AS245: Objective Morality, Boltzmann Brains and More

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 245, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, First quick order of business before I get to some commentary. My website went down yet again last week, it was fantastic timing, right when Sean Carroll retweeted the episodes. So immense apologies to anyone who was unable to access the show during that time. Just a quick explanation, very quick, I had been forced by the web provider to add a caching plug-in to prevent using so much CPU time on the server, I did that, but it turned out that's what was interfering with the bonus feed, so if patrons were trying to access the bonus feed, it wasn't working because of that caching plugin.

0:01:20 Thomas: So, then I tried to disable it for that, and I disabled it for the regular feed as well, but then that made me hit my CPU time limit. Long story short, they took me down again. So, what this meant was, they keep up a login prompt on the site so that I can get in and fix stuff, but people kept seeing this when they tried to listen to episodes, it wasn't, so many people kept telling me, oh, it's, it, it's protected, it's trying to get me to log in, it's whatever, and they thought it was like I had made it so you had to sign up to get into my podcast or something, that's definitely not the case, it's not the, the case, it's never going to be the case. My site will never require authorization just to get to it. And my podcast will never acquire authorization just listen to it. So don't freak out if that happens.

0:02:07 Thomas: I shouldn't happen again. I'm really sorry for it. But If it ever happens to occur again, realize it's not because of that. It's just because the website is down. So, so terribly sorry for that. So everything is working now. The premium feed is working. If you need your premium feed details, if you're a patron and you don't have them, email me atheisticallyspeaking at gmail and I'll send them to you confidentially through that. Okay, all that done.

0:02:40 Thomas: Wow, Sean Carroll episodes, uh, so first, just a small observation that, to my mind, is pretty sad, and it may not be sad to anyone else, but it was sad to me, so the weird thing is... I finally get someone like Sean Carroll, who is immensely popular, got a ton of Twitter followers, he's a genius, he got answers to questions you and I, I'm sure, share. Questions about the universe, questions about everything, where we came from, you know, quantum physics, just all kinds of stuff, all kinds of knowledge. The most interested and the most I've looked forward to any interview ever, and my downloads went down. Not a ton, but a little bit, and it just is so weird to me that that could possibly be true.

0:03:29 Thomas: It's amazing. I don't know what else to say. There's nothing really to say about it. I'm sure, I don't know, I guess people really were interested in the social justice debate in my commentary on it, were more interested in that than listening to a scientist like Sean Carroll, who's the, to my, if I had to put money on it, if I did, I know this is stupid.

This is going to, I'm about to say a stupid thing, but really, if I had put my personal money on it and we somehow could know the answer to the question, I would say that Sean Carroll to my mind is the biggest genius of any public intellectual I know. Just my opinion, but it's based on the fact that he's able to so clearly handle concepts and answer conceptual questions and, Hold his own in philosophy, in so many different subjects, in some many different areas, able to hold his own, and this is not just based on the interview, this is based on things I've seen him in and all that, but anyway, to my mind, who may be the biggest genius that I've ever, that I could really even possibly talk to on this show, and that's just, it's so weird to me that fewer people are interested in that than in social justice talk, but hey, I gotta use that as data, just goes to show that maybe social justice and that movement and the debate and the divide is just so important to people, maybe I should focus more on that.

I mean, it seems to be, it's hard to argue that if I find who I think is the most interesting possible interview guest, that that's less popular than social justice commentary.

0:05:05 Thomas: I guess I just have to live with that. I don't know. It's really curious to me. So the next things I want to talk about are the two issues that I sort of disagreed with Sean Carroll on. I already said a lot about them, I understand, but I got so many comments about it, and I think it's worth talking about more. And I also, of course, got people asking to clarify my thoughts, because I am now, I think I can declare that my Boltzmann brain objection is officially dead. I think there's like .01% of me that thinks that maybe I'm still on to something, but no, I don't think so, though, I think. And here's why it's dead. It took someone to actually understand and address what I was saying. So here's the weird thing that happened. I had, I don't know how many people, not, not like an insane amount, but I have 10 at least, maybe more, try to answer my Boltzmann brain objection with stuff that just had nothing to do with it.

0:06:02 Thomas: And, and the reason I bring it up is because it, it, uh, it was sort of a sad realization about how reasoning can work sometimes. I think that as humans, we are prone, we need to be aware of and be careful of the fact that sometimes we already know the answer we want before we even know why. So I think a lot of people, here, someone has been, and again, I understand it, and maybe it was a well. Reasonable ish thing to do, to hear me and then to hear Sean Carroll, and then to hear him say what I was saying was wrong, and then think, well, surely Sean Carroll is right and Thomas is wrong, now that's a very, very reasonable thing to to say, I get it, but when you're trying to explain to me why I'm wrong, you do actually have to address the reasons behind it, otherwise it's, it's nothing, like if I had people just telling me, oh yeah, entropy, you'll get, you'll, you're, you're wrong.

0:06:57 Thomas: You're wrong for no reason. Oh yeah. Tomato's actually a fruit. So you'll figure out why you're right. You know, just random, just stuff, not literally that random, but stuff that was unrelated to the problem. Didn't address the problem, uh, restated the problem is just all kinds of things that didn't actually do it.

But one person, and there were a few people, I would say there were like two people, maybe three, if I'm forgetting someone out of all the commenters who actually even understood what I was saying, which I don't know why. Maybe I'm a bad communicator. It's either I'm bad communicators, or this kind of physics stuff could be above some people's heads.

I guess it's above mine since I was wrong about this, but I want to say that I at least had a clear picture of the question I was asking, and I knew what would answer the question I was asking, and it's someone by the name of John, his last name is not there. But a patron by the of John was the one who finally got me to realize what the problem was. It's still a little mind-blowing to think that a mind, just a disembodied mind, could possibly fluctuate with any sort of frequency.

It just seems so rare, but Jon pointed out that, you know, and again, some of this is restating things that Sean Carroll and others already said, it was just he did it in a way that specifically finally made me able to grasp it, so. So, Jon pointed out that for, because we're in, we're talking about a closed system, the universe, Boltzmann's universe would be a closed system.

0:08:31 Thomas: It's a law that entropy always increases except for these little fluctuations, but in general, it's always going to increase with time. So, what you could do is for any life creating, okay, let's take it to what I was saying, a replicating molecule in some sort of habitat that's suitable for life. Now, to my mind, I thought, well, that could possibly be more frequent than a fully formed mind because it seems like one is easier to do. It seems like a replicating molecule is easier. And even as I say it, it still seems like it. Oh, you just need a little molecule and a place, some way for it to survive. I mean, if we're going to decide that a disembodied mind can survive just in nothingness, then I think we could say a replicating molecule could.

0:09:20 Thomas: But the problem is, what John pointed out is, okay, let's imagine that replicating molecule or whatever that minimal Darwinian state, let us then imagine time going forward. Entropy has to increase, so it has to move toward increased entropy. And then wherever you end up in that Darwinian situation, that self replicating molecule situation, whatever, wherever you end up, it will always have been higher entropy than where you started. And therefore it will always have been more likely to just randomly fluctuate to that end product. Now, the thing I couldn't get my mind around was I thought I was visualing it, I think, the other way. I was thinking, OK, take entropy for a given sort of level of entropy. Let's say the minimum entropy to create some sort of mind is a certain level, and I can imagine that.

0:10:13 Thomas: That's dependent on minds. It's dependent upon what amount of variation from empty space you would need in order to have a thinking operating mind. So let's call that some sort of a level. I don't know, level two of entropy, whatever. I'm not a physicist, so I'm speaking in non-mathematical specific terms. But for whatever level that is, I was thinking of it backwards. I was thinking, well, of all the possible fluctuations that could happen at that sort of level of entropy, so if we could quantify it that way, a given level would have the same probability, like if we say entropy is some value, I don't know how they measure it, I dunno how you physicists measure entropy, but for some given level of entropy, every situation is equally probable, I think, if it's at a certain level of entropy, if I'm understanding that right.

0:11:01 Thomas: And anything lower entropy, it's kind of confusing because we're going in reverse. So, lower entropy fluctuations means more rare. So because the equilibrium state we're at is very, very high entropy. It's maximum entropy. That is just empty space with, you know, any molecules or atoms. There wouldn't be molecules, I guess. It would just be atoms are equally distributed around space or the universe. So I was thinking of it in terms of in any fluctuation that's of the level of entropy required for a mind, a vanishingly small number of those fluctuations would be an operating thinking mind, it would be a percentage I couldn't even fathom, because just imagine how much can go wrong, a single atom, a single neuron, I guess, that's not in the right place, and you would have a mind that doesn't work.

0:11:54 Thomas: Well, that may or may not be true, but you might be able to survive with a single neuron going wrong, but very little has to go wrong in order for a functioning mind to all of a sudden be incoherent, for the ideas to not be right, for the ability to think to not be right. Minds are so complex. So that was my thinking. I thought, okay, there's like, I don't know what the number would be. Some number out of some incredibly large number of possibilities. Possibilities, so I thought we would gain likelihood by going up, or, or I guess it would be, sorry, I caught myself, going down a level or two of entropy, however many it would be, and fluctuating a replicating molecule, and then from there that that self-replicating molecule would have a high probability of evolving into something like a mind.

0:12:44 Thomas: Now, it wouldn't be very high relative to, I don't know, percentages that you or I are used to, but it would be high relative these incredibly rare things that we're talking about. So that was my thing. I was thinking that you gained likelihood by having that molecule actually respond to the environment it's in, I thought that would somehow gain you likelihood, because if it's actually responding to the environment, it can evolve in a way that would be more conducive to a thinking brain, when, you know, I think I'm just wrong, though. I think the way the math actually works out it will always more likely just to fluctuate straight to that operating mind, no matter what, because it's higher entropy. And thus, Surprise surprise everyone, genius physicist Sean Carroll, was right and I was wrong.

0:13:32 Thomas: My only remaining question, and I still think I'm wrong, I still am gonna end up being wrong, but just in case Jon or anybody else physics-minded can explain this to me, I totally understand, so now I get it that any higher entropy fluctuation is higher probability than a lower entropy flucturation. So I get that. We're all on the same pitch. But is it true that if you took the set of all of these, let's say, higher entropy fluctuations, again, it's hard to put numbers on it because I don't know how to do that. But if you take the set out of all that and then you took, say there's only one, just for argument's sake, let us say there is only one out of this set of fluctuations at a given level of entropy that produces a working mind.

0:14:20 Thomas: Let's just say there's only one configuration of atoms in that entire set of entropy that will actually produce a working mind. Is that one fluctuation more likely to occur than, let's say, at a lower level of entropy? Again, just for argument's sake, let's say at a low level of our of entropy, every fluctuation somehow results in a mind. So if you get to any fluctuation in that lower level of entropy, any, any single one of them, let's say somehow they all produce a working mind, I know this is ludicrous, but I'm just, I, I'm trying to understand the numbers here, I don't get how this part works out, so would it still be correct to say that, oh, because that one possibility out of a gajillion, uh, happens at the higher entropy, that's still going to happen more times in an infinite universe than all of the lower entropy scenarios combined.

0:15:19 Thomas: Now, I think the answer might still be yes, that is true that one situation will happen more than the lower-entropy ones combined. I think that might actually be true because of the way the numbers work, but I don't have the math to prove it. I don't know how to calculate entropy. I don't know how do those probabilities. So, if anyone can help me with that, let me know. So that was still the only thing that I wasn't sure about. But I suspect, like I said, I suspect I'm still wrong. I'm just trying to wrap my mind around that part. But thank you for everyone who commented. Some were more helpful than others. And by that, I mean like three were actually helpful and the rest were completely off topic. So I appreciate that. I appreciate people trying. But unless you can actually, it's okay to say, look, I'm going to trust Sean Carroll that you're wrong. That's fine.

0:16:04 Thomas: I don't mind people saying that at all. But unless you're actually grasping what I'm saying, which I admit was wrong, uh, don't try to just answer it in a way that doesn't explain it at all. There's a lot of people just restated, like, yeah, no, high lower entropy, uh, you know, this is like just nothing, it was really curious. Oh, to give a better example, I think I had someone say that, oh, it's it's an infinite, infinite universe, so everything will happen an infinite number of times. It was just like, yeah, that's not the question. The question is, what's more likely? Because the Boltzmann brain problem is we should find ourselves as Boltzman brains rather than fully developed people, because that would be more frequent in an infinite world.

0:16:49 Thomas: So I actually did have quite a few people just saying, yeah it's infinite, so it's everything happens. It's like, no, that's not it. Anyway, moving on.

0:17:07 Thomas: Alright, so the other thing I got even more debate on, probably because it's a little easier to grasp and less physics based, but the objective morality thing, so I think I've been convinced by Sean Carroll and I guess by enough commenters that I don't really want to say objective morality exists. I don't want to make the strong claim that there are objective moral values because I do think fundamentally you can't quite get past the is-ought problem. It's just the is-ought problem, at some point in there you do have to just accept that you have an ought, that you just accept. Now, I still think it's worth emphasizing that once you agree on that, then everything from there is objective, or could be in theory.

0:17:58 Thomas: I think more needs to be said about this. I mean, I know Sam Harris wrote his book, which I enjoyed. I like the moral landscape. After reflecting on all this, I may ultimately disagree with a lot of it, but it's still very fascinating, something worth reading. But this is such a big issue and there's so much confusion and there is so much disagreement on it. I I think more needs to be said about this. Well, here's the thing. The concern that religious people have, I want to look at it from this angle for a minute, because the biggest concern that religious people when I talk to them, when I debate people is, if there's no God, then anything goes. If there's not God, you can't say that rape is wrong, because it just depends on how many people vote on it.

0:18:45 Thomas: If a majority of people decide rape is right, well, without God, without a dad, a mythical dad figure, a parent in the sky to tell us to say, nope, you're wrong, rape is wrong all the time, no matter what, then it's just a question of whoever votes on it and And how many people vote which way. And so that's the big fear that for some reason a lot of religious people have. So maybe the idea or the problem is a lot of people have a problem with me calling it objective morality, which again, I've already, I have already admitted. You can't just say, and I'll say it again, just for the record. Okay. If someone asks, are there objective moral values?

0:19:32 Thomas: I will say no, but you know, that that's more the answer. I'm not going to say yes anymore. Oh yes, because if we all agree on something, then we can work objectively. Now I'm not going to say that anymore because apparently people have a huge problem with it. I would say no. However, if we can agree on some sort of starting basis, everything from there on is objective. How to achieve everything from their own is objective, and I think, I don't think people are giving this enough credit because I keep getting people saying, well, that doesn't mean anything. That's still totally subjective. I just, I keep coming back to the chess analogy. Analogy. I think you agree on a broad goal. If, just pretend we could all agree, just pretend that we want to promote the well-being of conscious creatures and we could just agree on that.

0:20:21 Thomas: That's our principle. Done. That hardly answers almost any questions. Just that one agreement doesn't answer, say, abortion. It doesn't answer for anything.

0:20:35 Thomas: It until you go into the details, you research and objectively you gather some facts about the world and what leads to that well-being that we already agreed on. And from there, everything hypothetically should be more or less objective. And I think that's where Sam Harris's moral landscape comes in handy because it doesn't mean that there's one right answer to every question. But it does mean that there are definitely wrong answers. There are objectively wrong answers, just like in chess. It's not like they've proven there's one correct opening move to do. Now, I do think eventually once chess playing computers get advanced enough, there will be something like a mate, a guaranteed mate from white's position, obviously not from black because white gets to go first.

0:21:26 Thomas: There will be something like a guaranteedmate, in which case there's a correct answer. At every stage, there's a correct move. But that requires, I don't think we're quite there yet. I think we are close-ish, but I don't think we're quite there yet. But anyway, it's not necessarily going to be like that. It's going to be like Sam said, where there's kind of peaks that are similar, and they might be just as good on the moral landscape, but there are more ways to have valleys.

There are more ways to have bad outcomes for conscious creatures. Pictures. Then there are to have a good outcome. But I think the number one objection I've gotten is, oh, well, if you have any part that's subjective, then the whole thing is subjective, and I just think that's not quite how things work.

I mean, if someone asked me, is chess strategy objective, I would say yes, it is definitely objective, that chess, it doesn't matter what humans agree the right moves are, if every human agreed that the best chess strategy is to just sacrifice your queen immediately for no gain, that would not make it true, it would not be true, the, the correct chess strategy would exist independent of our opinion, and it has, I mean, just think of how chess has evolved as a game, I mean, it's gotten, chess strategy has gotten more and more refined to the point where a certain level of player now would beat the crap out of a player from 200 years ago, probably because there's been more development into what the actual correct moves are in more situations. And that existed that whole time, that strategy existed independent of human agreement, which is the definition of objective.

0:23:04 Thomas: So, but I think the biggest, and to use a confusing word, objection, the biggest objection I've gotten to my objective morality is that people keep saying, well, but the starting point, well but the start point, so therefore the whole thing's subjective. And I just, I don't, I, I don't know what else to say, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it because once again, we did the starting point of chess is subjective. We subjectively decided the rules of chess. There are all kinds of variants there. Uh, there's, there's a variant where there's an extra piece that can either do what the Knight can do or what the Bishop can do. I think there's, uh, that's somebody, some famous chess player invented that one. I think, uh, there's a, there could be a variant where the King moves two moves instead of one, or two boards, rather, two squares instead of one.

0:23:52 Thomas: There could have been all kinds of different starting points. For any of those starting points, for any of them, there's an objective strategy after that. And I think that's valuable because, like I said, that first question of agreement doesn't solve all your moral quandaries. When we agree on the first principle, now let's again, let's say we, and even if we agreed that the first principle was we should try to please God, as long as we had the correct set of what that would entail, as long as we knew what God wanted, we actually could come up with an objective strategy from there too. I mean, it would require an actual defined God with defined wants. It would have to be very rigidly defined, but that wouldn't even make it subjective. That would still be objective from there on out.

0:24:37 Thomas: So, the point is that first principle we're agreeing on doesn't answer your everyday questions. For example, let's just take a hypothetical. Well, actually, not even a hypothetical, let's take an example. Let's say, is it better, is more moral to pay a lot in taxes and have that be the way we help the needy, or is it better if we don't pay a lotta taxes but then donate money to charities? Let's just say, I'm just thinking of an example, does our principle solve that question? Does our principle, we've all agreed on, again, for argument's sake, we've all agreed on a first principle of we want to maximize the well-being of conscious creatures. Again, for argument's sakes, that's our starting point we've agreed on.

0:25:24 Thomas: Does that solve that problem? No. You would need to do a lot of work to find out things about the world, how it works, how, you know, do studies on which produces the best result. There is an objective answer, most likely, unless coincidentally they end up being the exact tie, but that would be incredibly coincidental. There is an objective answer, we might be able to get to it. And we couldn't have gotten it simply by restating our first principle. So this is the only reason I'm emphasizing this is because I think the chess, again, go back to my analogy, the chess strategy is a bigger part of morality than people are granting. The rules are not that big. And maybe it's a bad analogy because the word rules makes it sound like those are moral rules, which we all agree on.

0:26:12 Thomas: And then then all our work is done because we've agreed on moral rules. No. I think most of the work is in the strategy of chess, not in agreeing on the rules. So I think I've hammered that enough times, hopefully that made sense. I've gotten, again, a lot of comments on that. I don't think I have addressed them all, but maybe I'll try to find one or two to go through. But otherwise, keep commenting if you want. It was definitely interesting to hear your perspective on that. I just, if I can make any observation as on the comments as a whole, it would be that people, I think, are discounting how much of morality is after the starting point and not solved by the starting point you've all agreed on. Oh, there was one more thing I wanted to talk about on this.

0:26:57 Thomas: At one point during this talk with Sean Carroll, I said that our biology constrains our morality somewhat. And I had one email that I think conflated two things that I want to make sure I'm clear on. So I, by that, I don't mean that by any sort of biological imperative is what determines what's right or wrong. I think some people may have interpreted that to mean that you, because we evolved to form societies and have certain rules that benefit evolution or benefit survival of the species, that that was what determined morality, objectively, and an emailer pointed out that this could lead to things that we wouldn't like, and I just wanted to head that off by saying that isn't what I meant.

0:27:42 Thomas: What I meant was our biology constrains the things that we will find to be good for us. So it will never be true that a large number of people will think bleeding us dry will be good for us, or just any stupid example like that, like cutting off all our left legs.

0:28:05 Thomas: We're never going to all decide that that's good for everybody, barring some weird hypothetical you could think of. Because biologically we all share certain traits. We all share, we all need to eat to live. We all need a drink water. There's all certain things we need. And all I meant by that was our shared biology constrains the things that we will find and we will agree increase our well-being. So I didn't mean to say that biological, like how we've evolved evolved or, or how, what has been beneficial to our species is somehow a replacement for morality. I think the opposite is true. I think, I think there are a lot of things we could do to benefit our species, including like forced, uh, reproduction of some people and barring the reproduction, banning the reproduction of other people just based on genetic, like whatever genetics we thought, basically eugenics.

0:28:59 Thomas: We could use eugenic to create a powerful species, a better species, but I don't think that would be right. It would be probably the best thing we could do biologically. We could all be fitter, stronger, and more impressive genetically over time, but it wouldn't be right, I think there's a difference there, so I didn't mean to say that whatever was best for the species is the right thing to do, so quick clarification on that, and that was one of the comments I got. So while I've got a little time here after the two main things I wanted to talk about, there's actually another thing that I'm finally glad I have a chance to tell you. So for the past, I would say, couple weeks, I had been listening to a conservative talk show because, okay, so I realized that I don't want to ever be in an echo chamber.

0:29:48 Thomas: I think the social justice debate and other debates I've had have made me think that I just, I don't want to be in in an echo chamber. And it's very easy to listen to NPR and have all the basic stereotypical liberal sources of news. And I try to do a good job already, I should say, to diversify my sources of new.

So I already I follow Google News or rather I just look at Google News and look at the headline no matter who the provider of the news is. And And I try not to get all my news from like one website or one service, but I wanted to go further than that.

And I thought, you know, I'm going to try to find a conservative podcast and just listen to it and see if, if it, just see what happens, you know, just to see if my worldview has changed or if I start to see like, oh, okay, when you look at things from this angle, then I could see how certain, you know, right wing ideas might make more sense, that sort of thing. So I was doing an experiment. Can I do it? Now, here's the thing. So I picked a show that is wildly popular. The numbers are huge. It's a conservative talk show called, well, it's whatever it is. Michael Savage. I forget what it's called. The Savage Nation maybe is what it is called. But it's Michael Savage, it is a big show. It has got huge ratings.

I didn't want to do Rush Limbaugh. I did not want to Glenn Beck because I think, I don't know, in my mind I thought, okay, they're more straw men of conservatism. Maybe this Michael Savage, who I didn't think was like a straw man of conservmatism, maybe he'll make more sense or something.

0:31:29 Thomas: And after, I'd say I'd listened to two weeks of it daily, I had to stop. I had to stop listening to it because it's not just, oh, here's a different perspective. And here's the thing, I'm going to make some statements. Now, conservative listeners, maybe you'll be offended, but hear me out on this. It's not that it's conservative. That's not the issue. It'S not that he's in favor of low taxation. That would be something interesting to talk about. That'd be fascinating if he said, hey, here's why I don't think we should pay as much in taxes. I think that, whatever it would be, I think the benefit to businesses helps people, whatever, Reaganomics, whatever. We can debate that all day. I am not offended by those ideas. Is. I'm not really offended by anything, but I don't run and hide from those ideas.

0:32:17 Thomas: If someone wants to tell me that they think a certain way on that, I'm not going to run and hide from it. However, this show was nonstop conspiracy theory. That's really all it is. And it gets to a point like you can't listen to people talk about the moon landing not happening or talk about 9-11 being an inside job. There's no such thing as a moderate position there. I can't listen to 9-11 truthers and say like, oh, okay, I kind of see the middle ground. It's like, no, that's just not close to true. There is virtually nothing about it that's true. That's what I found this radio show to be. I'm going to go ahead and ask if someone wants to recommend if there's a better conservative podcast out there, I will give it a try, 100%.

0:33:06 Thomas: But I had to actually stop because because it's just useless. Here's when I, among other things, let me give you an example of when I had to stop listening to this Michael Savage guy. For one thing, general note, he's so full of himself. It's hilarious. He thinks he's a, he referred to himself as having a Stradivarius of a mind, and that's why he had to like particular music or something, because he's such a genius and all this. And it's funny because he can make, it's so easy to create a world where all those those things are true for you. So if you're a host like me, like I could do the same thing, maybe, I don't know. I could have a podcast where I say certain things, I pick an ideology and I just talk about it. And then anyone who disagrees because I'm in control of everything you're hearing, I can shut them down.

0:33:54 Thomas: I could not play them in the first place. I can edit out where people disagree with me. I get it. So these callers will call in to Michael Savage's show, and he just manhandles them via, you know, not letting them speak. He railroads them, he he does all this stuff so that if they disagree with him, he's so short that they never get a chance to even say why. So they'll say like, "Hey, I think maybe, uh, such and such," and he'll just railroad them out. And you can create an environment where, yeah, you would think you're a genius because everyone who's still listening probably agrees you're a genius because you've created, because anyone who doesn't think you are will just go like, "I can't listen to this." This guy just railroads everybody who disagrees with him. But it's the most useless thing.

0:34:41 Thomas: I mean, you're not going to accomplish anything. You're not gonna get closer to the truth by doing that. And that's why, I mean on my show, I do my best to represent and to have both sides of conversations because I never want to do that. And that was the whole goal behind starting to listen to the guy because I thought, oh, I want to get things from the other perspective. But back to the story of when I had to quit. Here's when I Had to Quit. So his whole thing last week, I think it was, or it could have been the week before, I don't remember. Time flies for me and I kind of mix up dates. But anyway, his whole things was he got really mad. Trump is his guy. Trump Is Michael Savage's guy. But now that Trump has some classic Republican figures behind him, now Michael Savage is worried that he's going to be just as bad as Romney was or something.

0:35:27 Thomas: He has advisors that are telling him to do the wrong thing because Trump went after the Clinton sex scandals again. And Michael Savage said, "Oh, that's bullshit. Don't go after that. It's definitely not worth it. There's no point in pursuing those, we got other issues." And at some point during this show, he ended up saying, yeah, the reason I didn't care about the Clinton sex scandals in the 90s, because his show is that old, it's been going for that long, he said, "The reason I didn't care about Clinton's sex scandals in the nineties is because they leaked them. The Clintons leaked the sex scandals in order to cover for bigger scandals," and that was it. The odds that that's true is so low, it is so, so low. Bill Clinton is a playboy. I mean, he's very much that guy.

0:36:13 Thomas: He got caught. There's no, the idea that you could believe that they're so devious, they're trying to ruin the country and, oh, people are onto us, so we'd better release a fake sex scandal. He almost got impeached. He almost had to leave the presidency. Does it get much worse than that? Sorry, he did get impeached, he almost was forced to resign, he survived, as you'll recall, of course, but it was close.

It's not like they're the Underwoods or something where they they know they've done all those calculations. They know they're barely gonna survive a sex scandal. They won't survive whatever other scandal they're covering up for. And and it's just stuff like that. So, long story short, to any conservative listeners, I have, I respect your opinions. I'm curious about your opinions, I would be happy to debate topics like economics or, or you know, taxes or things like that, I'm happy to to debate anything. But But just note that the reason I talk a lot of shit on conservatives and Republicans is because all of their shows are that. Any show I can find for Republicans is conspiracy theory. It's not enough for them to disagree with Obama. They can't just disagree with what Obama's doing. They have a whole theory about Obama, knows exactly what he's doing, he's ruining the country from inside.

He's like a Trojan horse. He knows what he is doing. He's trying to ruin the country. He's a closet communist. He'll call him a closet communist, socialist, Kenyan, whatever. He's on the inside trying to ruin everything. He's devious. Everything has to be that, that conspiracy theory level bullshit.

0:37:50 Thomas: There's no middle ground for that, is what I'm trying to say. So overall, my point is, if you have a show like that where there's no conceivable way I can relate to it unless I fully agree with it, there's not a way to half agree with that and be satisfied because it's so extreme, then it's kind of a worthless thing in my mind. In my opinion, that's a worthless show to have. You're better off having something where you explore issues and talk about both sides of things and at least address the other side of things. So it was an interesting experiment. It was an interest experience. And once again, if anyone has a good recommendation for a conservative show, I will give it a try, but that one was terrible, and it's not listenable. For someone who doesn't accept that Obama is a closet Muslim who's consciously trying to ruin our country, if you don't accept that, you can't really listen to it.

0:38:42 Thomas: It's too stupid, it's too inflammatory to be valuable. So let me know what you think on that, but there it is. There's my take on it. Alright, that's it for today's episode. On Thursday coming up, I've got a really interesting interview. It started as one thing and ended on a totally different thing. I think I'll tell you more on Thursday. I didn't mean it to be two parts, but I think it's going to end up being two parts. As usual, my patrons will get it all in one part. That's patreon.com/atheist. If you'd like to go there, you'll get early access to any two-parters that I do, as well as occasional bonus content that I did with Jake Farr-Wharton. Alright, thanks for listening. I And I will see you guys on Thursday.