SIO239: Listener Questions!

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 239, I believe, and it is the return of, of Jamie and I, finally, it's been a little while, Jamie, but how are you doing? Yeah, that's about right, same, same., yeah, we've got some awesome questions from our listeners to discuss, yeah, the world's not great, how are How are doing? Anything you care to share? How are your coping? You know, family, anything?

0:00:43 Jamie: Am alive, lots

0:01:04 Thomas: Yep, same.

0:01:03 Jamie: Of alcohol, lots of alcohol, completely unstructured sleep schedule, a lot of The Mandalorian, and Albert Camus, and that's, that's about it, yeah.

0:01:17 Thomas: Mandalorian will help your sleep schedule. No, sorry. That's

0:01:21 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm like gripped by insomnia at three o'clock in the morning and then in desperate need of a nap, usually about two o'clock in the afternoon. Nothing makes any sense. Every time I open up the internet, there's some new horrifying thing happening. And it's just awful. It's just awful.

0:01:23 Thomas: Okay.

0:01:41 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I'm not in a great place either. The reason I didn't know which episode it was is I actually recorded a solo show last week and then just was like, this is crap. I didn't put it out. So I think it's 239. And uh, it's gonna be hard because I talked about a lot of stuff that's on my mind that I'm sure I'll talk about again today. And I did, now I, now since I had that false start, I don't remember what I've said and haven't said on the show. It's kind of frustrating, but, but yeah, no, I'm not doing great, you know, up and down. Um, it's hard when you have a two and a half year old, because two, when she's a monster, it's, it's like that could be completely normal two and and a half year old stuff, or is, you know, is she losing it because she's cooped up and doesn't get to go to daycare, blah blah blah, and it's just, I think she's fine, but it's, there's always the doubt, you know, like I can never know for sure. Well,

0:02:36 Jamie: Yeah. So similarly, my eight year old, which is, which is not two, two is just hard under even ideal circumstances. But same, my eighth year old is just having some days where he is just a feral beast. I'm like, I don't know if this is like eight-year-old boy stuff, he just needs to, you know, be climbing a tree and on the swings, or if this isn't indicative of, you know, a looming mental health crisis in my second grader because the world is locked down. Yeah.

0:03:02 Thomas: That sounds normal to me, I mean, I all I did was climb trees as a kid, I'll just run around all the time, so I'm gonna go ahead and put one vote for that's normal. Okay.

0:03:11 Jamie: Well, he also finger-painted the bathroom with poop again, so I'm not sure. That's

0:03:15 Thomas: Well, That's not Normal, I would say. Not as normal, at least, you know, it could be normal but not as normal. I don't know.

0:03:16 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah. That's A fun thing to wake up to. Let me just

0:03:22 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah. Uh, so let me ask you then, uh, our two-year-old, two and a half year olds are psychopaths, right? Is that a normal thing, like They

0:03:24 Jamie: Yeah. Oh, Yeah, I don't even consider two-year-olds persons. Yeah.

0:03:34 Thomas: Yeah. They're not yet. I mean, I love Phoebe, but she is a psychopath, like she can't understand anyone else's needs but hers. I think that's just something you figure out as a human later, I hope. I mean, we're doing our best to instill it, but she cannot, not, you know, just take everything from her little brother, and, you know, like it's everything and she doesn't get it. So, but anyway, I'm sure it's fine.

She also runs around like a nut, and I will say this just for me, and I won't speak for Jamie, I cannot speak for your situation, but for me, like it is really hard, like don't get me wrong, it's really hard, but every day these little things make me laugh so much too because they're so funny.

And uh, I do really, really love, at least getting more kid time, that is a positive I've tried to hang on to, it is really nice to spend more time with them even though it's also really hard, but you know, like they just, do kids are, kids are comedy masters, like it's their, it's just natural from them, everything they do is fucking hilarious, it drives me, it's just, I laugh so much, I love it. Oh,

0:04:41 Jamie: I think that's true in the, in the calmer, saner moments when I'm not cleaning up 4,000 Lucky Charms spread across the living room. It's

0:04:50 Thomas: God. The Cheerios, the Cheerio, they're everywhere, everywhere.

0:04:53 Jamie: So bad, it's so bad. You know, they, they are, they're definitely comic relief. My, the little one, the, the feral eight-year old was outside, it was a little drizzly, and he was in the hammock with an umbrella. And I just found that to be the funniest thing in the world. He was just sitting in the hammock with an umbrella. And he's got this little gizmo watch that I bought him because I let him walk to school, back when there was school. And it's only 0.3 miles from our house. And we live in one of the safest towns of New Jersey. And I'm the opposite of a helicopter parent. So he was allowed some independence with a GPS tracker, cracker, and so he's just sitting in the hammock, with under an umbrella because it's a little drizzly, calling everybody who's stored into his watch to talk about Pokemon, and I was like, okay, this is, this is hilarious.

0:05:43 Thomas: Well, while we're, uh, while we're swapping kids stories, I'll give a one. We're, we're lightening the mood for everybody, hopefully, but, uh. Just so many little things. For one, for Phoebe, every little object is a thing. You know, she's in that phase where everything is a different thing. Like, oh, this is a pretend dad, and this is whatever, you know. And, uh... There's that, and so that's always funny. But also, the other day, she was... She counted... I got her to to count to five on her fingers, you know, which I'm still pretty impressed by. I'm sure I shouldn't be as impressed as I am, but you know like you can't help it's your own kid and they count to five and do something right. It's like wow you're a genius. And so I was impressed by it. She goes one, two, you knows she counts her fingers three, four, five. I was like that's amazing. Do the other one and so she points at her thumb. She says one penis, two penis and I was like what? What are you talking about?

0:06:29 Thomas: She's like there's a penis on it and I was like, no, there's not. What are you? I have no idea where it was apropos of absolutely nothing. Like there was no penis discussion before that. It was just like she looked at her thumb and I guess thought it looked like a penis, which to be fair, I mean, maybe it does. I don't know. It was so funny.

0:06:52 Thomas: Oh, good time. So it's little stuff like that every single day. But with that said, let's get to the most depressing thing in the world, which is the world. I think would be get to that. Uh, so we've got a lot of good questions of different uh topics, and maybe we'll do, Jamie had a great idea, which is, I think we can, we can kind of skim each time, do one from each topic, and, you know, go back and forth so we're getting a good selection of everything. Um, so politics, yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious what the major topics on that are. I mean, do we want to at least, just do you want to give your broad thoughts on what's going on? I think, think we've kind of landed in a similar place. I know we both liked Kate Mann's article on the Biden accusations. Do you want to maybe summarize thoughts on that first?

0:07:40 Jamie: Kate Mann's article specifically you mean or just the fact?

0:07:42 Thomas: Well, no, I just use that is to say that I think we're broadly on the same page. There's all I'm saying with that. But whatever you're if you want To summarize for people who aren't, you know, following us on Facebook, because we haven't talked about this for a while. So maybe it'd be worth.

0:07:55 Jamie: Yeah so Kate Mann wrote what I thought was a really powerful article in The Nation talking about the need to hold Joe Biden accountable and to take seriously these allegations. And she pointed out that a number of the criticisms that have been raised against Tara Reade, like the alleged inconsistencies in her stories, the years between the incident and her coming public, are entirely consistent with what trauma experts say happens to people or is normal for people who have been been exposed to this sort of violence to embody. And she got a lot of pushback to this.

She's actually taking a break from the internet because of how much hostility was directed at her for suggesting that we should take these accusations seriously. I think one of my favorite lines in the article, though, and if nobody reads the entire thing, that they should at least review this, is she draws a very clear distinction between holding Joe Biden accountable as it it relates to the presidential election, and as it relates to criminal prosecution. So often people say things like, "What happened to innocent until proven guilty? And she very helpfully points out that nobody is suggesting that he be denied his civil rights, that he'd be locked away without a trial.

But what we are suggesting is that this be evaluated as it relate to him ascending to the highest political office in the land. And particularly, when you say that you need to presume Joe Biden is innocent, what gets snuck into that is you need to presume Tara Reade is lying. And it's a real asymmetry to suggest that we have to default to believing Joe Biden, who's got a documented history of lying at the expense of one of his potential victims. So I thought this article was was really helpful and really powerfully done. Yeah,

0:07:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:55 Thomas: Yeah. And I also really like that she, you know, she also says, like, obviously, you still vote for Joe Biden over Trump, because in my mind, it's the easiest decision in the world. It's also the shittiest decision inthe world, but it's it's not hard for me. But I agree. This is a conversation I've had on the show so many times in the last how many years has it been since Me Too really started?

I guess like three, you know, before the wider kind of Me Too movement. And I know it predates that. But but anyway, it's this is this happens all the time where it's like you're going to switch to like you all of a sudden you're the district attorney, you know, in the Joe Biden case. And you're gonna see if we have enough to indict him. It's like that's not ever what we're talking about.

Up We're always talking about public, you know, perceptions and like would you, again, as you put it, or or maybe it was it was you quoting Kate Man, either way, like this is this isn't just what you think of a guy around your neighborhood or something, which even which even still, like, should be way looser standard than criminal, uh, convictions, but this is, should we hire a guy for the top job in the United States? I think we can go ahead and say we don't presume he's innocent of every single thing, uh, without ironclad evidence. That's just not how anything operates. And it's it's always frustrating that we do that selective thing.

But at the same time, we also grill the hell out of Tara Reid, like, to an insane degree. Like, we don't, people don't presume she's just telling the truth, which is also what you would do. I mean, if you're talking about a criminal trial, you kind of presume witnesses were just telling their story unless you, they're impeached or you otherwise have evidence that they're lying.

0:11:38 Jamie: I think that's right. And I think one of the things that's really important in Kate Mann's article, and I think, actually, one of things that is probably inspiring a lot of the pushback is, as she says, if it comes down to it, worst case scenario, and you have to make a decision between Trump and Biden, then yes, we have a moral obligation to vote for Biden. But he's not the nominee yet.

0:12:01 Thomas: Right.

0:12:01 Jamie: There's still time time to avoid this. And the only reason not to avoid this is because of a decision not to, and is to continue to go forward knowing these risks. And that's its own sort of moral concern that we should be taking seriously. And I think a lot of people are really uncomfortable hearing that.

0:12:01 Thomas: Yeah, we have time.

0:12:22 Thomas: So I think we can tackle this under question four there, Jamie, which is how many babies per month would Biden have to eat before you'd not vote for him? I'm at five. Anything more than one a week seems unreasonable. It's kind of along the lines of that question, like how bad. But it's it's so interesting. And I had so many thoughts, which again, why I kind of recorded a B.S. episode last week, which is like, I, I have never really, honestly, part of me hasn't blamed Republicans for voting for these horrible people because of the way our system is set up. I think we're, I absolutely hold people accountable for voting for Biden in the primary. I think that was an immoral choice. They shouldn't have done it and they should have voted for somebody else.

0:13:09 Thomas: We knew even before we were really aware of Tara Reid, we knew he had allegations from Lucy Flores, which was very disturbing, inappropriate, touching and like kiss the back of her head in a weird way before going out on stage when he's the vice president. It's gross. It's weird and gross. And there are examples on camera of that. We already knew that he should not have been our candidate. We Already Knew. And so I think you did an immoral thing, in my opinion, If you vote for Biden in the primary. But now we're in a different situation. And in the same way that I think everything we've gotten to these life or death issues, you know, and from the right, it's like they think that we're killing 20 million babies a year or something, you you know?

0:13:55 Thomas: And so like, if you really think that, I guess I understand why you're like, well, yeah, my guy's a fucking rapist, but I guess the other side kills 20 million babies a year. So I guess all the, now, obviously the problem is we're not killing 20 million babies a year, it's just inaccurate, it's just a wrong, you know, it's just a false part of it. But like, given that assumption, assumption, I, we are in a, um, what's the word for it? We are in a system. What the hell? Sorry. We all have a, I think probably pandemic brain right now, but you know, uh, where it's a zero sum, it's zero sum. That's the Word I was looking for. It's a zero sum game. There's no, if we lose the other side wins, that's just not for a while. You know, back in the day, politics might've been a little different stuff.

0:14:42 Thomas: Wasn't sorted quite the same. There was more like split ticket stuff, like, like, but it's all, we're all sorted into these, these polarized parties, and it really is zero sum. And so what matters in my opinion is which person would be better for the world as president. And if you, there are people who try to make some sort of arguments that long-term it's better if Trump beats Biden. I think they are so wrong. I don't even, I can't even contain how wrong I think they are, cause I think it's sacrificing literally tens of thousands of human lives for maybe some progress that I don't even think will happen later on, because the system will be fucked beyond repair and you won't have a court and you want like, it's just, so I think that's wrong, but we could have that argument, but that's the only argument that I think for in my mind would change anything.

0:15:31 Thomas: If you could somehow convince me that it would be better for the world for Trump to be Biden. Well, we can have that agreement, but short of that, there's no question that voting for Biden for me is the right thing to do because I was put in a hostage situation. I didn't do this, you know, like I was Put here along with a lot of us. I

0:15:50 Jamie: Right. And so I definitely feel the situation that we're in right now is a hostage situation. I think one of the areas that you and I disagree on is the extent to which there such a thing as a Democratic establishment, and the extent to which they're culpable for this. I'm not generally comfortable blaming individual voters for how they behave, because they have relatively little, one vote has relatively little influence on any sort of policy or electoral outcome. But I do absolutely find the Democratic Party to be morally culpable for the position that they've put us in, now that we are faced with Joe Biden versus Trump, as to whether or not the world would be better depending on how the different administrations played out. I think there are just too many things that are unknown to make any meaningful sense about those kinds of arguments.

0:16:41 Jamie: There's just no way to know how these things will unfold. Is it possible that if Trump got reelected, a very progressive Democrat could be elected in 2024 and do more meaningful legislation on health care and climate change, then, so

0:16:59 Thomas: Think almost certainly no is my opinion on that.

0:17:03 Jamie: Again, but this is, and that may be right, I think the nature of those questions are hard to, are hard to answer, because they just rely on so many things that are unknown. It also runs the risk, if Trump gets reelected, who knows what happens to elections after that, that presupposes that there'll be some semblance of a functioning democracy if he as an office for another eight years. And there's really no way to know that. And so I don't tend to go in for arguments like that, that all things considered, we'd be better if we just let Trump win and try again in 2024. Otherwise, it's potentially 2028 or something before we have a chance to sort of right this ship. And I just think it relies on too many things that are fundamentally unknowable for either argument to take sway. And I think it's sort of cavalier with the lives that are in danger in between.

0:17:56 Thomas: Yeah, I just want to make sure I'm understanding. I mean, are you really saying it's unknowable whether or not a Trump presidency for four more years is worse than a Biden and presidency for the next four years? Okay.

0:18:07 Jamie: No, I'm speaking specifically about the sort of arguments that say if he were to win, we could have a Democrat in 2024 and then perhaps they could do progressive legislation and the advantage of meaningful climate change and healthcare legislation could result in a net savings of lives compared to not doing those things in four years if we do defeat Trump. I'm not saying that I think that all things considered, we would be worse under Biden, under Trump. I don't think that's correct. I do worry, though, that we are going to lose critical time and a lot of lives are still going to be lost under a Biden presidency. He remains hostile to universal health care. He remains hostel to agreed New Deal. And I really worry that what we're seeing now with this pandemic is but a shadow of the horror we're going to see as climate change accelerates, and more people die. Famine spreads, locusts

0:18:12 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha. Right.

0:18:31 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:19:05 Jamie: Spread. I think this is just the beginning. And I really worry that Joe Biden is just not up to the task ahead of him, and that a lot of lives are still going to be lost. And that worries me.

0:19:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:21 Thomas: Uh, I, I, I partially agree. I think there's a lot of stuff that we have decent information on. Obviously any prediction is is troubling, but I think when we're voting on something like this, I think we can't help but try to do the thing we think is better for the world. I mean, otherwise, I don't know, that's how I'm voting, and maybe I'm different than people or something, but I don't what else you would base your vote on. And we've run this experiment.

There are certain ways in which we've run this exact experiment. And it drives me insane that it's been four short years, not even, because when you talk about the aftermath of 2016, it's been three and a half or whatever short years. And I still see people making the same bad arguments. Now, I don't want to say everybody's doing this. I know it's a broad brush, but like, I argued with people on this show and off the show around this show in 2016 who didn't vote for Hillary because they, they had this exact theory that they, well, you're, you're better off with Trump, because then we'll get our progressive, you know, candidate in 2020, and it'll be, and we've run this experiment, and Bernie did worse in 2020 than he did in 2016. Like, we've ran this experiment, it doesn't, get four more years of fascist raccoons tunes doesn't get you closer to progressivism. It just doesn't. I

0:20:33 Thomas: Agree.

0:20:32 Jamie: So, I mean, there's a lot in there. I, I think that argument sort of overlooks the fact that putting forth these sort of centrist, corporate-friendly Democrats doesn't actually get us there either. Hillary Clinton put out Hillary Claire, Hillary Care, I'm sorry, I am plague addled, in the 90s as an alternative to what Newt Gingrich was proposing to address the healthcare crisis. And now it's 30 years later and we still don't have universal healthcare care. We still have close to 50,000 people dying every year in this country for no reason other than they lack health insurance. And so when we talk about saving lives and minimizing damage, I worry about how much death and destruction gets baked in as somehow morally neutral because it's just already happening and we don't have to therefore treat it as a moral emergency to to respond to the precariousness of so many Americans' lives. Well,

0:21:34 Thomas: But I would agree that that's a compelling way to look at it if we had nothing but Democratic presidents from the 90s until now, but we didn't. What stops progress is that we had eight years of a horrible, horrible Republican Christian right-wing presidency in George Bush, and that set everything back a ton. And it's just it's weird, we keep coming back to the same thing, and it's it's interesting the ways we look at it. Like, I certainly, I respect most of your analysis on this, but I think especially with that meme, like, for example, I'm not saying you're saying this, but I always go back to that meme that people have where it's like, yeah, voting for the lesser of two evils, it just turns further and further right. And every time I'm like, but we don't have that data, because that would assume that the lesser of two evils won every time.

0:22:22 Thomas: And it hasn't. It's lost two out of the last three elections. We don't have that are rather administrations, I guess, if I were to multiply it out of each of Bush's wins and each of Obama's wins, and one of Trump's wins, for example. So we don't have the data of what happens when you just have the lesser, quote unquote, lesser of two evils that whole time. Mm-hmm,

0:22:44 Jamie: So I disagree a little bit, because some of the data that we have is when you push the lesser of two evil candidates, you don't win elections. And I think one of the ways that we have been much less successful than the Republicans is that they dig their heels in on their positions, no matter how ludicrous they are. And they do not budge. When it comes right now before the Supreme Court, they're hearing a case on whether employers should be able to deny birth control coverage to women. They have been consistently attacking women's reproductive rights for decades, and they have made serious gains on this issue.

There are states in the United States where the right to abortion is functionally non-existent. You have to travel across state lines, or you have to trouble with the far, like in Texas, for example, that you need to take at least two days off of work because of the combination of waiting periods and hallway requirements for the sorts of places that can perform these procedures. And they dig in no matter how ludicrous, how unscientific these views are, and they win. Meanwhile, Democrats are willing to cave to ever pursue that sort of mythical, reasonable Republican vote.

0:23:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:00 Jamie: And what ends up happening is the issues that are near and dear to our hearts, like the idea that women are people, continually lose ground in ways that are dangerous. And I wish that Democrats were willing to dig their heels in and make a stand on issues in a way that were similar to Republicans for these things that really matter. Take climate change, for example. This is an existential threat. This, this is threatening species-wide extinction. We've already entered the fourth mass extinction, according to some experts. This is not the sort of thing that we can incrementalize away. We either address this or we die. And there just isn't room to say that we need to compromise on Republicans who want to just flat out deny the reality of science. We will lose. Right.

0:24:51 Thomas: I don't think anyone's platform was to compromise with Republicans on that. And I think that we aren't, There's a tough thing here, because from, let's say, progressives like you or I, our perspective is, okay, Joe Biden is the lesser of the two evills. And I don't even really accept that when one evil in Trump is so far to one awful side that it's really stretches reality to say that, like, well, Joe Biden is just the lesser of that. I honestly don't buy into that. But let's say you do. It's not really accurate to say that Democrats have been putting up the lesser of two evils. I think what's been happening is a lot of voters see their candidate as a great, great candidate. A lot of voters, more than for Bernie and more than for any other candidate this year and in 2016, said this candidate is better and we love this candidate.

0:25:47 Thomas: And so it's it's I don't know if it's quite right to say, well, we keep losing because we're putting up the lesser of two evils type candidate. I-that's not-I don't think that's what's happening. I think that more Democratic voters happen to believe in certain candidates. And then from the more progressive side, you say, well, that's, I guess, the lesser of two evils, but they don't view it that way. They're not trying to put up a lesser of 2 evils candidate just because they think that's the best way to win. They just believe the most in these candidates. I truly believe that one of the reasons Joe Biden won so handily is because of exactly what you just said. I believe it was, is it educated women? There's a certain demographic that really came out for Joe Biden in the primary. I think it was older women, I believe, or like, what is it?

0:26:34 Thomas: I shouldn't say you say older, but like my age, I guess, like 30s, 40s, educated women. I think that was like the demographic that showed up more than maybe people were expecting. And I think one of the reasons they did was because they want so badly to beat Trump, to protect women's rights in the same way that you're saying. They're doing what they think is the way to do the thing you want to do. It's probably that, I guess we just disagree on what the best way to do that is.

0:27:01 Jamie: To be clear, I don't think anybody is sitting around at home debating about how they're are going to cast their vote saying, you know what I really think will be the solution to our problems? A slightly less version of evil. I don't think anybody is doing that. What I do think is happening is that people are generally not that politically knowledgeable and make their opinions based on the sort of narratives that are constructed around political campaigns. And you, you see this when voters are polled, when they're asked about, you know, their stance on particular issues, who they view as too liberal, who they view as as too far to the left or too far to the right. And there's no reliable consistency here.

Voters are, or to the extent of voters are reliable, they're reliable and not being terribly well informed. And so this is why I tried to move away from blaming individual voters. And I won't say things like, you a gigantic portion of the blame for the political operatives and the campaigns that sort of present us with these options. And I think the way that primaries and elections in general are held in this country are just rife with bullshit. There's no reason our primary system should be held in the way it is. It's insane that Iowa votes first. It is insane that it had more influence in our 2020 primary election than the most populated city in the United States. This is insane.

But this is done in a way to sort of create filters and as a way to sortof help construct a narrative. And I think that's really dangerous and I think that's what we're seeing. Not so much that people are sitting around in their living rooms deciding that, like, less evil is good.

0:27:10 Thomas: Uh, Well, we should probably get to another question. I'm sure we could go back and forth on this all day. Um, let's see, let's let's tackle a philosophy question now. Do you want to talk about, do you wanna address which ones of these you want, do further deep dives on, or do you like, do little answers now? What do you think? Okay.

0:29:04 Jamie: So I'd like to set aside some of them for deep dives and just not get into them here because I just, I think, so credit, I would love to do a whole dedicated episode to Rawls versus Nozick. I would get, love to get into that. I think there's too much there to do it justice, and I need more time to prepare to be able to do that the justice that it deserves.

0:29:08 Thomas: Well, You could You could mention them maybe just to give credit to the to The cool Cool.

0:29:26 Thomas: Well, plus more time to just talk about it. We've already like used half an episode.

0:29:28 Jamie: Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I'd also – and that would be great because then I can talk about this like fun little exercise I do in class when I'm trying to explain John Rawls and the original position.

0:29:37 Thomas: All right. I'm excited. Let's do that episode.

0:29:40 Jamie: I'd Also love to talk more about stoicism in depth. I'm going to reach out to Massimo Pigliucci and see if he'd like to come on the show. So Massimo, if you end up listening to my podcast, surprise, I'd like you to come on.

0:29:54 Thomas: He's been on before. It was under, I think it was back when it was called a different thing, but I've had him on before and it was a lot of fun. It's been a lot years though. So I can't imagine he'll remember.

0:29:59 Jamie: Oh, OK. I'll be sure to ask him. I'm going to be doing a Camus thing with him in a couple of weeks. So he can come on and talk stoicism for us. And then there was one about the philosophy of science. And truthfully, I just do not know really anywhere near enough about this to speak knowledgeably on the subject. But I do know someone who can. And so I've asked them to come on to the show, and they've agreed, and it's just a matter of trying to nail down a date, which is obviously only more complicated now that we live in plague and days of the week and hours of the day mean nothing anymore.

0:30:39 Thomas: I'm pretty sure Pigliucci is also pretty into philosophy of science, right? I know he's talked about a lot. Oh, that's right. Right. Yeah.

0:30:43 Jamie: Yeah, that's right. Before he switched over to philosophy, he worked as a biologist. Yeah,that's

0:30:51 Thomas: That does seem like a very, I guess I'm just asking a meta question about it. It does seem a pretty, I mean, maybe everything is nowadays, but a pretty specialized area of philosophy. If you're just a run of the mill philosopher or something, which if there is such a thing, it doesn't necessarily mean you've come across a whole lot of that, right? That's just my question to you. Is that true or no?

0:31:13 Jamie: Totally true. Philosophy of the science is its own discipline with its own area of expertise and and specializations, and I know woefully little about it.

0:31:14 Thomas: Okay.

0:31:25 Thomas: All right. Well, those are great deep dives that hopefully we can do later. But we'll tackle a question I think we could talk about a little bit now is, would you be interested in a left intellectual dark web?

0:31:39 Thomas: There's so much there. I can let you start if you want or up to you.

0:31:44 Jamie: So, no, I would not be. In fact, the person who I've asked to come on and talk to us about some philosophy of science stuff has jokingly on Twitter mentioned being a left IDW and trying to get it off the ground as sort of a tongue-in-cheek thing. But one of the things about the IDW is that they've had to brand themselves this way because they can't get anything published in peer review, and so they've come up with this, you know, moniker from those for themselves to to try to pretend they're somehow these persecuted voices and academia who are being unfairly silenced and censored when the reality is you're just completely full of shit and your arguments are garbage. And so no, I don't want to see a left equivalent of the IDW that has terrible arguments, terrible reasoning and shoddy research presenting themselves as some sort of like beacon of truth that is unfairly being oppressed and censored. I absolutely do not want to see that at all. They're

0:32:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:50 Thomas: Well put. Well, put. I think you nailed it in that I look at the the quote unquote IDW and having a left version of that. I I think it's entirely marketing. I don't think there's anything really that would define, you know, I guess if you're doing your best to like, try to say what that would even be, what would it be? I guess it would be like, okay, it'd be left.

You know, it might exist in that maybe it would be somebody like a Noam Chomsky or something, somebody who, you know, has faced some, some sort of, you know, like, uh, persecution or, you you know, not being accepted due to their super lefty ideas. And I think the fact is we have, there are those people, but they don't go around. The reason the IDW is such bullshit is because they're full of shit. Like you said, I mean, they're, they'RE, yeah, they'Re grift. It's not as though they have good ideas that aren't being taken seriously because of some bias in academia. They have bad ideas and they're not good at coming up with ideas. And so they're Not able to like get peer reviewed, as you say. And like, it's all a marketing ploy for people who aren't able to cut it in, you know, like in certain spheres. If you have any real IDW, any real like intellectual dark web, they're out there.

But I feel like it's the kind of thing where you don't get to like call yourself that, you know? Maybe it's that. Like if they're Out There, they'RE just doing work that maybe isn't being accepted yet for various reasons.

But some, maybe someday it would be like, if it's really is good work, like if it really is good ideas that people aren't accepting, I'm sure there are those people out there, but they, the, the problem with the IDW is it's first and foremost, a marketing enterprise and they've had some success at it.

0:33:40 Jamie: Grifters. Yeah.

0:34:37 Thomas: You know, like I give them credit for marketing somebody like, um, Peter Boghossian, who is the, one of the most unqualified people to be talking about anything, thing. Uh, he, he acts like he's a philosopher. He has, I don't even think he has a degree in it. Uh, he teaches it, but he's like on a weird, like, they, they're just bullshitters and they're good at bullshitting, and they, they capture a large number of people, um, on that marketed image. And so no, I don't want a left version of that.

0:35:08 Jamie: No, completely agree. They appeal to this sort of sense of aggrieved entitlement to to people who, you know, have this disbelief that they deserve a platform, they deserve to be listened to. And the only possible reason they can come up with for why they aren't being listened to is because they're being censored, instead of possessing the self-awareness and reflection to say, "Oh, well, actually, maybe this isn't that good." And and so I would prefer for the left not to have anything like that.

I think one of the most glaring examples is, you know, Stephen Molyneux in his, like, "How to Argue" book gets basic, basic, basic terminology wrong about logic and completely screws up definitions of, like, validity, which is just logic 101 sort of stuff. But he puts himself out there, you know, as the most influential philosopher working today, and that absolutely terrifies me because what he's saying is just definitionally wrong. But the people who are drawn into this sort of grift don't actually care what logical validity means. What they care about is is maintaining their ability to feel like they are superior to other people, and I want no part of that.

0:35:41 Thomas: Um.

0:36:22 Thomas: All right, well, let's, let's go to this kind of, uh, you have, have it listed as a pandemic session, uh, section, I think.

0:36:27 Jamie: Yeah. So.

0:36:28 Thomas: It's, yeah, it's more like life questions, I guess, like, different. And I want to ask this, I, I don't really want to talk too much about hockey, but I want, somebody asked, okay, do you miss hockey, what do you want the NHL to do with the season. I wanted to ask you if there's any equivalent for you, that's that, like, is there any, I donno, you know, if there is a sport you're into, if there some other thing you're in to in the world that had to stop and how you're dealing with that, or what you think of it. Is there an example you can think of? Oh,

0:36:54 Jamie: I'm gonna out myself as bougie as hell and totally deserving of the guillotine when the revolution eventually comes, but I am desperately missing live theater and Broadway in particular. There was

0:37:08 Thomas: Come on That's, that's not necessarily bougie.

0:37:08 Jamie: No It is. I, I go to an irredeemable number of Broadway shows. I love it. It is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. And I was really looking forward. There's a new staging of West Side Story. I was very excited to go. And I'm, you know, really sad that I can't. I miss Broadway. Yeah.

0:37:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:31 Thomas: Have that is an excellent equivalent, um, because one of the things that's so depressing to me is, as a fan of certain sports, uh, and NHL first and foremost, is, you know, I, on my team, we've got a guy who's an, a Hall of Famer, like, gonna be a probably a first ballot Hall of Famer, and Joe Thornton, he's 40 years old, was still out there. They're, like, scoring, getting assists, you know, and it's been so fun to watch him pass, like, the all time greats and the career assists and career goals. And something, some, this weird thing happens, the world stops. And like, now that guy doesn't get to finish it. You know, you don't have a bunch of years left when you're 40, you're already, like, negative five years into where you should have been, like, in your sports career. And so I, that's, that's what hurts the most.

0:38:16 Thomas: Like, just the fact that he might have lost time that he can't get back, and I might have lost time of watching him that I just won't get back because, you know, if you're 40, how many seasons can you pause? Not very many. So that's heartbreaking. And I'm glad you brought up theater, because I can totally relate to you there. I forget if I mentioned it to you, or even on the show, but Lydia and I had a whole New York vacation. Our first vacation planned, booked everything, everything, our first vacation without the kids that we were ever going to do. Uh, we would have been in New York right now, I think, or just flying back, like, now. And we had, uh, tickets to shows that are not going to exist anymore. It's a very similar thing. There's a staging. What was it? I'm going to mix them all up, 'cause, um, it's been a while since we bought the tickets. But there's, there's something that I think they just totally canceled, that now we're going to, like, keep the tickets that we got.

0:39:09 Thomas: We, we, because again, we were really looking forward to it. We got the tickets, like, printed and mailed to us, you know, and it's a show that just won't exist, like, it just never happened because it was supposed to open, like, I don't know, maybe a few weeks ago, I think. And it was, God, who was it? I don't know if it was Patti LuPone or if it was, uh, what's her name, for somebody was in something, I don't know, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, something, something with an amazing actress that I love that we both really were looking forward to seeing. And so I, uh, certainly feel your pain there and think the equivalent to my hockey thing is like shows like that where, well, this was a production that was gonna happen with some big name actor, actress that, you know, they had arranged. And now that production just might never happen, you know? 'Cause, like, what, what are these, what are those theaters do? Do you have any idea how that's going to work?

0:39:58 Jamie: I don't. I have no idea.

0:40:03 Thomas: Yeah, I don't either. I don't know what they do, like how much money they lost. Do they have insurance on it? Maybe it's fine. Maybe they can reset, but then there'll be some scheduling conflicts. So the show may never happen. So who knows? I, I hear you on that.

0:40:13 Jamie: So while we're Talking about those, it's worth pointing out, now, this is just another example of the way that this is impacting people differently. Perhaps the owners of those theaters will be able to file for insurance claims or maybe be able to get some money from the state. But if you are an actor on Broadway, you needed to work a minimum number of shows within a certain period of time to continue qualifying for health insurance. And now Broadway actors are outside of that time. And many of them don't know if they're going to be able able to keep their health insurance in addition to having lost their incomes and their jobs and the lines on their resumes that they need to be able to get the next role. And so there's no way to look at this where it doesn't just highlight the economic disparities And and how this is going to impact different classes of people. Yeah.

0:40:58 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I think to bring it back to sort of a political point, you know, they talk about, oh, you know, the economy, Republicans are great on the economy. Trump is great. He had the economy of the Dow was at 38 or 20 or what was it? 28,000 or 29,000. And like our economy is fundamentally broken. Joking. As you say, we had a giant number of people reliant on one or multiple gig economy type jobs. You know, I guess theater is not exactly that bad. It's kind of that like sometimes you're you're, you know, if you're just on the edge. And there are many examples of that where, yes, that makes the unemployment number look super low when you have a bunch of people working jobs that aren't paying enough, that don't give enough benefits like, yeah, OK.

0:41:49 Thomas: And and and furthermore, probably makes the Dow look amazing because those companies are making money hand over fist. You know, the people on top are making so much money and they're investing money in their, blah, blah, doing the doing the whole stock buyback thing. So, yeah, those two numbers, like the unemployment number and the overall, like GDP or the Dow or whatever you want to measure the stock market kind of thing, those numbers looked awesome two months ago, but that doesn't reflect how well people were actually doing. Not

0:42:19 Jamie: It's almost like the stock market isn't a good indication of how regular people are managing. Oh.

0:42:26 Thomas: At all. And, uh, it's really unfortunate too. Did you, did you, um, see that actor who got, I mean, there are a lot of them, but there's a Broadway actor who, who, you know, because there's the blood clotting problem with some people in coronavirus So awful, and he lost his leg. I think he's still fighting for his life. It's, I, and I, I only bring it up because there are still people, many people, who don't get it, like, who don't think this is a big deal. And it's so infuriating. You know, people, sorry go ahead

0:42:38 Jamie: Yeah. Yeah.

0:42:56 Jamie: So this is one of the things that's the most worrying to me is how this epidemic is being experienced in different ways depending on your partisan affiliation. It is shocking to me the extent to which self-identified Republicans will post things on Facebook, for example, claiming that the deaths are being overstated and that governors are doing this because they want to attack Trump. There's a movement in New Jersey that's now claiming New Jersey's Democratic Governor Phil Murphy is intentionally and purposefully collapsing the New Jersey economy so that he can basically hold it hostage so the federal government will give him financial resources to cover the financial hole that was really all his fault to begin with.

0:42:57 Thomas: Yeah

0:43:47 Jamie: And it's just this sort of lunacy. I've seen other posts where people are saying doctors are lying about the number of cases because they want money. I'm not exactly sure how that logic is supposed to work, but people are still saying it. And it is just so frightening the way people's political worldviews are shaping their willingness to accept scientific and medical evidence as to the nature of this virus. And it's very frightening.

0:44:12 Thomas: I think what I agree with you, like, that that's off. I take it kind of as a given at this point, as I know a lot of us do, that, you know, Trumpers are going to be pieces of shit, like, I, that, so that I hate it, but I sort of take it for granted. What affects me most is when I see people who should know better, you know, I'm just talking personally, what, like, makes me the saddest. You know, there are people, because I think California now has a decent handle on this, uh, we don't have as many new cases, I think we've been social distancing really well, um, even though at first, I, you know, it was pretty bad for a little while, but so I have friends who think this was like a fake thing, and I don't think they're Trumpers, you know, they're not friends I talk politics with really, but yeah, I have people who, you know, I got texts from my, like, people I play hockey with the other day, like a group text.

0:45:01 Thomas: We're like, Hey, we want to try to go play some roller hockey somewhere since everything's closed. And I was like, all right, I'm not going to start a fight, but I just texted the group that I didn't even know who it was. Cause I wasn't, didn't start it. I was Like, well, I, I for one think we should be social distancing. So I'm not doing this. Sorry. And then someone's like, Oh, I think a lot of us think it's overblown. You know, it's just like, man, come on. Like we should know better. And you know, that what There's one of two things is going to happen and they both suck for different reasons. On one hand, things could get way worse and then that'll be awful because things will be way worse, you know, and then maybe these people will see that they were wrong. That's a terrible outcome. Or we get a handle on it better. And like we do the social distancing stuff. And so you don't see the deaths maybe get quite as high as like the worst predictions.

0:45:49 Thomas: And then a bunch of people will think this was all bullshit, you know, and they'll always think that. And that's the better outcome, of course, but it still sucks, like, people won't understand that, and what went into the numbers not being quite as bad as the worst of predictions is a bunch of self-sacrifice and hard work and social distancing and testing and all this stuff. And so, uh, just, it just sucks. Oh.

0:46:12 Jamie: Yeah, I think it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who had said, in response to a case before the Supreme Court about the Voting Rights Act, someone had, you know, argued that we didn't need it anymore because there weren't

0:46:21 Thomas: Yeah oh that would be the right wing that argued that we did no

0:46:25 Jamie: Right well not no So Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't say we didn't need the Voting Rights Act, but there was a case before the Supreme Court

0:46:28 Thomas: I know I'm just saying it's all of the right-wing justices or who are saying that

0:46:30 Jamie: Right talking about, um, how we no longer needed the Voting Rates Act, and I believe it was Ruth Badger Ginsberg, maybe it was Sonia Santamayor, but she had said this is like saying, while you're standing in the rain, that you no longer need an umbrella because you are not getting wet. The reason we don't have an abundance of voting rights infringements is precisely because of these protections, and to get rid of them because they are working completely misses the point of why we need them. And it's the same thing with this social distancing. The reason that cases aren't as bad as they otherwise could be is because social distancing works, and it is just really frightening how people are unable to understand this. And I'm right.

0:46:33 Thomas: Yeah right yeah yeah well not only that, the numbers are actually really bad, like the death count is, about, from the Washington Post article, like, they're studying this, it's probably half of what it is, you know, maybe maybe not quite that, but it could be as much as double the official death count. So if we're somewhere around 70 000 right now, I think last I saw, you do the math, like, there, it's undercounted because we're not testing enough, we don't know, you know, if somebody dies of coronavirus, but they were never tested, it's not necessarily going down as a coronavirus death. And just think about how few people we are testing, relatively speaking, like it's tiny, tiny percentage of our population. And so you can study it, you can study, you know, and I'm sure we will get a way better picture of this in, like, you knows, a few years, when a lot of math is done and a lot statistics are done to show, like, okay, what was the expected death rate overall?

0:48:12 Thomas: But but then also, I think it's, I haven't heard anybody really talk about this, maybe it's just that we haven't gotten a chance to do this, but it's not only the expected death rate, it's also the expected death rate given a shutdown, because, like, think how many fewer deaths we should be having if there was no coronavirus, but we all were just in the same amount of quarantine that we're in now, like, you know, vehicle deaths, murder, like, there. So it's not just the expected amount, it should be the expected among under these conditions. And you're going to find that the actual death rate under coronavirus is, is like almost double what's so far reported, and maybe they'll eventually go back and kind of just correct the official count, but, like, it's a big deal. Can, are you everybody out there, are you fathoming that, like, a hundred something thousand people are dead of this, are you grasping that? Yeah.

0:49:05 Jamie: So I Don't think that they are. I think the numbers are almost too big for people to get. The this is insane, this is, we now have a death toll that's the equivalent to like 1.2 Vietnams, 24 9-11s. This is utterly insane and it is crazy to me, as someone who came of age during 9-11 and sort of watched the world world change, it is absolutely horrifying to me to live in a world having seen the way that we were able to marshal our resources and change our lives because of the threat posed to us on 9-11, and yet fundamentally unwilling to do what needs to be done and invest the resources necessary to to save lives because of this virus.

0:49:54 Jamie: It is just mind-boggling to me. These people did not need to die. It does not need to be this bad. This is willful stupidity and malevolence on the part of the federal government, and quite frankly, some of these Republican governors and politicians.

0:50:14 Thomas: There, there, uh, there's articles saying that, you know, experts had we heeded experts' warnings even a week or two earlier, it could have been vastly different. I mean, there was one that said two weeks earlier doing these measures, we would have saved 90% of lives. Can you imagine? Like, I don't, I don't know exactly, you know, like if, if that's going to be exactly true. I also don't know, under a present Hillary or something, like what would have happened? Well, it would, would have been a shit ton better. It would have been literally maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of humans' lives that wouldn't have been lost because of this. And it's, it's incredibly frustrating. But

0:50:53 Jamie: Yeah, I think that's right, and I thinkthat's important. I say this as someone who is really really no fan of Hillary Clinton but given our current moment we would be so much better off with Hillary Clinton as president if for no other reason than that alone a Hillary Clinton administration would have handled this much differently and much better much better and we've had many thousands fewer deaths under Hillary Clinton administration because this would not have been handled in the most malevolently stupid way possible and I think that's important to keep Keep in mind, for those of you wondering, can I morally justify voting for Biden? At the end of the day, I can't tell you what to do. You have to lay your head down at the pillow at the end of the night and grapple with your own conscience.

0:51:40 Jamie: But there are more people who are dead today because Donald Trump is president rather than Hillary Clinton than otherwise would need to be. And it's not impossible to think that there may be a – I mean, nothing similar, God forbid, I hope, that – but you don't know.

0:51:54 Thomas: You don't know. We don't

0:51:56 Jamie: Oh, and yeah,

0:51:56 Thomas: Know. And that's why the party that values functioning government by default should at least have a serious leg up on the party that wants to destroy everything and provide no services for anybody and give all the money money back to corporations and rich people.

0:52:12 Jamie: And so I say this as someone who is just dispositionally furious in the general direction of Democrats these days, but put your energy somewhere else. Put your energy into organizing for congressional candidates or fighting climate change or ballot access or whatever, but especially if you're in a goddamn swing state to stay home and say, Say, oh, well, you know, Joe Biden's just as bad as Donald Trump. I implore you to think of the 70,000 people who are dead who do not have to be.

0:52:43 Thomas: Well, I think we should go out on that note. I can't top that. Well said. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks for the questions. We really appreciate them. And I think we have enough to do another one. We'll see what we want to do. But at any rate, we really appreciate the questions and the participation. And stay safe out there, everybody!

0:53:04 Jamie: Bye, guys.

0:53:13 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.