SIO152: Philosopher Elizabeth Picciuto on Trump's Moral Code

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 152. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I have a very interesting episode for you today, an interview with philosopher Dr. Elizabeth Picciuto. She wrote an article on Trump's moral code. You might not think he has one, but she thinks he has one of a certain kind, and we talk about that and a lot of other things, really fun.

Also talk about a tweet of hers that went viral about the humanities and how the decline in our politics might have something to do with the decline in the humanities and people's understanding of the humanities. We get to that, though, I just want to take a second to plug some things that I don't plug too often, and one of those is Comedy Shoeshine, my comedy podcast, if you need something to laugh with, it was a really funny episode this week, my brother Sam almost burned his house down, and that was hilarious, as hilarious as it sounds, and it just was a really fun episode, and you should check it out if you need something more casual and laid back and funny.

And then also Philosophers in Space, that show has been absolutely killing it, and this week we had a really cool discussion about kind of time paradoxes and stuff like that, centered around the short story in the movie Minority Report. We talked about both of them. They're very different, actually, vastly different, but they're both good in different ways, and we had a really cool discussion around those kind of things. So check out those shows if you haven't.

0:02:00 Thomas: I don't often plug other shows on here. And I mean, really, I could plug them every week, but I feel like that would be annoying, so I don't. So I think I've chosen to just forget to ever do it. And so I just remembered it. I wanted to say that. All Okay, with that said, let's get over to our guest.

0:02:24 Thomas: Elizabeth, so nice to have you here, I

0:02:26 Elizabeth: Thank you for having me.

0:02:27 Thomas: Am really excited to talk to you. You know, it's kind of funny now, I was going to mention how I came across you is just some really smart people I follow on Twitter had retweeted a tweet of yours and I noticed it, and then I kind of took a look at your profile and your writing, and I thought, oh, this would be a great person to talk to. And then, as we were just talking here, I wanted to pull that tweet up again. And it turns out it has gone way viral. So congratulations on that right off the bat.

0:02:55 Elizabeth: Thank you. I actually think it might be my most viral tweet.

0:02:57 Thomas: I would think so. I mean, it's got 10,000 retweets and 34,000 hearts. That's major stuff. And I want to talk about that later. Since I've teased it, I guess I'll say what the tweet is and then we'll come back back around to it. But you tweeted, y'all, that was a good start, STEM is amazing and we should learn it, but so many of the problems of current political life can be traced to being weak in humanity's unfamiliarity with history, civics, ethics, and philosophy. And I thought, oh, that's a great point. And apparently a lot of other people thought so too. So that's really cool.

0:03:31 Elizabeth: Yes. Yeah, I agree.

0:03:33 Thomas: So we'll go into that later, but I wanted to first start with I want to first talk about this piece you wrote in ArcDdigital. And as you say, you are a contributing editor there. So that's really cool. And it's called When Trump Demands Loyalty. And it seems as though, correct me if I'm wrong, it's like you wanted to apply your philosophy skills to kind of determine what morality, if any, Trump has. Is that a fair summary?

0:03:59 Elizabeth: Yes, and I should say that I'm not saying, by saying this is what his moral system is, I am not saying he is a moral human being, you know, or that I agree with this moral system or that it's a good moral system to use. But I'm always very interested in the what moral systems people operate internally by. So and I want and obviously Trump is a figure of a tiny amount of interest to us all. So I was I was curious, thinking, like, what is his moral life like? What does he think is the right thing to do, the wrong thing to Do? I

0:04:08 Thomas: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Is there anything in particular that made you want to write this? I mean, was it was it something you saw, or something you wanted to respond to, or or was it just that exploration? Uh,

0:04:47 Elizabeth: Wrote it soon after James Comey released his book. And right around that time, there was a fairly sophisticated moral discussion happening in public. So that always excites me as a philosopher, when our stuff goes in public, you know. So, Where was repeatedly making the distinction about having a moral system that's based on rules and law, and how that came into conflict with Trump and his loyalty. And so that came up. So that was being talked about then, and I wanted to clarify that and think about that a bit, it? I

0:04:54 Thomas: Right, yeah.

0:05:04 Thomas: That's Really interesting. I mean, I have my, uh, my opinions on Comey. I've, you know, there's like a split second where I was like, "Oh, maybe this guy was just trying to do the right thing." And then I, I think, I think I came across another of the million podcasts I listened to that was talking about really the details of how extraordinarily out of his way he went to kind of screw over Hillary in press conference, in the letter. And I was like, you know what, this guy maybe is not quite living up to his own moral code. But I don't know, what do you think about that?

0:05:58 Elizabeth: Tend to think he thinks he is. And that's what's kind of interesting to me. It's like the self-talk people give themselves.

0:06:00 Thomas: Yeah. Don't we all, though? Like, don't we? Don't you all? Yeah.

0:06:06 Elizabeth: How do they justify certain kinds of things? I am convinced he has justified it to himself. Whether or not that justification is adequate, I tend to think not. He obviously behaved unfairly. But I think he is able to tell himself, hey, hey, I did this because I was doing the right thing. And I think it was, I do actually take him at his word that that was a large concern for him. And it's interesting, there was at some point I was reading, maybe it was testimony of Sally Yates and or Loretta Lynch.

And they mentioned that part of their concern with stopping him, So he had contacted them, not giving them nearly enough time to sort of to stop him saying, hey, I'm going to go forward and say Hillary did the wrong thing when I announced that we're not pressing charges, but that she was extremely careless. And they said they didn't want to stop them from doing that, which would be their inclination and the rule, because they knew what he was like and they knew he would turn it into some kind of ethical battle where they were the bad people. And so that's kind of a case where his reputation as being this Boy Scout, as being, you know, could actually had some detrimental effects.

0:06:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.

0:07:18 Thomas: Interesting. Interesting.

0:07:27 Thomas: Yeah, if I'm remembering correctly, in his mind, and actually, I think this is another thing I accept at face value for him, but I think he just went too far with it. Wasn't he thinking he needed to compensate for the fact that Loretta Lynch was on an airplane with Bill Clinton and that was so disqualifying that he needed to make sure that he went out of his way to go over and above? And I feel like maybe the ethical blind spot there might be a one of degree, you know, like how big of a deal was that and how much should that mean you need to do something unprecedented in holding this press conference and lecturing Hillary Clinton? That's my recollection. Was that what you recall as well?

0:07:47 Elizabeth: Right. Yes. And I think also he mentioned in the book that he had had some information that was would look bad about Loretta Lynch, but wasn't bad. And then that turned out not to be true. But yeah, no,

0:08:17 Thomas: That's right. That's Right. Oh, really? Oh, did that? I just thought it wasn't ever declassified or something.

0:08:26 Elizabeth: I think the he had said no, it turned out it was it was not a thing. I don't have no idea what it was. But, yeah, there was something like he had to sort of ethically compensate for her failing. And I think that led into a kind of ethical arrogance, which ended up inhibiting what Sally Yates would do and what what she would do to stop him. It's pretty interesting, actually.

0:08:30 Thomas: Hmm. Right, right, right. Right.

0:08:49 Thomas: You said earlier that he's justified it in his own mind. And I chirped in, but I don't know if Skype caught it, but don't we all do that? I mean, isn't it the case that we pretty much all think we're the good guy or whatever in our story?

0:09:03 Elizabeth: Mean, we certainly tend to think that too much. And one of the things, I do think we all tend to do that. So part of what I'm interested in, not all, mostly, we mostly tend to do that, one of things I'm most interested in is, so when I see people doing what seem to me obviously morally horrible things, is what story are you telling yourself? Yourself use, there's almost always a story.

0:09:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:30 Elizabeth: You know, it's a usually a bad story, but there is a story, and so that's one of the things I was interested with Trump, um. I, I mean, you know, I want to be, you know, people do change their minds morally, they feel guilt, uh, you know, so it's not like we always rationalize all the things we do, um, but uh, most of us rationalize too much, and So,

0:09:37 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah, well, let's transition over to Trump then and let's talk about what conclusions you came to too, about his moral system, if any.

0:10:04 Elizabeth: Yeah. So what was interesting to me is, to me, Trump has, I sort of, I start by when I want to really understand somebody well, I started looking when they start complimenting other people's ethics. You know, when do they say somebody else is a good person or a bad person? And with Trump, there was, there's this tendency, obviously, to say autocrats are good people.

0:10:31 Elizabeth: But I mean, it's not really my good person crowd.

0:10:30 Thomas: Right. I was also going to say, if you check the demographics of who he says is a good person versus, there may be some conclusions there. Yeah.

0:10:42 Elizabeth: But so he does have this autocrat tendency, although I kind of left that to the side, although it would be interesting. I think the reason he keeps kind of mentioning how good they are is he knows other people don't think that. But almost all the times where he said this person is a good person, it was in terms of somebody he had a personal relationship with and they had served him well in some way. Know, so in contrast to, let's take James Comey, where you have, I think, thinking is a fairly large part of James Comey's mind, as it is for almost all of us. I mean, we think ethically a lot of the day, like if somebody cuts you off in traffic, you're usually ethically annoyed. Some people shouldn't do that. They shouldn't be selfish. Selfish, um, you know, we think of that when somebody is rude to a shopkeeper.

If somebody makes, gives us an extra compliment, we're pleased with it, you know. So we think ethically a lot. I think that like Homie has this kind of these ideas of rules of behavior in his head. Am I meeting them? Am I not meeting them? How does it have, even though it is apparent, it seems like I'm not meeting them.

0:11:05 Thomas: Hmm.

0:11:53 Elizabeth: How am I really meeting them? That kind of thing. And Trump has a much more, as far as I can tell, limited, first of all, it seems to consume him far less than it does most people. And also that it's the question of good and bad, which is a large part of other people's conversations. And, also, it is entirely restricted to this interpersonal, personal, has somebody served me? And that's almost entirely where I see him complimenting. Like he had said it about Michael Cohen. Now he's not a good person. He had said it about, know, a few of the other people, Paul Manafort, a few of other people who had, he felt, loyal to him. And that seemed to be the place where he said, this person is a good person.

0:12:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:37 Thomas: Yeah, did you look into Arpaio? Because I don't remember if they had a relationship relationship prior to, to, to Trump saying, oh, he's a good person. I also feel like that could have been an example of, uh. Saying someone is a good person because it serves a purpose. You know, I feel like that's a lot of also what's motivating him too, is just what, what, What benefits me and taking a, a, uh I mean, it's weird to say, but a weird conservative hero in this awful person. Oh, pie or pie. Oh in my opinion, uh and just praising him, even though he has no real dealings with him, is another person that I can think of offhand. Did you look into him as an example?

0:13:09 Elizabeth: I didn't write about that, but what I would say about it is that he was loyal to Trump in terms of campaigning for him.

0:13:25 Thomas: I wasn't sure which came first, but yeah, that makes sense.

0:13:27 Elizabeth: His and public support of Trump came first. And I really haven't heard him use that kind of, even ethical talk, if not good, then admirable or something You know, something along those lines about people who you would expect a president would normally say it about, you know, soldiers and, you know, especially even soldiers who don't support him, you know, about, there was this LeBron James situation where I think that drove him extra crazy because people were morally praising LeBron James for being, you You know, what seems to most people, hey, I gave a ton to charity and I'm helping these kids. So it seems like a good thing. And Trump not being charitable, I think, is jealous and upset. But I haven't heard him say it about a charitable person. I haven'T really heard him. I mean, he may have like a couple of times, but it doesn't seem to be a regular thing. Again, I haven' t, you know, just heard him saying it in these other contexts where people normally say, oh, that's a good person, a religious person, that kind of thing.

0:14:00 Thomas: Yeah, that's really interesting. A couple of thoughts I was having. I always am interested in when philosophy philosophy becomes psychology or vice versa kind of thing. And when I first saw, you know, this article, I thought, well, I wonder, is it a moral system so much or could it be, I don't know, you're always forced to do some armchair, you don't diagnosing of the man. But to me, he seems incredibly transactional and narcissistic and that he's doing and saying whichever thing serves him him in the moment. It, would you call that a moral system? I

0:14:48 Elizabeth: I So it depends what you're, so there's two ways to look at, let's take a praise, his former praise of Michael Cohen, who he said was good in some way. It depends to what end you're thinking. Oh, and by the way, just to go back, you were saying it's a philosophy, psychology. Psychology, I mean, there is a, the two blend, you know, and my PhD advisor used to say what he did, he called it theoretical psychology, which I thought was an awesome phrase, way of putting it. So yeah, there, there's this kind of blend. And that's the kind of philosophy I'm more interested in. So to get back, so when he says Michael Cohen is good, there are two ways to look at it. Is he saying that in order to get something from Michael Cohen or purely in order to get Something from Michael Coen or is he saying it because is there any sort of genuine sense that oh, he's good I oddly and I don't attribute authenticity to Trump very often,

0:15:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting.

0:16:05 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah

0:16:13 Elizabeth: You know, but I actually do think there's a sense in in which he gets gratification from what he sees as, you know, some kind of expression of loyalty. Like, there was one debate where they asked, oh, can you say something nice about each other? It was an annoying question. And Clinton said, what to any normal person would be like, all right, whatever, his kids are good. You know, like, that's the best thing I could come up with, you know. And he seemed really moved by it. Like oh, yeah, that is nice of her to say. You You know, like he seemed kind of genuine, like he's so ready to take compliments, but I think they do. So that's the question. You could see it as purely transactional. I tend, and in which case I'm totally wrong.

0:16:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah Yeah. Oh really? Oh, I wasn't sure if that would go along with your theory or, or you, you think that would, okay.

0:17:01 Elizabeth: You could, I mean, Then it's more purely manipulative and it's, but, you know, I think that I do think that there is a part of him that genuinely thinks the good people are the ones who are good to him and who like him and and the good supporters are the ones who like him. You know, that kind of thing.

0:17:19 Thomas: Yeah I wonder how much he, he, I, I just feel like he treats people as means. Well, you could remind me which philosopher it was, but treats people's means rather than ends. Was that a humor or something? That's right.

0:17:33 Elizabeth: Oh, that was Kant.

0:17:34 Thomas: Kant. Okay. Yeah. I feel like that's the sense I get. Just, you know, obviously.

0:17:35 Elizabeth: Yes. Oh, yeah. No, that's... Sorry, what I'm saying is definitely not saying that he treats anyone well or properly. Like, it is entirely consistent with seeing them as means. It's just a matter of what is his actual motivation in saying someone is good. Is it a genuine, authentic expression of what he thinks?

0:17:45 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:17:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:17:58 Elizabeth: Now, he only thinks it, I think, because somebody has served him in some way. You know, like, so it's obviously treating people as means, but it's just about whether he's only ever saying that because he wants to get on someone's good side, which I'm sure is part of the reason sometimes, but is it ever sort of, yeah,

0:18:12 Thomas: Well I, yeah, for me it's, it's I'm sorry, I'm just theorizing, but, but I get the sense that people can be almost coded as good or bad in his mind, and I'm not saying he's always, when he says someone is good, it's to, like, serve a specific purpose of getting that person to do something, I think that could be it, but I also think, based on his transactional nature, if they, the few people, and it's not very many people, the few who are on his good side of his register, he will mention that, you know what I mean? Mean, that's kind of where I'm coming out of.

0:18:48 Elizabeth: Yeah. No, and that's, that's exactly what I think. So it is only due to this kind of transactional, you know, value that he has that he ever thinks people are good.

0:18:50 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha.

0:18:59 Elizabeth: You know if people give him something that's what makes him think they're good. Uh, you know, the question is just whether is he ever saying somebody is good? Is it genuine? And like, oh, I appreciate that you did this thing for me. This for me, that's why I'm saying it. Or is it because I need you to do something for me? So I'm going to say you're good, even though I don't even think that way.

0:19:21 Thomas: Interesting.

0:19:22 Elizabeth: Does that make sense?

0:19:23 Thomas: Yeah. And I cannot help, but I do not think one can ignore, again, the racial breakdown of people who are on his good side versus his bad side. One of the things that's most disturbing to me is, like you mentioned the LeBron James thing. I mean, it's always people of color and usually women who are are on his who he just goes out of his way to demean in in the worst kinds of ways so his his like kind of he has this weird good list and this bad list and shocker, all the bad list is is black people and it's just like it's Really disturbing. Yeah.

0:20:00 Elizabeth: Right. And You know, this is, I think people were tempted to say for a while, I mean, I remember people used to say this, and maybe Charlottesville was the breaking point for this, that he's not really a racist, he's just playing to the racists, um, And I, that's, I, that, that's absolutely not true. And I think part of that is it started with some genuine value of racism that he has. You know, this has been, this is not Trump in, you know, the 2000s. I mean, he's been talking about race. I mean he's being racist since the 80s.

0:20:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:34 Thomas: He's Put in A Solid Uh, decades long work in being racist. He's put in the time, he's earned the label of racist, I think. Who are we to deny it from when he's done so much good work to earn it?

0:20:40 Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly, I exactly question. It's great work in this area. No. So I think that's a genuine. So and that starts and then but then that becomes a reinforcing thing because who is likely to recoil from him? You know, he knows that if he runs into an African-American, chances are that African-Americans is not going to like him. And the woman is less likely to like Him, you know, and so he can hit first. And, you know, so I think there's a kind of reinforcing thing in the way he, and also he gets the praise of his supporters who are racist, you know, for being racist.

0:20:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, counterpoint, I saw an elderly white woman holding a blacks for Trump sign. So that's my counter argument to whatever you just said? No. So I want to, one thing that you wrote about in this piece that I found so fascinating, because I frequently make reference to Peter Singer, you talked about with respect to loyalty as a value. Do you want to talk about kind of the little story you told there about Peter Singer?

0:21:53 Elizabeth: So Peter Singer is a philosopher who's famous for being a utilitarian. And basically what that means is that the more happiness people in general feel, that's the more moral thing to do. So if you have two options and one would bring about more happiness in more people and one bring about More Unhappiness, you should do the thing that brings about more happiness. And traditionally, utilitarianism doesn't value certain people over others. Everybody's happiness counts equally. And there's a whole big debate with utilitarians, including whether animals count. Most of them think they do, in which case that would mean radical change, radical behavior change for most people.

0:22:42 Elizabeth: Um, and so if you take everyone's interests into consideration equally, as he suggests you should, that means you don't you shouldn't treat your family and friends better than you do anybody else, because there's nothing better about your family, you know, they're not more morally worthy than anybody else. Every person, whoever, however you count person, I'm using person morally, so it can include animals, is non-human animals, is uh, equally worthy. So the idea that you should treat your parents better than someone else, your children better than anybody else's children, any sense that you have of that, which almost all of us do, would be kind of a moral mistake, take, that you're just being sentimental or, you know, misled.

0:23:34 Elizabeth: And then his mother was ill, he ended up spending a good amount of money for her care. Now, if you're going to take utilitarianism seriously, you don't spend a lot of your money on one person. You give your money to like a charity that spreads it out among as many people as possible, giving them the biggest as boost possible. Taking care of only one person is never going to cause the most happiness for the most people. But he found himself doing that anyway. He found himself following what he thought was moral and then taking care of his mother.

0:24:08 Thomas: Yeah, I didn't know about that example. And, you know, Peter Singer or is somebody that I think has a lot of valuable things to say. I get the feeling that possibly you disagree with a lot of his opinions.

0:24:20 Elizabeth: Yeah. I mean, that doesn't mean I don't think what he, there are several things I disagree, including, and some extremely strongly on. But, But, and including that, I mean, this is not something I, you know, this kind of, we don't owe anything more to our family, friends, that's not something, but, you know, obviously, I respect his thinking, and I would think he's, you know, it's good to have somebody articulating his point of view.

0:24:21 Thomas: Yeah, I think that the message that we all need to be buying a lot of malaria nets for people because that's what does the best. Like a lot his, kind of sensible altruism.

0:24:54 Elizabeth: Effective altruism.

0:24:54 Thomas: Yeah, that kind of thing. Effective altruism, I think, is really valuable and is worth thinking about. But yeah, I feel like there's a few ways you could go with that example. I mean, I Think the easiest would be to say, well, he's falling short doesn't mean doesn't mean his moral system doesn't work. That would be, I guess, my first objection. What?

0:24:57 Elizabeth: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean That's, you know, that's that's obvious, I mean, that sort of obviously true. I don't mean this as a way to disprove utilitarianism. Um, but to talk about sort of how compelling, you know, if even he can't stick to that, that kind of ideal, how hard it is. Now, I don't think he should stick to it, but I'm not saying this disproves utilitarian I mean, it, like, that I just meant that, you know, just because a moral system is hard to follow doesn't mean it's wrong. That just hard.

0:25:19 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. But but my more I actually think my my objection I actually possibly agree with regarding Because I tend to be pretty consequentialist, so it might be interesting to talk about. But I've been partial to, I think, what people have called rule utilitarianism. I mean, if we have to live in a world where we all can't value our family members more than other people, I don't think that actually yields happiness. I don't think it breaks utilitarianism to say, oh, well, this rule, even though maybe on the surface, it seems like that should be the utilitarian rule. Turns out it actually makes everybody unhappy. I don'T think that's, uh, yeah.

0:25:40 Elizabeth: Right.

0:26:16 Elizabeth: So He's usually an act utilitarianism. Although he kind of has been around, you know, like his view has moved a little bit. But yeah, on rural utilitarianism, you could easily sort of carve out some kind of way to, better for most of us if more people treat their families better. You know, you could kind of talk about it that way. Yes. And that would be a way to talk about it with consequentialism.

0:26:20 Thomas: Hmm.

0:26:46 Thomas: Okay. Well, a little bit of a departure, but I did find that story interesting because I actually hadn't come across it, and I think it would have been a really interesting story if it, if the end was, and he just didn't spend anything on his mother. And there are a lot of ways in which he has made sacrifices like that. And, you know, I think I think they're pretty commendable in a lot of ways, but he he wasn't able to to do that one, I guess.

0:27:00 Elizabeth: Yeah, no, it's right.

0:27:13 Elizabeth: And his particular philosophy, utilitarianism, it sounds like students always say, oh, that sounds good, making people happy. That sounds kind of like fun, like a fun thing. And it's by far the most demanding of the major ethical systems. Like you really have to, it asks a lot of you, you know, when you really always choose the thing that makes the most people happy, that's really, and you don't count yourself as any more important than anyone else. That's a lot times you're going to be unhappy to make other people happy.

0:27:27 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here.

0:27:44 Elizabeth: I just, what I wanted to talk about was that I think what I argue is that Trump considers loyalty to be a virtue in other people. I don't think he really questions it in himself. You know, like that's not part of his ethical vocabulary is not like, am I being loyal enough to everyone? You know, ethical questioning is not really, I mean, to what actually kind of an astonishing degree, even bad people tend to justify things to themselves. I don't think he bothers, but the can be, and the reason I brought up Peter Singer is because I was arguing that loyalty can, can be a good thing, you know, it's good to, or at least hard not to, take care of your friends and family and treat them a little differently.

Loyalty involves treating people a little differently, uh, you can't be loyal, equally loyal to everyone on earth, you know, that doesn't, that's not loyal, it's respectful or something, but loyal means, you know, you're treating some people differently, and it can be good thing, it helps build community bonds, it helps built family bonds, uh, the question is when it's your exclusive virtue, as it seems to be for him, like that's the only way he judges people what you're going to do, is because loyalty often involves demanding sacrifice, how do you

0:27:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:14 Thomas: Lock

0:29:01 Elizabeth: Prove loyalty? Ever you sacrifice something else, like if you're loyal to, like, I'm loyal to my kids, I mean, I would do an armed robbery to help, you know, save them. I mean, there's no question, you know, I would do immoral things in order to oh, if only you knew what I do for my kids you know, it wouldn't be a lot out of the house but

0:29:13 Thomas: Your doors, everybody. No. I have a baby that is turning one year old very soon. And I believe me, I there are a lot of things that I previously thought were, maybe that doesn't make sense to me, or that's kind of, that's kind of, you know, touchy feely, wishy washy kind of of thing. And then, uh, the minute she was born, I was like, nevermind, it all. Uh, I get it. Sorry, everybody. I, I've yeah, now I get It.

0:29:25 Elizabeth: Oh yeah right uh, so I mean, so in that sense, um, my loyalty to them, um, is expressed in terms of, you know, what would I sacrifice to do for them. I would sacrifice quite a lot, you know, uh, you know, maybe kind of conditional, like, what would I do?

Same with my husband, you know, I, you know, stay, you know, loyal to him in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of, what if I don't just move wherever I want to move, you know, I don't say, like, all right, I'm seeing on vacation, bye, you know, take care of the kids, you know, I mean, I sacrifice things in order to sort of maintain our relationship. That sounds like I'm the only one doing that, this is a two way thing. But the so So it involves sacrifice. But if it's the only thing you care about, you know, I wouldn't expect my husband to do something, a certain immoral things in order to, you know, prove his loyalty to me. I wouldn'T want him, you know, if I want, you know, a new dress, that's kind of because it's really pretty. I wouldn'T want him to, like, steal money for that, you know.

0:30:47 Elizabeth: When loyalty is the only thing you value, then there's no sacrifice that's enough, in a sense. There's nothing, there's no sacrifice, that's going to be too much to ask of someone.

0:30:23 Thomas: Right. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, there's also no end to it, I guess. Like there's no, ah, you've done the loyalty. You know, it's like, it''s a never ending thing. And I think we''ve seen that with Trump. It''s, you know, It'''s, It's no matter how much, I mean, think of the things Michael Cohen has done for him over the years, I''m sure, You know, I'm sure Cohen's benefited as well, of course, but like he's put in years and years of of service that which I can. He's done illegal things for Trump over and over. We know that he's done legal things for drunk. And then, you know, the minute it wasn't useful for Trump anymore, then it's like, well, oh, well.

0:31:08 Elizabeth: Right? Yeah. Right.

0:31:34 Thomas: And yeah, yeah.

0:31:34 Elizabeth: And what? Oh, sorry, go ahead.

0:31:36 Thomas: No, I was just going to say, I think it goes to what you're saying, where it's it's if loyalty is the only thing you value. You it's, that is a definite problem. I don't see a way around that. I mean, just the minute someone falls short, it's kind of like they're, they're you're done with them in a sense.

0:31:52 Elizabeth: Right, so there was this interesting thing where he seemed to be saying initially, you know, would Michael Cohen flip? I mean, now we're pretty sure he's going to flip. But before we weren't sure, he was like, Oh, Michael will be loyal to me. And And he seemed to believe that, even though it would involve the guy going to prison for the rest of his life. Like, who would do that? And nobody would. I mean, you know, and, you Know, absent some other reason or like, you Know, some super close relationship like, You know, my kids or something, you Don't for your boss, you don't you're not going to say, I'll go to prison just to protect them. You know what I mean?

That's not but he seemed To be kind of expecting that because again, he He doesn't really have any sense of, OK, well, this is too much to ask someone. Or also there are other things I other people need to be responsive to their family. They need to Be responsive to other people in their life. They need responsible to other moral principles. There's no sense of that. It's just this kind of like. So I was interested in that kind of how loyalty can be this thing that brings families and people and communities together. It's about how much of it is finding a balance. But too much is obviously, and Trump is sort of the personification of the problem with loyalty.

0:32:11 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:33:05 Thomas: Yeah. No, that's really fascinating. I thought it was a great piece and it was really interesting. And you know, we're with the time we're coming on, I want to make sure we talk about your, your humanities tweet that went viral. Can you tell me kind of your thinking behind it or anything in particular that led you to, uh, to, to craft that tweet?

0:33:13 Elizabeth: Okay. Oh, that's just kind of an ongoing sense that I have. And, you know, and obviously I have some interest in this as a philosopher, you know, like I like philosophy. You know, I have an ongoing joke that philosophers are the ones who keep trying to come up with the meaning of life, and they keep coming up with, like, doing philosophy as part of the meaning of life. And one suspects that maybe it's a little self-serving.

0:33:41 Thomas: Yeah. Some bias there. Yeah.

0:33:47 Elizabeth: So it could be a little self-serving. But I was also just thinking of, you know, there's been a lot of emphasis on STEM education lately, and I think that's great. You know, I'm not anti-STEM remotely, you And I think people are still undereducated in STEM. But there is a way to sort of say that people have of saying that STEM is sort of all there is, you know, like we've got to focus entirely on STEM. And what it struck me was looking at our current political life. And I mean, the Trump administration, but also just our current political life together, you know, our polity, I guess. And how often I am frustrated or thinking, wow, this could really benefit if people had a better understanding of civics, had a a better understanding of history, like, why did this rule, you know, like that you're breaking come about, that people had a better understand of, you know, ethical principles.

0:34:46 Elizabeth: And you know, this is something that major that we're lacking. You know, it's important and it's major that we're lacking all the time.

0:34:53 Thomas: Yeah. So I want to give you, uh、 my, my pet theory about, about why this tweet resonated so much right now. And, you know, it's going to be from, from kind of from my narrow point of view, but you can let me know what you think. Uh, are you familiar with Jordan Peterson?

0:35:08 Elizabeth: I am.

0:35:08 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I, I think that there is a bit of a culture war going on, and there is, as I'm sure you would know, I mean, there's also a lot of anti-humanity sentiment out there, and Jordan Peterson is unfortunately immensely popular. He's really resonated with a certain group of people, mostly, I think, disenfranchised white men or honestly a lot of STEM white men that I know. And he

0:35:09 Elizabeth: I am.

0:35:41 Elizabeth: Cultural

0:35:41 Thomas: Has outright called for, you know, getting rid of humanities because it's so riddled with, I Post-Marxist, no, Marxist, post-modernist, neo-Mar, yeah, something like that. Post-modern, cultural, yeah that's what it is. Cultural Cultural Marxist, neo-whatever, some word salad that actually just means what it originally meant Jewish people back in the day when it was crafted, cultural Marxism. But now it's morphed into, I don't know, liberals of some kind or something. But anyway, I wonder if it might have gotten caught up a little bit in that. You know, people are are circling the wagons around the humanities because there's a there's a major, major, unfortunately, force that that is anti-humanities right now. What do you think?

0:35:54 Elizabeth: Marxism or whatever. Yeah.

0:36:06 Elizabeth: Yes.

0:36:27 Elizabeth: Yeah, I think there's... there's a couple of different things going on. First is there is a genuine, know, I Think nonpartisan way of looking at, you know, in education as an investment, and what is more likely to pay off its stem, you know, so there's that kind of bit just that basic calculation and that, hey, this is what you need to make money and hey, This is where the future is going, we're going to to need people to build the robots that will bathe us or whatever.

0:36:58 Thomas: Yeah, to build the the robots that will take all of our jobs and essentially leave us.

0:37:03 Elizabeth: But then they'll take care of us, I hope.

0:37:05 Thomas: Yeah, hopefully.

0:37:06 Elizabeth: Think there's a genuine sort of sense and a move on not only a kind of cross-partisan, I suppose, move to invest more in STEM education for children and for universities, uh, so there's that, but there's also this uh Jordan Peterson thing, which is weird given Jordan Peterson's own scholarly work, which is very, I think, not narrative, and you know, like it's all very humanitiesy, I mean, you know, it's it's the the most touching it is really is, but there is this, there's a sense in which, um, this reminds me also of the tendency of followers, Ben Shapiro's followers, to use logic language a lot, you know, they'll be like, "Oh, you committed the ad hominem fallacy," and the you know, they'll start naming and especially they're like rando, like fallacies that are like the, the, the armpit follow.

I don't know. Like, I'm just like, okay, you know, like it's not even a real thing, but they use this language of logic, but they're not being very logical off, you know, like it doesn't make sense. Like, they're using the words appropriately, but it sort of makes them, gives them an authority to use this kind of logical language. And I feel like

0:37:28 Thomas: Right. Yeah. It's downright postmodern oftentimes.

0:37:52 Thomas: Yeah, right, right. Right. Yeah.

0:38:23 Thomas: Jordan

0:38:23 Elizabeth: Sort of, even though he is doing this humanity stuff, to do use this anti-humanities language, kind of has a power above and beyond what he's actually saying. And, you know, it has to do with, don't listen to anyone else, listen to me, and people are willing to go in on that. I totally agree. So I think there's, yeah, there's both, there's this, the uh humanities professors are the touchy-feely ones who don't have to prove anything, just not true, but that's the kind of reputation, so therefore they're unnecessary, that's kind of of a right wing. They're just there to inculcate.

0:38:55 Thomas: Peterson will hop on Fox News and really tell a gripping story about what people like you are doing to our our kids.

0:38:57 Elizabeth: Yeah, I know. I know a Twitter friend of mine who said, you know, like, not only can I not inculgate them into socialism, I can't even get them to do the readings. You know, it's just really extremely true. But, you Know, there's and, you know, I have to think Peterson actually knows better, but what do I know what he knows?

0:39:05 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:39:27 Elizabeth: But But yeah, then there's that kind of right-wing version of anti-humanities, and there's also this kind of generalized anti-humanities sense.

0:39:26 Thomas: Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about the state of the humanities? Because I saw, gosh, I wish I had it, but it's another one of those things scrolling through Twitter that I can't quite remember. But I did see somebody recently publish a graph half showing the decline in people seeking humanities, I guess, degrees. And it was pretty stark. Is that, yeah. What do you think about it? Can you talk about that?

0:39:56 Elizabeth: Yes. You know, and I've seen this in terms of anecdata. Sorry, now I'm really pissing off the STEM people. You know?

0:40:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Anic data. I like it.

0:40:07 Elizabeth: But at both the schools that I've taught at, their philosophy majors have reduced pretty markedly since mid-2000s, like 2005, 2006.

0:40:21 Elizabeth: Um, and, uh, so I think there's a definite, I've seen the chart too. I mean, I think part of that is there has been this emphasis on, not um, only, hey, you're telling me what to think, you're programming me and, you know, there's that, but there is also this kind of, well, I'm here to be practical. So one assignment I've done with my, my students, um. Many times is sort of, okay, design your own university. What would it be like? Um, and uniformly they opt against the liberal arts type of education, and they, they, they want practical knowledge, a lot of times it's life practical, like they want to learn how to do their taxes and stuff like that, but all yeah that

0:40:37 Thomas: Yeah, hmm.

0:41:02 Thomas: Well, that should be in, why can't that be in frigging high school? You know, like, why don't we learn? Yeah, I

0:41:07 Elizabeth: I know that's that's something, yeah, like I, I actually do

0:41:09 Thomas: Do agree with that sentiment, but just, you know, we should it all have that knowledge. I wish, I wish high school education had more basic stuff, you know, that, that life, life valuable stuff.

0:41:10 Elizabeth: Oh yeah like serious home ec, like a legit home ec, I'm totally in favor of that, uh, and uh, they want, um, to use this, again, not all of them, but most of them want to focus in college on career prep, and they get frustrated that, "I'm paying all this money, and I'm not focused, I'm taking these courses that don't seem like they're relevant." Like, I'm seeing it as an investment, I can't, it's not that those courses are not going to make my investment pay pay off.

0:41:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:49 Thomas: Yeah, you know, and in a sense, I'm really sympathetic to that. And I think that, you know, it could be a generational thing, a, is more anecdata, I guess, but it seems as though there's a bit of a higher education bubble in terms of just how much costs are going up and how much student loan debt is going up. And is that a big factor of, like, "Well, I, you know, I'd love to come study for four years and learn interesting things, but, you know, I'm gonna have 50, 60, 70 thousand dollars worth of debt. I need to learn something that ostensibly will make me a lot of of money."

0:41:50 Elizabeth: Right.

0:42:24 Elizabeth: And yeah, and to be, I totally think they have a point, you know, I'm not going to say like, oh, every one of my students is saying this, they're all wrong, you know obviously. They're all kind of saying it, I mean that's not obvious necessarily that it's possible that they're wrong, you, know, but it's their education, they have vested interest interesting. One thing that professors haven't been very good about is thinking, how can I make, first of all, how do you explain, hey, this actually is very useful to you in your career? Like, you know, often it's learning specific content isn't going to help you as much in your carrier as learning a way to think, a way write, which is much more adaptable to different types of jobs, you know, like, so we don't really sell them on that. We don't talk about that ever. And we also don't, there's a way, so in philosophy, you could have, you know, one thing you have to do in business is make presentations.

0:42:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:19 Elizabeth: So you could have students do presentations. You could, you know, you can sort of try to bring in work skills into the mix that I don't think professors think about enough or say, hey, I'm teaching you this and this is why it's useful in your, your, you know, to your future.

0:43:35 Thomas: Yeah, I but I don't know if that's the way to go, you know, because should humanities serve the purpose of making you a better business person, or should it be the humanities, you now? Should it be... Yeah, yeah,

0:43:46 Elizabeth: Right. I mean, you know, I mean obviously it's meant to make you a better world citizen. Although, so I have mixed feelings on one hand. Yeah, I don't think, you know, like seeing education as purely an investment or as opposed to, hey, can it be also something you purchase? You know, okay, so part of it is investment, but part of it I'm paying for it because it's a good thing to be or an experience to have.

0:44:13 Elizabeth: So, you know, I am sympathetic with not seeing it entirely as that. You know, and I don't even necessarily mean that need to focus exclusively on that by any means, but to sort of say, hey, this is why this might be useful to you, not only for world citizenship, But also career wise, especially there's a leisure, an upper class bias, I think, in saying, oh, education is for citizenship. It's not for anything practical, which is easy for somebody who has a lot of money to say, I'm going to blow it on becoming a much better citizen of the country, of the world, you know, democratic citizen, whatever it is. That's that's nice, but if you have a much more limited means and you're going into debt, and it's it's more necessary for you to think about, okay, how am I going to monetize this, so I think I worry that there's a little bit of an um, I have that sense that hey, this is what it should be for, it's about creating the whole person, you know, but also I worrythat that there is a classist bias in that.

0:44:42 Thomas: Right.

0:45:19 Thomas: Yeah! Yeah, that's understandable. This might be too big of a topic for right now, but I'm kind of worried about higher education. I feel like with how freely available a lot of really amazing classes are becoming online, there's so much you can learn for free that I don't know. Why would people invest such a hefty sum to go to some of these places and learn something that might not even help them pay that off, where they could just take a more practical route and then, you know, learn on the side or not bother learning at all? I'm worried about it.

0:45:55 Elizabeth: I mean, I'm worried about it, although I also think that may be a good thing. You know, you know, it's great that people can learn some. I mean, I do think there are benefits to be gotten learning in, and I've taught online classes, and I'm sure there are benefit to learning in person and, you know, in having discussions, and you know, that are going to be very difficult to entirely replace.

0:45:57 Thomas: Yeah, it could be. Yeah.

0:46:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:17 Elizabeth: And also, as long as employers demand college degrees, people are going pay a lot of money for them.

0:46:24 Thomas: Yeah, that's true. Man. Well, that is, I think, a good place to end, a nice, dire, pessimistic place to end, but, um, no, this was fantastic. This was a whole lot of fun. Very interesting. Uh, thank you so much for coming on and make sure to, uh, can you tell us anywhere that you, you want to send people to find you online or find your work?

0:46:46 Elizabeth: Well, you can find me on Twitter and epicciuto. And there will be, I'll have links to my articles and stuff there.

0:46:54 Thomas: Fantastic. Thank you again so much. Really enjoyed it.

0:46:57 Elizabeth: Okay, thank you so much.

0:47:23 Thomas: Oh, that was so fun. You know, as much as Twitter does suck in a million ways, it also can be good. You know, it really can and I've been trying to use it in a different way these days. I don't really interact with people as much, especially negative people who you're just not going to convince of anything. I spent spend almost no time trying to do that now, which which has improved my experience a lot. But Twitter can be really cool because I follow so many smart people, you know, there it's there's one thing I could pride myself on, it would be having a good recognition of when other people are smart and know what they're talking about for the most part, you know, I found Andrew friggin Torres by knowing how brilliant he was at right right away when I read his message toward me.

0:48:09 Thomas: But anyway, I follow so many brilliant people and I just came across Elizabeth and it was just such a cool thing, because for every, you know, awful troll, and well, okay, I won't say that, as much as there are a A bajillion awful trolls and Russian bots and crap like that, it is interesting, that kind of a reminder that Twitter can actually be used to find smart people and talk to them, like, like was the case in this episode. And I really enjoyed it. And I don't know, I just wanted to add that in, even though, as we're seeing this week with every other social media platform basically banning Alex Jones and InfoWars except Twitter. So that was very disappointing. So it's, I'm not, I'm not a huge fan in many ways, but I just want to put that information out there.

0:48:56 Thomas: Also, I just saw, actually just now, that Jack, the Twitter guy, you know, he, he said that Alex Jones hasn't violated any any rules, and that's why they haven't banned him. And I saw a tweet where news outlets have been asking Jack for an interview about this, you know, over and over. And one liberal news outlet had been asking him for like two or three years or something like that, and he's never done it. Except tonight, he's going on Hannity, so that gives you an idea maybe where Twitter and its leaders are coming from. So it might have something to do with why Alex Jones isn't banned. But anyway, found that interesting. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting the show, patreon.com/seriouspod and seriouspod.com/support, those are two ways you can do it.

0:49:42 Thomas: You make the show happen, and thank you so much to those who do, and I hope you enjoy the bonus episodes and all that good stuff. So with that said, I will see you next week.