SIO173: Voicemail: Ethics, Robots, FGM Laws, and More!

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 173, I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I hope you had a very happy Christmas, I really like the word merry, I don't know what it is, it just always bugs me, we don't use it for anything else except Christmas, and, I mean, I guess that's not a great argument, but still, something about it bothers me, but, pleasant Christmas, or, and or any other holiday you guys celebrate. So I'm really excited to do this episode. We've got some great voicemails, lots of ranging topics, different stuff spanning from, of course, last month, I put off a couple voicemail that I had. So, I'm going to do those first. They're going to be a little bit dated, but not in a way that I think really matters.

0:01:18 Thomas: So a couple November voicemails and then I got some great December ones, and I'm just really so happy to have this interaction with you folks. And I hope you'll take advantage of this again next month for the end of January. Make sure to get those voicemails going, any reactions you have to anything on the show or even not on the show, news article, whatever it may be. So, all right, let's do it! All right.

0:01:45 Clip: It's time to check the voicemail, and of course if you'd like to leave a message, that's 916-750-4SIO. That's 916-750-4746. Let's check out this week's messages. Music

0:02:05 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, David calling in. I work for an email marketing company, I won't say which one, but I just finished helping out about five different Republican action groups email their constituents to get out the vote, and throughout the last month, I've not had a single Democrat group call to send out email with that. Now, that either means Democrats don't need help with their emails or that we're just not getting out as much information as Republicans. And it's something that's consistently worried me and put me in a little bit of a moral dilemma because my livelihood depends on helping people I fundamentally disagree with.

0:02:52 Voicemail: I've even in the past had to help out people equivalent to the Westboro Baptist Church. And I don't know, I was just wondering what your thoughts are on that kind of moral situation. You know, is it right to help out these groups, which I fundamentally oppose, while taking money from them and, you know, ultimately, it's November 5th, the night before election, voting against them. But anyway, I hope the election turns out well. I'll be watching the coverage tomorrow.

0:03:21 Thomas: Well, the election did turn out pretty well, so that's good, uh, interesting voicemail, a couple things I wanted to talk about in relation to this, first, I think it's highly possible that Democrat liberal groups don't have problems sending emails because of the age difference and how much young people skew liberal, uh and then maybe it's just specific to your area, I dunno, it could be that, but, I will say that, I'm trying to think off the top of my head which organizations I receive emails from, you know, I did Act Blue, I, did, uh, what's that, blanking on the one, Swing Left, I think, I do a couple, maybe two or three of these organizations, and, you you know, they know how to email. They're all set up already to email people.

0:04:08 Thomas: So I don't know. I don't know if you're talking about individual candidates. Maybe they could. Who knows? Maybe there are Democrats somewhere who aren't getting out the word in these elections. But as the results showed after your call, it seems like we did OK. But I want to talk about your kind of ethical concerns there, I think that's an interesting question, and I think it actually depends on some factors, so I don't know what your position is, what your setup is, but I would give you a much different answer, like if you are just a sole proprietor, whatever, you're an independent contractor taking business where you get it, and if you're somebody who's doing really well in life and has no shortage of clients, then, you know, I probably personally, I'm just talking about me personally, I would draw the line at something akin to Westboro Baptist Church.

0:04:58 Thomas: Like, I don't think I'd necessarily cut off the entirety of one political side of the country to do business with. I think, I mean, I, I don't think that's an awful idea, but I, I, it would scare me. I mean you gotta feed your family. You gotta make money to, to get by in life. And if you don't provide them this email service, this basic, you know it's not like you're helping them hack into the other side's email servers or something if you're just providing basic tech support that they would get somewhere else anyway, uh, to me, I, I don't really think that's a line, I would draw the line somewhere at, you talk about something like a Westboro Baptist Church, like if I were, and again, this is all ifs, and this is all just, just my opinion, if I were a independent contractor, so you have the right to turn down pretty much anybody, I think that there's some, to speak to a lawyer if you worried about it, I think if you repeatedly turn down, you know, people of a certain race, I think someone could show a pattern of discrimination.

0:05:56 Thomas: I'm pretty sure that's how that works. But when it comes to politics, it shouldn't matter. Depending on your state, check your state laws. But in most states, it doesn't matter, you can turn down people for politics all you want. And let's be real, I mean, you're probably not going to be, unless you make a big show of it. You know, you, as a, as an independent contractor, you're going to take and not take jobs all the time.

So it's, it's not going to be a big deal. But if you are not an independent contractor, if you work for a company, you know, and this is your job, you need your job and your boss or something is just giving you these tickets to do or something like that, you know, then that, that to me is a different story. I think that it is, if you are someone, one of incredible means, then do you know, by all means, do as much good as you can with the fact that you are privileged, but, you know, so many people out there are working paycheck to paycheck and need money, and I don't, I don't begrudge, I put more, I guess, in my personal philosophy, I put more onus, more responsibility, on, uh, the government, uh, organization, um, political organizations, voting, voting, stuff like that.

I put the onus on that as a way to accomplish stuff rather than, like, individuals sacrificing a paycheck for something that probably won't matter anyway. Like, it's not going to make a difference if you don't help this one Republican group send out an email, kind of thing. So that's just how I feel about it. And of course, there's all kinds of things that could depend on. There's all kind of individual scenarios that might be different, but that's how I feel about that.

0:07:31 Thomas: So there's my answer. Thanks for the call. And glad that you're helping these Republicans didn't end up costing anybody any elections that we know of.

0:07:41 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, long-time patron Alex, patron name capitalthree here, I continue to enjoy all of your commentary, I disagree very seldom, I am a little farther left than you, but that's okay, but I'm actually calling to talk to you about something that I haven't heard you talk about, and really I haven't been hearing anybody talk about, and it's what I think is the most important and pressing reason why we need more socialism and specifically something along the lines of a basic income where people can afford to live without any expectation of labor. And that is the advance of automation technology and AI technology. I think that we need to acknowledge the fact as rationalists that there's not anything special about humans that robots aren't going to be able to replace.

0:08:27 Voicemail: And as time marches on, all of the jobs are going to go away. All the people I know who work in low-wage jobs like retail are already seeing their hours cut worse and worse. And as much as I love to blame everything on the Republicans. I don't think there's any turning back the clock by any party. I think we're going to have to acknowledge that jobs like that are going to go away. I'm a programmer, so my jobs will be some of the last to go away, but even that's going to get replaced by AI eventually. And if we can't transition to an economy where people aren't expected to do labor in order to live, I think we're just going to be in for massive massive populations starve off as society just decides that people aren't valuable. So I'd love to hear your comments on that, maybe other listening comments on that.

0:09:12 Thomas: Alex thanks so much for call, great question, great topic. I have some thoughts for sure, I just quickly, before we get to AI and automation and all that, I want to talk about socialism, you know, you made brief reference to that, and I just want to say, while I am not personally a socialist, I am pro-waste, more socialism than we currently have. And it's interesting. I am so totally cool with and in line with and willing to work with any socialists or communists or something who, well, it might not work for communists. I don't know. I'm still fuzzy on what different people who have these labels believe. But anyway, we'll go with socialists who believe in working within the Democrats.

0:09:58 Thomas: Even if we might, you know, support different candidates in a primary, we might vote against each other, we might argue with each other, I still really support, and I think we can work together, uh, so much. What I have no patience for is people who, uh, might be socialists, or maybe borderline, like, some sort of weird anarchists, although that doesn't really go together, but people who think there needs to be some sortof like revolution, and to me it's so, I think, lazy and pointless, because if you cannot even get a coalition going in the one party in the country that supports a lot of your ideas, like if you aren't even able to get working with those people enough to have a strong, like, socialist wing of that party, but you somehow expect that you're going to just inspire enough people to take up arms and overthrow the system and, like, a bloody, bloody revolution.

0:10:54 Thomas: And we're like, hey, get rid of police officers and get rid of this and get right. It's that, to me, is just so contradictory and hilarious. Like, you can't even work with anyone to form a coalition to vote a certain way, but you think somehow you're gonna get enough people to, like, grab some sticks and take over the system. It's just not gonna happen. It, it's embarrassingly naive, in my opinion, but if you are, you know, again, if you're a socialist who wants to support more and more further left socialist candidates, I'm so with you, because I've said this before, I think there's so much room to move to the left, to move to more socialist attitudes in this country, that you and I, even if I'm not fully on board with, like, the 100th percentile of your agenda or something, there's, there's so much room for agreement to get there, like, along the way, and there are the odds that we're actually going to make that much progress to where the differences between you and I are really even going to matter.

0:11:49 Thomas: Like, the odds we're going to that level of progress in this country anytime soon are so low that I don't want to fight with you. I agree with you, I think it's better to focus on what we agree on in that situation than what we disagree on. So that's a little word on that. OK, when it comes to automation, I think this is such a powerful argument and sort of thought experiment in favor of socialism.

I think it's, it's probably one of the reasons you bring it up, maybe one of the reasons you're far lefty, is, is just that when you think about it, when you draw to its conclusion, you know, the conservative ideals that I was kind of raised with, you know, oh, you got to work hard, you've got to work your way to the top, and you have people, people who are poor kind of deserve it because they're dumb or they don't work hard, you know, and they, they just aren't helping themselves, and the people who work hard and are smart enough, they deserve it, and then they start businesses or whatever, and they they can make all these bajillions of dollars.

And then if you think about this automation stuff, to the point where by dint of where you were born, or what situations you were born into, maybe, or the fact that you had a good idea or were in control of something at year X, you know, I don't know when that'll be, 2030, 2040, whenever it is, like whenever things are basically full on automated, um, because you had some level of control over things, you're the one who gets to benefit from basically a slave robot workforce that has no feelings. So you could, they could just work forever, like infinitely efficient and all that. You get 100% of the benefit, and then everybody else is out of luck.

0:13:23 Thomas: And I think it just so easily shows the ridiculousness of some of this conservative ethos around like hard work and all that. Like when you, when you imagine getting to that point, if you just let the free market take over, like if there's no regulation, if you're just in free or even some regulation, but just not enough, in our libertarian wet dream free market utopia here, the dude who's in charge, who gets to benefit from these robots that do all the work, gets untold riches, and then other people are not needed, so they're worthless. And the idea that that's a just outcome, that's anything that we would want to have happen, is so ludicrous to me. So I think it's a powerful example of why socialism of some kind, at least, is needed.

0:14:14 Thomas: And I think it is interesting to consider, kind of philosophically, what life will be like in that society, and it's, it's really impossible to predict these things, I, I can, I've, you know, I have done some reading and some, some listening along these lines, and I've heard some interesting ideas about, you know, the economy may just shift to things that only humans can do, there's always going to be things we want humans to do, I think, well, maybe not always, but at least in the, in the nearer term, and, you know, services, companionship, things like that, I mean, there may be, like, art, music, performance, there, there'll always be things that I, I, think, even if a robot does end up doing certain things better, we won't care about it, you know, like we all know a robot can bench press infinitely more than a human.

0:15:02 Thomas: Like if you just build a bench press robot, it'll win. But we don't, no one cares about watching a bench pressed robot or something or weight lifting in the Olympics. You know? We wouldn't care about watching the weight lifting robot. That's pointless. Or, you know, we could invent a robot that plays basketball better than any human ever. I'm not, I mean, it might be kind of interesting to watch the robot basketball league, but to me, it's not really that interesting. I will be interested in what humans do. I will be interested in the songs that humans write when I rarely come across one I like. And I won't be interested in something that's written by an algorithm. Even if it's got a great melody or something, or they found a way... I am interested in a human being expressing their inner experience in art.

0:15:51 Thomas: I'm not interested in a, in a robot, until somehow they have consciousness and feelings, which is a whole other conversation. This is quickly getting very futuristic, apologies, but, uh, but anyway, the point is, I think there will probably be always things that humans will do. But but it does make you think about, like, okay, if all the menial work and, and a lot of the even not so menial work, like a lot the advanced work, even, can be eventually taken over by machines, we ought to do a universal basic income. It seems so obvious that we will have gotten to a point where our combined human resources, our human wealth, should just guarantee everybody a baseline. I mean, we already should be there. We already should be there somewhere.

0:16:37 Thomas: And I do support some level of UBI right now, I think. I don't know how high it could realistically get. I'm not totally sure. Lots of different numbers there, but I already support that. And once there's almost no need, there's massive unemployment, no need for a lot of laborers, then I absolutely think it should be a very healthy UBI. I don't know, as a society, we should have zero interest in making a bunch of people insanely wealthy at the backs of robot workers.

You know, it seems like nothing could be more pointless to me. But it also makes you think about, like, where are we on that spectrum, you know, we're already, technology has already allowed people at the top to make way more in different ways, I mean, there's a lot that goes into it, but on some level, we are somewhere on that that spectrum, you know, where if the extreme beginnings of it are nothing's automated, basically everything takes labor, and people at the top, while they do earn money by coordinating and having ideas and marketing and, you know, all that, for the most part you still need everybody, and maybe the in an idealized world the discrepancies and pay wouldn't be so large, versus, you know, the future where robots do everything and then people at the top get all the money. Somewhere on that imaginary spectrum, I'm visualizing, where are we right now? I mean, there's so much that software has allowed us to do.

There's, you need way fewer people to set type or whatever, you in your accounting department, people aren't spending a bunch of time, you writing out ledgers and doing stuff that Excel and other software just does immediately. Like we're somewhere on that spectrum. And to my mind, we haven't done anything to account for that, really.

0:18:22 Thomas: Like we haven't done a universal basic income. We haven't increased taxes on the wealthy. We've actually decreased them now, of course, with Trump's new bill. So where are we on that? It's interesting to think about. Another thing I wanted to rant about related to this is I often see this post on Facebook, Make the Rounds, where it's, you know, never use the self-checkout in the Safeway or whatever, in the supermarket, because that just takes a job. It's not faster and you're just taking away jobs kind of thing. And I don't understand that mentality personally. I actually don't. I don't think the answer will be us making sure a new technology doesn't work or something. You know what I mean? Like, imagine that with any other robot that takes over stuff. Never accept a shipment from a self-driving car because that takes away a job.

0:19:10 Thomas: Like, I don't really think that's the way to fight this stuff. And especially, you know, you think about, like, never go on an elevator where a man isn't pushing the numbers for you kind of thing. That eliminated a job, never pump your own gas, that eliminates jobs, although people in, oh wait, does Oregon still have, who reversed that, was it New Jersey? That's, I hate that law. One of the states got rid of it, huh? But one of them still has it. Anyway, the point is, I don't think that's the way to do it. You know, I think that that's grasping onto a dying thing that just won't exist anymore. And I don't think the way to solve it is by, oh, no, if we all choose to not use this machine that is a way to just relieve traffic and make sure that people get checked out, you know, faster, when you don't, rather than hiring a bunch more people at unpredictable peak hours or maybe predictable peak hours.

0:20:01 Thomas: Anyway, the point is, once again, I don't think that's the way to fix this. I think the way is to recognize that this might be a job that just won't be around much longer. And maybe those machines can get more advanced and start doing more of the process for us. That is an interesting one, though. People may disagree with me on this because it does kind of make the consumer do a bit of the work. But I think that, again, the analogy to pumping your own gas, like, yeah, that makes you do that work. But for me, maybe it's just because I'm an introvert or something. I want to do that. Like, I do not want to pull into a thing and have to wait for somebody to pump my, do a totally basic, easy thing like pump gas for me. And while I think checking out at the grocery store is slightly more challenging than that, it's, you know, it'S not brain science.

0:20:51 Thomas: It's not rocket surgery, as they say, whatever. I was going to say brain science, but that actually kind of exists. It's not rocket surgery. You can just scan the things and it's pretty easy and it is faster and I don't have to talk to anybody, which I like because I don't like talking to people. So anyway, all that is a long answer to what I think is an excellent question and statement and exploration into something, so thanks for the call, on to another one.

0:21:16 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas, I was wondering if you would comment on the recent case, I read about it in the New York Times, it's about female genital mutilation, the judge, Bernard Friedman, said that Congress can't pass a law that makes female genital mutilation illegal, that seems crazy to me, and in the New York Times article, Shelby Quast, Q-U-A-S-T, said her group Equality Now is urging prosecutors to appeal the decision. She said that she is confident that Congress has the authority to pass the law, which bans female genital mutilation.

0:22:02 Voicemail: What do you think? Should Congress be able to pass it? And what are the implications of this kind of ruling? It seems like Congress should be able to pass things that make it illegal to abuse girls thank you this is Susan calling from Florida

0:22:23 Thomas: Hey Susan, thank you so much for the call, yeah, you know, really interesting case, so I did some reading on this, I think that this'll maybe be an opening arguments-type topic, I wasn't totally sure, I heard some rumblings on this and I wasn't sure what the grounds for the ruling were, but now that I've done some research I think I have a little bit of a handle on it, but of course I'm not a lawyer, so maybe we can ask Andrew sometime, but looks like this is a case of, the court said the judge ruled that this is is a federal law. There are, it looks like there are, what, 27 states that have a state criminal law against FGM, and there's a, the law in question is a 1996 law, federal law, and the judge is saying that, hey, it Looks like it turns out that Congress, you know, the United States Congress didn't really have the authority to do this law.

0:23:22 Thomas: Congress doesn't actually have, like, police powers over all the states, there has to be some justification for it, you know, like for example, interstate commerce, and people are saying, yeah, I mean, maybe you can make an interstate-commerce case about FGM, but it shouldn't really be a com-, like an inter-state commerce issue, so this is a ju-, to this, all this is to say, this is an extreme technicality, like no, even the judge isn't saying that this should be legal, they're not saying like, oh, FGM's great, go ahead and do it, they are saying that, That since this was a federal law, this particular case was brought under federal law and not state law. When they look at it, you know, actually, the U.S. Congress doesn't have really the right to tell states what to do on this matter. It should be a state level case.

0:24:08 Thomas: So it's kind of a federalist thing. And I honestly, you Know, I don't have the expertise to say whether or not that makes sense. What I'm reading, it seems to be, you know, it, it seems actually not that crazy that the ruling would go this way based on that law. So I would say this, I would say every state should get a law in the books about this right away.

Uh, Because obviously, in my opinion, I don't think FGM should be happening, I think it should be legal other than some medical necessity, like if there's some procedure that needs to happen that a doctor recommends, like a real doctor, or something like that, but anyway, so that's kind of how I feel there, maybe the law could be rewritten by Congress, it's weird that it took until now, you know, the law is 20, what is it, 96, 22, 3 years old, it is weird that took until now, but maybe it could be rewritten or maybe this one went on appeal to a higher court, that could happen, you know, and given the fact that this law is so old, or at least relatively old, this could be one of those rulings that happens and then is overturned at a higher Court, and so that's why this hasn't really been dealt with for 23 years, that kind of thing, so, who knows, I wouldn't, you don't panic, nobody should be panicking about this particular ruling, it sounds like maybe it's a legitimate legal point being made that this, this isn't something Congress should have authority over all the states on.

Um, and, you know, we can lobby, check your state laws. And if you don't have a law on the books for this, start lobbying to, uh, to get one on the book, I guess.

0:25:41 Thomas: But, interesting question, I would be very curious to hear Andrew's opinion, maybe I'll see if we can deal with it at some point, or write into opening arguments, in case I forget, and that will be a good way to maybe get an answer there too. I, I think a lot of people had been posting about this, um, so maybe it'll, uh, be in an episode upcoming.

0:25:58 Voicemail: Hey, Thomas, this is Pedro. I was calling you because I just listened to your episode 166, the evidence-based mental health panel on QED. I decided to call you because, I was listening to it in my car, on my way to pick up my kids from daycare, and when Robin Ince was talking about his memory of thinking that it was his fault that his mom had, was in a coma, that it was that he remembered that as that's his fault, and he didn't see it until much later on, uh, for whatever reason it triggered something in me, uh, I'm an atheist now, and I, and I grew up Catholic, and what ended up doing this, it reminded me that, uh, for a long time I felt guilty, uh, when my aunt passed away, and that I was very close to, and, um, I, I, I, uh, I felt that I didn't pray enough, I felt that I sinned too much and that it was my fault, and it triggered, it triggered that while I was driving on the highway going 70 miles per hour, it was a pretty scary, I had to call my wife and stop, and on, the at the gas station, I had together a location, because I thought I was gonna pass out, but anyway, I decided to give you a call because I felt that it will be a cathartic for me to let you know these things, and to, you know, give you thanks for, uh, and hopefully everybody on the on the panel, uh, because, you know, it it allowed me to think these things, and, and hopefully I can take that, uh, forward with my life, and not realizing that, you know, that that guilt is still there, um,

0:27:44 Voicemail: And it will never go away no matter how much I deny Catholicism, and, um, um, that there is a God, so hopefully I can work through that, uh, from now on. So anyway, uh, great episode, uh, thanks for everything that you do, thanks for all the shows, uh, appreciate it, thanks, Thomas.

0:28:02 Thomas: Hey, Pedro, thank you so much for calling, I really do appreciate it, and yeah, I was just blown away by that mental health panel, I thought it was really moving, and hopefully helpful, and I'm glad you're okay, I'm really scared that now that it might have triggered other people while driving, that's not something I wanna do, I hope there was enough, gosh, I hoped I put a little bit of a warning before the episode, I blanking now, but if I didn't, apologies, I'll make sure to remember to do that in the future. But, you know, with something like that, you never know which particular thing is going to trigger somebody based on their their history. And it sounds like Robin's history was something like maybe yours in a way and was triggering for you. But, thank you for the call.

0:28:49 Thomas: And that's, that's, it's a reminder, too, that religion is often harmful. You know, it's, it's not, religion is not a harmless thing, as much as, you know, I, it's, I'm not as much on the new atheist, uh, hammer religion all the time bandwagon lately, I'm, I'm also not pro religion, I do, I do see a lot of people, by the way, this kind of irritates me, this is a a personal thing, but I, I do have some friends who, after feeling alienated or being frustrated with the atheist movement, sort of went the other way and are like, religion is the best, oh, these atheists, religion is great, sure, I don't agree with it, but it's awesome. And it's like, nah, sorry. I don't care how bad individual atheists might be, or even groups of atheists.

0:29:37 Thomas: Uh, religion still sucks in a lot of ways. And I think it's, I think actually very rare that someone has any sort of dedicated religion that isn't causing harm in some way. You know, um, maybe there are are people who are just vaguely like, oh yeah, I believe in God. I don't really go to church or do anything about it, but I believe en God. That to me, I mean, that's so low on my priorities. A lot of people just have some conception of a God somewhere and it doesn't do anything in their belief system. But I think that's probably pretty rare. You know, anybody, certainly anybody who goes to a church and hears messages from the Bible and hear, you know, that that's often political it's often harmful especially the idea of hell as as uh As you're, well, I guess you're not alluding to hell exactly, Pedro, but this idea of punishment or, you know, things being your fault, being blamed if you weren't praying enough or you're sinning too much, that kind of thing, you now, that's a really harmful thing.

0:30:31 Thomas: Guilt is not a good thing to live with, like, a bunch of guilt, especially for kids, you know, a lot of guilt over stuff that isn't their fault, that is really psychologically harmful, so I really, I'm, a, I am so glad that, you know, the fact that you're able to call her and talk to her about it and be open about it, that that's awesome. That helps a ton. And the fact, you know, hopefully, you know, if there's, if the therapy is needed or whatever it is, I'm so glad that it sounds as though this is something you are working through and at least kind of know what's going on there mentally, because I know that can be such a challenge.

0:31:12 Thomas: Believe me, I know mental health can be a challenge. And thank you again. I'm just so honored by this call. The fact that this was a helpful recording to you, I think is a testament to how good that panel was and how good QED, by the way, QED. What a conference. It's so great. I cannot wait.

I am just counting down until 2020, when they have the next one, because it is a great conference, I can't recommend it enough, stuff like this was all over, you know, content this good and better was all-over, I think, and well-run, my only complaint would be they need to make it bigger so more people can come, like they, I think they sold out pretty early, and I know that's tough to manage, it's a tough undertaking, but hopefully, especially taking a two-year, or a year break there, I guess it would be, and I hope they can come back even bigger and better, because what a great conference that was, and this is just a small part of that, so thanks so much, Pedro, really glad to hear from you, hope I hope you're doing well, I hope those issues can be worked through, and best wishes.

0:32:20 Voicemail: Hi, Thomas, it's David calling because you did an episode a while back with Eli Bosnick about meditation, and kind of mentioned, well, you're going to try it out, and, you know, kind of see how it goes, and at least I don't, can't think of any recent updates with that. I was curious if you would maybe give us an update on how meditation is going. Are you still doing it, or did you fall off the bandwagon? And I'm just curious because I'm currently diving into some meditation as prescribed by my therapist. So, yeah, so let us know, you know, if there's an update, if you've fallen off a bandwagon. I mean, you know, no harm, no foul if you haven't kept up with it. But I'd love to hear an update. So, bye.

0:33:05 Thomas: Oh, thank you for the call, I 100% am not meditating at all, so that's, I don't know what, I, yeah, I dunno why, I'm not really sure. I think at some point I read that the science was a little more mixed than I had initially thought, and, you know, toss in a healthy dose of me not being able to follow through on stuff, that's certain, I'm not, I definitely, uh, not shirking my responsibility there, I, uh certainly bear some responsibility for not following through, but I don't know, something happened I just didn't think it, I needed, or would be useful to me, or something, um, so I don't know, I I'm I'm not knocking anyone who does it. I hope it's helping people. And maybe I could be convinced back into it.

0:33:50 Thomas: But I just haven't really. What I don't know, I haven't felt like doing it, I just kinda, yeah, dropped off, so, tell Eli to make me do it again or something, or, or somebody, somebody do a bunch of research on the science and let me know if I was wrong, I, I saw something that said that was kinda mixed, it was kinda, you know, not as, not a scientifically sound, and I don't need another thing to do, so I didn't, so stopped doing it. Ah, it's probably bad, I should, maybe I should do it. I don't know. All right. Thanks. Thanks for reminding me that I'm not meditating. I appreciate it. Interesting that your therapist recommended it. That's kind of cool. Maybe that means it is a good thing. I do not know. Let me know. Report back. Tell me how you are doing.

0:34:36 Voicemail: Hey, this is Laura, I recently started listening to Serious Inquiries Only, I don't know if this is something you've discussed on your show before, in depth, but I heard you mentioned in one episode that you used to not believe in climate change, and I'm just really interested in, like, hearing about your evolution on the subject, and how you finally, well, I don't want to say came around, but, yeah, came around. Anyway, thanks. Bye.

0:35:12 Thomas: Hey, Laura, thank you for the call, thanks for the question, I appreciate it, that's interesting, yeah, let me talk about this, and I actually do get people from time to time asking about, you know, oh, tell us about how you used to be a conservative and how you got out of it, and yeah, I've talked a little bit about it here and there, but I think it's interesting and maybe a little depressing to think about, I think, because of what it says about how to convince people, but yeah, it's not too much different than the story of being conservative, but I guess it's a little bit different or at least it has some distinct features that might be interesting. Um, so as I think any long time listener knows, uh, I used to be conservative. I was raised in a Fox news household, uh, very, very staunchly Fox news house.

0:35:59 Thomas: And that stuck for a long time, you know, and, and I made, and I made what I think is a pretty typical transition. I've seen some moral scales that sort of track it as well. I went from like, okay, my parents in Fox News are right about everything, and conservatism is right, and Democrats and liberals are evil and stupid. And then I in college, I kind of I still held some conservative feelings, conservative, you know, ideals here and there. But I started, you know, being in a in a liberal place, and in a different culture where everybody's liberal, pretty much, I started shifting a little bit more toward like, well, it's also complicated.

0:36:47 Thomas: How could you or I expect to know anything? You know, it's sort of a cognitive way of feeling superior still, or not superior, but just feeling like you have a handle on things still, like, ah, sure, everybody here's liberal, and yeah, I, I still feel kind of conservative, but how could we really know, you know, like, it's too complicated, we probably are privy to all the information that goes into these decisions and government, yeah, at the time it was like the Iraq War and stuff like that, so it's it was like that kind of thing where it's, it's like, ah, I'm sure they've got intelligence we don't have. They know what they're doing. Everybody's so anti this war, but I'm sure it's the people. How can you so easily be against that war, I think was a feeling I had. And also, I still felt pretty economically conservative.

0:37:32 Thomas: I guess as it relates to climate change, I should shift over to that. So again, this is how Fox News works. Fox News doesn't, you know, and conservatives in general, like the widely, I think I'm very anti-conservative. I'm very dismissive of conservatives because I was one, you know, it's largely to climate change scientists.

0:37:56 Thomas: Like, that's the argument. The argument is these idiots, you know, like there's no content to it. It's just like they don't, Obama, climate change, kidding me, science, and climate change, climate change. Like, that's literally the extent of the argument. Like, it's just a, it's a feeling. It's not even an argument. It's just like, these people are stupid and we're all not stupid. So therefore they're wrong. And we're right. Like, it really is. And it's even worse now, you know, like Tucker, Tucker Carlson is just, uh, the liberals are after the genitals of your gingerbread men, you know? Just this nonsense, nut picking all day long. It's nothing but nut nitpicking. My favorite term, you know, it's like nitpicken, except you're just finding individual bad examples of the other side and then harping on them over and over and over to create a culture of hatred of the other side.

0:38:51 Thomas: And we've seen this, you know, we've seen this bear out in what's happening today. It's so obvious that this is a root cause of Trump, because once all you are defined by is that you hate the other side and you think they're stupid and evil, or, and, or evil or both, you know, they're, alternatively, sometimes they're just couldn't be more stupid. And then sometimes it's an international conspiracy about climate change, like they're so smart and savvy that they're coordinating globally to convince people that climate change is happening, even though it's not, that kind of thing. So, uh, it's just a cultural hatred. And I was raised with that. And eventually, here's, here's the depressing part, I've said this before and it's absolutely true, the number one thing that converted me to liberalism, to being a Democrat, was the new atheists, isn't that funny?

0:39:45 Thomas: And, you know, I think we should give them a certain amount of credit, now they've blown a lot of it, but when Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins and Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, I never noticed it's H, H, and D, D, that's the easy way to remember all of them, um, anyway, when they were doing a lot of their work, when they were super prominent, you know, in like 2000, what, six, eight, 10, kind of in there, 10, 12, around that time, um, when I started, they did that talk, that YouTube video where they all sat around and talk, and that really, really resonated with me, um, because the stuff they were saying, I was just like, wow, that is so right on a lot of the time.

0:40:30 Thomas: You know, it was stuff about religion that I had never felt like I had been able to express or had heard expressed that way. It is a story a lot of people have, a lot of atheists have. And every one of them at that time, again, this is at that time, expressed the fact that they were obviously liberal and obviously would support Democrats. Now, I know you're going to say, wait, I thought Hitchens supported the war.

Well, yeah, Hitchens did support the war, but he still wasn't a Republican. People like to say he was always just a conservative. Not, not really though. Like he, he supported the war for good reasons that all in all, I don't think justified supporting Bush's war, but he supported a war to help the Kurds and to help people who'd been gassed and, you know, had genocide committed against them, which are in my opinion, not that bad of reasons to support the war, but he also got way too ahead of himself in terms of supporting the war as it was happening. Separate topic. But anyway, put him aside.

Just put Hitchens aside, all three of the other ones at the very least would talk, you know, and they all railed against conservative Christians, and it was, it was a weird thing for me to be like, well, here I am, I've always been a conservative, but here I'm finally hearing people making sense on religion and expressing how just dumb a lot of it is, you know, like how off-base so much of it is.

And all these smart people, these scientists, you know, scientists, philosophers, great thinkers, not just those, you know, horsemen people, but other people too. Scientists, great thinkers. And they're all just de facto.

0:42:14 Thomas: They're just like, yeah, of course Democrats are the better party. Not a perfect party, but the better part. And for a conservative, that was like, whoa, that wasn't huge. You know? And over time, at first I resisted. I was like, gosh, you know how could these, these smart, people must just be wrong about this kind of thing. But eventually it wore me down and I'm so glad it did. And I have to give that credit. And it's depressing because now who knows if that would happen? You know, now You start watching atheist videos on YouTube and the terrible algorithm will take you toward conspiracy theorist, racist, anti-feminist crap instantly, you know, and maybe if you get, if you go get plugged straight into that, who knows what your beliefs are going to be, and the fact that so many of these atheists got locked into this, like, all the liberals are the threat against free speech now and all this crap, who knows what would happen now, but I do have to give them credit.

0:43:12 Thomas: They really did. I think it'll be funny to some people now, but yes, the four horsemen are the reason probably that I'm such a staunch Democrat now. Eventually seeing that all the smart people ever are on precisely one side of that spectrum, really, I mean, even all the quibbles aside, like, still, as much as there are some bad actors and some people posing as Democrats and liberals who aren't actually, they're kind of conservative, Koff, Jordan B. Peterson, that kind of person, still for the most part, scientists, people with education, you know, look at the education gap, people who have any clue about anything in the world are liberal, and honestly when it comes to climate change, oh, I keep getting off track, sorry, this is just, I'm pontificating, I'm talking about myself, I'm getting carried away, my apologies, but climate change was a, was a weird one, because Again, I had that attitude from Fox News of like, these people are dummies and there's no way this is real, and it was just an attitude.

There wasn't any data or argument or anything, you know, it was just an attitude of like, these people are wrong, and I was an idiot. I was ignorant and I just went with that, like that's all I had. Just shows you how harmful Fox News is. And you know, and to be fair though, I wasn't very politically active.

It's not like I was marching in favor of not believing in climate change or anything, I was just kind of casual, casual in my beliefs. So, as I became more liberal, that was one thing I started opening up to, because, again, eventually I was open to the fact that, oh, look, all the smart people are on one side of the political spectrum, and eventually that cracked through my psyche, you know, my resistances that everybody has, even though you think you don't, everybody has resistances to changing their mind fundamentally on something so huge as that, and eventually it got through to me. I'm glad. And climate change, though, was a weird one because I have a friend, not kind of a friend.

0:45:03 Thomas: It's not so much friend anymore, but an acquaintance, somebody that I had interacted with a few times who is just like legitimately a genius, like Mensa, super genius kind of person. He is actually I'm not going to say who it is, but he's actually the chief cryptographer for one of the major cryptocurrencies. Like he's a legit genius when it comes to that kind of stuff. And this guy, as much as he was, he was he's also an atheist. So that was another another thing. But I want to say I don't know now. I cannot speak for where he is now. But back 10 years ago, I think he was kind of into libertarianism and he somehow was convinced that climate change was not human cause. It was actually caused by other things.

0:45:49 Thomas: He wasn't doubting climate change as a thing, but he was, we had a couple exchanges where it was one of those things when, like when you talk to a moon landing person who thinks the moon landing was fake and they have all this evidence that you've never heard of, you know, so I couldn't really even engage with it. I was just like, huh, okay, that's interesting. And he was so powerfully smart that that actually had me resist it for a little while. I was like, this, this can't be right, you know, maybe, maybe he's onto something, maybe climate change isn't manmade, you know, but but it's been several, you know, like I said, it's been a decade since then or so. I hope that hopefully he's changed his mind. I haven't, I haven't talked to him, but that eventually cracked as well, you know, eventually seeing enough scientists showing us why this is just the data alone.

0:46:37 Thomas: I mean, the chart and the fact that every year on record for the past like five years. Oh, it's the new hottest year, new hottest hottest year, new hottest year over and over and, uh, and all that. So the evidence did eventually outweigh everything else when it came to that. But it just goes to show, again, we think of ourselves as rational people, and some of us are, and, you know, I think of myself as a pretty rational person, but when it comes to these huge fundamental feelings we have, and politics is pretty unique in this, you You know, we put up a lot of defenses and barriers and cognitive, you know, safeguards against anyone actually changing our minds. And sometimes if you're the smarter person is, the more creative they can be at coming up with these defenses.

0:47:24 Thomas: And what it took was not so much argument, you know, this, this pains me to say, I wish that this weren't true, but in being brutally honest about myself, what eventually changed my feelings and converted me over time was the association of all these smart people with being Democrats and the kinds of people that I cared about and cared about listening to because I cared, cared about science. And, you know, to my credit, there's a reason those were scientists. You know, I could have gotten really into like religious people, or I could've gotten really into other people who might've been conservative, but because I had an interest in science and, and that kind of thing, that led me to the people who were scientists, which all, all of whom, you know, like an extremely high number of whom were just obviously Democrats, like with, with nothing but disdain for how stupid a lot of Republicans are, that eventually actually cracked me.

0:48:21 Thomas: It wasn't so much argument. And then once that sort of cracked things open a little bit, then the arguments came from there, you know. But I don't know that an argument would have worked when I was all the way in Fox News land. I just don't, I don't think it would. You have all these weird, stupid defenses you use against arguments. But the arguments were critical once I, once it was cracked a little bit. You know, I think, I think that's certainly true. It's not as though I blindly was a Republican than I blindly was a Democrat. Like I had a lot of arguments for either side, but the association sort of loosened my defenses a little bit. And then I was able to look more into the evidence and the arguments on certain positions. And that's the story. I hope that wasn't too boring. Apologies for that if it was, but that, that is kind of my story and it's, it's depressing.

0:49:11 Thomas: I wish it were more about, you know, oh, I thought you're a rational person, and you should, the evidence should, blah, blah, blah, but, um, no, it's not, I don't think that's really how most humans work, and, uh, pretty sure the evidence backs me up on that, um, and so, alright, that's the end of the show, that's the voicemails. Thank you so much for those voicemails, I found them so interesting, and it's so fun to explore different topics, and nobody ask me any questions about myself next time, because apparently that allows me to spout off for, you know, whatever, 10, 15 minutes on something that might be boring to people, but but I think there are some lessons there, you know, there are some lessons that when it comes to trying to change people's minds, it might be about living as an example, you know, like trying to be an example more than presenting facts and figures in a condescending way.

0:50:04 Thomas: You know, it might be like, hey, I'm a nice person or a good person. And, you know, there's a lot of good people like me who happen to think climate change is a problem. You know, like that might be the better way to go. I don't know. It's hard. It's all around to try to embody that. Even, you know, even for me, even though I should be the living evidence that that's what you need to do, it's still hard for me to act that way. So I think there's some lessons there. I hope that wasn't too boring talking about myself that long. But thank you so much. Again, please keep those good voicemails coming. I think once a month is a perfect number of times to do this kind of thing, and look forward to January's roundup of voicemails. And thank you so much for listening. See you next time.