AS304: Clarifying Empathy, with Eli Bosnick

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Still Atheistically Speaking For Now. I'm your host Thomas Smith. This is episode 304. Alright, got a great guest for you today. You already know who it is. It's Eli Bosnick. But here's the thing. I would really, really highly encourage you to listen to this one all the way through. Eli opens up in a way about his past that I guess he hadn't before, and it really affected me, and really, I've been thinking about it ever since, and I would just, I really like this recording. I think it was, there's so much good stuff in it.

So Eli is here to talk about, among other things, the empathy speech he did back in in 298 and 299, specifically 298. A lot of people had questions about that, wanted him to clarify some things. I have some questions. I actually had some things I kind of disagreed with him on that I didn't bring up as much at the time. So that's what we're here to discuss today. I think it was a really great discussion. And we got a lot from Eli that I don't think he's really given anywhere else. And I want to thank him for opening up in that way. It was really really cool. So here you go, Eli Bosnick.

0:01:53 Thomas: Joining me right now, the man who needs no introduction, but I'll do it anyway, Eli Bosnick, how you doing? I'm

[0:01:59] good, Thomas. Thanks for having me on again. Thank you for coming on. Of course, everyone should know you from Godawful Movies, Scathing Atheist.

0:02:08 Thomas: Everyone's familiar with you. But what we're here to talk about today is a follow-up show that I've really wanted to do, I know you've really wanted to do. And more importantly, a lot of listeners have hit us both up, I think, with comments and questions regarding your empathy. You did a bit of a soliloquy on it back on a recording that should go nameless. No, on a recording that turned out to be, I think, a lot more informative than maybe I gave it credit for by the

[0:02:35] time the editing was all done. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Cecil. Yeah, for part one. That's a hell of an edit, Cecil. And the part on empathy, because you made a plea for empathy back in that show. And I think You'll likely want to maybe touch on it again, go over what you think are the highlights again. But some of the questions I got and things that made sense to me to maybe want

[0:03:03] to run by you is the idea that, like, while you were making a plea for empathy in order to be able to even deliver facts, you know, in order for Dustin or Michael back in that recording to even be able to accept facts, they first needed to show empathy. And a lot of people, and I know they probably sent these comments to you, said, look, isn't it the other way around? You know, isn't it true that empathy is sort of a subjective thing, like we can get caught up with empathy? A lot of people referenced, you know, Paul Bloom, I think is his name, what is the book, Against Empathy. Against Empathy, which if you just read the title, sounds like it should

[0:03:41] be something you would have to answer.

0:03:44 Thomas: But even still, it is interesting to think that, like, yes, empathy is a subjective thing and facts shouldn't really be subjective in theory, like we should be able to kind of agree on facts.

[0:03:56] I'm sure you've got a lot of those questions. So what are your thoughts? Yeah, well, so the first thing is I want to sort of say

0:04:02 Eli: That I made a mistake. I made a couple of pretty major mistakes in the way I introduced that way of thinking. And the first, of course, speaks to my giant and very, very silly ego, which is that I assumed people listening to that conversation had heard my conversation with James Lindsay, had heard me come on this show, be wrong, come back and do an apology and talk about the importance of integrity. And I got a lot of people who wrote to me for the first time, very sweetly too, people on side, people who were just confused, who were like, dude, what are you doing? Like going online, getting in yelly fights with people. And the truth is, if you're not aware of sort of the history of civil debate that I have participated in, that was a weird moment, right? Right. If you were like a movie guys doing a show and I'm just like, you have

[0:04:59] no empathy. I think a lot of people, even people who are on side and agree with me in a lot of ways, you know, wrote me incredibly heartfelt messages. But just being like, dude, I have no idea why you did this. This was a bad choice for you. And so, so I do want to apologize for that, in that I took advantage of the context I believe that I have on this show. And I would encourage anyone who was just like, "What is the wacky comedian doing here and why is he yelling at people?" To listen to the James Lindsay thing, to listen to my first appearance here, and more importantly, listen to my apology about my first ever appearance on this show, to sort of see the story arc that led to that conversation in a little way.

So that's the first thing I want to apologize for. The second thing is, uh, this was an idea that I applied, replied to a person on the air live, which meant that people who heard it, in the most part, and a couple people got it, and a couple people liked hearing someone who was being trollish or hearing someone who was saying these things online and then sort of walked them back in person, they, they liked hearing that address, and a lot of people wrote me incredibly positive messages. "Oh, I'm so glad someone's finally talking like this to the troll, someone finally taking on the trolls." But for a lot of people, they were just like, "Why are you yelling at Dustin and saying he's incapable of empathy?"

0:06:26 Eli: What they got from that was not my philosophical ideas about empathy, but was just me calling Dustin a psychopath, path and honestly I think that's what Dustin got in the conversation, uh, and the truth is that that was my mistake for applying that principle, which is something that had been swimming around in my head, uh, live at a person on a recording without talking about it first, um,

[0:06:53] and then the third and final thing that I just wanted to sort of apologize for is that, and someone who I disagree with all the time, a guy who I email back and forth with quite a bit, he was like, you started that conversation by referencing three conversations that you hadn't had on the show that we would have to go watch a two-hour YouTube video to understand, and then a Facebook conversation that we couldn't see. And

[0:07:18] I think that was a valid point as well. So, I want to take all of that on. Yeah, and I also, I definitely have responsibility for that. It's unclear to

0:07:24 Thomas: Me what the solution to this is. Sometimes, you know, because we can't, it's not like every show we can recapitulate all this history. But at the same time, I do totally understand the concern of new listeners. We're always going to have new listeners, you and I both. We're always going to have people who don't know the context. I don't know the solution. And also, while you're apologizing, you're doing your apology tour, which I think is very respectable of you. I think that you're very apt to apologize when you think you've gotten something wrong. That's a good quality. And so, to emulate that, I also want to apologize for, I set this up, that original conversation with Dustin and Michael, I set it up in order to see what would happen when we tried to have a conversation with people who obviously vehemently disagreed with us.

And that's not an easy thing to do. And we set about a bit of a plan for it, but there was no way it was that we were ever going to stick to that plan. Like, it's just too hard to do that when four people who all have different points try to say stuff. So part of that's definitely my fault, like I didn't think we would need to be referencing the Facebook exchange. I thought we would just sort of say what we said on the Facebook exchange. I didn't want to expect everybody to know it. I thought we would just

0:08:44 Thomas: Kind of repeat what we said, but I didn't realize how, like, accusational it would get and how much we would maybe want the original context. So, I apologize for

[0:08:54] that as well. Yeah, and I do want to lay some of that last bit about us sort of

0:09:00 Eli: Wanting a subject at Dustin and Michael's door. I mean, the truth of the matter is, and I'm going to push back on a subject that actually Tom and Cecil brought up on your 300 extravaganza, which if you haven't heard that conversation, if you missed that episode, and didn't get to hear it, it's incredible Tom's thinking on free speech and Cecil's, and listening to them work this out both on their own show and here over the last couple of weeks, and with Andrew over on OA today when we're recording this, has been awesome, you know, it's just been like a learning

[0:09:31] buffet for me, I've just gotten a little opinion here watching people grow and watching and I mean, conversation at the highest level, you know, because most of the free speech conversation I have is someone calls me a fag and then

[0:09:43] I go, no, you are, and then they go, my free speech has been taken away, or someone's like, I think it's funny when your wife cries, and I'm like, fight me, and they're like, oh, just kidding. So, you know, that's my instruction. So again, the point of this being, Dustin and Michael behaved in a way online that I believe, and I'm not inside their head, I'm not a mind reader, that I believe is honest. You know, we're the most honest when we're alone. We're the most honest when there's no consequences, right? Right, we're all more polite on the train, we're all more polite in person, but, but I do not believe, and this is where I'm pushing against Tom and Cecil a little bit, that, like, they showed them true, that they showed their true selves on the show, which were walked back.

I think they felt uncomfortable on the show and they walked back those beliefs, which they didn't really have because there were consequences. Even just doing a live recording that they knew was going to go out on the internet of saying some of those things, right? So we started to play the word game, right, and this is a lot of what certainly you and I have confronted when it comes to trolls, and Tom and Cecil who told that story about the guy who said it to the face, is, you know, once someone's not in the, once someone gets in the room with you, all

[0:11:04] of a sudden all the talk seems to disappear yeah Right? All the strong opinions and the tough guy and the this and that. Everybody's an internet tough guy. And if you only knew how wrong and you are a Nazi and it all melts away. And look, that's true of everybody. I want to be very clear. If I ran into David R. White on the street, or if I did an official debate with David R. White, I would probably not do my five best jokes about his physical appearance. Right? Because I'm

[0:11:35] trying to reach him in that scenario. Here, I'll try to fix my mistake. So David A.R. White is an actor in the Christian movies that Eli makes fun of over on God Awful Movies. If you don't know who David A.R. White is, you stop listening to the show. And the episode, just to make absolutely sure, the episodes we're talking about right now are AS -298

0:11:54 Thomas: And AS -299. So if you haven't heard those two, check those out where we had an awful discussion, with, but

[0:12:00] an informative discussion. So anyway, go on, go on. So I did want to plant a little bit of a flag and say, I don't think the people walk things back in

0:12:13 Eli: Person is who they really are, stands to muster. I think who they really are is who they are behind the anonymity of a Twitter handle, who they are is who they are behind the anonymity of an email or even a Facebook post, where where, again, you just don't have to look someone in the eye and say it. And I got to say this a little bit on the show, and I was mad at the time, so I think the point was lost. You know, there's no way someone goes, hey, man, I think it's funny when your wife cries at the election results to my face. It just doesn't happen, right? And we all know it, right? Like, there are people typing

[0:12:57] angry comments right now, like, you know, the problem with social justice warriors, is like you know they're sipping their tea and they're in their comfy chairs, but the truth is they're gonna run into me at an atheism convention, they're gonna run into me at a skepticism convention, and they're gonna be like, you know, I disagree with you but blah blah blah, and this has happened, this has happened over and over to me, you know, enough people listen to Scathing and some of the appearances that I've done that people who vehemently disagree with me come up to me and they go, hey, man, I'm Big Daddy

[0:13:28] 69. And I want you to know, their names are always so great. I noticed you were arguing with someone named Cuntipede today. That's, they really give themselves all the chance in the world to be understood properly. I think Cuntipede is, is reachable. I really do. I think, I think I do. No, I'm not being very serious. We had a great little exchange after that. It was like so heartfelt and real. And I had this great moment where I was just like, man, I am getting through to Cuntipede.

[0:14:00] It's my job, Eli Bosnick, getting through to Cuntipede, the Eli Bosnick story. Ugh, gosh. But so here, so I want, with all of that out of the way. Well, hold on, I wanted to, sorry, I wanted to kind of go with something you said.

0:14:12 Thomas: And don't lose track of what you're saying, though. So, when you talk about who the real person is. I'm not, I'm not sure I interpreted Tom and Cecil as making a decision one way or the other. Maybe, maybe I missed something, but, but, but I would certainly agree with you. I would think the important point would be what they end up voting for. Like, who is the person and the personality they vote with? You know, who is the personality?

Like, if we talk about someone who has an online persona where they're, you know, telling you or, I like, they're happy, we're crying, our wives are crying, and maybe in person they would be nice, I think what's important is which version of them are they making political decisions with and voting and expressing opinions on. And I would agree with you that the truth is that the part where no one knows who they are, the part behind the mask, like that part of them is what matters because that's what they're going to revert to.

Because even if you spend some time with anybody, like FaceTime with you or I or Tom and Cecil, and opinions change or whatever, like, or how they present it changes, that time is always going to be dwarfed by the time spent kind of on your own and with your own thoughts and opinions with, or anonymity online. Line, like that's always going to be the bulk of your time. And I think that is more important. The only other thing I'd say that really drives me crazy, and I don't, Eli, frankly, I don't

0:15:32 Thomas: Know how to say this. Like, tell me how to say this without sounding like a total asshole. But I honestly just, I don't think I'm this way. Like, I don't argue differently online than I do in person. And if I do, someone call me out on it. But like, I don't understand it. Like, I would, I don't feel this need to not say thing, to be an asshole because no one knows who I am online. And then when I see someone be different, I mean, you're going to talk a little differently just because when you're talking directly at someone, obviously, it's always going to be a little different. But I don't, I don't understand that impulse and I wish that we did a better job as just everybody of pretending

[0:16:10] we're talking to an actual person online. Well, I think that's definitely, it's true. And the truth is there is no

0:16:16 Eli: Better way to put it. And I, I think it's a generational thing largely. I mean, the truth of the matter is in ninth grade I told Carlos his girlfriend was a hoe and he broke my nose and shattered one of my front teeth. And look, I'm not advocating violence at all, but it did change the way that I think about conversation. The one rule about the internet, little fun fact from Eli's history, the one rule about the internet in my house, from the moment we had the internet, my dad was like, look, you look at whatever websites you want, shitsippers.com is great, here's my password, right? My dad was totally cool, but he said you can never ever have a username, you are always Eli Bosnick. And what's crazy, really, it's less, yeah, he said if I ever find out you have an anonymous username, if you're anything but Eli Bosnick, the internet goes away and it stays away. And that has been the case for me since the moment I've had the internet for everything. I

0:17:12 Thomas: Mean, all my, yeah, you've never told. He told me that. So do you know what he was thinking behind that? How did he know

[0:17:18] or why did he think to do that? Was it like an old timey manners kind of thing? I had no, I have no idea why my father

0:17:24 Eli: Until the day he died was excited by, he, my father, father had one conversation with technology with me. He would go, "How do I get the iTunes on my phone?" That was what he wanted every time. And I would load all the music on and then he would go, "No, I want iTunes on there." And I was, all right, that was, that was the moment. I don't know what

[0:17:43] it is. I think he knew that anonymity, um, allows us a certain lack of humanity and a certain lack of, uh, empathy. And, and actually, if I can go into a little side story here, which I think some of your listeners are going to be super bored by and some of them might like, I think this is how he know it. And it's how my parents met. So my dad, for those of you who are friends with me on Facebook or can see him, was a man named David Bosnick, who

[0:18:12] was a teacher and a football player all through college and just a huge dude, which for those of you who've seen pictures of me, I know is baffling. Um, but he was just a giant of a man, I mean, a weightlifter and a state champion wrestler and held a bunch of records at ECU, where he was a star football player for the entire time he went there. Went to ECU on a full scholarship during college, played

[0:18:38] a little in Canada. Incredibly gentle, incredibly sweet man, but in high school he was a physical bully. He was like, he was the captain of the wrestling team and he was a physical bully. Uh, he didn't like go around on beating up nerds and stuff, but he was just a big dude. And he also had, you know, he was smart and he wrote poetry and he loved art, but he didn't have the tools to express that.

So there was a poetry project that my mom was a part of where you could give anonymous feedback and people would say like, "Oh, I love this line," or "I don't like this as much," and they would sign it like B. And my dad would go on and write the first ever troll, like this is 1976 in Syosset, New York, and he would write like "You suck, kill yourself," really, literally like troll comments, and then he would sign it Mephisto Now, uh which is the comic book character, for any comic book nerds, they're, uh, the assistant to the devil, um, the truth speaker. And so, uh, everyone knew this was my dad in this Syosset High School, uh, but nobody said anything because he was this giant wrestling guy and he'd squish you like a bug, except

[0:19:40] for my 90 pound mom. So one day someone wrote, "You call this poetry" on one of of my mom's poems and signed it Mephisto Now. Until the day he died my father swore that wasn't him, and I actually do believe him because it turns out he had a huge crush on my mom. But my mom, who is and was fearless, marches up to the head of the wrestling team, slams the, she's stolen

[0:20:05] the binder, slams it down in front of him and goes, "Yeah, I call it poetry, asshole," and and my dad sort of takes a moment and he looks at this 90 year old, hit, 90 pound hippie in her overalls, you know, and looks at the poem and he goes, "Me too, I didn't write this." And again my mom is fearless and she goes, "Yeah, well, you write stuff on other people's things and you're a big asshole and everyone no one's afraid of you everyone thinks you're a big dumb," and, you know, he got talking and they fell in love that way. And he loved her until the second they

[0:20:36] were, high school sweethearts, they were high, high school sweethearts. Yes, they were. They were high school sweethearts. He proposed the first week they met. And my mom said, "Are you kidding?" And then they, they broke up. In high school? Yes, in high school. A week after they met, my father proposed and she was like, "Absolutely not, get out of here." So they went to college, they broke up, they went to college. She went on to marry the novelist John Gardner. My mom is the first wife of, not the first wife, but one of the wives of John Gardner, who wrote Grendel and Freddie's Book and all those incredible things. And he went on to marry another person because my mom married someone, and then they came back together

[0:21:13] Just a few years before I was born. And it was because he followed her. I mean, it was always about my mom and so when John Gardner and her broke up - Followed her like the Grateful Dead, just kind of - Yeah, exactly. When John Gardner and my mom got a divorce, my dad moved to upstate New York where my my mom was and was like hey this has funny running into you here in the middle of ups and and and loved her passionately until the very moment he died I mean there there is no greater love story than my parents which is truly wonderful but the point of that little side note being aside from little background there is that I think that's where my father learned the poison of anonymity you know be that chance to be the very first internet troll and you know I talk about this quite a bit and I talk about it in humorous terms because it's actually very painful but I was a bully in high school not not a physical one obviously from anyone who's ever seen a picture of me but I was a word

[0:22:09] bully and yeah I think on a comedy shoeshine people could look back for the episode with eli I'm

0:22:15 Thomas: Pretty sure you told your like origin story as a bully superhero and it's pretty amazing and I like there's like there's some times when I'm skeptical like because Because the story goes maybe we can do the just quickest possible version of it but you were just awakened one time at what was it a camp or something and there was like a performance

[0:22:34] happening? It was a camp for the arts. I'll give the one minute version of it,

0:22:40 Eli: So I was an incredibly sensitive kid, pre -medication depressive, which, you know, just like a weepy kid. And my parents decided that this sleepaway arts camp would be a good idea. And I just spent the entire time homesick, sobbing into my pillow and all the kids hated me and all the kids made fun of me and all the kids bullied me. And seven, eight year old, I was a precocious, chubby little boy, you know? And I just wanted everyone to like me and this was really the first time in my life that people didn't like me, you know? Because everyone was hotsy totsy. I grew up in, you know, upstate New York, suburbia, let's all ride

[0:23:16] bikes, go get them, scooter. And this is the first time people really bullied me me. And I just, for three weeks of this summer camp, I just got bullied and bullied and bullied. And then the last night of camp, there was a talent show. And in the talent show, you were supposed to go up and tell a joke. And it was like a funny roast joke. Like you'd go up and

[0:23:35] you'd be like, Counselor Smith, he eats so many hot dogs, there's never enough left over for us. And I remember I was waiting in line and my parents weren't there. My parents couldn't come until of the evening. I was waiting in line and the kids were going up and doing these silly jokes, silly jokes, and the kid in front of me is in my bunk and his name was Michael. I'll never forget it. He turns around, he goes, what are you going to talk about? Did you even make any friends

[0:24:00] at camp? And have you seen X-Men where he's in the Holocaust and he bends the door? Yeah, right? He's just like, I just had a snapping moment in that moment and I found my mean. I found my mean. And it's never gone away. Yeah. Uh, and I went up and I did, these are one minute jokes, I did 20 solid minutes of

[0:24:25] the most vicious roasts an eight-year-old can do. Way blue, way homophobic, race, just like Lenny Bruce live on stage out of a seven-year-old's mouth or eight-year-old's mouth. And then my parents walked in the back door just as I finished, and I looked into the mic and I said, I'm never coming

[0:24:44] back here. And I put the mic back on the stand, walked out. And I was like, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, and I walked out with my parents. But and that was really the birth of my aware, and it killed, by the way, like huge laughs, because I was a seven-year-old swearing. That's a story who if I heard just a random person tell it to me, I would be like, yeah,

0:25:02 Thomas: Okay, you're full of shit. But like, when you see Eli, or when you hang out with Eli, or when you do skits, or you hear Vulgarity for Charity, like, no, he has super powers. Like he actually does have a super ability. He can push your buttons. He can get you exactly where it hurts. And I'm just so glad that for now, uh, until you hit some weird comic book, uh, like Spider-Man, uh, yeah, I don't know, comic books, the black crap

[0:25:27] that'll turn you evil, until I'm doing like a comedy experiment and it blows up and kills my wife. Yeah. And I go all my hair. Yeah. Until that happens, you right now you're using your powers for good, for the most part. So I'm really glad to know that, but should that ever change, I'm probably going to go into hiding because I know you probably just have hours

[0:25:46] of roast material that'll make me cry. So, and again, yeah, I I did not behave well in

0:25:52 Eli: High school. And it's, again, it's something I joke about and I have like funny stories about being a bully, because the story I don't tell is when I looked back on four years of making the world the worst place, you know, I threw that at Dustin, um, and honestly I think I would have made a thousand times more effect if I did what I'm doing now, which is to talk about how much I regret

[0:26:17] the people I hurt and and absolutely I wasn't just picking on kids. I was putting people in their place in my head. It wasn't an anti-SJW thing because that didn't exist for my generation, but I wasn't just picking on weak kids. I wasn't just picking on nerds. It's not Freaks and Geeks. Molly Ringwald wasn't there. I was getting laughs at

[0:26:41] the expense of others. I was trolling. I was trolling in the way we understand the word trolling. And because I was funny and because I was quick and I've always been funnier and quicker than the people in my presence, it was easy. And I can't ever take that back. I can't ever take back the pain I caused. And I didn't feel it in the moment because I

[0:27:06] lacked empathy. You know, I was a kid and I didn't have the brain wrinkles. You know, but one of the reasons why I carry it so heavily with me today is because when I look at the trolls or the anti -social justice comedians, I see a version of myself. I see a version of the darkest, worst parts of me. And I reach out to those people, especially those people. The people I ally to, they're like, eh, that Eli guy, he's a nice ally, but like, meh, you know, they take me or leave me. And that's the truth. People appreciate allyship, but I'm not a leader. You know, what I'm here for and what I sort of make a little bit my mission

[0:27:47] is to stop the damage that I wish someone had stopped me from doing. Because I carry it all the time I carry it every day and I'll I'll. Have the happiest moments of my life you know, I'll be at my wedding or I'll be hanging out with my friends or I'll be doing a particularly good joke and those memories

[0:28:06] of the pain I caused will hit me like a truck have you had anyone approach you or any you know any kind of reunion type thing where it's like like hey it's funny yeah I have I have jokes um about this and and telling the serious side of this is actually very difficult and something I've never done on air before but um I got reached out to uh halfway through college uh by a kid who I had been very very cruel to um and he said that he the summer of senior year he had tried to take his own life and he

[0:28:44] had failed and he wanted me to know that my bullying had been the cause of that oh my god and you know that's all my that's written on my fucking headstone yeah I don't know I don't I would not know how to process that yeah and I've you know I still do to this day yeah you know I get people I'm sure people can hear and you know I'm sure that someone's going to comment like oh crying into the microphone but like I get I get choked up at the thought of and and and to be clear I did not think I was bullying. Yeah, I did not think I was hurting, I was joking, I thought this person was my friend. Yeah, I thought this was my friend who I was ripping on.

And and to hear that from him and and the joke I make, and it's actually more true than it is not true, is you know I get a message, I, the joke is I get a message once a year from someone telling me like I've worked through with my therapist and I want to tell you what a terrible person you are, and that of course is an exaggeration, but but I've gotten a few, I've gotten a few, my 10-year high school um

[0:29:46] reunion was this year, uh, and I couldn't go, but more importantly, I didn't think I deserved to, um, or if I did, I felt like I should have, like, sat in a dunking booth, a lava, for just everybody, yeah, to throw apples and urine at me, um. And and I think it's important that I share this because look, there are people who disagree with me no matter what I say. I could come on here and I could be like, water

[0:30:10] is wet, and someone would be like, really? I think Michael is one of those people. I think we exactly, exactly. And we'll I want to move into why I think that is in a smidgen, but I know there are people who just whatever comes out of my face because of of predetermined bias, or who I am, or the anonymity of the internet, just everything

[0:30:29] that comes out of my face is just like, ugh, meh, right? And the thing that I want to say about this is that it's, the reason why I tell my story is because I want people not to make the mistakes that I've made. I want people not to fall into the traps that I have fallen into. And, you know, know I I know that I'll never make up for the things that I've done in my life.

I know that I'll, you know, that those those wounds are real and the people who I inflicted them on carry them forever, but what I can do is I can work to make the world a better place, and I can do it as someone who is funny for a living, and blue funny for a living, again, I'm not yuck yuck the clown, I go hard, um. Um, and, and the difference there that you can be funny and it's the thing I said on the very, very first episode I ever appeared on this show, I said, what do you stand for? Uh, and that's something that I had to ask myself. And what I found I was standing for, just after high school, is as I was standing for myself, I was standing for my own ego, um, and for the rush of getting and laughs.

And then I needed to turn that, and I needed to stop using my pain and look to forgive 16, 17, 18 year old Eli. I'm a heavily medicated depressive, you know, I was lashing out because I was in a tremendous amount of pain. You know, let's give that kid a couple of bits of credit here, but the truth of the matter is, you know, I'm

0:32:02 Eli: Awake, I always was, seeing through my eyes, free will, illusion or no, you know, I thought I had free, I, I, uh, deliberated under the illusion of free will while I did those things. And since then, and especially since I've been gifted a platform and a voice by shows like this and shows like Scathing, I want to do my very best to make the world better for anybody and everybody I can. And if that means tolerating some silliness and letting some radicals on the left and radicals on the right, I mean this goes both ways, if it, if, if it means ignoring the individuals to fight for good ideas, that's something that I've committed myself to.

[0:32:47] Yeah, yeah. But that's a little neither here nor there for my point, except that it sort of proves that this – I come to this empathy thing honestly. I don't just wag my finger in the faces of others. And so to get back to that point a smidgen – sorry, I just chatted for like 85 hours.

[0:33:08] Do you have a – Yeah, no, I'm really blown away by you telling that story.

0:33:13 Thomas: I can't imagine that, I've certainly had times in my life where, you know, I said the wrong thing, or I had, I can really relate to having an attitude, I definitely don't have your roasting superpowers by any means, and I never was, I don't think I was that kind of bully at all, but I, was somebody who could, make a joke and would occasionally think I was just kind of joking with someone when really I wasn't. But I was also kind of the subject of bullies a little bit. So I don't know, I have a kind of a, I see it both ways here, and it's kind of weird for me, but I know what you mean. And it's really interesting to hear you say that. And thanks for sharing that, by the way, because I, that really can't be easy. I can't imagine.

0:33:54 Thomas: I mean, I know if if I heard that somebody say that to me, I don'T know what I would do. I don't know how I would deal with that because I'm not

[0:34:03] I'm not really good at dealing with things like that, to be honest with you. Yeah. Neither am I. Yeah.

0:34:08 Thomas: Like, there's some people, I feel like some people are, maybe they're just faking it, but some people, ah, what are you going to do? I did something reasonable, it's fine, you should get over it. But I, yeah, I'm not good at that. But but anyway, so I just wanted to say thanks, thanks for sharing that. And I'll be thinking about it for a while, I think. But if we tried to get back to, let's see, if we tried to get back to where we were going, with maybe if you want to modify, if you want to kind of, I don't know, would you want to reset sort of what you said about empathy in that episode, and maybe how you would reframe it in light of, you know, having more knowledge of who you're talking to, plus the feedback of others.

[0:34:46] What do you think about that? That absolutely, well there's a couple of things that I should have, um, uh, qualified, or that

0:34:52 Eli: I should have clarified, uh, so first of all, uh, to the people who recommended Paul Bloom's book, I read it, I loved it,

[0:34:58] I do not believe that it countered anything. Yes, we should. Okay, that's a big thing I want to talk about. Yeah.

0:35:05 Eli: Yeah, I do not believe that it countered anything that I believe about empathy, um, he has apparently done some other podcast appearances on Sam's show and stuff like, like that, where he does say things that counter my appearance.

[0:35:17] I have not heard them. I don't even know if that's true. I think that people, it's

0:35:23 Thomas: Hard and I know everybody on the other side and I will have my biases of how I'm shaping his words, but I've listened to all of his appearance on Sam Harris and I've really enjoyed it. And I think you'll get this, listeners and Eli will get it as well, that I am very pro empathy, of course.

And so naturally someone who has a book called Against Empathy, you would think it's just by reading the title, you know, you Would think it's going to be something I would disagree with, or you would disagree with. But like, people need to realize that we don't, we live in a world where the authors don't write titles, you know, and the titles are written to be provocative. And there's going to be a way in which the title is true. You know, there's going to Be a way in which a certain meaning, in which that title is what Paul Bloom means. But it doesn't mean no one should have any empathy. It's just not what it means. His point, just to maybe sum up, that I've heard him, you know, I actually haven't read the book, but I've heard his appearances. So maybe we can kind of cover both sides of that, because you've read the book and haven't maybe heard all the appearances.

But what I've heard it conveyed as is, empathy doesn't work correctly for things like charity and for things like knowing where to put our resources. This is all stuff Peter Singer has talked about too. Like, yeah, we know this. When you show a person and a photo of a child that's starving, they'll give up their frigging house to save this child. When you

0:36:43 Thomas: Show them two, they'll kind of do something similar. When you show them nine, they'll be like, oh yeah, I have a few bucks, maybe. When you tell them there's a million starving children, they don't care. You know, that's just how humans are. It's not the correct way to be. You know? It's not objectively, if we could reprogram ourselves, I don't think we'd be like that. I do think we have to do some of that in order to carry on

[0:37:02] in our lives.

0:37:03 Thomas: Because if, if you see it as a good to be able to carry on with your everyday life, you could not operate that

[0:37:10] way where you just, all the horror in the world is killing you at all times, is just hurting you. And that's really the point he stresses in his book, is that unreasonable empathy, which

0:37:21 Eli: Abounds, you know, and he makes some really good, and I want to say, I thought his book was very interesting. Interesting. I, I'm glad you said the thing about titles, because the thing that I have written in my little, like, notes for this conversation is, Paul Plume was, Paul Bloom got David Silverman, you know, David Silverman's book, Fighting God, he was like, I don't want to call it fighting

[0:37:40] God, and they were like, well, you have to, David. It's my David Silverman impersonation, everybody. He's very Jewish. I don't know if you listen to him speak. He's a real Jewish dude. Um, the truth is, like, the book is very interesting, and what he's really talking about is unreasonable empathy or trying. Trying to make decisions that require critical thought with

[0:37:59] empathy and why that is a bad idea.

0:38:01 Eli: And, you know, look, as I read the book, and look, when people tell, enough people tell me to read a book, I'll read

[0:38:07] a book. Yeah. You know, I read Who Stole Feminism twice. I'm looking forward to, when I quit my job, to actually being able to

0:38:13 Thomas: Have time to read a book. I can't wait. It's going to be my favorite thing ever.

[0:38:17] All the time in the world, just one Christian movie a week, a couple of headlines, it's fantastic. Yeah. None of the editing. Um, so

0:38:24 Eli: You know, I found the book very interesting, and I don't want to crap on it at all, and I hope people don't take this as me being like I know

[0:38:30] more than Paul Bloom, because that's actually a point that I want to get to that I think is really important. What I took away from the book, and am totally willing to have anyone who knows more about this subject than me say no, you're wrong, was unreasonable empathy for critical thinking decisions is a bad idea, and that what What he did in the book often was he would make a claim that was really interesting, like, empathy for charity is a bad idea. And I'd be like, wow, like, man, I cannot wait to hear this guy tell me why that's true. And then throughout the chapter, I felt like, and luckily, I think the New York Times felt this way as well, because I read the review, he would walk that back. And he'd be like, well, you know, obviously you want empathy, but you don't want it to guide you.

0:39:18 Eli: Hits all the points that you just mentioned. So I don't think any of that refutes what I have to say about empathy, which is specifically, I think, applies to the skeptical and atheist movement. We are, as a movement, and look, this isn't true of everybody, obviously, but it's something I've noticed and I have access to quite a few people. I get accessed by

[0:39:43] several people. People. We are very, very in love with the idea that we smarted our way out of theism. That we saw an argument, okay, well, we were presented the arguments for God, and we were presented the arguments for not God, and I sat in a chair and I thought, this not God argument seems better to me, and that is the way I shall choose things from now on. And we really do, you know, as a community, sort of pride ourselves on skepticism and this sort of

[0:40:16] cold, almost Socratesian, I think it might be the term, this cold, logical indifference that we're just these logic machines. The problem with being a logic machine, right, is that at a certain point, you do need a gut check for when you're talking about the emotions and the effects that take place on other people, right? So just to use an example, right? One

[0:40:48] of the things that comes up a lot of the time is when you're really bored down, and I'm talking these four in the morning conversations that you have with your buddy who's got some bad ideas or, you know, the ones where you can really talk. I'm not talking about Facebook fights, but when you really get down to it, a lot of these conversations break down to because it it makes another person, you know, why shouldn't I do this? Why shouldn't I say what I want? Why shouldn't I do what I want? And you say, because it

[0:41:13] makes another person really unhappy, right? And that's the bedrock a lot of the time of social justice. It really is. Yeah. And to try to give examples of that for, I don't know, for the the uninitiated,

0:41:25 Thomas: I guess. I mean a lot of it does come down to why should I have to know all the pronouns or use the, you know, why should I have to make some allowances for, and I'll even confess myself when it came down to the debate on ableism and some of the language I use, like I still resist a lot of that as I think people could go back and look, there's an episode back back in the archives, but it does come down to, you know, this makes someone feel uncomfortable. And I think the times where it's really important to realize that it doesn't matter is when it's something that doesn't affect you.

Like, it's one thing if someone needs to be made to feel comfortable and it's going to cost you a lot. Like it's going to somehow, they're going to to have to take some of your money or resources or you, I don't know, you have to give up your child to that, something like that. I mean, but it's when it's with these things like trigger warnings and safe spaces where this costs you nothing, it's just you don't like the idea of somebody having that accommodation, or you think, you know, because of whatever, these examples are the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket. That's where I think the pushback is more more appropriate.

[0:42:43] Yeah, go ahead. I think it's because people's, I think it's because, and especially in our movement, I'll say this again, people value their skepticism more than they value the

0:42:56 Eli: Lived experience and suffering of their fellow beings. And look, I want to throw a bone here. I know that a lot of atheists had appeals to emotion as a big part of breaking. You know, my dad, good guy, talked about him a little on this show already. You know, when I was a little kid and I had doubts about religion, my dad would sit me down and talk about everyone that went through the Holocaust and don't I love my mom and do I really think it's a coincidence that this, that, and the

[0:43:27] other. And I was a kid and I just, no, I love my mommy and I love and I, oh, I'm so sad about the Holocaust. I know that was a huge part of religious guilt. And I know that this, forgive the term, triggers a lot of people when that comes up. A lot of people hear, don't you feel X? And they go like, oh, you

[0:43:45] tried that, Pastor B. You know, they know that. So, you know, what it comes down to, and this is going to lead really, really nicely into this idea I have about trust in institutions, institutions, which is the half I think I left out of the argument that I think is okay, is a real downfall of my argument, which, um, you know, there was a conversation on Twitter and I was like, oh, I'm going to talk about this. And then I realized that this person did not volunteer to be on the show, so I'm just going to use it as an example. Um, I had cc'd Andrew in on a conversation about this Canadian pronoun thing, right? And Andrew Torrez, and look, Andrew hates when I do this, like credential dropping for him, but but it is important because I'm going to get to something thing in a bit. Andrew Torrez, uh, is a Harvard

[0:44:29] lawyer, right? He went to Harvard. He is a lawyer, and he's talking with me and this other person about this discrimination law in Canada. And Andrew Torrez, we we get down to it, and Andrew Torrez says, do you think that someone calling someone else their pro, the pronoun they don't prefer, should be legal? And the other person said, I don't want to do the exact quotes, well,

0:44:53 Thomas: Hold on, but do we need to make sure it's the, I think it's even more narrow than that, right? Because isn't it only an employer

[0:44:59] or a landlord, right? It was, do you think an employer should be allowed to repeatedly call you the wrong pronoun, repeatedly call you the not the wrong pronoun, and the and

0:45:12 Eli: The person said, well, my name's Dan, but I prefer for Danny, should they have to go to jail for that? And again, like, that was a moment of just disconnective empathy, right?

[0:45:25] Yeah, that was, that was a moment where, like, that, that should. And again, I'm not calling this person out on air because that's not useful to the argument, but I think it is a useful example. That should have been a moment where that person's, and me and him email back and forth, so I've

[0:45:44] said this before and he knows this is how I feel, that person's empathy, their human awareness of the experience of others should have connected. And I want to use another example as well, which doesn't use this person because, again, calling specifics out. I recently posted the thing about

[0:46:03] Milo going to a school and he put up a photo of a trans kid who was at the talk without his permission and did a little mini roast. Did like a, hey, you know who doesn't need any more male things? And then put up a photo of a trans woman, a kid who goes to that

[0:46:21] school and did a little like comedy bit in front of this. God, you know, I had been avoiding that article and it truly was that bad because that is absolutely disgusting. Yeah, I recommend people look it up. I posted it on my Facebook and I can find the link and I'll put it here. Yeah, I need to do

0:46:41 Thomas: That, honestly, I'm so done with Milo, I was just trying to kind of be done with it, but wow, that is really

[0:46:47] truly even worse than I would have thought would have come from him. I'm going to have to track that down. And it's important to

0:46:53 Eli: Recognize that Milo's been a big part of the conversation when it comes to free speech and deplatforming. And look, I know I've talked a lot of people's ears off about free speech and deplatforming, and I don't want to go over those arguments

[0:47:06] again because I think you've heard my arguments. But if you think the solution to a kid getting their face put up at a public university, a trans kid,

[0:47:19] and mocked in front of a room of laughing fellow students, if you think the solution to that is more speech, there's a part of humanity I'm

[0:47:32] not going to reach. You know, there's no facts I'm going to present to someone who doesn't care about that.

0:47:38 Eli: That's going to make you go, oh yeah, you know, I'm not going to go, oh, and here's why you should care about that. And the thought that trapped in my head, and I called Tom after I read the article, because again, Tom's sort of my sounding board for a lot of stuff like this, Tom over at Cognitive Dissonance. And I said, imagine if that's your kid. Imagine if that's your baby and they call you from college and they say, my university had a speaker and they put up a picture of me and

[0:48:03] made fun of me for being trans. How do you live? How do you make it through the day? And what armchair philosopher answer, you know, does that guy take that call and go, well, honey, you know, the answer for that is more speech. You know, I know that the trans suicide rates are as high as they are, and I know that's probably the worst thing that's ever happened to you. But, you know, what was slippery, slow pun, you know, slippery. And I'm joking about it. But but if that doesn't stir your bones, if that doesn't light you on fire a little bit.

And this was really my point about empathy. And again, I directed it at Dustin, which made it a problem. But if the thought of that doesn't stir your bones and draw a line for you as to where this free speech thing needs to be or where the platforming thing needs to be, I don't think I'm going to convince anybody. I don't think, I think there's something human that stops that, not something intellectual. And our reliance on the intellectual in the movement is a problem because it stops us from making those connections, which should be the epiphanies that lead us down the track of right thinking. I hope that

[0:49:23] makes sense. I know I just, that was a weird sentence. No, I get it. I'm blown away by that.

0:49:29 Thomas: I don't know how people could continue to support that and I would say it's even one thing to have the opinions Milo has or allegedly has. It's hard to know if he's really even believes the crap he says. I don't think it matters personally, because if you're going to publicly say those things, I don't give a shit if you believe it or not, you're doing the harm of saying them. But anyway, it's one thing to believe maybe that trans people are, I, don't know, whatever he says, you know, it's a mental illness and it's not something that people should make accommodations for.

It's another to, target someone like that. And the idea that you could even, you know, still support this guy or still think he has anything useful to say when you've seen that he's actually just a monster like that, you know? Like, that, that, that's, that's just a Monster. That's not a, that's not anything I want anything to do with, you know? And and if you still want to hang out, or if you Still want to Hang on to some aspects of his arguments, that's fine. Just find someone else to do it.

[0:50:31] Like just, just, that's a monster. You don't, you can't support someone like that. That's absurd. Right. Exactly. Go after

0:50:38 Eli: Someone who's not who's not victimizing and stand for them, stand with them. And this brings me to the actual opposite side of the argument, because I've just talked about the heart and how important empathy is and how important. Oh, tiny thing before I move on from empathy. This was a question I got pretty significantly from people who either, I guess, just don't know a ton about the autism spectrum. A couple

[0:51:03] people wrote me and were like, so you think that people with autism are incapable of learning? Fuck you. Ew.

0:51:09 Eli: And I just want to say, people with autism or people on the autism spectrum have problems recognizing emotions, but they don't lack empathy. That is, they just

[0:51:20] like, don't recognize certain emotions in people or they have trouble with it. Yeah, let me stop to say, I also got

0:51:26 Thomas: A ton of those comments and actually some messages. And I think that is, I want to talk about that another time. I think I might even do a show on and I kind of want to do a show, maybe interview some people on what it's like because I got a lot of interesting stories actually and messages of, hey, I don't really agree with Eli because I've had trouble with empathy. You know, I've got Asperger's. I don'T really, I think you should be able to, but it's interesting.

I think You're right that there is a subtle difference there between a difficulty recognizing the human emotions, but then also being able to empathize once you do recognize them. I'M not a doctor. I'm not a psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever. I don't know anything about that, but I want to get more to the bottom of that. And I think I will do that in a later episode. But, it was really interesting. I did hear, I do want to say that I heard from a lot of people saying they were autistic themselves are saying they had Asperger's themselves who even said for that reason, they kind of didn't like what

[0:52:26] you said so. Right. Did you have a response to that? And again, the idea is not, um, well

0:52:33 Eli: Again, I think that there's a couple of things to address here and I am not a doctor and I should have a lot of citation for, um, so I'm gonna say I think and be totally willing to be disproven on this, um, but having done the work I've done and worked with some kids who are on the spectrum and certainly have some friends who are on the spectrum, um, first of all, where you are on the spectrum and how that has been taught to you, uh, varies greatly in psychological literature and just throughout the country, so that's the first thing to think of, um, I have never heard that people on the spectrum or people with autism lack empathy, they have problems recognizing emotions.

They have problems recognizing empathetic situations, but they are actually capable of empathy. I know there are humans who are incapable of empathy and that's a psychological disorder just like any other. But the failure to recognize emotions is what is most often attributed to autism and the spectrum. The inability to read situational cues and personal cues and body language, those things that just sort of tend to be ingrained, those interpersonal connections. And I, of course, got a lot of messages from people saying, you know, I have trouble connecting when I hear about stuff like this. I have trouble, you know, and it's because they tend

0:53:53 Eli: To be, you know, there are literal autistics who literally can only, like, think in literal terms. Like, if you say, oh, I'm going to shove my

[0:54:00] hand up your butt, they're like, no, don't shove your hand up my ass. Like, they literally... I'm not sure why you're telling them that, but okay. You just tend to go and find those people and say that? Yeah, it's my hobby. Don't judge my kinks. Kink shaming. But there are a variety of things that sort of exist on the spectrum, um, that that sort of learning is not affected by that sort of empathy, uh, is my point. Right. So the idea that like people who are artistic, so I would, I would be very curious to, you know, grab, uh, you know, one of these listeners who sent us these messages and run the story

0:54:39 Thomas: Of the Milo thing by them. I would be really curious to see because I think they, who know, I'm totally speculating, but but I think that would be a situation where maybe they would recognize what's happening and empathy wouldn't be an issue. It's just that maybe theoretically sometimes they wouldn't be able to recognize like visually accused cues that someone's giving them. I don't know. I'm speculating, but I would be, maybe I will even do that. Maybe I will send a message

[0:55:05] and say, hey, can you tell me what you think about this situation and see what happens? And some people, in fairness, not

0:55:11 Eli: Everyone reacts emotionally the same way to situations. When I am upset, I get therapist voice. When I'm upset, I get very soft. My wife knows that when I'm really mad with someone, all of a sudden my hands go in the air and I start speaking in super big words. And all of a sudden I turn into a penguin directing planes on how to land. We all have different coping mechanisms. And look, if you heard me say the Milo story, and you didn't like sob away for the rest of the night into your pillow,

[0:55:42] absolutely.

0:55:43 Eli: Empathy also doesn't mean like, I feel exactly as sad as this person says I should feel.

[0:55:50] Empathy can mean you recognize that that's a bad situation. Yeah, well, actually, this is a good place to tie in

0:55:56 Thomas: Paul Bloom's book again, because I believe his pitch was for compassion. And I think the distinction he makes is it's a way of still recognizing that people are suffering, but doing so in a more measured way, you know, which I think ends up being kind of the word salad way he gets by with his Against Empathy title, if we're going to be a little critical of it. But I think that would qualify. Sure. I mean, I think there's going to Be a huge difference in how people react to these things. I think there, are, you know, I got a lot of messages saying like, Hey, I can't believe you cried over Trump. Like I don't know what you, you Know, I would never do that.

To be fair, most of them were really positive, but, a lot Of them were like, hey, I would never do that. Like, I Don't really feel that way, but I'm glad you did. Like. I got some of those, you know, and that's fine. People react differently to different stuff. But it's inevitably going to inform how you view these things, I think. What it all comes down to is a story I've told about a bajillion times, probably, but I'm going to tell it again. Because it's very quick. I was raised in a very conservative, very rural place and everything was gay and fag and this is so gay and everything That's how how everybody talked. And I went to college and one night, at

0:57:16 Thomas: A party, you know I, was friends with, I had some gay friends because I did theater in college and I had no, I had absolutely no problem with them, but, but at all, you know, like I wasn't, I didn't still harbor some like conservative resentment for them at all. But I accidentally said, I just said something like, oh, that is gay. And my eyes, I met with this gay person in the room, his eyes. And I just saw the look on his face when I said that, like just for an instant, I just saw the, just, just the, like the hurt and the kind of shock and the like, come on, you know, just the the sort of sort of of a weird pity or judgment to me. And I just decided on the spot, I was like, I will never say that again. And, I never do.

0:58:04 Thomas: Occasionally, maybe for a joke, I will or something, but I will never say that in seriousness in a room of crowd, you know, a crowded room of people might hear when I associate something being bad with being gay, I'll never do it again. And I don't like I think for me, even who I think I'm a, you know, I think I'm a reasonably empathetic person for me. I needed that experience to teach me that, you know? Like I needed the, experience.

If you go your whole life, never meeting a gay person that you know of, like openly, you probably have met plenty, but if you, if you never meet them and you, and you you just say that word, you just use that. You just think, eh, it's a, whatever. It's a word. Who cares? It doesn't matter. You know, it's just, I I don't really mean gay people are bad. I just say that because it's you know it's what people say. I I It's just it's inevitably going to be different.

And I think that it might not be possible for for everyone out there and for even me included, of course, to like have every experience like that story I'm telling where you're going to have that experience with a trans person and with, a, I don't know, with a black person, whatever it is, for whatever like slang we're talking about.

It might not Be possible, but you can at least take the approach that, hey, maybe if someone tells me or I hear on the internet or something that something I might be saying or doing hurts somebody, I can imagine, I Can

0:59:24 Thomas: Think back and say, you know what, it might be like this situation where I said this and what would it feel like to say that right in front of somebody. Somebody And, you know, it's not that hard to just say, I'll keep it to myself. You know, I'll Keep it to Myself. Maybe I'll accidentally say it. Who cares? I'll accidentally say, I'm sorry. It's not a huge, but you don't have to treat it like you're going to be killed if you say something. You know like people have habits, of course, but like it's that level of compassion. And we don't even have to call it empathy. We can even call it compassion like Paul Bloom does. That

[0:59:54] Like, I, I don't know why that's too terribly difficult, you know? Right. And and what, what often comes

1:00:01 Eli: Up in that situation is, rather than answer that question, what someone will say is they'll go, "Oh, look, I have no problem doing XYZ, you know, I'll call a trans person whatever they want to be called, but it's the ones who demand, and if you make one mistake, they get mad." And I'm just like, where are

[1:00:19] they? Where are the, they're on the internet somewhere, but, right, sure. I mean, look, you have you been yelled at by on Twitter? And in that case, and I know I've made this point before, but, like, like, if anyone would like to have a link storm back and forth where you give me all the radical leftists and I give you all the radical rightists,

[1:00:38] we'll see who creates the worst world, right? You're going to have like, and look how silly.

1:00:44 Eli: So sad. I'm going to be like, so I've got all these Nazis, literal Nazis. Gosh,

1:00:50 Thomas: Was it on Cognitive Dissonance? I'm blanking because I've done a lot of recording with them lately, but there when you

[1:00:57] made the prediction that we will talk about people in power, uh you know, say on the right doing and saying and making laws that'll hurt people, and they will talk about someone on the internet or

[1:01:10] on a Tumblr somewhere said something. And then you said, even though I just said this, it will still happen. Yep. And it absolutely still happened. And I say it in every conversation. So I talked a lot about like,

1:01:22 Eli: I've done a bunch of Skype conversation, a bunch of debates, bunch of things. What I really committed myself to when Trump got elected was, I need to take my activism up to a 10. I need to get me's out of the system. I need to help me's escape. Again, I am an okay ally. I use my voice. I try to raise the voices of others. But like where I excel is like, hey, I'm the funny movie guy who says Carly Fiorina killed her daughter. And I'm here to tell you we should care about black lives like that's that's

[1:01:55] my niche. That's where I belong. Right. And so I've been taking that to 10. And in every one of these conversations, I've said, here's what's going to happen. You're going to name bad behavior of individuals. And I am going to name like institutions and

[1:02:07] laws. And then even though I said that, that's going to happen. And they'll go, well, this lady sued because, and I'm like, well, okay, there we go. It's just like HB2. Now you say a law that the liberals passed. And they're like, you, Anita Sarkeesian, right? It's just, it comes up over and over. So That actually brings me, interestingly, exactly to my second point, which is the thing that I think is lacking that I didn't talk about, that I think left out a big puzzle piece that kept people unable to understand my point, which is I think we majorly lack, and this is in the United States, not just among the secular community, trust in institutions. And this is on the left as well as the right.

I mean, this is a universal problem, which is when someone has studied something their entire life, or when someone is a professor in X, when the New York Times says X, you should bear that with more weight than you bear feminismiscancer.com, right? And we have lost that. And I'll explain why I think we've lost that in the skeptical community. Because argument from authority was a huge part of your religious upbringing, right? Oh, you're a nine-year-old and you figured out that there's no God? Do you think all these people in church are wrong? Do You think you're smarter than all these these people. And interestingly enough, this is something Dustin brought up in the conversation, which I think actually got edited out. But Dustin talked about how he used sort of

1:03:42 Eli: Challenging and fighting people within that church community to break out of his religious beliefs. And I think that's true. That's sort of like, I don't care what authority says. I'm going to find out what's true. I think that's through of a lot of secular people. But the problem is that doesn't apply apply universally, you know, if, and I'll give an example for myself, because, well, actually, I'll Give an example, right? So if, if everyone who studies gender says that, you know, and I'm talking about scientists and philosophers, these are the, these Are real people, people who are in gender studies, people Who have doctorates say, there's not such thing as two genders, gender and sex are independent of each other.

It's a spectrum, right? Which is easy to find, right. That's a casual Google. We all know that. Even if you disagree with that, you do know that when you Google that, that's what comes up. If you look at the Wikipedia citations for gender identity and you see just peer-reviewed article after peer-previewed article, after book, after doctorate, after doctorette, and you're a mechanic from Baton, Ohio and you go, yeah, I think maybe all the psychologists are wrong. And I'm not kidding, and this has happened in multiple conversations, is I send someone the page from

1:05:02 Eli: The DSM-IV and they go, yeah, psychology is not really a hard science. I'd need to see some hard science, and that's just about trust in institutions, and I think it's what we're lacking now. We lack, and not just the secular community, but as Americans especially, we lack the recognition that if someone knows more than us, if someone has studied something more than us, it doesn't mean we have to take it as gospel, but it means we need to do the extra mile and they don't deserve immediate skepticism. The example I'll give is this, and then I'm going to turn it on myself and make myself look silly for everyone's amusement. The sample I'll give is Peter Boghossian, who I've talked about several times and who I would still love to have a conversation with. I've asked him dozens and dozens of times.

1:05:52 Thomas: He's Sorry. He's just frustrates the hell out of me. We've asked him, you and I both have asked him to come on to talk about his whole book, his whole deal. Everything about him is, let's have conversations, I'll convince you to, you know, be, be open to stuff, be doxastically open to whatever, and I'll debate you out of your belief in God. But the minute you challenge him on any of his tweets or what he believes or anything he's trying to say, he just will not, he will not talk to anybody. Drives me nuts.

1:05:54 Eli: No, Yeah.

1:06:19 Eli: It's, it's really, and it's not just Peter, but, but I do want to say that, like, we have reached out, friends of his have reached out, I'm not trying to be bitchy because he's not here to defend himself, but like, from the outside, I think even from a non-biased perspective, he has behaved in a way that I would consider, consider pretty intellectually dishonest at this point when it comes to whether or not it's the left or him that's not willing to have a conversation. So that bitching.

1:06:48 Thomas: Yeah. Same goes for Rubin. By the way, while we're at it, we might as well cover it. I've reached out to Rubin, I've had Haley email Rubin, I've had lots of people, have tweeted, oh, God, is this unreachable, but Rubin at least ostensibly is, is saying, oh, he'll talk to somebody, he'll tell somebody, I've told him, uh, you know, I've emailed, like, come on my show, you don't even have to publicize it, I don't give a shit, I just would love to actually talk to you. They're not interested, they're not interested in the conversation. Stop hiding behind the thing of, oh, he will, he's asked all, all the social justice warriors, they just turn him down. He hasn't. Maybe he'll have one example or something, but if he wanted to have the

1:06:54 Eli: So, Have I Gad Sad Right.

1:07:14 Eli: Right. Right. And Right. And what they Want To Do Is

1:07:25 Thomas: Conversation, he could.

1:07:25 Eli: Right. And what they want to do, and just to be clear, like, they want to debate Laci Green, right? They want to debate 19 year old nutritionists, they, they don't want to debate us, right? And like, look, I know I make the occasional joke about like, oh, me and James Lindsay in our conversation, but like, I have a tremendous amount of admiration for James and the conversation we had. And whatever you take away from that, right, from either of our points, and some people are like, dude, he kicked your shit. And some people were like, dude, you beat his ass, right. It doesn't matter what your opinion is. Like, the truth is we sat down, we had that conversation. That's what I've been asking for. And that was a conversation of of perfect civility. But my point wasn't actually to just point out that I think Peter has been...

1:07:45 Thomas: Yeah, me too.

1:08:06 Thomas: Sorry, I couldn't resist.

1:08:08 Eli: Yeah, we can't let it go, and I understand that. Because it is hard. It is really hard to see, like, they don't want to have a conversation on the Twitter of someone who you're like, please, please talk to me. I will donate to charity.

1:08:16 Thomas: Yeah. It would be fine. I would drop it if every single person on Twitter realizes, no, if people realize for the most part that they're not actually willing to have a conversation because people are still hiding behind it and they're pretending they are. And that drives me nuts. If you don't want to have a conversation, come by it honestly. But anyway, okay. Done with that.

1:08:35 Eli: So the example I want to give is Peter Boghossian has said, and he's said this multiple times, a casual look through his Twitter will say this, but he put out a list of like top 10 ways to improve academia and number two or three on the list was um disband all gender studies uh and and we really need to think for a moment about what the implications of someone wanting to completely end an entire form of study is.

Now, to my knowledge, and look, I am happy to be wrong on this, he has said vaguely, oh, I'm talking about about it in my next book, you know, in my next book I'm going to address this, and yada yada yada, but the truth is I do not know that Peter is an expert in gender studies, and to call for the end of a field of study, one would have to do a tremendous amount of work. I mean, you know, overthrowing gender studies is like any other, you know, we should end all sociology, and honestly, what what it reminds me of, you know, and he talks about it's full of demagogues, it's full of ideologues and, you know, biests and racists and it's entirely swamped with terrible people with terrible ideas and it all needs to be purged. And honestly,

1:09:55 Eli: That just sounds like creationists to me, right? We've all heard creationists say that about biology, right, we're all aware of that and we all laugh at Ken Ham and And some of the people who listen to my show and laugh at Ken Ham when he says, you know, the biologists are all corrupt and under science's big dollar, right? Or big pharma, right, all that. We all giggle at that. And then someone says, feminist studies has no place in a university, or there's no reason for gender studies, or race studies, why do we need an African-American studies department? And those are not claims that Peter has made, just the gender studies one, just for fairness to people. But like, these are arguments we've heard. And, and those same people are like, yeah, yeah. It seems to make sense. And again, that is not about empathy, although that certainly

1:10:01 Thomas: About biology. Yeah. Like evolution.

1:10:44 Eli: Contributes to it. It's about a lack of trust in institutions. Um, which brings me to the story about me feeling silly or at least looking silly. So I was riding in the car and I'm listening to episode 300 with Andrew, right? And you guys have been talking about free speech lately, and you were talking talking specifically about the rule, and this is episode 300, part two, for those who want to listen to it, um, you were talking about the Australian idea of free, oh,

1:11:07 Thomas: 300 part three. It's, it's episode 302. Sorry. Just, yeah.

1:11:11 Eli: 300 and two, there we, okay, uh,

1:11:12 Thomas: It was confusing. I, yeah, Yeah.

1:11:13 Eli: So, so he, um you're talking about that, and Andrew pointed out, uh you know, well actually I think I would go with the United States, and I was riding in the car with my wife, and obviously, you know I'm the social justice warrior dude, my wife is vaguely aware of the the things I say when I lock myself in our bedroom. She has a much nicer life than me, and I like to keep it that way.

1:11:36 Eli: And she looks at me and she goes, well, you disagree with that, right? And I sort of pause the tape and I go, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe me and Andrew need to have a conversation about this, right? Just like up my own butt, right. And then I turn it back on and Andrew's like, well you know according to Rawlsian philosophy, and I was just like, or not, you Know, maybe Me and Andrew don't need to talk because I don't know who that is and I I haven't read that. So I should probably read that before I talk to him. And like, here's the thing. Like I went and did a little research and then I reached out to Andrew with questions. And today on Atheistically Speaking, like they talked about the McDonald's thing. And again, I know that I'm referencing other shows, opening arguments, right? On opening arguments they talked about the MacDonald's lawsuit and I had some questions about that.

And look, the truth of the matter is I absolutely could have been like, Andrew Torrez thinks spilling hot coffee on your your lap is other people's fault question mark right snarkity snark but like the truth of the matter is and I said this in my message I said Andrew I think I'm wrong about this I doubt my BFA in drama figured out something that your Harvard education didn't why am I wrong about this and he was like oh yeah you're totally wrong which I'm sure won't surprise you we're totally going to talk about this on OA and not only did I get an answer but like I got to have a real conversation and

1:11:58 Thomas: Opening arguments. Yeah.

1:12:56 Eli: The truth is like and a great example we were talking about the ableism thing I heard the episode that you did with and I'm forgetting her name, um, Ania, right, Ania Bula, and I really disagreed with everything she said, which will surprise some of your listeners. I was just, I did not, the connection she made between ableism and language to me were stretches too far that I thought went past common parlance. And so I wrote her, I said, hey Ania, I know I'm like a stranger and a white dude, can I ask you some questions? And the answer is okay to be no. And she was like sure, and like we went back and forth for a day and a half while I asked her questions. And like, did we end up uh agreeing? No, but I got to the the core of what I felt her argument was and when she was done it ended when she was done talking

1:13:03 Thomas: Ania. Ania Bula is her name.

1:13:42 Thomas: Yeah,

1:13:42 Eli: To me and she was like all right we're done and look exactly And that's fair. And I did not, and the truth of the matter is by approaching it that way I had so much more success, so much more of an interaction, and I just took a moment to go, look, this is a person who comes to the table with this knowledge, who has studied this subject. And look, I walked away still disagreeing with Ania, and I think I have very strong arguments about why ableist language, when policed at a certain level, is just about unclarifying communication and tone policing, or making communication less clear and tone policing, than it is about protecting the feelings of others. And I think I have relatively good arguments about that, right?

1:13:42 Thomas: That's most arguments with Eli. But yeah, fair. Yeah, yeah,

1:14:27 Eli: But I tested them first and I tested them well with someone who has studied the subject. And what's crazy on that, and I talk about this constantly, especially in private institution, is people will go, I'll say, well, you know, I will send someone a Wikipedia page. I will I'll send someone this. And if you're questioning the validity of Wikipedia, I hate to tell you, you have found a refuge in the imperfection of information, right? You're not coming from a place of information. You're coming from the place of total pure skepticism, right. And this applies to news as well. I know there are folks who listen to Rubin and Steph Molyneux and those folks. I'm I'm not equating the two, but like, you have to understand when Steph Molyneux said that Robin Williams killed himself because of his ex-wife, like getting all his money. And then it turned out that he had like this terrible form of Alzheimer's body.

1:14:56 Thomas: Yeah.

1:15:22 Thomas: Yes, horrible disease.

1:15:23 Eli: Right. And that was just, he was just provenly wrong. If the New York times had done that. Right. And just said like, uh, Robin Williams kills self because of wife. Right. There, there are consequences, right? There are journalism ethics boards for these kinds of things. Steph Molyneux was just like, give it a go and just kept making things. And his followers were like, eh, right? So if you find yourself constantly apologizing for the outright lies or mistakes of your sources, you need to start trusting in institutions. Constitutions. And look, I know it's hard as a secular person. I'm not, I'm not being condescending. I really do.

1:15:23 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

1:16:04 Eli: I know. It's hard. As a secular person to go, this person knows more than me and I should take their opinion with incredible consideration, right? When Andrew says something about the law, I can't believe I have to say this, but the truth is I've had this argument a dozen times in the last month. When Andrew said something about the law, we should probably listen, right. Unless you also have a law degree, we should probably listen. And yet I watch his Twitter and the Opening Arguments Twitter where people are like, really? And I'm like, yeah man, fucking really, you gotta have citations if you want to disagree with Antro on the law, right? It could

1:16:24 Thomas: Yeah.

1:16:39 Thomas: He could be wrong, but but you just need to, you would need a lot to to be able to show that you're going to need to come at him with some citations.

1:16:42 Eli: Be right or right and your default should be, man, he's probably right, I'm gonna have to do a ton of work to prove him wrong, and My first reaction should be to go home and do my homework. And the final point I want to touch on, again, it applies to this social justice thing in sort of a broad scope. And I know a lot of what I said is not going to get through to people. And God, I can name them at this point, the people that are just going to comment like, the problem with Bosnick, by the way, I love the people who call me Bosnick. Keep it up. I've been like E-Bos, an E-unit for everyone my entire life. And people People occasionally call me Bosnick, like a philosopher. Love it. Sorry,

1:16:48 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, how do

1:17:27 Eli: Side note, got distracted. Look, I know I'm not going to reach a lot of people. And I know for a lot of people, like, I'm just this guy who comes on and whines and like, essential justice. And people message me such heartfelt emails where they tell me that I ruin your show. And there's a part of me that really empathizes with that because I love so much of atheistically speaking. And then my thing updates and I'm like, ugh, it's me. So I want you to know I also hate me, I hate me, yeah, exactly, people who don't like me, trust me, I hate me more, I have to take pills to keep me from killing me, so trust me, I hate me more, um, dark humor.

1:17:55 Thomas: You think I feel every single episode? I do that same thing like, oh, God.

1:18:08 Eli: Um, but here's what I would say, and again it comes back to my very very first appearance on this show, what do you want? Right, when you fight against social justice, right, when when you talk about debunking the wage gap or rape statistics or Black Lives Matter, what is your effort doing? And if grinding, and I want to, don't let yourself off the hook with the truth is important, because that's something I hear a lot of, right? Yeah, truth's important. And we can talk about the truth of those things that I just listed because they're often not what people think they are.

But if the result of you being correct would be for women or rape victims or African-Americans who are afraid of being shot by police officers unfairly to shut up, then I invite you to consider what it is you're standing for. If you're standing for silencing, and I say this all the time, and I say it in an attempt to wake people up, and it doesn't always work, but if you recognize, and you must recognize this, that you are, sometimes it's not true, but if you are a white guy, right, like me, and on the other side of what you're fighting are African

1:18:07 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

1:19:29 Eli: Americans and gays and trans people and people with PTSD and people who need mental health resources, there, there is a moment, right, where we must recognize, like, oh, I'm the bad guy in an 80s movie, right? Like, how, how has this turned out in history for people like me forever? When, when was the time when social justice went too far and the white guys stood up and said that's enough and we all looked back on that fondly, uh, right, and no,

1:19:58 Thomas: Trump's election will be that thing. But but I don't think we'll look back on it finally. Yeah. We got to come to a close. And sorry if you do need to finish that thought.

1:20:07 Eli: I mean, and that's, that's what I invite one to do is just have a gut check historically on that moment, the moment that you sit in in history and what you want to stand for. And what you want, and look, you can hate my guts while you do it, but just note, take a moment to note who's on your side, right? Are there Nazis on your side, literally? Are there KKK members on your side, literally? Do you have rape apologists on your side? And and look, uh, you know, I get a lot of, that's not an argument, but the truth is it's something to consider. Absolutely.

1:20:08 Thomas: Yeah.

1:20:42 Thomas: And I would say so what I wanted to say to kind of sum it up is you don't have to ignore, you know, blatant examples of stupidity on the left. Like you don't have to. It's not like I or you, I think, are endorsing every example of everything on the social justice left. Yeah, there's people who are just wrong about things or they're stupid about things that they go too far with things. But my position has been and I don't know if it would be slightly more centrist than yours. I'm not sure how much it matters. But mine would be that I am I'm happy to call out that nonsense.

I'm happy to call out nonsense if something's nonsense, but I want to do it from the side of compassion. Like I want to do it from the side that's not trying to get rid of gender studies and is not trying and is not platforming someone like Milo, you know, who's who's doing the horrible thing you described earlier. Like I just wanted, we could, we could, it's easy to still criticize your own side. It's actually pretty easy. You can do it, like I tried to do it as much as I can, um, it's pretty easy. You don't have to take some weird anti-social justice side or anti-social justice warrior side and claim that the entire social justice movement is ruined by a couple people or a handful of bad

1:22:02 Thomas: Examples, so that's what I would say in conclusion. But just to try to put a final thing on the empathy thing, I mean we didn't maybe discuss that as much as I thought we were, but that's kind of okay because maybe it'll be a chance to not just reference past conversations as much. Um, but I, I did, I didn't think that, that you did make a few missteps on that. And I certainly made a ton of missteps in how I handled that episode, but I did think that they had an easy out, you know, I think you gave Dustin and Michael a pretty easy out that I'm not even sure if they took, but which is just to say like, yeah, sure, I have have empathy, but I still disagree. Like I still, you know, and, and I, I think, I wonder if you would acknowledge that empathy is not required for facts because, and I don't know that you were making that claim, but I think it was sort of the way a lot of people took it. Um, yeah,

1:22:51 Eli: And the phrase that I said that confused people was the facts don't care about your feelings, but you need feelings to care about facts, um, which Which was a bad way of putting, um, compassion. If you want to use compassion, do the Paul Bloom thing here, right? Compassion is, and this trust in institutions, and and this recognition are required before your personal skepticism trumps the lived experience and expertise of others, right? Because those are the two building blocks of knowledge is the lived experience and the expertise of other people. And so, I think that's a really good point.

Andrew, who has studied the law, and Callie Wright, who tells us what it's like to be a trans woman. And if neither of those connect to you, if you don't connect there and you go, "You know, I'm a guy in Bayonne, New Jersey, and I think trans ladies ain't really ladies because I am skeptical." Right, you you have just failed to connect on an empathetic level, right? That is a that is a moment of compassion you have failed to have. And I want to point out then that in those situations, it's not like, and this is what I was trying to get across, there are no facts in that moment that will get across to someone who

1:22:59 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah.

1:24:12 Eli: Has rejected the living spirit, right? Because there's nothing I'm going to do, and Sam Harris has that great quote, right, the bed, if someone says that that's not how, H2O is not how I like to think about water, the conversation Is over. Over. Um, you know, I'm just really parroting a lot of the brilliance that Sam puts in that quote, in that, you know, if the lived experience and expertise of others has not changed your mind, then the conversation truly is over. And, and more importantly, not to end this on like a sinister note, but then it becomes the responsibility of allies and the oppressed to make, to minimize your damage, right?

Right. So like there are Nazis, for example, who are probably not capable of learning at this point. Right. I think it's fair to say Richard Spencer is not going to have his mind changed by facts. I'm not going Oxford English style debate Richard Spencer and be like, ladies and gentlemen, that's why Jews are people. And he's just going to be like. Oh, man, I was so wrong. Right. Right. But so so because of that, and this may include people listening to this, if you fall into the category of unreachable, the job for allies and for, again, the victimized is now to stop your damage, which often means removing you from a platform,

1:24:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

1:25:34 Eli: Making sure you don't have access to the vulnerable, making making sure you can't attack the vulnerable. Right. And nobody likes that. Nobody likes to hear, well, now that you can't learn, you've got to be stopped. Right? But, but, you know, I say that not as a threat, which I'm sure, again, I'm going to get a tweet from someone like, you think you can stop me? Well, why don't you come on down to big old man. Right, right, right.

1:25:56 Thomas: You went into a tire commercial ad. That was cool.

1:25:59 Eli: Someone's going to do a tire commercial at me. It's terrible. Every time I do a social justice thing, I get a tower commercial no but sorry

1:26:02 Thomas: Yeah yeah. No, I get it. We are plum out of time. No that's okay. It's absolutely okay. It was really valuable. I thank you so much for coming back on and clarifying that. I think we'll get more questions, but I think that does answer a lot of the concerns that I heard, uh, or at least it'll give an answer to it. And if people, uh if people still disagree, you know, feel free, you can shoot us messages. I don't mind it. Um, I learned from, I really appreciate the people who were affected by, you know Asperger's and autism who messaged me. I actually really appreciated your stories because I want to do more on that. I want to talk more about that. It's really fascinating to me how kind of the differences in how we might, you know how different people might perceive things differently. It gets fascinating. So So I always appreciate that feedback. I always

1:26:07 Eli: Go ahead I I've taken so much time oh

1:26:50 Thomas: Appreciate Eli Bosnick coming on the show. Thanks so much, man.

1:26:53 Eli: Thanks for having me thomas

1:27:18 Thomas: All right, one more big thanks to Eli for coming on, sharing all that really interesting stuff. I meant what I said, to, if you, if you have feedback, if you comments and thoughts in response to that, send us a message, send me a message. Either way, either of us, because I think these are good ideas worth continuing on with. All right. Thank you so much for another great week of shows. Got some good stuff planned for you next week. We're doing a lot of research, Haley nice, mainly Haley, on Trump's cabinet picks and other and other picks, and I wanted to get to the bottom of like just how unprecedented they may or may not be.

Maybe some are, maybe some aren't. I really wanted to compare and contrast, do take a really deep look into that. And I'm excited. I love being able to do those shows now with more time and resources. I have got just so many kind new patrons to thank. Brian atherton, Jace Browning, Elias Garcia, or Elias, sorry, not sure which, Saccad with a pledge edit, thank you, those count just as much, Andy Cuesta, Patrick Dobbins, Morgan Matta, Andrew Waddington with a big pledge edit to five, thank you, Frank Ferriello with a Pledge Edit, Greg Jaskiewicz, Matthew Brown, Latchezar Nikolov, Desecrator, Michael, Michael with an

1:28:38 Thomas: Edit from two to 10. That is absolutely huge. Thank you so much, Michael. Nate Kinast, Cindi Lynch, Michele Stark, Daniel Charles LeBrun, Daiceth alvarez, Elliot H. Lamb, Stephanie Schulze, Kevin Triplett, Scott, Melisa Jensen, Victoria MacNair. Thank you, Cam. Thank you. Spencer, Cohen DeBruyne, Cassie Halladay, Kyle Smith, DodSno, Kjetil, oh man, I don't know, Kettle, maybe? Hope, Andrew Lindsay, Brian Schwimmer, Gillen Brown, and The Scathing Gloryhole Shoeshine Show. Thank you guys so much for your very kind support over at patreon.com/atheist really means an absolute ton to me. And And the show absolutely would not exist without your help. Thank you. That's it for me, I'll see you guys next week.