REVEALED: The Sick TRICK to Make You Support Evil | Jay Shapiro

0:00Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back. With support from the Gates Foundation, American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result? A safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential, search GatesFoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. Welcome back everybody to New Jersey Studies. Today, for the first time with a great colleague in Germany at the moment, Mr. Jay Shapiro, who wrote a very fascinating book recently, insufficient rewards, how we traded integrity for comfort and outsourced morality to history. Beautifully log title, but you can see he's a philosopher and Jay, by the way, also has a YouTube channel that's the one over here, the dilemma podcast, but we want to do mainly focus on

1:00the book today. Jay, welcome. Yeah, thanks. It's a great pleasure being here. A big fan of your show, so this is honor being on it. No, thank you very much for that and thank you very much for your book because you try to make sense of the international world and you put in clearly a philosophical, like framework around it as in as in, as in, scholastically, philosophy, frical not just what's good, what's bad, although that's what it was down to. But can you maybe walk us a little bit through your through the arguments of your book? Yeah, absolutely. I'll throw one corrective in there because you called me a philosopher there. It's like, you know, I'm uncomfortable with the title. I think of myself as a filmmaker, really. But actually on this title or on this topic, my sort of crash course background is I was pursuing a degree in screen studies and film, which is what I ended up getting when 9-11 hit when I was a sophomore. And that was actually the event that started me thinking a lot about questions of morality and political philosophy and moral philosophy.

2:02And I started taking more classes than it ended up getting the degree in film and ended up making films and some films that intersected with moral philosophy. But just to sort of like, it's like I'm itchy with the title of philosopher because it's such like a weird gate kept thing. And in some ways, it's a lot of the reason I wanted to write the book because I think moral philosophy as far as my couple decades now of studying it and understanding it and working with well-known intellectuals who I have majored as agreements with now. I think it's in a major rut. It's in just like an absolute awful boring moral stalemate place where every political conversation, every moral conversation we get into ends up just seeing to get into this gridlock where everyone ends up just calling themselves the other person a hypocrite and it goes nowhere. And I really wanted to get under that and get behind that. And so the book was me thinking out loud on the page about a lot of the things that I found along the way to think differently about moral philosophy. And especially the question that sort of launched it for me was what we really

3:05mean when we use this phrase that history will be the judge or history will judge our enemies. You know, these classic questions of can I morally judge a slave trader or someone in the future? Can they morally judge the way that I'm living now? And what does that really mean to speak about morality in this sort of context of history? And so those were the questions that launched my initial sort of path down these questions and what I came out with was I hope a pretty big dose of skepticism on concepts of utilitarianism, sort of consequentialism, effective altruism, which are really and I could explain those things we could talk about the more have these become sort of the default way that I think most people digest or think about morality and moral philosophy even if they've never thought of themselves of even thinking of these things in a very neoliberal kind of mathematical, quantifiable world. This desire to want to measure morality and measure outcomes is a very utilitarian, consequentialist way of thinking of it. And then the counter to

4:09that, the opposite of that is this is a little bit of sort of strong manning philosophy, but deontology, which is like a rules-based order, maybe divine command theory, like God tells you what's good in that and you have to follow those rules. And we have these, this like seesaw of two conversations where you have people just pushing principles all day, like I have a principle of, let's say, sovereignty and it's my most classic principle or whatever, but I make some exceptions when it's, I don't know, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, whatever it is. And then suddenly, oh, you're not actually into the principle anymore, you're doing consequentialism, right? It's the consequences, it depends, you know, the outcomes of the thing that actually determines the morality. And we're just always on this stupid seesaw and we all flip back and forth whenever it's convenient for us. And I want us to sort of just burn down the seesaw and think about morality in a really different way. And so that's why I wrote the book, not quite the thesis, but those were my frustrations and why I pursued it. And you know, this morality question is very important, especially to kind of a liberal conception of international politics, right? Because we see that

5:13the whole time they're forcing it down our throats on TV and in the newspaper all the time to be on the right side of history and do the right thing, do the good thing. I mean, you're living in Germany now and like Germany itself, it basically predicate its entire support for Israel's Zionist project on this, you know, the ameralty that happened before, the horrible crimes that were happening. And I shouldn't do air quotations. I don't mean that, that those were horrible. Like what what what what Hitler Nazi Germany did with the German, what Germany did back then was was a horrible crime because it killed so many people not just to Jews or first and foremost also a lot of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. But the the question over like whether it is it is useful to use that kind of moral framework. What what what did you come up with in your book then which kind of groups of people are using moral frameworks and which ones are rather going in pragmatist route of trying to analyze what is and then how to improve from where we are and

6:18said off like how it should be. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question and I have a chapter in there where I sort of list all I mean, I could it wasn't exhaustive all of the people I get find in history that use the phrase, you know, invoke history to sort of justify what they're doing currently. And Hitler was one of them who said, you know, history, I think he said something like Hitler history will judge what happens here today or will vindicate it's you know, everyone has said this everyone. And so, you know, you ask it there like sort of who's using a moral framework versus who's doing sort of pragmatic stuff. I think everyone is using the moral framework, particularly of consequentialism. I could just lay it out here and it gets critiqued of being infinitely flexible, which I think it is. And so this sort of like basics since we're talking about War War 2 here, the one that is usually used in like philosophy 101 classes is like everyone knows it's wrong to lie. It's like a moral thing you shouldn't lie, right? But if you're hiding Jews under the floorboards and the Nazis knock on your door and say, hey, you're hiding any Jews should

7:18you lie to them. And then suddenly you're like, oh, okay, wait, lying is wrong. But, you know, in this case, I think it's actually good. And so what if you slow your brain down there and figure out what's happening there, you're invoking what's called consequentialism. So the act itself is not inherently moral or good or bad or whatever. It's sort of you project a split in the universe if you make this action. And then you have universe A and universe B. So it's universe A where you lied and presumably the guy at the door believed you. And then this is the universe that pops out of that or you have universe B where you told the truth and presumably he believed you and you're then somehow sort of like putting these two universes on some sort of scale of goodness and badness and figuring out which one is better. In this case, presumably if they believed you and you saved those people hiding under the floorboards, it's better. And that that measurement of these, you know, counterfactual future universes that sounds very like technical is really what you're doing there. And the determination of that is actually what determines whether the action was moral or

8:19immoral. So that's consequentialism. Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing on for my free substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there or you can get some of our new merch on neutralitystudys.com. Links below. See you there. And yeah, the critique of it is that it's really, it sounds very rational. It sounds very logical. There's like a whole world of sort of, you know, debate bros who love this thinking. That's very like mathematical and strict and you this desire to want to measure these outcomes. But it is infinitely flexible because you can justify anything given sort of just let the universe play out long enough and how you're going to measure these things and, you know, how much is sort of integrity worth, how much what really is flourishing. So for example, I'll give like a much more mundane example that we all live through rather than probably hopefully many of us are faced with that particular one of hiding people under floorboards. But so I used to judge this competition called

9:20the Ethics Bowl, which is a philosophy competition in America for high school students, which is really fantastic. Then anybody's looking for a fun night, go to their website and pull up some of these cases they do and just argue with your friends over it because they give you sort of these like little, you know, one page scenarios and then you have to sort of discuss the moral philosophy of them. So one of them that I that I use in the book that I end up using all the time, I just love the way people respond to it is, is this one, I'll give it to the audience. There's a young a young man who wants to be an actor. Let's just name him Marcus and he's in Los Angeles and he's always wanted to be an actor and he's struggling. He's like running low on cash. He's been at this for a few years. He's like waiting tables. He's just trying to get by. He's going to know auditions and auditions and auditions and he just can't find a break and, you know, he's really he's really on thin ice and then he, you know, goes to another audition and finally gets the call from his agent being like, oh wow, you know, they love you and they want you to do they want you to offer you the role and it's a huge TV show. It's going to be a huge thing. I have a ton of money behind

10:21it. You're going to be like one of the main stars like this is your big break. Of course, Marcus is really excited. Then he gets the script for the show and he reads it and Marcus is black. So he's an African-American and he reads the script and his heart sinks because he realizes the role that they want him to play. He is reading on the page and it's like he, he, in his mind, it's super harmful portrayal of black people. It's like minstrel show kind of stuff and like really trashy and he has these like really ugly feelings about it. And so what should Marcus do? Right? And that's sort of the whole scenario, right? And so if you're a consequentialist, you start doing the math and it's basically just making a list of pros and cons being like, well, you know, you're going to go hungry if you don't take this job. You need the money or, you know, take take the job and become a big star. And then when you have a big platform and more power, you could use that to promote the causes you want or talk about whatever you want. You could get money away to charity. Like, you know, your brain has started going on and on and on and all the reasons why you should take this

11:23thing or if you're a deontological or more just sort of principal person, you're like no racism is always wrong no matter what you have to reject it and racism is just wrong. There's no, there's no argument to be made to take the job. And like, you could you could flip the other way. You could flip the other way if you're sort of like a principal, I don't know, free market person being like, oh, just, you know, take the job and, and you know, be neoliberal and iron rands kind of style. Like, you could be you could flip that argument anyway. You're never going to come to some clear magical solution in the sky that tells you what Marcus really ought to do. Whatever he decides to do there, he can make a moral defense for it. And really, like that, that dilemma, I think is just, you know, I call it like the mundane dilemma. Everybody listening to that should be insanely familiar with that. We do that all the time, right? And especially the neoliberal capitalist society we live in. And the important takeaway that I want to get across certainly in the book is that if you decide, like my big,

12:24I come to to get out of this mess, I make a big I put a big emphasis on moral integrity and I can talk about how I define that and what I think that means. But if you can say with your moral integrity intact that you had no choice but to do X. So if Marcus tells me like, listen, it's a wound to my moral integrity. I know it's, I know it's like, it's hurting my moral integrity to take this, but I have no choice. Like, I have no other options and I have no choice. And he can say that with his moral integrity intact, which only he can really decide for himself. You know, I think we should accept that analysis if he's being honest with it. But what he has discovered there is not moral clarity or like the right answer. What he's discovered is a political problem that needs to be solved. And what I would love us to do if the book has any sort of influence on the way we think about systems is to evaluate and judge systems morally, not based on these like Stephen Pinker flourishing outcomes and charts going in certain directions or whatever, is much more about this question of how

13:24often is it requiring demanding people in the systems who are who are being honest with themselves and really taking the time to examine it, being forced to or asked to or pushed put into position to to damage or wound or or do moral harm to their moral integrity. And I think obviously I think most people would agree we're living in systems that are requiring that to like an extreme degree right now, especially in the neo-liberal West. And I think as why we're seeing much more revolt and resistance to yeah, to all the systems that are putting in those in those positions. Yeah, the thing with the system question though is whether the people who engage in certain decisions, whether they are aware of what the decision does. I mean, I have this beautiful example now in front of me being you know, back home in Switzerland, we're on the 27th of September, we're going to vote on a neutrality initiative, which I am highly in favor of. It's going to be a referendum. The no side, the yes side, we keep saying that look a pardon parcel of the problem that

14:28we have right now in not just the Ukraine war, but in a lot of the other wars is also that the West constantly puts these sanctions unilateral coercive measures. Those coercive measures kill every year, half a million people according to Lancet study, according to you know, well researched and understood mechanisms of how this stuff works. This is not a tool of international law. The United Nation says don't do this two thirds of the of the countries of the world in the general assembly. See, don't do it. We hate this stuff. It is really only known in all of America and Europe that says like no, no, no, no, sanctions are a very important tool of international law to protect international law, but again, the institution itself that is supposed to be in charge of international laws, it's like don't do it. But all of that, all of that is on the no side. The people who argue against it is completely being just shut out as in that's not even being touched upon. It is assumed to be self evident that sanctions put on a evil dictator will lead and will help to uphold international

15:32law. So you can see how these how these groups are actually both sides believe very strongly in the justice and in the in the in the in how into how good their actions are. That's just a reflection, especially with the Ukraine war, you know, of how the what I would call the pro-war side argues constantly, we need to shovel more weapons into Ukraine in order for them to defend themselves against the evil aggressor. Whereas on the other side, you argue like no, you should stop with that in order to make sure that that as little people as necessary still die before this thing comes down to an end that that's what it boils down to. So both sides argue from a position of believing that the good outcome will result from theirs and then they ascribe the evil outcome to the other side and hence evil intentions. How do you so how do we square with how to be spread a kind of problem in international relations? Oh yeah, it's a big question in international relations, but yeah, I you know, I think if I could put another sort of key on the table in the way

16:35I think about these things is so because in my last answer, I gave you sort of a run at what I think is wrong and or a dead end in moral philosophy because you just anywhere and anyone who who who goes to the ethics bowl and reads any of those cases, you'll find yourself always in the same argument that I just gave you a principle versus consequence as at these sort of like outline that's sapping politically when it comes to Ukraine or anything else. But another key that I that I bring in the book and actually where where the name of the book comes from insufficient rewards is from psychology. So it's just another quick background like I I if people look up a little bit of my bio I like worked really closely with people like Sam Harris. I made a film with him and Majin Nois and like this very like again utilitarian, atheistic, very like Stephen Pinkerish type world. And I know how those people think I again a huge huge differences with them. It's split, you know, did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today people are fighting back with support from the Gates Foundation. American scientists and

17:40partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them helping cut malaria rates in half. The result? A safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential, search gatesfoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. Do you hear that? That's how it means that summer's officially here. It means that grown adults just sprint into the street for a frozen dessert shaped like a cartoon. But this summer, mid mobile has a better tree. Every plan including unlimited is $15 a month. And unlike ice cream it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. Does anyone have any cash? Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. A front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12-planned plan required $15 a month equivalent to Texas and P's extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes me slow and network is busy. See terms. Stramatically after I cover seventh obviously. But I often found myself in those worlds really frustrated that they were completely blind to psychology. You know, they want to live

18:43in a world where the nodes in any system are really rational actors, right? Like humans are rational creatures and they do things that are self-interested or they want to do things that harm themselves and you want to evaluate people. And I get the attraction to do that. But I think it was I think Plato who said humans are man is the rational animal. And I think it's not quite true. Man is the rationalizing animal, which is psychology. And I think the field of psychology in so many ways you can boil down to a study of all the ways we can successfully lie to ourselves. So I just want to get this other in order to answer your question in a roundabout way, but this other key in my thinking of the book and why nobody thinks they're evil. Of course, anybody arguing you could send a million Ukrainians off to their slaughter tomorrow and think you're not evil using the arguments of consequentialism being like a better world will come from it, right? So, so insufficient words this title comes from Leon Festinger's famous study in 1959 of Cognitive Disadance. So this this was a huge key for me to

19:44unlock a lot of my thinking and think through these things. So I'll give it to the audience if they respond the same way. So Leon Festinger in 1959 did this experiment on a college campus in New York that I think was brilliant. And so he had a control group and two experimental groups. So you control group and then experimental group A and experimental group B and a walk people through it. And I think they'll see hopefully they see what I see in it. So control group A is like it's a bunch of college students who sign up for a psychological testing, which happens a lot on college campuses without knowing exactly what it is you just sign up, right? So they come in one by one and so someone comes into the room, one student sits down across from a researcher and in front of them is like a pegboard. So it's like the size of like a chessboard basically and has all these like wooden kind of spindles on it just pointed out. And he says, okay, thanks for participating in the study. So in front of you is this pegboard. You see the top left like cylinder. I want you to turn it counterclockwise and then do the next one for the next one and the next one and do the entire row, do the entire board. And when you're done do it again and do it for an entire hour. That's it. Go

20:48ahead. So it's like the face you made is perfect gives you like this is like the most boring stupid thing I've ever heard of right is that the experiment right and you sit there and you do the entire thing for an hour and after the hour the little arm goes off and he says, cool, thanks for participating. So we have a couple of questions. The really basic like how much do you enjoy it? How much scientific value did it have? You know, would you recommend it? And of course the control group is like fuck no, it was really boring, you know, zero out of five stars, thumbs down, get me the hell out of here. This was a waste of my time, right? But you would expect. Okay, so that's the control group. So control group A. Now we're going to start the experimental group A. There's a little wrinkle. So it starts the same way they come in pegboard. Can you turn them, do it for an hour? They're like, what the hell? This is really boring. The alarm goes off. And then I say this is where the first wrinkle is, you don't get any questions yet. I say, okay, so I have a student waiting in the waiting room who's about to come in and do what you just did. And normally we have someone from the lab who sits with them and gets them excited for it, tells them how fun it's going to be, hypes them up. You know, it's really interesting experiment. But they're running late

21:49today. Do you mind going out and sitting in and and help in doing that for the next couple students, while we wait for our guy to come in, I'll give you 20 bucks. And with inflation, raise it to like 500 bucks. It was a significant amount of money for a college student at the time. Some of them say, no, no, thanks. Like I just want to get out of here, maybe because that's a lie. But some of them take it and say, sure, I'll take the money and I'll go do that for you. And they go out and they tell the next student, hey, it's going to be really fun. It's going to be really interesting. You're going to really enjoy it. And they do that for a few students. And then I go out into the waiting room and I'm like, oh, cool. Thanks for doing that. Our guy showed up so you can go home. You're done. But before you go, do you mind ask answering a few questions for us? And it's the same questions. How much did you enjoy the pegboard? Would you recommend it? Scientific value, right? With that group, you got a little bump up. But mostly they're like, yeah, I thought it was really boring. This is pretty stupid. But you know, you gave me a bunch of money. So I do what I did. And now, so those first two, no surprises there. But the last one is where he really made the discovery. It

22:50starts the same way. Student comes in, pegboard, do it for an hour. You're really bored. Hey, my guy didn't show up. Do you mind going out and hyping these students up for a bit? I'll give you one dollar. And so with inflation, whatever, five, ten bucks, a small amount. More of these students say, hey, no thanks. I just want to leave. But a lot of them still do it. And they're like, okay, all right, they go out and they tell the students, it's going to be really fun. It's going to be really interesting. You really enjoy it. Bubble blah. Do that for a few students. I go out. Same thing. I tell you, hey, my guy showed up. You can go home. But before you do, a few questions. And here's where his discovery happened. Suddenly, this group, the one dollar group, was like, you know what? I really liked turning the pegs. It was really enjoyable. It was really fun. Like, it was actually great. First, maybe I thought it was a little boring, but then I got into it and it was like, zan and really meditative. And it was really, really, really nice. So thanks. I'll take my dollar and leave. So what's happening here with this group? This was, that it suddenly randomly get a bunch of pegboard lovers who just all took a dollar. So festering your theory then was the theory of cognitive dissonance, which is a word that gets tossed

23:51around like crazy and online discourse and arguments right now. But this is really what it comes from and what it means. This theory is that, you know, with the 20 dollar group, let's say the high reward group, in their minds, you know, you know, lying is wrong. And it's a pretty minor infraction. You're lying to another student about, you know, it's not much, but you know, it's wrong. I did it for the money. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I did it for the money or even better. You could say like, you could say, you know, I'll give some to charity, like I've some leftover or like, you know, you know, or you could say like the systems screwed up here by college tuition is too high. So I'm kind of like getting the man. There's a lot of ways to say, I did it, right? This is why I did the thing. But all of those excuses, not excuses, rationalizations of why you lied to the student, start to fail with the one dollar group because they're like, I asked not really a lot of money. I can't really say like, I needed it or it's going to be life changing or I'm going to give any to charity, like they all start to sort of fail. And this is cognitive dissidents. So it's like, it's often pictures like having gears in your head that are clashing, right? Like, I'm a good person.

24:52I'm lying. Good people don't lie. And we actually can't, this is the important thing about cognitive dissidents. You can't persist. It has to resolve itself. It's actually like a position, a situation where we can't live within cognitive dissidents. Actually, we have to resolve it. So our brains, and our minds, and this is just brilliant sort of breakthrough, was they are incredibly good at brainwashing ourselves because you can imagine like a little repairman. I do this in the book, coming into your brain, being like, I got to fix this clash of the gears and he's like, I got it. All these other rationalizations aren't working. You know what? You didn't lie. You actually really like turning woodpegs. So you weren't lying to those students. Everything was fine. Instead of moving the gears, I'll start to turn again. And that's it. Like that, that was his theory of what's happening there. And the insufficient reward actually is the best way for us to successfully lie to ourselves. But even the language gets weird there because you're not. You really, really believe it. Those students really believe that they enjoy playing with the pegboard.

25:53And it's not even to say believe. They really, like what's the difference of saying you really believe something versus you really do love playing with the pegboard. And this state, again, so you're not living within cognitive dissonance now. The repair job has happened. I think is surprisingly sturdy in our world, but also brittle and fragile and can be cracked and pierced in certain ways when you're reminded of certain things or your shown certain images. And we're increasingly living in that in that world where, you know, my thesis is, and I hope to do it by naming an insufficient reward, is convincing more and more people that we're all in that one dollar nearly all of us are, especially with large moral infractions, right? Like very few people are in the $20 group is pretty rare. They're actually like psychopaths because most people are like, they told you to what you were just saying about sending Ukrainians off to their death and huge numbers. And they're like, well, I did it for the money here. I did it for capitalism. I'm like, you're rarely going to get someone who just says that. They're in the $1 group, meaning they're like, no, it's actually a good thing. It's actually not evil. It's not what it looks like. And they really do

26:56believe that. So anyway, that was a, that was a key for me in the book. And certainly why I gave the title, but I'm hoping more and more people feel themselves in the $1 group and you don't like it. When you alert yourself to it and you wake up to it, you want to leave the experiment, right? You want to break out of that and find authenticity. So the whole title of the book, these insufficient rewards, they, to you, explain like a psychological phenomenon that people in these circumstances will trick themselves into believing. No, I always thought so. I always thought this was the right thing to do. Although if you could wind, wind back a little bit and show them the whole thing again, you would say like, if you were honest to yourself, you would actually, you would just stand up and walk away and say like, no, this experiment sucks. I'm sorry. I'm not going to help you anymore. But with the experiment thing, it's like this, this thing of being asked to do something, right? And most of us are nice people want to do something. It's like fine.

27:57It's not a big thing. I want to help you out. I know it's an experiment and then you go and but that means you then have to start modifying and rewiring yourself in order to bring yourself into line again with what is then happening also due to what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's set. I mean, the experiment for me was such a key because yeah, it sets up a situation where if people, if you realize all the ways that you you can successfully bite yourself, you do start to do these more skeptical of your own beliefs and your own weaknesses and your own ability to be bribed as it were into brainwashing yourself. And ironically, to broaden the scope away from just sort of like a student in the lab, I'm obviously trying to take festiners, cognitive dissidents, discovery and apply it on on big scales of systems we live in, right? Like a genocide in Gaza as being something that that I mean, this is really my thesis. It's hard to get the language out,

28:59but that you know was wrong. Even the people like Dana Bash or someone on CNN or something who I think she really believes what she says when she's interviewing these people as a Zionist, right? Like that she's in that one dollar group and the ironic part about that is I'm saying to be in the one dollar group, meaning I, from some sort of view from nowhere with doubt that she really thinks this is the right is not, it's not like an immoral thing to do. You have to, you have to put on the table that she is being rewarded insufficiently for doing it rather than sufficiently like she wouldn't tell you or lots of I could get off Dana Bash. People wouldn't tell you like, you know, I actually think it's a genocide and it's totally immoral, but you know Israel gives me a lot of money, right? And like no one, no one says that even if we like from the outside we're like, oh, you know, you're getting paid to say this. It's actually, it actually works in a much more subtle way in psychology where they're you're getting paid, but because in my view, the infraction, the moral damage is actually

30:01almost infinite to your moral integrity to support something, especially like that. It will always be an insufficient reward. And so no matter what you're getting, you really do, you really do believe it, right? You're not going to, you're not going to tell me that you know what Israel is doing is wrong or you think it's immoral and you're just taking the money. No, you're actually being rewarded with something that is ultimately always going to be insufficient because I think moral integrity, which I could also get on the table, has a kind of infinite value to us. And that's, but I hope to sort of alert in people that that is rather than sort of doing this plus minus consequences utilitarian kind of math. No, we have this maybe mysterious and I approach the grounding problem in the book sort of moral integrity conversation with ourselves that has almost infinite value. And no matter how many, you know, I live in a nice place. And if this is all sort of a reward, this sort of consequential transactional reward from something like a neoliberal society that

31:03that requires genocide to happen on the periphery, well then this is insufficient too. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to sit here and be bribed by the rewards that keep me trapped in pretending that, you know, something is moral when it's not or that my moral integrity is not damaged even by participating in it. So it's a really, really interesting way of thinking of like what it is that then flips the switch. So if I, if I, if I use that on a different example, it's like the people who ask me how much, how much does Putin pay you to say that? I should tell them that's the wrong question. You should ask them how little he pays me for me to then fool myself into believing that I'm saying the right thing. According to your book, that's the question to ask, right? Yeah. Or with the same with the Zionist, we have this, we have this gut feeling that we need to look for the money that the Zionists spend everywhere. But if what you're saying is actually what's

32:04happening psychologically, then we just need to look at how little people get out of being on the progenocide side in order to try to start making sense of it. Is that where you would be looking for? Well, kind of, I mean, they have to give you something. There has to be some reward. So like that. And yeah, but, but, but they can give you, they can give you, Pascal, you could be getting $20 million from Putin right now. And I would have the sort of the same thesis. Like I, like I actually think these are all the wrong questions. You're right. It's not about who's getting paid or whatever it's about. And there would no way to, yeah, yeah. What's the reason for believing what we believe or what you're saying is you, you, you, you, you have, you have reasons why people form beliefs that that are induced beliefs that do loves them from their actual moral compass, right? And if that is, if that is right, then well, you're just making everything even more difficult than it already was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, so I put it this way. I think we live in it. We live in a, a time that really, uh, dissuades people from doing moral examination and actually thinking of these things. I mean, I, I don't know what kind of education you

33:07got in school or whatever. It's almost totally absent, especially in American education. Like, if you get something in your religious school or whatever, which I'm not a big fan of. But, um, so let me, let me run at it at this way because I consider myself a pretty strong humanist, um, in this regard. So I'll put out, I'll put, put on the table what I mean by moral integrity as trying to alert this within with. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back with support from the Gates Foundation. American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result, a safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential, search gatesfoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint

34:12Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent taxes in these extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow and network is busy. Sea terms. And people is blanking on the psychologist to give him credit here. If it came up with the first instance of it. But so there's first order desires and second order desires. The first order desire is like, I'm just hungry for something. I just want something and I go after it. So like a wolf has a first order desire because it's hungry and wants to eat that rabbit and it has an urge and it chases the rabbit and eats it or doesn't eat it. And that's kind of the end of the story of the wolf. But a human or man has this second order conversation and desire, which are desires about desires. So you can ask yourself, do I want to be the kind of person who wants to eat

35:13a rabbit? Do I want to be the kind of person? What do I want to want? I have these urges, but do I want to want to have those? What kind of man do I want to be? I don't think a wolf is running around saying, what kind of wolf do I want to be? Do I want to want to eat that rabbit? No, it has a first order desire. It chases it. It goes for it. It's not wondering whether it should be the kind of wolf that goes vegetarian or something like that. And in that tension, in the tension that man has between this ability to have second order desires and our behavior is I think we're all art philosophy, even religion springs from, which is why I don't think wolves have religion or aren't going around making art. And there's some philosophers who deemphasize the uniqueness or specialness of humans. And I'm definitely not on their side. I think it's important to lean into that particular wrinkle that we have, which is kind of torturous. This is where you get questions of free will. A lot of people are like, man, I wish I could get rid of that.

36:15If you ever have friends who are like, I really just, or you yourself or anyone listening of, I wish I could be a bird. It looks so nice. It looks so free. But I think we're really, obviously, the flying looks pretty fun. But I think what we're really expressing in that is this desire to get rid of this fucking annoying conversation in our head about what kind of man do I want to be? It's just like, you have a desire. You go do a desire, first order desires. But so in this, in this, what I would say is moral integrity. Because when I'm talking to there's the moral animal, right? I don't think a wolf has moral regret. They can't like chase and kill a rabbit and then wonder if it did a bad thing and if it did a immoral thing. But a human can, man can. And so I think moral integrity is a constant conversation of trying to align one's behaviors and one's thoughts and one's actions with their second order desires rather than just chasing these first order desires. And obviously people probably could hear we live in a world of neoliberal capitalist world in the West that is just like feeding you first order desires non-stop.

37:16It's just like a crazy sort of Lord to get you in that trap. And I think it's driving people kind of crazy. And so in that conversation of if I, and people can only do this really with questions I ask on their own in my view, there's no like objective way to do this. But really try to understand a conversation with yourself in the second order of desires and what moral integrity is. I think at least for me trying to do that hasn't almost like I said infinite sacred in a secular sense quality of moral integrity. And when you're in so with your question of like how much is Putin paying or anything like this is funny that we're talking about that. If that conversation about moral integrity is nearly an infinite sacred kind of value, then like I said almost any that you get will be technically insufficient. You can't bribe me away from my moral integrity if it's that sacred. But I'm also not going to put out an argument for moral purity. But yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, but the $20 group I mean that you brought up is kind of the thing that says like

38:23no, if you pay enough then they stay, they don't need to resort to self manipulation in order to readjust their their self with what they're doing. Then then they just they can just blame it on the money. That's the $20 group point. The $1 group is the one that that needs to so it needs to be it needs to be a small reward as your book says. It's a reward is large. Then people you can just say like yeah, I know it was wrong, but I'll do it for the money. You know, it will a couple of million dollars is fine. I'll participate in general side. I know it's not nice, but they're dying, not me. It's okay. I have a swimming pool. I have a Ferrari. It's fine. But the large part of the people who who who are part and parcel of the general side industrial complex and so on as this is from Joe Skullbona is it keeps pointing out right? They for them it's rather the small rewards and the kind of like re re re re wiring themselves into saying like no overall I'm defending humanity and you know the the Jewish homeland that what not it is. I do think this is quite important

39:24actually the difference between the these three walls if that if that if that experiment actually holds up or no I mean I would maybe contend that the $20 group as well is well so the important thing that you said there is like manipulate manipulating one's self successfully or not. And I think the $20 group in this example that we're using what's important to me as long as they are not manipulating themselves into saying that you know that it's not immoral right which I still contend the important part to me is that they know it's wrong right the interesting thing in in my book or in the thesis that I'm going for and I just have to sort of bite the philosophical bullet is I'm like if we take this like history if I'm like did people in the you know Edward Colston is someone I write about is a slave trader whose stature was torn down during COVID and Bristol did he know or think that slavery was immoral deep deep deep down and my argument is actually yes right my argument is actually like

40:28yeah he he did and and when we do things like history will judge us like history will invoke will somehow reveal this to us somewhere in the future that we always knew it was wrong at some point um that sounds like a kind of crazy thing for me to say right because he was a slave trader like how how could he know what's wrong and do it so again he's not consciously knowing that it's wrong but even he and he was an insanely wealthy man so this is kind of your point right like he in today's equivalent I did some math and he would be like the CEO of Coca-Cola some like massive thing and he's a slave trader in in Bristol um you know I think reading his biography as much as we can and and understanding his life he's still in that one dollar group what's such a massive reward I really think the $20 group technically is much on on on a moral infraction such a slavery or genocide like this like maybe the $20 group when you're lying to another student in in a in a room or whatever but even that I think we we genuinely want to be good I think humans want to be good that thing that I did with the wolf and the human I think we know that I think it drives us crazy very

41:32influenced by someone like Eric Fram who wrote the insanely important book Escape From Freedom who was called Fear From Fear of Freedom in Europe all about the way is that we tried desperately to hand that back over to to God or to something else we want to get rid of this this torturous you know idea of having free will or or or being a moral creature we want to give that back but we actually but we can't because we deep deep down want to be good we want to know what's good and we want to do what's good even Edward Colston even Edward Colston a slave trader so I don't know I'm going to stick to my gun that's a $20 group especially when it's a moral infraction like that or even a small one is it is an exceedingly rare psychology to be in to be like I did something wrong but I did it for the money obviously you hear people say this but I think it's a bit of bravado and it's like it doesn't really get to the bottom of it and I think it's fragile like this is the thing so for example somebody reacting really strongly to an image from like Henry job is is a way to pierce

42:37their sort of even if there's somebody tells you they're a Zionist and they think in certain ways this bothers them and and it's good that it bothers them they get defensive they want to tell you all these other reasons why it happened maybe it's cherry picking maybe they I mean they they have all the ready reasons for it but it's because it immediately alerts the cognitive dissonance that they're like I know that's wrong deep down I know somehow that that's wrong but I have all these ready made excuses for it and the fragility that our repairman in our mind is constantly repairing these things for us and we have to live like this I'm not setting up some moral purity like we have to live with some repair jobs in our heads just to just to survive and that might be a fundamental feature of humanity although we live like a set in a system that's requiring way to much of it and our brains are just clashing gears all the time but that way and I even wrote chapter on veganism which works the same way like I don't know the percentage of your listeners who are vegan or not and I definitely not on my high horse about it because I went vegan because I fell in love with a vegan and so it's an interesting case of if you came vegan from a utilitarian

43:42perspective I made some move in the right direction if you think that's the right moral direction but I actually didn't engage with the kind of discussion with moral integrity I always agree with the argument that just never aligned my behavior with it but it was the beauty of the vegan that you fell in love with that sold the concept to you so that's fair enough probably yeah probably but but if you had showed me and if any of your listeners and this veganism and food happens to be insanely like morally you know sensitive topic for a lot of interesting reasons but um you know if somebody's eating enjoying a a pork dinner tonight and I walk over and I'm like oh can I show you a picture of the pig that you're eating playing and you know having a good time playing with a ball like it would be pissed right they would be angry and in that anger is revealed like what I've done is just like if you imagine like the repairman and their clash in their in their gears I just like pulled the duct tape off a little bit didn't take much just showing them a picture and they know that it's like fuck that feels wrong to me like I killed that thing for the enjoyment

44:44of eating this pork like that feels like an instantian reward you're getting a reward I mean I love the taste of pork I used to eat pig and bacon all the time like there's a reward but it's insufficient when faced with the death and the the killing of this pig everyone can have all the ready made arguments have like oh I have to eat meat it's healthier or this I've heard all the arguments fall hurt all and I used to make them too I'm sure in my own mind because you have to live with but it shows how fragile it is and it shows how how easy it is to to interrupt and and and you know tear down a little bit that cognitive dissonance repairman in our mind and and it's annoying when you get it it's angering but in that anger there's some hope like I said it's actually like this person knows that this is wrong somewhere deep down yeah I want to come back to two points one is that the interesting part of your explanation would be of course that you would maybe like line out or or a description of how it is possible that a relatively small group with a lot of money

45:49is able not only for themselves to to come up with with actions that they know that are very moral but how they can translate that you know instead of bribing one person with 20 you can also bribe 20 with one and you know you get a multiplier effect and then you have you have you have a her movement and so on and you get you get a political outcome that you need so that that would be a very interesting thing the other one and that's one of a much more abstract one I keep wondering and I said a lot of people and I get also within my within the university I get very different answers is like how important to you is the concept of an observer independent reality it I can't make up my mind but the more I talk to my physicist friends the more I go like yeah they are kind of accepting that there might not be one which didn't put a huge wrench into the whole idea of objective truth right yeah where where where do you land on that one yeah that that's a big one that's sort of a run at it through the moral questions so any you know any book

46:53like mine or any thinking like mine you have to eventually take on that big question and something like where does morality come from is there some view from nowhere right yeah or just that or just the idea of reality does an observer independent reality exist yes or no and it is quite important because if the answer is if the answer is yes then the question is how do we figure it out if the answer is no then the question is how the hell are we ever going to make into subjective sense out of stuff and that's of course where where some where we're we're a big part also of the philosophical community didn't says like no no you cannot go there because then everything is relative and this kind of relativism is is fatalistic and this poison there must be some form of of objective truth even if it's like I know the sun and you need to go out and out of the cave and go and figure it out but there is a sun that's the claim yeah I have no idea if you're not such a big question I have no idea but I could say that I am from from sort of the moral perspective I'm I'm convinced that David Hume and his famous distinction he gave us what's known as the Isat

47:56distinction where he said you know there is no description of the way the universe is that tells us how the universe ought to be I want that to not be true but I think it's just fundamentally philosophically indefutable but it doesn't mean we should just give up on trying to seek ultimate I don't know objective is of the universe this is the way the universe is from some view from nowhere point of view but even if we did it went and tell us how it ought to be right and let you know we would just be like well why that why isn't that is versus any other is and and I think again like this is maybe my emphasis on the the moral creature that we are which imagines different universes and then tries to figure out which one ought to exist in some set but but you know where I'm pulling that from I'll give you sort of like my best dive at it which one of my childhood heroes was Carl Sagan and with this is art distinction you know he he said this line that I go to and I lean on where he said we are a way for the universe to know itself

49:01which is a very beautiful very Carl Sagan-esque I'll say it again we are a way for the universe to know itself and upon first hearing it you think oh wow this is like poetry and class it's actually they're very sort of basic neutral is it's just it doesn't tell you why but we this mysterious consciousness thing which we don't even have an explanation for somehow we are our oven in the universe we are of the universe and we can look at ourselves we can look around us and we can did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived today people are fighting back with support from the gates foundation american scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them helping cut malaria rates in half the result a safer healthier future for everyone the gates foundation partners of human potential search gates foundation.org slash mosquito to learn more rhineland's here for mid mobile with your summer price forecast now

50:03unfortunately we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100% now over here at mid mobile we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month give it a try at mid mobile dot com slash switch up from payment of $45 for three months 90 dollars for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra new customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes me slow and network is busy c terms maybe we're fooling ourselves but comprehend in some ways and we can know itself from the inside out and that's the is and it's really beautiful and but what's important about that is there's no there's no obligation in the statement that the universe ought to know itself there's no odd it's just an is right doesn't say we are a way for the universe to know itself therefore the universe ought to know itself but that little addition that I add seems like kind of the only game in town and so this is how I kind of jump start the question of

51:03I don't know it's something like you're asking of this like objective viewpoint or like is there something outside of itself well I don't know but that's how I start the kind of moral conversation where it's an opportunity but I think Seagan gave us there is noticing that we this mysterious we have an opportunity here in and of the universe to know itself morally objectively to seek this thing that you're talking about does that even exist I don't know but we can seek it and we're not obliged to do it but it seems like if you if you forego the opportunity it's it's suicide which you could do you could just not be in the universe and say like I'm out I don't want to do the game but if you stay in the universe you're sort of accepting the invitation and the opportunity to engage with it and of course there's other you know I'm talking suicide there literally but also maybe philosophically or mentally to just not sort of engage in that in that game turn turn your brain off dig into your first order desires infinite

52:05scroll forever and you know listen to the consequentialist tell you that somehow some better world is emerging that where you know I don't know people live longer in diseases are cured which might be a good thing abstractly that it's not the kind of deep engaging flourishing that I think is the opportunity of man I don't know if that answers the question on the physics one because I don't really have an answer no it doesn't but I don't think it can be answered so did the but let's let's for the last 10 minutes or so let's whip it down again to the to the good old like the lower level of of of simple international politics help yeah using your insights from that book and about the one dollar the 20 dollar groups and so on how would we make this useful in order to reduce the violence in international relations if you are if you're a doctor and I come to you and say like look I'm humanity and I have this problem that I keep killing my members of my own group I kind of would like to wind this down how can how can your book help us yeah no it's good I mean I

53:08think I think what I would like it to do would be to to admit defeat to the the desire to measure outcomes of that that really really matter to us like I like I just said in the last answer like living longer curing diseases or you could say like objectively good things I agree but actually what what what can't be what never is going to show up on a graph in international relations or intervention we do is something like a sense of justice and how much a sense of justice adds to or is a necessary component to true human flourishing right so that you know in some ways it's like I'll answer it this way because you're asking the international relations one one of my big takeaways is that peace is not something that you go for I don't think you I don't think it's such thing as like a peace plan I think peace is an emergent property of the conditions of justice being genuinely sought oh and they bring it back to justice I mean

54:14justice is an important part of peace so uh in in that concept yeah yeah I think justice is like the the the molecules bumping into each other that creates the wave of of emergence I think peace pieces this thing that that happens but it only happens when the conditions of justice are being genuinely sought which is a big big philosophical question and people hate when you get an argument like this because it sounds a flimsy and it's like well what am I really saying and I'm like well I can't measure justice I can't show you some graph that shows you justice going up but I can but it means you have a pretty you have a pretty large conception of what peace is right it's not my my my little definition is this is this negative peace you know the absence of war is peace right if people don't kill each other you're more or less at peace even if you're not like we are not talking about mental peace and so on but but peace in the sense of like at least no killing going on um but your your your conception is bigger than that huh yeah well because I think that would be

55:14that would be fragile right like if you build walls around everyone like maybe the Israelis want to do and then suddenly you're in or you we don't even need walls anymore we're living in a surveillance state that's getting more and more insane so the digital walls around everyone that prevents everyone if we live in some you know future 1984 version of things where everyone's surveilled and everyone could be you know debanked and turned off like like a robot on the street and then nobody's killing each other and violent crime goes down to zero and we have these charts would anyone call that peace yeah like I agree with you like negative killing we would have this almost like um uh the film Wally by by Pixar is one of my favorites where you know people know the film like that as a totally peaceful world up there but it's not a world where I think like human flourishing or justice is is actually you know um happening um so yeah so so my my conception there would be that it would just be a ticking time bomb because we cannot we cannot get this torturous second-order desire human thing out of us as much as we wish we could that that will then in that world of

56:19negative killing kind of version of peace it just won't last and it and I don't think anybody from the outside would call it would call it flourishing and so it would be to try to shift conversations of international relations or all morality away from the succession over security and peace and safety which I don't think is worth anything I think what we want is flourishing moral integrity we want to live in a world where we can we are required less and less and less to injure and sacrifice our moral integrity to be in that one dollar group and deny that we are to the to lie to ourselves that everything is okay or that the rewards are good enough I think we don't want to be in this world anymore that that's requiring that that much of us and that doesn't mean I have some perfect world out there because on a really philosophical level if I'm saying peace is an emerging property of the conditions of justice being sought I think someone could rightfully argue that existence itself is a form of injustice I didn't ask to be born I didn't

57:20ask to be here and and got got got himself put put me here and it's an it's an unjust and unfair world and I'm angry about it so I think like people make a lot over you know trauma leading to you know radicalization or bitterness but I think exists and I'm not just trying to be a cramage and I think there's something really to that in philosophers of doubt that for a long time so I think that's the human condition to be in a world that we didn't ask to be in and to feel that we have been harmed or there's some unjustice in it so we will always be in a siss of siss of fissie in way pushing up against this this um tragedy of the human condition that will always lead to outbreaks of violence and domination or whatever but we should we have to be a village in uh vigilant to to to push it against ourselves and against uh and you know other people out there so it's uh you know I don't I don't I don't again people people well I'm a frequent debater on things like Israel Palestine and I always get people really frustrated because I don't offer like specific solutions or whatever I give these esoteric like well if justice is being sought

58:21I don't really care what the solution looks like on the ground it's going to work itself out it's has to be a more like deep philosophical engagement with these things and then I'll add just one more last little thing which is interesting of again back to the title and then sufficient rewards is um if people sort of you know grok the thesis a little bit that I'm saying basically everyone's in the one dollar group whether we know what or not um that requires rewards being given to us in some sort of transactional world neo liberal world we're in uh I think more and more people like when I wrote the book I was hoping to alert people mostly in the west that hey all the rewards that you're getting from the system are actually insufficient if you think about it well by the time honestly the book even came out it's like the rewards are getting less and less that I barely don't even need to make the argument anymore where they're like yeah what rewards like I don't have a job I don't have any like there's nothing coming my way and so the moral clarity of not having get been bribed by like that actors choice I gave you like no one's getting offered any jobs anymore so it's a lot easier

59:21for them to see the moral problems be out on the street say I want to change um what I worry about is if the global elites get scared enough and start redistributing the wealth just a little bit we'll have to be much more careful to not I'll just be pulled back right into that one dollar group and stay quiet and assume that we like turning wood in pegs even though it's really really treacherous and boring and that are little moral infractions are actually not that we actually like turning wood in pegs and so yeah we're at a weird teetering point right now where I'm telling people hey the rewards aren't good enough but a lot of people are just like what rewards are you talking about like I'm graduating with four degrees and can't find a job and I'm like okay good like at least I don't need to make the argument at that point you know it's um it's a it's a frustrating thing but the question about how this morality of ours and especially also what is what is being you know constantly shown on TV and in and Newt say percent so on and how his

1:00:22influences our psychology and how it then leads and feeds into the systems that then create as outputs on one end that insane level of dying and murder and so on including half a million dead every year from unilateral coercive measures including the violent deaths by people getting getting getting a blown into to bits and pieces by by bombs and whatnot I mean that's a very important one and I don't think we have figured it out yet at least if we have then somebody wrote a really good book and put it far away from the reach of most of us Jay like people who want to read your book I think they should first and foremost go out there buy it and and read it because it is out right it's by Sam and Shemster it can probably be bought on Amazon I suppose where should people get it from oh yeah I mean it's available everywhere a collective ink put it out under the if in print and then I also did a 10 part video series for it which is pretty fun so I did it's not exactly an audio book but you can find that on my

1:01:22website what Jay thinks it's also on YouTube that you're showing out if you're the first three are free so the intro and the preface and chapter one and two and then the rest is for members only or you could get it through my website on watchaethinks.com and it's cool so I actually like there's no you know there's no images in the book but I get to show pictures and talk through a lot of it and tell you about the argument so that was that was actually really fun for me I still consider myself a filmmaker so it was fun to do a visual companion series for the book so if you're a reader or a watcher or both you can find it everywhere yeah and if you want to follow Jay then go to the Teh Aisha Pira Dilemma podcast I am I have more questions now at the end of this of this episode that at the beginning but that means you did a good job but yeah that's that's that's what that's why that's why Socrates got killed so I'll try to I'll try to sneak away but philosophers ask really good questions and we don't give a lot of answers but these are these are the questions

1:02:23that I think really matter so just one one more little thing just because my undergrad degrees in philosophy I must say the philosopher I always had the most the most respect for his Socrates because at the moment he wasn't in front of that 500 panel judge kind of thingy and they ask him what kind of punishment do you want if you choose to pick a good one you can go free he said my punishment should be you should dine me for free in the best restaurant of Athens that man believed in what he thought anyhow Jay Shapiro thank you so much for your time today yeah thanks so much Pascal you