AS302: Andrew Torrez and Cognitive Dissonance!

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking, this is episode 300 part 3 or also known as 302 And I am your host Thomas Smith. All right, saved some of the best stuff for, well, you know, I got to be political. It was all good, but really saved a good show for part three here with Cognitive Dissonance and Andrew Torrez. First up is going to be, Andrew and I, we're going to talk, we got a good segment planned for you where I try to be the lawyer and Andrew is the questioner. So that's fun. And then we talk about the Australian law that Jake talked about and Andrew offers his expertise, expertise and thoughts on that. Then we've got cognitive dissonance. And I noticed there did end up being a bit of a free speech theme to this show.

0:01:16 Thomas: But Tom had some issues involving free speech and trolling and that kind of thing that was really on his mind, and I appreciate that he felt like my show was a good place to talk about that. So we had a good discussion, great discussion with Cognitive Dissonance in the later half of this episode to round us out. So it's action-packed. I hope you enjoy it. I'm really excited, so let's get to Andrew Torrez.

0:01:48 Thomas: Joining me right now is Andrew Torrez from some podcast. What's the name of that? You're on a podcast, right? Oh, yeah, it's a dog podcast. I remember now. Joining me is Andrew and Andrew's dog. You know what? That's appropriate. I'm keeping it in. That's exactly appropriate to our relationship. Andrew and his dog. How are you doing, Andrew?

0:02:08 Andrew: I literally, she's been quiet for like the past half an hour. I've got her, I've got her secreted away upstairs. I got the gate up and everything.

0:02:12 Thomas: Mm-hmm. That is the excuse I hear every time this happens.

0:02:18 Andrew: Yeah. Oh, we've been pretty dog-free on OA for a couple of episodes at least.

0:02:23 Thomas: It's true now it has been very good and your dog is awesome. I don't mind It's, it's very occasional. Uh, if my cats could make noise or like could disturb the recording, they would all the time. And then I would be the one who's like, no, I, I swear they're good. I, but, uh, but yeah. How are you doing? Opening Arguments, of course, our podcast that is just absolutely killing it right now. And I say that as a, actually a fan, I'm sort of, I don't even consider myself on it, but I guess I am. I'm more of a fan of Andrew's knowledge and opinions getting more out there to the world because they're really useful. Like the, the research you do and the expertise you bring, I can honestly say like, I'm proud that we're getting that out there. And, and I think we're improving conversations incrementally, you know, out there in the world. It's really cool.

0:02:26 Andrew: But yeah.

0:02:38 Andrew: I I I, I really enjoy what we're doing. And, uh, don't sell yourself short, right? In it, like, I, I have been to enough, uh, cocktail parties and public events and networking groups, going to one later this evening, uh, where I've, you know, narrated legal stuff at people for a period of time until they walk away in disgust. So I know that your, uh, finally honed abilities to, uh, ask the right questions and to sort of gently be like, okay, that, that's enough, like, time to move on to a different topic now, uh, are, are what turns, uh, my narrating screeds from intolerable to listenable. So, um.

0:03:50 Thomas: Awesome. Thank you for saying so. It's a great, it's a great thing we're doing. And you know, what, yeah.

0:03:51 Andrew: No, I'm serious. Like we have

0:03:55 Thomas: Check

0:03:55 Andrew: A lot of fun together, and, and, and I'm a hundred percent serious that, um, you ask questions that it wouldn't occur to me to address, right? So, yeah, it's awesome. Them that way.

0:04:06 Thomas: It out if you haven't. And here, so, okay, we got a little, we got to confess something, although I think people already know this. We have, we are re-recording this because, and it's already totally different than it was before, because I can't do the same thing twice. One of the things we need to re-say in our re-record, this is, well, this is episode 300, this is part 3. Now I know where it's going, I didn't before, but now this will be in part 3 of my episode 300 spectacular. Uh, we're going to talk a little bit later about the, uh, the Australian law that Jake brought up. And it's going to be really interesting to talk about the differences. It's like, I'm psychic, I kind of know what we're gonna talk about ahead of time. Uh, between the US law and Australian law.

It's a really cool issue, like, to look at it from a philosophy standpoint. But, uh, but first, really, of all the things that have come out of 300 episodes of this show, and there are a lot, there are ton of really cool things, relationships, and, you know, friendships, and of all different kinds,

0:05:04 Thomas: Podcasting, bromances, all that stuff. None, none equaling the partnership with Andrew Torrez and opening arguments. I really, I, so, oh, I think we even, when we did this the first time, we talked about how we first came into contact. Do you remember that?

0:05:21 Andrew: Yeah. Um, and it's additionally fun because in between the first recording and this recording, uh, you had the notice pop up of our one year friendversary on Facebook, which was, uh, uh, I don't know, a day or two ago. Um, so I, that helps put a timeline on it, right? Like, in a year ago I, uh, friended you on Facebook because I was such a fan of of Atheistically Speaking yeah.

0:05:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:44 Thomas: You wanted to stalk my cat photos that I have.

0:05:46 Andrew: Um, no, I, you know, I wanted to get, uh, additional, uh, information about Atheistically in my feed, and Thomas, then as now, uh, is, uh, super generous with friending actual listeners of the show. It's something I try and live up to as well.

0:05:46 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah but I remembered a certain point you messaged because it was Tyler Vela, I believe, and he mentioned the fact that, what, the right to to privacy. No, no, no. No. It was the abortion debate and we didn't.

0:06:15 Andrew: Yes. Yeah, it was on abortion. And I think that it was, I think actually for a three-part opening argument segment. But yeah,

0:06:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Tyler definitely inspires that sort of response. Like you're like, hold on, let me record a marathon thing about why he's wrong.

0:06:34 Andrew: No, so he made the sort of common argument, I think that this was the time, when he made a common argument of there's no right to privacy in the Constitution, which is the underlying justification for the right to abortion from from Roe v Wade and um and so I wrote you uh to say something kind of law-y related about that and that that wasn't a good argument

0:06:57 Thomas: Yeah. Well If I Well My memory we can both tell our version and we don't know which is correct but my memory is that I didn't even know like I don't think Tyler or I would have even thought to say right to privacy in relation to abortion. So I think you messaged and said, hey, here's where this protection comes from. It's actually related to the right to privacy. Because that's a counterintuitive thing to a non-lawyer. What does privacy have to do with abortion? I would think it's, oh, it's life. It is either murder or not. But no, you explained like, well, it has to do with the fact that it's a decision between her and her doctor, a woman and a doctor. And it's also because the, I can use the term, the penumbra of like right to privacy and all that is more complex than merely privacy. Like it's more complex than just

0:06:59 Andrew: Yeah Yeah No Right Right Right Right

0:07:48 Thomas: Saying like, you know, whatever the common definition of the term privacy would be to a lay person. It's more complex in that. And I was intrigued and I don't even think you bandied about your Harvard Law credentials. I don't think you did that. I think you just said, hey, I'm a lawyer, whatever And I was so like, whenever somebody gives me a piece of information like that, that is clearly coming from a place of knowledge that I don't have. I was like, hey OK, this is great. I need to get on this. And then from there, we developed the kind of the idea to more on the podcast. I think You had said when Scalia died, you might have reached out with the blog post you'd written. And I thought that was just amazing to learn so much about Scalia through you.

0:08:31 Andrew: Yeah, it definitely, the Scalia episode was was my first appearance on Atheistically Speaking. And and that was just that was a lot of fun. I had no idea sort of where where where we would go with it. And and it was really kind of liberating to take, you know, something that I had done as a blog post for my firm website, which, boy, my firm blog is really growing weeds these days.

0:08:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:58 Thomas: Well, you've got a different outlet now, but yeah.

0:09:00 Andrew: Yeah Uh but but no, you know, I mean I was used to writing for a primarily you for the kind of audience of people who would read firm law blogs, which I guess is other lawyers and you know people getting ready to hire lawyers and turn that into like just sort of talking to anybody and um and it was a lot of fun and uh and then I came back for I don't know five or six or seven episodes of of Atheistically Speaking, until we decided, yeah, we've just got to do this. We've got to du this full time.

0:09:19 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

0:09:32 Thomas: Incredibly good decision. Well, let's get to, you know, you had a great idea for what we should do for this 300th episode spectacular. We already did it once. It went over okay. The idea was was to, it Will be, I think it will be even better. The idea was to do a little role reversal and I would try to play the lawyer and Andrew will try to play the interviewer. Now, we did it, I want to I don't want to do the same question twice because Andrew told me the answer afterwards. So that kind of spoils it. So I want to reference that we did answer a question that won't go out there because the recording was ruined

0:09:34 Andrew: Oh, man, it will be even better this time. Right.

0:10:06 Andrew: Yeah, that was from Avi Poggi, and he asked a fantastic question about the bizarre laws in Arizona regarding, you know, touching a child in a bathtub. And I thought that would just be fantastic to to see if Thomas could get through that. Yeah.

0:10:17 Thomas: Right, yeah, he was wondering wondering what would Happen with that if your own parent, there's no exception. So if it's your own kid and you touch a child anywhere on the genitals or any area like that for any reason, apparently you were running afoul of this law. And the answer ended up being that, I mean, the law is the law. There's not going to be any exception. The only option would be if you're convicted, like let's say it's a divorce situation. So maybe one parent would accuse the other because otherwise who's going to be the person who even makes those accusations with your own child. It could be whatever. There could be some weird scenario. But in that situation, I mean, you would just have to appeal to the Supreme Court because it would hold up in Arizona because the Arizona Supreme Court already upheld it. But Andrew's expert answer, which I didn't get to because this was a little too difficult of a question for this purpose, but was that he would shoot for vagueness.

0:11:20 Thomas: He, but I don't even know how that would work because it already stood up in the Arizona Supreme Court. So we would just have to hope that the actual Supreme Court would see a weakness in the law in terms of the vagueness of how it would be enforced and what you would need to know was a crime with your own child.

0:11:37 Andrew: Remember that, you know, the constitutional test for vagueness is, does the law give you sufficient advice in advance of how to tailor your conduct so as to comply with the law? Law, and I, I think you could make a good argument that, you know, I mean, it's sort of at the core of this question, right, which is because of how it's defined, you know, we don't know, right? Can I, uh, You know, can I, can I bathe my child or not and

0:12:01 Thomas: My guess My, my guess was if it had anything to do with the right to privacy, but it didn't. But now let's, let's try another one. You got another one queued up. Let's do it. Here we go. Let's do a little sample for fun of opening arguments. But with the roles reversed, what do you say?

0:12:04 Andrew: Um, uh, So this is a question sent in from Bryce. And he says, my, based on the interaction of the portion governing political partisan activity and the one prohibiting membership or support for any organization which participates in hate speech and or subversive activity, including the threat of force to prevent another from exercising constitutional rights, would it be possible to demonstrate that the Republican Party now meets the criteria laid out in this document for those categories? And if so, how would that interact with the partisan activity categories? And this is a TSA directive. I don't think we need to. Yeah, for the

0:13:01 Thomas: TSA management? Yeah, I was, I was, I was wondering what document, is this a law or is this, what is this?

0:13:02 Andrew: Right. Right. So, yeah, no, this is these are instructions for TSA employees, you know, at the airport. And it includes things like, you know, you have to maintain a neat and clean personal appearance during working hours. And, you know, you have to not engage in hate speech, right? Because obviously, when you're being, you, no, searched at the airport before you get onto the plane, you do not want, you

0:13:23 Thomas: Oh, so the question is whether merely now being a Republican would disqualify you for the TSA because of this? Is that, do I get, Do I have, well let me, let me apply my Harvard mind to it. You know, I've, I worked a long time at Covington, Sterling Cooper, super, uh, Mad Men reference that you won't get. Um, I, and I, I can't remember a case coming up like this, but let me, let me see if I can. I would say that merely being a Republican is definitely not going to qualify as anything here, but, but if, if an employee is engaging in a behavior that fits that category, then of course.

So I'm wondering what really even the controversy of this question would be if maybe if I'm trying to think of like the most corner case, which would be merely making a pro-Trump statement, you know, like maybe that would be where it'd be an interest, because obviously if you're a TSA agent and you talk about, like I do, if and you do any kind of hate speech, whether it's supported by Trump or not, that's against your agreement, so that's going to be against the rules. But I'm wondering if they are shooting, if the questioner is shooting for like a more corner case, like merely supporting Trump. And because Trump has said things that the Republicans have said certain things like, therefore that would violate it. What do you think? Is that what you might

0:13:47 Andrew: Right. Correct.

0:14:58 Thomas: Be going for?

0:14:58 Andrew: Well, And I'm trying to find the specific provision, but the directive requires, even in your off hours, that you conduct yourself in a manner that does not adversely reflect on the TSA. And so let's assume I can't find it in there. It's said in the question. Let's assume that the TSA code of conduct says you may not be a member or express support for any organization which participates in hate speech or subversive activity. Right. So there. So that's the gravamen of the question here is the code says, let's just take it as a given that you can't be right. Right. So, you know, it's it's clearly meant like you can't be a member of the KKK. Right.

0:15:28 Thomas: Okay. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh, okay.

0:15:41 Andrew: Like you can'T you can'T wear your, you Know, skinhead, you Can'T have visible like that.

0:15:46 Thomas: That is, I mean, that's an interesting question because I don't, I would say that it I think it would be too broad. I don't know if there's any legal status of hate groups. I know, know, the SPLC does a lot with hate groups, but they're not, you know, I don't know if there's any official governmental designation of hate groups. There might be, but I would say maybe that would factor in if there were, because I think Republicans as a group is just too large. I don't think you'd be able to, my intuition is that you wouldn't be able to make that case based on something that is roughly speaking half the country or maybe, be, you know, whatever, 40% of the country. I think that's going to be too broad of a categorization in order to do that. But I'll hand it, I'll hang over the reins to the actual lawyer here. I did my best. What is our actual legal expert, Andrew Torrez, think about this?

0:16:37 Andrew: I think I mean, I think that answer is as good as as any answer I could give. The only thing I would add is that I would have sort of two things. Right. Number one, to the extent that a an internal policy, right, a regulation would conflict with your constitutional right, then the constitutional rights would trump. Right. And so I would say the fact that you cannot fire somebody for holding a political opinion under the First Amendment, in my view, means that, you know, that that you're coming awfully close to saying, right, you cannot be a. Well, I mean, it's not even just coming close. The questioner is, can you be a Republican and work for the TSA? And, you know, the First Amendment pretty clearly protects that, right?

0:17:12 Thomas: Interesting. You actually would be saying. All right. Yeah.

0:17:29 Andrew: So it's kind of a hierarchy of rights, right, like your basic constitutional rights would trump, you you know, an internal policy and guidelines manual. And then the second thing is, if this ever went to court, we've talked about this a little bit. I don't know if this is a perfect fit, but it's a good time to just kind of plug it. But courts tend to have what we call the political question doctrine, right? And that is, if something is an issue of significant political political debate, then the courts tend to say, hey, look, like, we're not going to weigh in on something that is kind of directly a political question, right? That's not to say they don't weigh in on controversial issues, right, like that's pretty much what the Supreme Court does, right. And so, you know, there's political debate about abortion.

0:17:34 Thomas: Right.

0:18:21 Andrew: But when you're talking about things that can be solved through the electoral process, they tend to saying, oh, hey look, We're not going to go there. This is something if a majority of people feel that the Republican Party is a hate group, then let you figure that out on your own. But we're not gonna go out on a limb and make a judicial determination about a political party.

0:18:47 Thomas: Okay. Do you know offhand if there's any official governmental entity that designates hate groups? I mean, I feel like they're like the FBI or or something. No, there's not.

0:18:52 Andrew: So there is yeah there's not yeah I mean look, that's not to suggest there aren't internal you watch lists, uh, but uh, but, but there's no official hate group designation.

0:18:55 Thomas: Okay. Okay, okay. Makes sense, but that wouldn't factor in.

0:19:04 Andrew: Yeah, so I think you did a good, I think he did a great job with that question.

0:19:05 Thomas: Okay, cool. Well, yeah, there you go. All right. See, I'm learning. If you listen to opening arguments, you can learn to sort of be able to answer a question as well and maybe be right some of the time. Thanks so much for that.

0:19:15 Andrew: And these are the Kinds of questions we get on Opening Argument. Like, they're not easy questions. So, yeah,

0:19:23 Thomas: Normally, we just let the expert handle it. All right, let's get to our issue we're going to talk about, the Australian hate crime, hate not hate crime hate speech law of 1975, that Jake talked about. So what are your thoughts on that? I thought it was very interesting that this law has existed, like I said, for what is that, 40 years now? And I just, as an American, I just never, it never would have occurred to me that, because when he first brought it up to me as something we should do, I thought he was talking about a proposed law because naive US me, you know, I was thinking, oh, well, free speech reigns, of course. So any new law that, you know, that we could talk about that, but he's actually talking about something that's existed for 40 years.

0:20:09 Thomas: It doesn't seem like it's caused a gigantic problem, but it's definitely something that would not fly in this country. Is that correct?

0:20:17 Andrew: This law is sort of flatly inconsistent with the First Amendment. To me, kind of the interesting feature of it is that shifts the burden, right? Right. Like you read the text already in in Jake's segment, but it specifies that it's unlawful to do X unless you're in private. Right. Which is much the reverse of all of the kinds of anti-discrimination statutes and other things that we've talked about in which, you know, you have a presumption of liberty in this country. And then they will say, oh, but if we're in this particular circumstance, then you don't. Right. Like, so, for example, you have the general liberty to feel however you want about, say, you know, homosexuals. And then we say, oh, but by the way, if you're engaged in the act of hiring, or if you are engaged in serving the public, then we, then in the 20 states which have, have, uh, homosexuality as a protected class, then we say, oh, well, you know, you're not, we, we restrain that liberty in that unique instance, right.

And that's kind of how we've set the, um, it's, it's how we've struck that balance between the freedom to do whatever you want and the notion of promoting a tolerant, inclusive, and, and, and open and equal society. Um, and so, I mean, that's sort of the first, uh, the first feature to me that's, that's really striking, is it

0:20:54 Thomas: Hmm.

0:21:42 Andrew: Reverses the burdens. It says, no, presumptively, you cannot offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate another person or group of people on the basis of these protected classes, unless you can prove that it's in private.

0:21:56 Thomas: Right. Yeah. So the wording, yeah, the wording. What was that wording again? That I read it with Jake, but, um, now it's a little less fresh in my mind.

0:22:02 Andrew: Yeah yeah the The wording is, it is unlawful for a person to do an act, comma, otherwise than in in private, comma, if, and then it sets forward. So, you know, we, we talked about this before, but lots of, lots of laws have kind of a burden shifting process, right? So for example, if I want to sue on the basis of, let's say age discrimination, right, then the first thing I have to do is establish that I am a, is, is build my prima facie case as the plaintiff. So that has of a protected class, which is, in this case, unfortunately, individuals over the age of 40. And so the plaintiff has the burden to show they're a member of a class, and then the burden shifts to the defendant who's fired somebody over the edge of 40 to show that they had that person.

0:22:11 Thomas: Right? Okay.

0:23:03 Andrew: And then the burden shifts back to the plaintiff to show that those reasons were a mere pretext, right? So, you know, the ball kind of bounces back and forth either side of the court. And here it's interesting because the burden, certain of this statute, is on the individual to show that they were in private, as opposed to it being the reverse. Here, does that make sense?

0:23:29 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, yeah. And this is something, so this is definitely would not fly in the U.S., it would not, uh, stand up to, I don't know, any sort of Supreme Court challenge or probably fail a lot sooner than that, I'm guessing. What do you think? One thing that I wanted to get your opinion on that I thought was interesting is that it surprises me when he said there's only 200 cases a year, roughly, in all of Australia. And I think there's like 200 people in Australia. But still, no, there's fewer than in the US, of course, the population difference.

But still not very many cases. And only a couple of them get past this like arbitration process or this mediation process where they kind of talk about, I think they can solve it from there without sentencing getting involved, it sounds like. And only a couple actually have penalties and all that. And when he described that, I thought, you know what, as much as I sometimes do think of myself as a bit of a free speech fundamentalist, a little bit, and I think you were coming from a similar angle on free speech, I

0:23:31 Andrew: Yeah. Yes. Yes.

0:24:30 Thomas: Can entertain the idea and I can think about it it and think from a utilitarian standpoint, is, is this absolute right to free speech really the best way to go? Like, and it's a hard question. It's something that I think we should be thinking about it. Uh, and, and I want to get your opinion on that. You've got, you've got. So the scenario I laid out for you before the, which we, uh, we were re-recording now is I want to imagine you're a space alien, Andrew Torrez, you, and then, and this is true actually, but But never mind. We won't tell people that. You're a space alien and you're a tourist. You're coming to this, you're coming to these, you see these two equal countries. Let's pretend everything else is equal, just even though it's definitely not. But everything else being equal between Australia and the US. And who knows? Maybe you're an alien who, I don't know, you might, the color of your skin might be different.

0:25:18 Thomas: Maybe you didn't get your human skin suit calibrated to equal the majority. You know, maybe you calibrated it to, you might be in a minority group. What are you going to pick? Are you going to pick the country with the absolute freedom to free speech, with the only exceptions being, you know, the common things we talk about? I won't go into it, but with very few exceptions, or are you going to choose Australia, which, you know, hate speech, not exactly protected. You might be a victim of it and you would have a way to, I suppose, sue that person or however their legal system works. I don't know. I think you talked to a kangaroo. A kangaroo issues some papers or something like that. What would you pick? What are your thoughts on all that?

0:25:59 Andrew: Yeah. Let me answer that in both a an alien legal framework and an alien philosophical framework. Right. Right. So, I mean, the two arguments that I think sort of would qualify as rule utilitarian arguments against this particular kind of bill are, you know, number one, that it defines hate speech really, really broadly. And you might remember, you know, way back when we talked about the EU hate speech policy and Facebook following it and and everything else. And and and even in Europe, you don't have hate speech defined as offending someone.

0:26:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:44 Andrew: Right. Right. I mean, it is part of it is a criminal offense to offend, insult or humiliate and intimidate is is is going to be an offense regardless, you know, assuming that it meets the relevant legal standards in this country. But but offend, offend, Assault and humiliate, it's pretty broad. Right. So that's, I'm, that's sort of point one. And I mean, I don't know that I even need to spin that out as to, as to the subjectivity of the level of conduct. Um, What responds to, uh, the point that Jake made, that there are only, you know, 200 cases a year, that's absolutely true. Uh, the other thing is, uh, I, I have some strong sympathy for his position because, you know, it seems like the drive to repeal this is being pushed forward by far right

0:26:58 Thomas: That's Interesting, okay, yeah. That is broad. Okay.

0:27:11 Thomas: Right. Right.

0:27:30 Andrew: Politicians in Australia, and there was like one, like the Australian Rush Limbaugh, like, you know know, got convicted under this. And he's like the only guy to, you know, actually go all the way to a verdict. And, you know, it seems pretty clear.

0:27:31 Thomas: Right, yeah. So, You're sympathetic to, to the fact that this is kind of a political ploy, okay.

0:27:49 Andrew: Correct. But, but the counter argument to that would be and, and, look, I mean, this is, youknow, kind of a right of center argument, but I think it's still a good one. And that is, this law is,you know, you referred to sort of the arbitration process.

This law is overseen by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different commissioners, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Human Rights, Race Discrimination, Sex Discrimination Age Discrimination National Children's and Privacy Commissioners. So, you know, is it is it a reasonable argument that That there is an entire governmental bureaucracy and, you know, at least eight people, but probably, you know, several dozens of people when you count staffers and everything that are dedicated to nothing but reviewing these kinds of cases where, you know, somebody has insulted somebody else. I mean, that's that's a lot of machinery to kind of put in motion. And, you know, I don't often get a chance to make the like, you you know, small, small government argument, but, but yeah, but it's, it looked like that, that argument doesn't have zero merit to it.

0:27:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:40 Thomas: Yeah, small Government, uh, Yeah. Ronald Reagan kind of argument, all right. All right. So, okay. Fair

0:29:06 Andrew: So I want to, I do want to flag that.

0:29:07 Thomas: Enough. So, as a space alien, you are interested in governmental waste in the country that you're gonna, yeah.

0:29:11 Andrew: Right. Well, you know look, how did the space alien got here in a, in a spaceship, right?

0:29:15 Thomas: Efficient alien government, that's How, yeah, okay, okay, so we get, we get a little more of your backstory now.

0:29:16 Andrew: Right. Yes. So, right.

0:29:21 Thomas: Your alien backstory.

0:29:23 Andrew: We come, we come from the planet Ayn Randia, but But, you know,

0:29:26 Thomas: Yeah, and you, you just got like your your backpack and some dreams, like you just, your hopes, and you can build a whole picture like a, it'll end up being a, uh, a song by the Boss or something, but so yeah, right.

0:29:39 Andrew: The counterside of the argument is, you know, kind of the Rawlsian philosophical perspective, right? And so in A Theory of Justice, John Rawls says that what you should do with goods is distribute them equally, but where there are unequal distributions, you should ensure that the greatest advantage goes goes to the least advantaged in society, right? Which is to say, it's called a maximum imposition. And he used this device called the veil of ignorance, which basically said, when you're thinking about any kind of end state, imagine that you are stripped of all morally irrelevant knowledge, right, like you don't know if you're going to be in any particular group in society. None of those characteristics are known to you.

0:30:25 Andrew: And so, you there's some questions that become really, really easy, even without kind of absolute rules, like, would you have a society in which 90% of the society was, you, content and happy and well off, but 10% were slaves, right? And so in a utilitarian basis, you might be like, well, you the only way you would vote for that is if you knew you were going to be in the 90%, right? Like, if there was any chance you were gonna be in the 10%, there's no chance you'd vote for it. And so you would reject that kind of a framework because, uh, would not want to take the risk of being in the, uh... the bottom 10%. So you maximize the worst possible outcome.

0:31:06 Thomas: And I think that's a good way of looking at things. I mean, I think that's something to certainly consider, but I want to know, okay, so you're, you're space alien Andrew Torrez, what, what is your feeling, what do you want to do, you got, hey, you got to plug some coordinates into your spaceship, are you plugging coordinates for the U.S. or Australia, all the, the, forget all the differences other than this law.

0:31:13 Andrew: Me too.

0:31:25 Andrew: I... I think I'm gonna stick with the U.S. Sorry, Jake. I do understand that when you have kind of a different history, I'm not saying – if I were an Australian, if I was some sort of platypus or something, might not vote to repeal this law. But if we were starting out from scratch, I think it goes too far.

0:31:28 Thomas: Yeah. All right.

0:31:47 Andrew: I come down more on the absolutist side. That's just me. Me.

0:31:47 Thomas: All right. Yeah, that's certainly, It's, I think it's certainly close though. Like it's an interesting thing to think about, right? Because I do think there are people, there are probably going to be people listening and certainly people in our country here of the US of A who would be outraged that we would even consider thinking about something that might limit free speech. But I don't know. What do you think? It is close-ish, right. It's something, especially when when you look at the actual effect of this law, and it really hasn't been a whole lot. I mean, you talk about a little bit of waste here and there. You talk about a couple of cases, but it's close, right?

0:32:20 Andrew: Yeah, I, for me, you know, the question is, I, I, I always want to look at a potential law and I want to ask, um, how likely is this to have a chilling effect, right? Like, that, that's the real, um, kind of.

0:32:35 Thomas: Sorry. Can you just define a chilling effect, how you're thinking of that? Like, okay.

0:32:36 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. A chilling affect is, uh, when I don't know exactly what constitutes prohibited speech. And so, therefore, I don't, I voluntarily stop from engaging in what would be productive and protected speech because I'm scared of being arrested. Right. And so it's why things so, for example, child pornography is not protected speech. Right? Right. And that's really, really clear what I have to do to not engage in child pornography. And I've got no interest in that.

0:32:58 Thomas: Okay.

0:33:17 Andrew: And and Jesus, no, like, look, so it there's no problem whatsoever with that. Like there is zero chilling effect from having child pornography laws. Right. Right. On the other hand, saying you can't offend somebody to me strikes me as as potentially having a very, very large chilling effect. And so even if there aren't a lot of cases, I would want to protect I wouldn't want people to say, you know, gosh, I'm not going to, you know, express this particular opinion because I don't want to offend somebody. Right.

0:33:16 Thomas: And you're doing your best. No, I'm just kidding.

0:33:55 Thomas: Yeah,

0:33:56 Andrew: So that's that's sort of the the extra legal harm.

0:33:56 Thomas: That makes sense. So you think there would be a little little bit of that because of the vagueness of the law. Okay.

0:34:00 Andrew: Yeah, I do.

0:34:02 Thomas: Yeah. Makes sense. All right. Well, thanks for taking us through that. I think it's a very interesting thing to think about. And who knows if it, you know, it seems like our first amendment is here to stay, but it'll be interesting to, yeah.

0:34:12 Andrew: Yeah, well, there's calls of having a constitutional convention, so who knows if Lawrence Tribe is in favor of it, I don't know, it would obsolete his job, but I guess he's got, he's a

0:34:16 Thomas: Yeah, I don't, yeah, I'm sorry. I don'T know who that is. Is that some, and he's against the first amendment or something?

0:34:26 Andrew: Con law professor at Harvard Law School is and very, very vocal on Twitter, unlike most other law professors. No,

0:34:35 Thomas: What do we, oh, so

0:34:36 Andrew: No, he's he's super. I mean, he was on the shortlist for nomination to the Supreme Court in the 80s and 90s. And then, you know, by the time that Clinton was president, I think the thought process was that, you would want to find somebody in their 40s and 50s. Um, but uh, a brilliant constitutional mind, um, virulently anti-Trump uh and uh, a neat guy, so if if you like uh, this kind of stuff so

0:35:05 Thomas: What, how did he, I'M sorry, sorry, how did this come up? What is he doing?

0:35:07 Andrew: There was a talk about a constitutional convention and he's just has not come out and said uh, this seems like a terrible idea which to me, you know, when you talk about a institutional convention, the problem is right, that you're starting over and I don't know, really unpopular provisions of the Bill of Rights would necessarily pass at a constitutional convention today. Certainly, I am not super confident that the public attitude on the separation of church and state today matches up with the attitudes of our founding fathers. Um, so, you know, yes, yes you do.

0:35:14 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Hmm.

0:35:42 Thomas: But the phrase separation of church and state isn't in the constitution. So I win the argument. The exact, find me, find

0:35:49 Andrew: Case, case closed twice.

0:35:49 Thomas: Me the exact words, Andrew. And with that, thanks so much for coming on episode 300. And sorry, sorry for the joke that went too far for you earlier, but you know, you are appearing on on an episode with cognitive dissonance. So it's kind of, maybe that colors the way that, yeah.

0:36:06 Andrew: Oh gosh. Yeah. I, I knew, I knew the swamp I was, uh, setting foot in when I can, um, no, and, and let me end, uh really heartfelt with, with this, which is in addition to our friendship and our teamwork and collaboration as, as podcasters and the fact that you are, know, maybe the nicest person I've ever met. I didn't mean that. It, it, I really, really, I, as we said at the start of this, I I began, you know, my whole foray into this community as a fan of what you were doing on Atheistically Speaking. And you are, it's a fantastic show. And I'm not surprised you're at 300 episodes. It's an unbelievable accomplishment. And for having me here to celebrate it with you.

0:36:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:58 Thomas: Thanks so much for

0:36:59 Andrew: You should be proud of yourself. I'm serious.

0:36:59 Thomas: Saying that. I am really glad your alien craft landed on this planet, especially where it did. Thank you.

0:37:05 Andrew: Could have been Australia. Just one. Missed coordinate. Thanks, Thomas.

0:37:08 Thomas: Exactly. Thanks, Andrew. To many more recordings together.

0:37:14 Andrew: Yeah, we're only 274 behind, so there we go.

0:37:18 Thomas: Yeah. All right.

0:37:34 Thomas: Joining me right now are, what do I even say?, I can't, it's like, it, it so hard to not, to every special guest I've had, to not just say, this is my favorite goddamn guest, but these guys are my favorite god damn guests, it does start to lose meaning, but I'm gonna say it anyway, yeah,

0:37:45 Guests: It starts to lose meaning. I'm just saying, it starts to loose meaning. You know, how many fucking Valentine's cards can you send out that says, I choo-choo-choose you, right? Like, at some point! At some point, I don't feel special!

0:37:55 Thomas: I said, the answer is, let's see, how many guests did I have?, the answer's that many, you know you still like it, you know you still like it.

0:38:02 Guests: Uh... Look, Thomas, when you kiss me and it tastes like someone else, I don't believe you anymore. I'm in. I'm still kissing back, buddy.

0:38:14 Thomas: You take what you can get, let's admit it, no, I really really I truly

0:38:15 Guests: All right, I'm just going to go somewhere else. It's a very serious show. I'm not uncomfortable. I'm just physically ill thinking of someone kissing Tom.

0:38:24 Thomas: Thank you guys for joining me. Cognitive Dissonance, Tom and Cecil, I'm sure everybody's familiar with the show, but just in case they aren't, that would be really weird. But I thank you so much for coming on. Episode 300 means a lot to me, especially because you guys, I've said it before, I'll say it as many times as I want, because it's true. You guys really are responsible for, for launching me at anything that I am today. And I really, I truly mean that, because you found me over on T and the B millions of years ago and you were like, "Hey, come on our show." And it was like, "Sure." And that was the first thing I like ever did. And it, it, it really, it got me noticed. And then from there, I moved on to whatever I have now. So I really thank you for that And it means a lot That you're on here on 300 to kind of celebrate And do a little mini Atheistically speaking episode

0:39:12 Guests: You You know, I want to say, though, you know, it's what's great about the atheist community. First off, you're talented. You're a very talented guy. You're one of the smartest people I know. And so for you to get as far as you've gotten is not a surprise. You're an excellent interviewer, and you're a very intelligent guy, and you ask a lot of great questions, and this is really a great medium for you. And so I feel like no matter what, whether or not we had you on our show or somebody else, you would have done a lot Of good work. But that being said, I really am proud of the atheist community. And one of the things we did initially, and a lot other people did, is we really did share listeners. We really did work our way so that we could have other people on different shows and sort of introduce people to different things. And, you know, there's... there's a lot of listeners that listen to your show that don't like our show. And that's OK. And the same thing may go the opposite direction. And that's OK.

0:39:26 Thomas: Aw thank you Oh I'm sure

0:40:04 Guests: But but we share we share listeners and we and we've created a really cool community where we can go to the same city and really hang out. And and and it's a neat, it's an neat community to belong to. And we're happy to be part of it with you. You have not. No.

0:40:04 Thomas: It does Thank you Thank you for saying that And if I brought you guys any listeners I am fucking thrilled because that would

0:40:24 Guests: Zero. You've never done anything for me. Who have you brought me? No, one.

0:40:24 Thomas: Be You've asked every listener They're like no I'll find somebody Hey so okay listeners right now Email me if I This is going to be so depressing I can't Fast forward to the fucking Fast

0:40:38 Guests: That's awesome. I'll let you know in a few weeks how this works out.

0:40:41 Thomas: Forward To my inbox, just a tumbleweed blows through it like nothing. There's nothing. Email me. I'm serious, if you found Cognitive Dissonance through me, fucking email me. There will be two. There's going to be two and a half people. And I'm going to fucking I'm going to forward them to you and I'm just going to be like, there you go.

0:40:56 Guests: You're gonna rub it in. That's cool. I like it when they rub it in. I'll just go set to spam like all the rest of his emails. Uh,

0:41:08 Thomas: Yeah. So what I've been kind of doing is I've got, I've had, I'm got like five different guests or I guess groups of guests in some cases, you and scathing, and we're doing kind of a mini episode with each group and it's been really cool. And today I know Tom, you had something on your mind that I really am very much interested in talking about. Why don't you get us started?

0:41:30 Guests: Yeah, well, I, I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea of free speech. I know that we get, I know you get it all the time, and it's been a hot button in our community, in the skeptical community, and in the idea of free speech, we get accused all the time, maybe not all the time, but much more so recently, we get accused, really, of shutting down free speech anytime, and I know you've heard this before.

And there's an idea, I think, there's a couple of ideas that I think would benefit from some nuance and from some picking apart. So, you know, there is free speech, the legal concept, right? And I think we need to think about that separately from free speech, the social concept. And then the consequences of speech, whether they be the legal consequences of speech, which Andrew would probably speak to much more fluently than I would, and then the social consequences of speech, which I think are starting to shake out, right? We're just really starting to see what the social consequences of free speech in a medium like the internet really is and how that should be managed and who should be the arbiters of those rules and how that's all playing out.

What I think is happening now is that anytime somebody screams into the void and there's a reaction, the person screaming doesn't like the reaction and says, "No, no, you shut down my right to free speech." And they call out whoever is reacting as antithetical to the notion of free speech.

0:42:15 Thomas: Hmm.

0:43:02 Guests: We'll tease this out as we go through. But I think that that's kind of nonsense. And we need to think about these things a little more carefully instead of just yelling that our right to free speech has been somehow impugned because somebody blocked you from their fucking Twitter feed.

0:43:18 Thomas: Right. Right. Is there... Can I put you on the spot? Is there an example in mind that makes you think about this? Or is that bad to try to...

0:43:25 Guests: Well, yeah, sure. I don't care. Yeah. So I had a lengthy Twitter conversation. Lengthy for Twitter, right? I mean, that's the other problem is Twitter is, yeah.

0:43:31 Thomas: Yeah. 280 characters instead of...

0:43:35 Guests: It's a ridiculous place. Let's just say it's a ridiculous place to have a conversation, right. That's not how conversations work. But I had reasonably lengthy Twitter conversations with somebody where they were saying, look, you know, deplatforming and, you know, I don't remember what their other example was, is a form of, you know, violating somebody's free speech. And I'm paraphrasing, which is ironic because it's Twitter, and how do you paraphrase 140 characters? I just don't recall the exact words. And sort of we went back and forth. And I said, well, look. That's not a violation of anyone's free speech. Free speech is really a legal concept, right? And the legal concept of free speech means that the government can't shut down my right to say something unless there's, you know, immediate consequences that, you know, the classic example is fire in the crowded theater, right? That's the, that's the classic example. So you can't do that. That's, that's no bueno.

0:43:35 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:44:24 Guests: But other than that, well, you can't

0:44:24 Thomas: But yeah, actually, you can do that. I think That was what was funny about Hitchens' speech about free speech, is that was cited. I mentioned this before, and it's something that... You should watch that Hitchens video. Just search Hitchens fire in a crowded theater. But that was brought up as an example of a bad argument in the Supreme Court when they were trying to adjudicate whether or not it was okay for anti-war people to hand out pamphlets at colleges. And they actually said, oh, it's okay to restrict this because it's like the equivalent of shouting fire in in a crowded theater. Uh, but anyway, but I, but to, to bring up another example of what you're trying to say, I think there's, there are certainly things you can't say there. Uh. You can't, uh, there's certain types of slander.

0:45:14 Thomas: There's certain kinds of slanders. There are certain types of false advertising. There're, uh. State secrets. Like there's plenty of, there are plenty of ways that speech is restricted.

0:45:21 Guests: Threaten the president.

0:45:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, threaten somebody. Absolutely. Absolutely.

0:45:24 Guests: But those, those are separate consequences than social consequences. And what, what I think is happening is that there's a conflation of social and legal consequences. And the legal consequences, I don't really want to talk too much about because they're cut and dry and they're adjudicated and they've really not open for our discussion, right? I mean, no one's going to ask Tom from the Cognitive Dissonance podcast whether or not something is legal or not legal. That would be a stupid thing for you to do. But we all get to decide on social consequences, right, because we're all part of the same society. So we're all having this ongoing conversation about what are the consequences of speech. And we know that there are consequences to speech. So let's dispel immediately the notion that speech is free of social consequences. We all know that there's plenty of consequences to speech.

0:45:28 Thomas: Right.

0:46:14 Guests: And what's been interesting is that the consequences to speech, the social consequences to speak, when speech is engaged in on a person-to-person level, you know, toe-toe physically, if I say something to Cecil that really riles him up, he can slug me, right? Now, should he? No. But he's right here in front of me. And if I say something that really riles him up, like, you know, he can take action against that, right? Now, I've been trying for years. Yeah, man, we sit across from each other and say some horrible shit. Right, I said the worst things I can possibly think of. He usually just shakes his head and edits it out.

0:46:37 Thomas: Let's try it. Make this happen right now. Yeah.

0:46:48 Guests: That's usually what he does. But, you Know, like, should he strike me? Of course he shouldn't, right, I'm not advocating for violence. You know that I'm NOT advocating for violence, but that's part of what keeps speech in check to some degree when it's person-to-person, right when it is eye-to-eye, face-to-face. Now we have this sort of, relatively speaking, new world, right, where there's real-time speech that's being engaged in, unlike newspapers, which isn't real-time, it's real time speech that is being engaged on an electronic level, that's semi-anonymous, or if not anonymous, protected by distance, right? And there's no physical proximity involved. And so I think what's happening is the level of discourse ratchets way the fuck down, and the level of vitriol ratchets way the fuck up.

0:47:37 Guests: And then when that happens and people respond to it negatively, then there's this screaming like, whoa, my right to free speech. If somebody says something just utterly awful and terrible and hateful, and then you block them from your Twitter account. It's like, oh, they don't want to engage in a conversation. And that is a consequence, right? That's a consequence to this new phenomenon, this new medium of speech. And I find it interesting as it's evolving.

0:48:08 Thomas: Well, you guys have probably heard me talk about before and the audience certainly has. I am getting really tired of the number of things that people are getting away with in the name of free speech because I am a fan of free speak, but that doesn't mean you need to give every idiot a voice and not challenge them. But what this reminds me of is, obviously, you guys are aware, Cecil guest edited an episode where I talked to two trolls.

And one thing we were talking about before we went on the air is how different Dustin and, well, to a lesser degree, Mike, but certainly Dustin, how different he engaged with us once we were on on Skype, he was far more sensitive to being yelled at or being challenged, uh, than he was maybe online. And that's certainly to me, that's okay. Here's, here's where I'm going to make, possibly uh, some, some judgments, but this is just how I am. I'm the kind of person where I going to interact pretty much the same way, whatever medium it is. And I don't understand personally, I just don't get it. I don't get the mentality that, oh, when it's online, it's a, it's fun and games. You just, you know,

0:48:34 Guests: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right, right.

0:49:20 Thomas: You're pissed at everybody. You can say, and actually, you know who else does this? PZ Myers. Everybody says he's like the nicest person on earth in person, and then he goes and types all this stuff on his blog, and you're like, what is, I mean, Yeah, it's like, even if you agree with his message or something, which is fine, you know, the way he's doing it, it's like, why are you doing that? And I feel the same way, and people can call me out on this if I'm wrong, but I feel like, like, I personally, I would rather just be consistent. Like, maybe I'll get, you know, maybe I'll be able to get emotional, maybe I'll go get mad here and there.

But I'm not one way online and a totally different way when you talk to me in person. I feel like that's a weird way to be. And that was something I was kind of reflecting on when you mentioned this, Tom. Like, it's weird. I would feel weird. Like, why don't these anonymous trolls feel that? Like, why don't they feel like, hey, it's weird that I feel OK saying this when I'm anonymous, but not when I am looking at somebody? You all

0:49:33 Guests: Yeah. It feels toxic, right?

0:50:15 Guests: I mean, I have a speculation. I don't know if this is true. So this is just wild speculation. But what occurs to me is that some of this might be generational. So I'm a little older than you are, right? But the speech that I grew up having, the debates that I grew up, having the conversations that I had, the majority of them, and the

0:50:20 Thomas: Right? Hmm. Yeah.

0:50:34 Thomas: It was, should we engage in World War II in a conflict abroad, you know, should we get involved?

0:50:38 Guests: Answer was yes. I'm always pro-war. Should we use mustard gas in World War I? Again, yes. 100% yes. Give me more mustard gas. Should we stab Caesar? I'm not that old. I'm still a desirable man. I'm distinguished, thank you. I'm a little bit older than you, but I still think this might be a generational issue, because most of the conversations that I engaged in growing up, they were not a walkie-talkie. They were in person, right? So they were in-person or they were on the telephone, right, and that's a different— So it seems to me there's levels, right. There's levels of disconnect. The proximate level is, hey, I'm looking at you eye-to-eye. I'm looking right now at Cecil. He's six feet across from me. We're going to have a conversation that feels and interacts one way. Then if I get him on the phone, there's a level of distance now that exists between us. And then it's a little further removed if it's just by, let's say, text message. And it's even deeply, even more further removed if it's over the internet without using our real names, right? Using a moniker, an avatar, right.

0:50:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:51:41 Guests: So there are levels of disconnect from our humanity that seems to drive some of this behavior. And I don't see the value in that. And maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe there is value to it. There is value, sure. Being able to connect to somebody across the world is a value, right? Finding community in different places, yeah, sure, right. Yeah, I guess that's

0:52:02 Thomas: But you don't have to do that anonymously. I would say that there's an interesting you know what you made me think of, it's that it's actually interesting, and I'll go, oh, sure, sure, oh, that's certainly a value that, yeah, no one will deny that.

0:52:05 Guests: What I mean. I see, I see. That's what I mean. It's the anonymous portion, right ? Yeah, but when You want to... wait, wait, when you want to trade child porn, you need to be anonymous, I think. That's Yeah, you got Yeah, all

0:52:16 Thomas: I mean, that's a, it's certainly a value to, he

0:52:16 Guests: Right. See, I never trade. I just buy. I just, I don't, I don't t Are you buy low, sell high?

0:52:20 Thomas: Hoards, he just hoards. He doesn't, yeah. He's not going to let anyone else get ahold of it. He just got the good shit. So I, something you made me think of, which I, this, this is speculative, this, but I'm wondering if there's going to be an interesting generational gap that is not quite, that is like what you said, but also will come, come back around, because I feel like the, there's a, there was a, the way it evolved, the way this, this medium evolved, was right away, it was very easy to be anonymous. And there are, there are plenty of ways, there're still plenty of ways to be anonymous, but back in the day, it was incredibly difficult to know who anybody was, like anonymous bulletin boards or whatever the hell that shit was in the early internet. And I feel like that culture might be different. I would actually speculate that the generation growing up right now, if you're 10, 12, 14, high school age, something like that, I think they're so much more used to the technology being ingrained in their lives that their online identity is more part of their real identity.

0:52:23 Guests: God. That's fair, that's fairly sure.

0:53:23 Thomas: And I think therefore it's possible it could go back the other way way around where, you know, maybe I'm being optimistic, but where it's almost like they're more not conscious of what they're saying online because it's more, um, it's more ingrained in their life. It's more part of their actual identity. Does that make sense? Because like when it first came along, it was like, oh, this is someplace I can just go and be anonymous. But now everything is integrated. It's like your Facebook account is your Instagram bullshit and your whatever is your this. And you log into one thing that tells you everything. And I wonder if it could go back the other way, especially when everything is about image sharing, like everything, every single medium is about posting pictures of your dinner or whatever, so it's like you're, that's less anonymous, you know?

0:53:47 Guests: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

0:54:03 Thomas: What I mean?

0:54:03 Guests: I You know what's interesting to me is that I remember when this phenomenon sort of started for me, and it was the bulletin boards. Right. When I would get on those bulletin boards and I would start to read some of the comments and I would get into some of these fights with people, I recognized that the level of insult shot up way high, right.

0:54:09 Thomas: Yeah,

0:54:21 Guests: Way high, real quick. And, um, we had, and I don't know if I told you this story, Thomas, and if I did, you can just edit this out of your show, but there was a guy who was commenting on our podcast. He came to our podcast and he commented, and he made a really shitty comment, just a really shitty, just, we went from like zero to 60 in two sentences, and just attacked us and said we were garbage, and said you were idiots, and and he said, you know, he was basically saying listening to our podcast is like eating a bowl of shit with a tiny bit of ice cream in it. That's what he, he eventually got to.

0:54:21 Thomas: Well, At least he said there was ice cream in it, yeah.

0:54:56 Guests: Yeah. I know, I know, yeah, he's like, but, but he was, he was rude and and just ruthless, and so I jumped on and was rude right back to him. I just I told him he wouldn't know funny if he fucked it in the mouth. You know what I mean? We just went back and forth. And we went back or forth three or four times, and then he left. And he signed his name, right? So I didn't think anything of it. Two years later, we're at a Skepticon. We walk up, and he sees our shirts. And this guy says, are you guys with the show? And we say, we are the show. And he turns his badge around, and he's the guy who I was arguing with on Twitter.

0:54:58 Thomas: Oh, Wow. You

0:55:32 Guests: Or not Twitter, on comments. Yeah.

0:55:33 Thomas: Know, you haven't told this story

0:55:34 Guests: Right? And so we look at each other, and he says, you know, I know that got out of hand. I just want to say I disagree with you guys, but here we are kind of, and here's the thing. Yeah, but I respect what you do. I respect that you guys do. And I looked at him, and I was a little hot, and I said, yeah, you kind of went a little too far there, but maybe I did too. And he's like, yeah we kind of both did, and you know I kind of regret it, and so do I. At the end of that conversation, we shook hands.

Hands, we looked at each other across the way, and I think both of us were sort of waiting to see where it went, and it, both, both of us kind of are, I think a lot of people will err on the side of, I don't want to get into a fist fight right now, and so that's what happened, and we, we walked away from that conversation, not friends, but certainly not to the level where I would say if that guy was on fire wouldn't piss to put him out, you know what I mean, like, like, and I think that, I think that, but it's one of those things, and it's, it, very apparent in the conversation that Dustin and Michael were having with Eli, that that tone dropped way down.

0:55:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:55:49 Thomas: What, what, Dustin,

0:56:39 Guests: I mean, on your page, he was saying, that's cool. I don't need anybody to cry for me. I don't need a cringe fest. You know, you could tell the way that was said.

0:56:48 Thomas: I want to interject it real quick and let you get back, that I found out from a lot of people that he was trolling a lot worse other places than he let on. Like, he's been kicked out of groups for saying mean things. So, like, he did, and he did that to bolster your point. Once he starts talking to a person, he really backed down from how he really was online. But go on, yeah, mm-hmm.

0:57:08 Guests: He really did. At one point, he says to Eli, stop screaming at me. And he sounded vulnerable, like he actually sounded vulnerable. He sounded hurt. He sounded he sounded like a human being. Right? That was being yelled at by another person. And he sounded, you know, I'm not, I'm sounded, and I don't mean it to sound, I know that they're both like sort of masculine dudes or whatever, they were talking about it at one point in there, that masculinity and all that stuff, I don't mean to make him sound unmasculine either when I say that.

So I just want to, I just want to put that out there that I'm not trying to demean him in any way, but he did sound vulnerable, and I, and I recognize that there's a level of connection that was there that wasn't there online, that there's a level of shame that you feel when you're in front of another person, and when you say something, it's a social shame that we have, maybe evolutionary level of social shame, you know, that we don't exhibit when we're close to the other person, but we sort of lose when we are online.

And it's an interesting phenomenon, and I recognize it in our Twitter followers. I recognize that in the people who leave messages for us. I recognize in emails. You know, we get bad, nasty, not nasty, but certainly very critical emails every single week. We get very critical tweets, very critical blog posts, et cetera, at us all the time for our opinions. Never once, I think, has anybody ever come up to me in person and said, except for that Thomas guy, that guy that I was telling you about online, nobody's ever said, I don't like your show. Show The worst I had was somebody

0:57:12 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah

0:58:55 Guests: I, I walked up behind someone while they were talking about our show to Noah, and they were like they were real drunk and they're like well, he said what he said was, he's like, he's like, those cognitive distance guys suck compared to you, essentially, was what he said, and I walked up right behind him, and I was like, that's cool, we don't, we're not that great, he's a guy who died, didn't have any kind of fucking trailed off order, but that's the worst I've ever and he wouldn't say it to me, he said it when I wasn't there, right, so there's this

0:59:01 Thomas: Like yeah, it's a bowl of shit with a little bit ice cream in it. Oh hey. Oh gosh. Yeah Yeah Right, right Yeah, this is what pisses me off about it. Yeah, and that's great points, and it made me think of a bunch of things. Like, first off, I think what frustrates me about this online trolling, and the reason that I never, like, I'll get, I'll get angry online from time to time if I want to make an argument and I think someone's disagreeing, like I will get angry, but the part where you start calling someone names and like saying all this shit about kill yourself and like the stuff that trolls do, the reason I don't value it is because it's free, it's, it's, there's no, there's not cost to that, there's, it is absolutely nothing to me. When I say, when I see someone online say just, uh, you know, ad hom kind of vulgar, whatever, uh, negative stuff meant to intimidate or, or whatever it, there is, I recognize that all they are doing is putting their fingers on a stupid keyboard and typing words that are free.

0:59:22 Guests: Yeah.

1:00:14 Thomas: There's not, there's no, if, if someone said that to me in person, if somebody said that to Tom in person, that's not free. Like that's, I would, I would be like, wow, I'm impressed that that you're going to stand here to my face and tell me I should kill myself because you're probably going to get punched in the face. Like, like that could happen, you know, like go ahead, go ahead.

1:00:30 Guests: Well, let me interrupt you real quick because I don't want to lose this. So the reason for that is that there's a social taboo that's being transgressed, right? And we know it. And the consequence of that taboo, while nobody's advocating for it, right, there are consequences to violating social taboos. And it is a recognized social taboo to just walk up to somebody or in in conversation with somebody, ratchet things from level, you know, zero to level 60. And so we don't do it. We don't doing it because we know that we're violating this social taboo and that the consequences might be severe, right? What I think is interesting is that online, the taboo is reversed. And what I mean by that is what seems to be the recognized online social tabo is is tattling. It's not the shitty discourse. The

1:00:35 Thomas: Sure. What do

1:01:26 Guests: Shitty discourse, well, I'll tell you in a second, The shitty discourses dismissed with, it's just trolling, or it's just shitposting, or just this or just that. Where people get bent out of shape is when they violate the online taboo of going to mommy Twitter and having somebody somebody reported or going to daddy Facebook and having somebody reported, it's the it's the online version of tattling, right? It's like we're all in this room together, and if we were all in a room together physically, the taboo would be no one's gonna stand face to face with me, or very few people are gonna stand faced to face. It's never happened, right? In 38 years of my life, no one has ever stood face to face of me and said anywhere near the level of shit people would say to me online, right?

Because they know that that's like it's going to escalate, right? And people don't escalate it because they don't want to break that social taboo. They don't wanna deal with the consequences. It's interesting because when we go online, we reverse that. Online, the real taboo is going and tattling and having somebody kicked out of the room.

Because there seems to be some difference here that I don't really fully understand that says we all have a right to scream as loud as we'd like in this room at each other.

1:01:26 Thomas: You mean by tattling? Okay. Sure, right, right.

1:02:42 Guests: And the only and the only responsible way to behave in this room, if we don't like the way someone screams at us, is to scream back at them. But if we say, hey man, get out of my room, then somehow that is a violation of a social taboo, and people get like they get their fucking panties in a twist about that and they scream free speech, even though the words free speech don't actually apply in that circumstance, and I think that that's an interesting flip of the script.

1:03:07 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good point. And I think that what bothers me so much about it is that I wish we all could just be better. And I'll include myself at this. Be better at recognizing you're talking to a person. Like, be better at that because you are talking to a person, you know? And this desire to take it up to 11 with the personal insults comes from a powerlessness, I think. Like that's why I don't do it or I try not to ever. AndI don't think I've ever, you know, like told someone to kill themselves online. In fact, I'm sure I haven't ever in my life and I I never will. The reason I don't say shit like that.

1:03:20 Guests: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Guilty as charged in the roast.

1:03:50 Guests: I said guilty as charged in our roast recently. So, yeah.

1:03:52 Thomas: What's that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Well, reason I'll never do that is because it's a powerless thing to do. Like if you're in that situation, what you're doing is you're realizing I don't have any way to change this person's mind or get them to do or say what I want. So what I'm going to do is elevate to the, I also can't hit hit them or hurt them physically because we're online. What I'm going to do is say the worst things I can think of in some effort for that to make an impact. It's like this little attack like this. This is all I have. This isn't just the only thing I can do. And it's worthless. It'S not worth anything.

1:04:21 Guests: Yeah. Yeah, because the consequences are, like you said, it's free, right? Like, we've come to expect to some degree that trolls just be trolls, you know, and all that, you know. It's kind of this weird, like, well, boys will be boys kind of attitude that we take toward, you know, some of the most hateful shit I have ever seen, you know, that, that I, again, I simply would never replicate in person or would very rarely replicate, replicate. And it, and it's funny because, as a corollary the same levels of disconnect are the same levels of connection we seek to get past when we're getting to know somebody, you know? So like, if you're getting into a relationship, you're going to get to know somebody. Let's say you're, let's, and this is, this just occurred to me, but I I think it's an interesting corollary. If you're dating in 2016, you start off on an app, then you move from an app or a messaging system to a text, text to phone, phone to person, right?

1:04:33 Thomas: Yeah.

1:05:20 Guests: So you're actually moving in the opposite direction because there's an acknowledgement that real connection doesn't usually happen until you move through those levels. And the reverse is happening as we move a lot more of our discourse away from those levels. So we move toward disconnect, and we do that implicitly understanding, I think, that by moving to this medium, we are going to have a harder time connecting with people on a real human-to-human level.

1:05:30 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting.

1:05:50 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting to think about. And I I think what what I am advocating is the idea, just treat the situation like you are in person. I mean, really, I mean like why don't we do that? I really wish, I wish there weren't online anonymity except for in very limited circumstances. I wish I would want there to still be a place where you can be anonymous because maybe you're in the Middle East and you're gay or maybe, you know, like certainly. But I wish for the most part, and this is slowly becoming more and more true, is you know Facebook doesn't let you for better or for worse they're not letting you fake your name or do you know do that kind of thing there's probably problems involved with that too but anyway um I would like that I would like it for if there's going to be an anonymous forum where everyone is anonymous then fine but this weird asymmetrical warfare where some people are and some people aren't and you and the people who aren't can just launch attacks however they want. Twitter eggs can do. It's frustrating.

1:06:47 Guests: Well, you just said a term right now, I think, that shows that there is some sort of derision toward anonymity, and that's Twitter eggs, right? When people say Twitter eggs that's not a term that is, I don't think, at least the way I've read it in context, it occurs to me that that term is actually an insult, right, it's a way to demean someone's tweet by calling them a Twitter egg, right? You're an anonymous idiot. You're not anybody I should even care about listening to. And so I feel like hopefully that's coming into the vernacular. So it actually means something, right. The thing that I'm worried about is have we already lost, have we already lost this? And the thing I'm afraid about the most is go to Reddit, go to our Donald and And read the posts there and watch how I think Twitter and other things have sort of poisoned the discourse in this country to where, and I know that they're going to say the same thing on the other side, right?

So like the people that are listening on the otherside that are like with that group are going to say, no, no no, the left poisoned the discourse. They're just, they're not, and maybe they're right, I don't know, you know what I mean?

I didn't follow at all, but what I see is this level of anonymity in that group, this level of vitriol, which is, I'm not going to say that I've never seen this level of vitrial before, but it feels like a level of vitriol that is unwarranted.

1:06:58 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Right,

1:08:20 Guests: You know what I mean? Just look at how they talk about people. People look at how they talk about, you know, like in the media, mainstream media, et cetera, and then watch as they just don't care about facts. They don't cares about sorts of things. And then they say the meanest thing possible. And then you look and you say, okay, well, that should disqualify you from an election possibly. And it doesn't, right?

1:08:43 Guests: It doesn't. I don't know. Did we lose the battle? Did we lose the war? I don't know. I mean, I'm on the side of no anonymity, you know, at least to a certain level. I'm available for comment on everything that I put out there, right, in person or otherwise. And so is there a level of discourse right now that we're never going to get back? And I don't know the answer to that.

1:08:43 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I think The issue is, what happened, one of the many things that happened in this election, I think, is that some part of our society decided there were things, there were resolved issues of racism and sexism and homophobia that we've decided is not acceptable in society, and the other side, the, the element, I'm not saying this is the whole, all of Republicans, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're all this, but the, there is an element of them who are one or two or three of these things in some closeted way, they rather, than me, like, like the decision to legalize gay marriage did not all of a sudden make everyone accept gay marriage, it just made the people against it think twice about opening up about it.

And the same goes with Obama being a black president. The same goes for Hillary being a female candidate. These things that we all thought as progressives, that I thought as a progressive, like, okay, maybe I'm in my bubble, but I thought there were certain things that even the other side would acknowledge are sexist, and that turned out not to be true because their response was actually just to not talk about it until somebody, like, like Donald Trump gave them a voice.

And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, wow, there are a lot of these people, I forgot about that. So it's, it's an interesting problem because I don't know what you do. Like, I think we're running out of time here, but like, I don't, a lot of people keep talking about what we need to do is be nicer to them and engage the other side. And it's like, I don't know how you do that. I don't know how

1:09:52 Guests: Right. It feels Like what it feels like to me, Thomas, is that if you are nicer and you try to engage the other side, they just try to find some way to tick you off and tweak you and make fun of you and try to be merciless about it. There's

1:10:44 Thomas: You, well, yeah. And what happens is they still just believe what they believe. They don't, that doesn't change their mind.

1:10:46 Guests: Yeah. Yeah. There never changes anything. Well, how much of that? Let me let me bring it. Let me bring It back around to medium a little bit. And I know how much Of that is, is the medium of something like Twitter. You know, Twitter is not a place where nuanced conversations can really take place. It is a 140 characters, 140 characters. I mean, it's just a place for people to yell at each other.

1:10:50 Thomas: Yeah. All right.

1:11:13 Thomas: Well, but you know what? I'm not even talking about that because I'm talking about the people who, uh, who in their homes were, were thinking these things and they don't, maybe they're not even online all that much. I mean, it just tends to be older voters. It tends to be like, they're thinking these things. And they just don't talk about it. They keep it to themselves. And then all of a sudden Trump says something and they're like, oh yeah, no, I, I agree with that. Like I sure, call her a nasty woman in the middle of the the debate for no fucking reason. Like, yeah, that was a great thing to do. You know, like it's weird that I don't know how you reach those people. I really don't. Sorry, it's a depressing note to leave on.

1:11:15 Guests: Oh, Yeah, I was trying to... That's all right.

1:11:52 Thomas: So I'm calling it to bring it to a close here. But I just want to say very interesting discussion as always. I love having you guys on. It's always entertaining. I, I love love that you guys get a chance to show your less dick joke side and show your more nuanced side.

1:12:07 Guests: Less dick is most of what I show.

1:12:11 Thomas: Yeah, less dick comma joke side. No. Thank you.

1:12:15 Guests: I make it work for me.

1:12:17 Thomas: Thank

1:12:18 Guests: Thomas, congratulations on 300 episodes. Yeah, buddy. You know, great work. And this podcast really is a treasure. It really is. I mean, it's one of the ones I don't subscribe to a lot of podcasts, but I subscribe to this one because it's all the conversations, even if they are frustrating, are worth listening to. Absolutely. Yep.

1:12:35 Thomas: You so much. That really means a lot to me. And congratulations, too, on all your success. And I hope we, you know, I hope we continue together being great podcast friends and doing each other's, because, you know, we're we're weird like that, so we just do, we do weird stuff with each other shows.

1:12:50 Guests: Wow. Thanks for having us on, man. I'm into the weird stuff, buddy. Thanks so much.

1:12:53 Thomas: Thanks Guys A Way to Celebrate 300, going out with Cog Dis, the guys who really started it all for me. Man, that is so fun. I really enjoyed that three-part spectacular 300 special. Special, um, I also want to say thank you so much for your response to my, one I'm not going to do it again, my one, uh, sort of plea for support.

If anyone was on the fence, you guys really came through, and at this time right now in in my life and my work, what's happening, uh, that is really, really critical. And, like, incredibly, I don't know, it's overwhelming. Thank you guys so much. I got a lot of people to thank. Thank you for watching. For example, thank you to new patron Bob Brady, HamsterToybox, Jeffrey Smith, crankyhumanist, Nora Garcia, Tom R., Travis Schwartz, Cinelogue, Just another Cali beaner, Mark Landes, Jennifer, John Copeland, GottaGargleEmAll, William Jan Van Zeist, Th0mten, I think, Joel Rembach, edited their pledge from 1 to 2. Thank you so much, that's also something you can do if you're a $1 patron and you think you can afford to bump up to 2, or 2 to 3, whatever it is. Uh, that also really helps. So thank you so much.

Pamela Kendall, uh, Joshua Mosteit, Robert Slavens, Big Baby Soad, uh, Daylin with an edit, Krista Manny with an Edit, thank you guys, Danni Bayn, Ken Aldred, Rohan Cox, Griselda with an Ed, thank you very much, Ashley Gragg, EffDee, Glen, David Campbell, Joe Kindic, Benjamin, andrew cooper, Shelly Younger with an edited pledge, Paul, Gender Pronoun, David at TheRamblingBlog.com with a Pledge at Big Pledge, Edit to 5, thank, thank you, David.

1:15:04 Thomas: Graham Baradoy, edit to two. Sarah Charlton, Evan Lee, Samantha, We-three, John Stewart, Grand Duke, Njål Davidsson, with a big pledge edit from one to ten. Wow, thank you for your kindness. I really appreciate that. Mary Smith, or Marie Smith, sorry, and JD and Christopher Dark. Ah, blown away. Seriously, that outpouring of support really helps. I look forward to being able to provide great bonus content for you patrons to really make it so this pledge is worth it to you. That's very important to me to do. Speaking of, there's... there's a patron-only video up right now that has another big announcement that I'm not quite making yet. It's not quite ready for primetime, but there's going to be another video with a further bit of announcing on that front.

1:15:51 Thomas: So I actually really enjoyed that. I made a patron only video discussing this and just got so many kind comments. Really, the community we have here, and especially over on patreon.com/atheist, is really cool. I appreciate it, you guys are commenting to each other, you're bouncing off each other's ideas, I love it, so thank you very kindly for that, and I loved making a video, it was cool to talk to you and to get your thoughts, being able to get your feedback on really critical decisions for the podcast, it's almost like you guys, they're kind of like the a giant board of directors, you know, because you, you guys, the ones making this show happen, so I like kind of being able run things by you. I mean, I need to have obviously my creative freedom and all that. But when it's a decision that's a little tough, something I'm not sure on, it's really cool to have you guys to bounce ideas off of and get feedback.

1:16:44 Thomas: I really like that. So look forward to that. And thank you for a gigantically successful episode 300 special. And here's to 300 more episodes. And then I quit. No, just kidding. Here's to however many episodes there are. Thank you and see you guys next time.