] not typecast unless

[01:39:46] you guys make yourselves

[01:39:48] type you you sorry

[01:39:50] sorry sorry you women

[01:39:52] make yourself okay

[01:39:54] now no no women

[01:39:56] have re-traumatized I know

[01:39:58] that you women typecast yourselves

[01:40:00] like this by giving these things

[01:40:02] more press than they want

[01:40:04] so that tells me you're not aware of

[01:40:06] that this this material

[01:40:08] didn't come out of nowhere for 30

[01:40:10] years I've watched in in gender

[01:40:12] theory how it became more

[01:40:14] paranoid and more expansive

[01:40:16] and was never corrected

[01:40:18] because nobody ever wanted to go in and deal

[01:40:20] with these this gender

[01:40:22] studies professors carried away

[01:40:24] because it would be for years ago

[01:40:26] they would call you names didn't have consequences

[01:40:28] now they have more power and it has consequences

[01:40:30] and their scholarship

[01:40:32] if you question it that's a form

[01:40:34] of intellectual harassment this is

[01:40:36] this is the thing like so

[01:40:38] do you think that the microaggression

[01:40:40] but you know what I know

[01:40:42] that is going on as gender studies

[01:40:44] that it doesn't affect me

[01:40:46] it's but it's affecting all the rest

[01:40:48] of us because you are here the rest of us

[01:40:50] like it's like it's like

[01:40:52] more did it affect James

[01:40:54] more in Silicon Valley

[01:40:56] it did but again

[01:40:58] but I mean no he got fucked over

[01:41:00] I will agree that that

[01:41:02] poor

[01:41:04] gaspergery kid got fucked over

[01:41:06] it's it might even be worse

[01:41:08] at these Silicon Valley places

[01:41:10] oh then it is in universities

[01:41:12] now this is the thing so then focus

[01:41:14] on that stop telling me what's going on

[01:41:16] because you think it started in the universities

[01:41:18] I watched it develop

[01:41:20] it was corrupt

[01:41:22] and it was full of heirs

[01:41:24] and just

[01:41:26] rigid ideology dogmatism

[01:41:28] from the beginning but no one corrected

[01:41:30] it and now these ideas have

[01:41:32] come to power and you are right

[01:41:34] they are going to be more dangerous

[01:41:36] in the industry briefly

[01:41:38] maybe briefly they will

[01:41:40] what's gonna stop it people like you

[01:41:42] calling it out no you're an apologist

[01:41:44] just the fact that

[01:41:46] like 99% of people

[01:41:48] like are level

[01:41:50] headed about this stuff they think

[01:41:52] maybe a correction of some kind needs

[01:41:54] to be made and it will be made and it should

[01:41:56] be made but okay

[01:41:58] here's where you're wrong there are a lot

[01:42:00] of young people coming along and they have

[01:42:02] learned these theories they learn standpoint

[01:42:04] theory they learn microaggression

[01:42:06] theory and all

[01:42:08] you know that the United States is a

[01:42:10] heteropatriarchal

[01:42:12] cisgendered they

[01:42:14] they don't

[01:42:16] that's wrong they learn it in

[01:42:18] the smallest vanishingly

[01:42:20] tiny percentage of

[01:42:22] courses that does exist

[01:42:24] nobody is denying they

[01:42:26] exist you know what else exists

[01:42:28] creationists there are

[01:42:30] there are pooky ideas there are dangers

[01:42:32] there are people who still study like

[01:42:34] paranormal activity there's like

[01:42:36] you are comparing

[01:42:38] there are people who like

[01:42:40] you are comparing some

[01:42:42] I don't know some nut to the influence

[01:42:44] of intersectionality

[01:42:46] and race

[01:42:48] absolutely

[01:42:50] like I think that this is the weird

[01:42:52] thing about you and

[01:42:54] the you know everybody

[01:42:56] the Rubins and all of you

[01:42:58] IDW people you think

[01:43:00] that the intersectionality

[01:43:02] dogma has infected

[01:43:04] the whole like university

[01:43:06] campus how about Hollywood

[01:43:08] and the Hollywood system because

[01:43:10] of the sort of work I do people send me

[01:43:12] letters and tell me that in Hollywood

[01:43:14] now they are developing a system

[01:43:16] where you have remember you had ghost

[01:43:18] writers when people were accused of communism

[01:43:20] and couldn't run now you have

[01:43:22] they have to get women you cannot

[01:43:24] get a film made you have to have

[01:43:26] women you have to have and

[01:43:28] now it's getting more like women

[01:43:30] should be more represented

[01:43:32] in movie making and filmmaking

[01:43:34] like I didn't finish you have to

[01:43:36] check off all the boxes not just

[01:43:38] in the casting but in the

[01:43:40] right at every level of the movie it's getting

[01:43:42] more severe in Hollywood we are going to get

[01:43:44] more like what was that fish movie

[01:43:46] with this last year finding

[01:43:48] no the one that won the

[01:43:50] I think it won the Academy Award

[01:43:52] it was a oh no it didn't

[01:43:54] shape of water yeah

[01:43:56] yeah it is going to be a lot of that

[01:43:58] what not that there's like

[01:44:00] the fish like

[01:44:02] yeah like

[01:44:04] like fish people hybrid

[01:44:06] by the way I'll buy it and I don't mean

[01:44:08] this in any way on seriously

[01:44:10] but there is a guy in

[01:44:12] Holland that is suing

[01:44:14] for because he says that he

[01:44:16] identifies as a much younger man he's

[01:44:18] 68 he says he's feels

[01:44:20] 48 he's

[01:44:22] let's say he's

[01:44:24] age fluid

[01:44:26] and I think that I'm age fluid

[01:44:28] I think you're age fluid yeah so

[01:44:30] I now identify as a 42

[01:44:32] year old

[01:44:34] and if anybody

[01:44:36] dead ages me

[01:44:38] they can get in trouble I'm suing

[01:44:40] Wikipedia because they have my birthday

[01:44:42] in there as you should

[01:44:44] I totally am on board

[01:44:46] with that and but even if

[01:44:48] I wasn't I can't understand

[01:44:50] what it would be like to be a

[01:44:52] woman

[01:44:54] of your

[01:44:56] advantage for advanced

[01:44:58] state speaking of that

[01:45:00] let's bring my young looking brother

[01:45:02] that I get constantly reminded about

[01:45:04] how long young looking he

[01:45:06] is on to the podcast

[01:45:08] we're at the year anniversary

[01:45:10] of

[01:45:12] year anniversary of

[01:45:14] of you

[01:45:16] confessing to wishing

[01:45:18] to have been in the van

[01:45:20] it was just sex

[01:45:22] it was just sex

[01:45:24] so I'm glad you brought this up

[01:45:26] bad day like a z

[01:45:28] it wasn't like a z is because

[01:45:30] I was 14 or maybe

[01:45:32] 15 and

[01:45:34] I think your listeners have the right

[01:45:36] to know I didn't have sex until

[01:45:38] 20 so here's a question

[01:45:40] were you an incel

[01:45:42] were you like

[01:45:44] a proto incel

[01:45:46] I am currently an incel

[01:45:48] but back then I just think I had

[01:45:50] bad luck and I went to the Jewish day

[01:45:52] school

[01:45:54] alright we should wrap this up

[01:45:56] it went off in too many directions

[01:45:58] until next year where you're

[01:46:00] warming yourself to

[01:46:02] Trump's second term

[01:46:04] no way Jose