The resurrection of the truth?

Transcript

Transcribed by machine from the recording.

Scott Chris, we've been on hiatus for a little while. We're back. We are back. We're back, heading into the end of 2019, and we are just, you know, we're getting ready to churn out content again.

Chris It's so good to hear your voice again.

Scott You know what? Written as it may be with remnants of some foreign invader, like I feel like congested.

Chris Oh, you've got something.

Scott Maybe our listeners can't hear it, but I notice it in my throat. Well, I was... I'm like a male Kathleen Turner.

Chris Don't make me laugh because then I cough because I'm still getting over my flu.

Scott I find Kathleen so attractive, still in her old age. She's fantastic. I have no comeback to that. Yeah, I mean, that movie where Jim Carrey gets bitten as a vampire and she's the vampire. Ah, such a good film. 80s. Not a great film, but it's great for comedic Kathleen Turner.

Chris Film. A lot has happened in film since last year. By the way, I'm happy that we took a bit of a break.

Scott Yeah, we're rejuvenated. Our listeners may or may not be happy.

Chris No, I'm sure a lot of people are pissed off, but I think that there is a... We don't recognize enough in modern life and society the seasonality of life. You know, like, there really is, you know, especially in northern climates, like I'm in the UK, you're in Philadelphia, right? I mean, there are four distinct seasons, and the seasonality of nature, it affects mood, it affects energy levels, it kind of affects what we're thinking about.

Scott You know the novelist Barbara Kingsolver? Yeah. She spent a year of her life with her family just eating what they could get seasonally. So she didn't go to the supermarket and get strawberries in winter or whatever. So she ate only what could be locally grown seasonally. It's a very interesting exercise because you begin to realize that things, you know, pre-modern life where things are natural, you wait for a peach or a strawberry or...

Chris And also you get good at preserving stuff, right?

Scott Yeah. And you eat a lot of potatoes and leeks and things like that in the winter.

Chris Oh, I remember my grandmother on the farm. I mean, the potato cellar, which you kind of fill up at the end of the summer when you hill all the potatoes and then you kind of dwindle the supply. And then you get like this bumper crop of strawberries and you make strawberry jam or you preserve the raspberries or whatever and you're kind of eating through those during the winter. Yeah. But anyway, summer for me was really running around all over the place. It was perform, it was give, it was spend, spend, spend intellectually. And I didn't have much time for deep reflection.

Scott That's interesting because most people, summer is oftentimes their reflection time. They're sort of down, especially if you're academic or something like that. If you're academic, usually the summer was your on time.

Chris Oh, I mean, you know, and unexpected things come up. Like I was invited to give a TED Talk in Mumbai in September, but the invitation came in June. And, you know, for anyone who's given like a TED Talk that is sort of run from sort of TED proper. The ringer that they put you through, it is an intensive process to, you know, get through these multiple rounds of drafting what you want your talk to be and, you know, attending trainings and giving, like, you know, basically mock performances where you then get evaluation afterwards. And it was just this intense, like it never stopped for about, you know, 12 weeks, basically.

Scott How did they wind down you when you got there?

Chris Uh, yeah, I mean, it was, it was, uh, so that specifically, that was in September, late September. So, um, they, they flew all of us who were speaking. There were about 12 of us. Uh, so they flew us all to Mumbai a couple of days before and, um, kind of the, the first day was pretty relaxed. There was, uh, a kind of, uh, workshop with some of their, um, kind of professional people, uh, kind of, you know, on, on like, uh, We practiced opening our talk and explaining it to one another and finding our conversational voice rather than a kind of stage performance voice.

Scott Was there anybody you couldn't stand in that group?

Chris You probably can't say that. I can't say that. I might listen to the podcast. There was a great mix of people, let's put it that way. All really fascinating. Had something interesting to say, obviously. Had some idea worth spreading. But there wasn't really much before. There was that workshop. There was kind of like an optional dinner. But really, they kind of understood that most people who are coming to this are going to be pretty focused on their performance. And so they kind of gave us the time and space to do whatever we needed to do to get our mind right to give that performance. And then afterwards,

Scott We could have a watch party on Facebook. You know you can do that? Should we? Oh, my God.

Chris We should have a watch party. That would be kind of embarrassing, I think.

Scott I think it would be awesome.

Chris Seeing yourself and hearing yourself talk is a special form of torture.

Scott Yeah, I suppose that is the kind of, yeah.

Chris But yeah, so summer and then of course, you know, the lead up to Basecamp London was a lot of work as well. And that just came to pass on the third and fourth of November. So, you know, all of my real time and energy to just step back and reflect with you was kind of stolen by other people. Sorry about that, man. Don't they understand? And then stolen by... Are you out of the EU now? So they've received another extension from the EU and there's going to be a British general election just before Christmas in mid-December. And so that's kind of like the results of that election are probably going to determine whether Brexit is or is not going to happen. If the current government under Boris Johnson wins... You guys are terrible, terrible students.

Scott Can I have another extension? Can I have another extension? Yeah, that's true. So Jeremy Corbyn, he would be Prime Minister for Labour once?

Chris Well, so, I mean, what the pundits are looking at is basically you've got... So Boris Johnson, the conservatives, they're kind of representing the Brexit vote now, right? I mean, if they win government, then that's essentially a kind of endorsement of the original referendum result to say, okay, well, then, you know, people have voted the government that is saying we want to take us out of the EU. So that's, it's clearly, we've all got to make that happen. The thing about Labour is that Jeremy Corbyn hasn't offered a clear position on what Labour's view of Brexit is. So you've got one party, Conservatives, who are saying, clearly, vote for us and we are leaving. And then you've got Labour, which should be, as kind of the big opposition party, they should be presenting the clear alternative. Vote for us and we are staying. But there are so many supporters of labor, and especially supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, who don't want to stay in the EU, that he as a leader is unwilling to take that position.

Scott So... Yeah, the populist thing, it's weird because, like, you have... This is what's interesting. You have people on the left in the United States who are running for president, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who seem to kind of agree with Donald Trump on trade. The populism goes, so they're not, you know, if this was sort of the Tony Blair Labor Party, the anti-Brexit thing would be obvious, right? But when you throw the more populist left in it...

Chris Now, there is another kind of center-left party called the Liberal Democrats, and they have gone out with a platform that basically a vote for us is a vote to stay, is a vote to shut down Brexit. And so they're likely to be getting a lot of the votes of people who would vote for Labour if Labour would take that position, but instead they're gonna vote for Lib Dems because they are taking that position.

Scott And what it means- Can't the Queen just fix this? Can't the Queen do something? Can't she just say, look, I haven't flexed my muscles in forever. I'm doing something good for England and the world. I'm just going to make a decision. I'm not sure which way she would vote. You think Prince Charles just looks at her and goes, when will you die?

Chris When? Well, okay, so we could lose a lot of time talking about the British royal family. You know, some speculate that when he married Camilla, the deal was that he agreed to the queen that he would not become king.

Scott And she just said, God just said, okay, you made the deal. I'll let you live forever. You can't account for longevity.

Chris Yeah, well, that's true, too. But that he would defer to Will, to his son, William. I mean, I think probably in the UK you can bet on anything. I'm sure you can put money on a bet, like who's going to be the next... The next Sovereign, is it going to be? You know, probably he can get like three to one on Charles and maybe like maybe three or four to one on William. And then, you know, crazy odds, like 15 to one on, you know, I don't know. Who else is there? Megan Markle. Megan. Yeah. Poor Megan. Apparently they're having relationship difficulties. I don't spend a lot of time reading the tabloids in this country, but yeah, she's having a hard time adapting apparently. Yeah, I mean... The media can be so cruel.

Scott Royalty is a tough life. I've always thought that. That's why I'm not royalty. Good call.

Chris Well, you know, I think what it is, especially in a country like the United Kingdom, it's about finding the sweet spot among the elite. I think to be a member of the royal family in the line of succession... Yeah, that's a hard life. But to be a duke, that would be great. I think you get all the perks, but nobody really knows who you are. But you still get to go to all the fancy parties, and you still get to be seated in a certain order. You get access to things like Wimbledon and crap like that. You get to be in a privileged position.

Scott I think the line of succession couldn't be that bad. It's stressful, maybe, but I still think it's probably. I'd still be into it, I think. I wouldn't turn it down.

Chris See, we've clearly refilled our tanks for erudite conversation. Because look at this.

Scott Let's talk about the truth. Unless you want to talk about you running for president, because everybody else is jumping in. What is with that? Yeah, Deval Patrick from Massachusetts is announcing his candidacy today. I suppose... Michael Bloomberg.

Chris I suppose what part of it is, and honestly, before Trump became president, probably what... I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but assuming that he never intended to actually win. I think that the incentive for so many people is... If you've got just a bit of financial capital and organizational capital, running for president is maybe one of the most cost-effective, lucrative ways of becoming someone with influence and popularity and followers. It's just a brand building. You get to run for the leadership of the free world, and all you have to do is file some papers and meet some criteria, and you're in the big show. It's crazy.

Scott I think also the way the Democratic Party is situated right now, there's two strong candidates with followings and money representing the left, the clear left, the left end of the country, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. When you look at who's gonna be the center, which generally the Democrats who have won, Clinton, Obama, and recently, have been more from the center. They haven't been the hard left. So it's going to come down to probably a showdown between the progressive candidate and the more center candidate. So Joe Biden right now does not look great. I'm not saying he looks awful, but he doesn't look—he ain't the Joe of a couple years ago.

Chris He's not that impressive, I think.

Scott Yeah, he still has name recognition, still does well in national polls, but he doesn't have a ton of money compared to Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg. And I think people are thinking, well, both for ambition and also for the country. I think a lot of people, and I'm inclined to agree with this, I think a lot of people think that if it comes down to three states, a far-left candidate in three or four states like it did last time, A far-left candidate is not going to serve the Democrats well in those states. Somebody a little more middle-of-the-road, left-center-left is going to do better. No, the leftist pushback to that would be a lot of the people Trump got, even though they're cultural conservatives, they're not economic conservatives. Their economics are populist, too. So it's just sort of a dual argument. But I think people think... Look, the best way to beat Trump is from a sort of more center-left than far-left, and so everybody thinks that lane is still open. I mean, which, they may be right. I mean, also, especially like, let's say Iowa, let's say Joe Biden just shifts the bet in Iowa, comes in like fourth or something, right? Or fifth, and then like, people are gonna make, whoa, you know, that's gonna, I mean, Then it's going to seem wide open. That's why, like, Deval Patrick, he's in Massachusetts. He's got that New Hampshire media market. He thinks, I could make a strong sign. Then you've got the black voters in South Carolina.

And then Bloomberg thinks, well, I can sit it out until Super Tuesday because I've got so much money, I can buy it. Which he could probably, if he got votes at the same price he got the vote in New York, he could get enough votes that he'd still have like half his fortune.

Chris I guess, so again, this is, you know, why I suppose US presidential politics, you know, for anyone who's vaguely interested in politics around the world, make such good TV, just make such good video. Because one, like, anybody can get in the biggest show on earth, basically. Marianne Williamson.

Scott You don't have to do your time as a backbencher to get in a place in Parliament.

Chris In Canada, in the United Kingdom, Justin Trudeau was an aberration because of his family name. And the brown face.

Scott And the brown face now, too. He's an aberration in some other ways.

Chris Oh my God, let's not go there. We're going to get completely off the rails.

Scott You wouldn't admit that you've worn blackface.

Chris Take Boris Johnson here in the UK. This man is a career politician. I was mayor of London, I've been MP. You've got to put your life into a competitive fight against other political animals for getting on the influential committees. You know, getting yourself elected in your local riding again and again and again. I mean, you've got to really build a profile and you've got to build enough allies within sort of the party to vote for you when the leadership bid comes up within the party. And you've got all of these political animals who are like, you know, who is this upstart? I'm not going to let him take the reins. There's a long list of people who have done their time that deserve, you know, my vote for party leadership before we get to that person. And so for someone who loves the idea of being the leader but isn't really interested in the life, in the political life, you're never going to get there. Whereas in the United States, one, so you don't have to face that personal test. I can have a life making, in Trump's case, like tens of thousands of dollars in business.

Tens of thousands. And then run for president kind of when I've done that and want to do the other thing. But two, like the Bloomberg example or even the Pete Buttigieg example, I don't have to demonstrate that I'm competitive in this big country of ours. I have to demonstrate that I'm competitive in the first little mini contest. And then there's like the big mo, right? I got the big mo. And like suddenly you're relevant because 10,000 people in one little fragment of the whole population. decided that, yeah, you overwhelmed us enough that we're willing to vote for you. And so I'm electable suddenly.

Scott Well, it's also interesting about our system, too, is after you become president, like, you fill out the government. You're not bound to career politicians. Like, you fill out your whole cabinet. You don't have to pick, like, other MPs. You know, like, you can pick people from all over any sector in the country. So it is an interesting—our system is interesting.

Chris It's fascinating. It really is fascinating.

Scott But you do have a lot of options. Once you become president, the executive has a lot of latitude of how they fill the executive branch and all these sort of different institutions. That's interesting.

Chris Yeah, it is. I mean, again, we're off on, I don't know.

Scott Let's talk about the truth.

Chris Yeah.

Scott Did I say this article? Truth and Consequences by Sophia Rosenfeld.

Chris So give me the background. So like you said, basically I get this message from you that says, Chris, you have to read this article because I want us to grapple with it.

Scott I could go hang out with her. She's at Penn. I'm going to have to be down in Center City today. I'm going to just knock on her door and say, hey, we did a podcast on your article. So what seized you about it? Well, I get this journal called the Hedgehog Review and it comes out of the University of Virginia, the Center for the Critical Study of Culture or something. And it's an interdisciplinary journal. So they always take a big idea and get a bunch of different thinkers from different disciplines to kind of think about it. And this was about, you know, sort of truth. It was called Reality and Its Alternatives. So this is the first article, and she basically is arguing that, all right, here we are. She also wrote a book that I'm going to check out. It's called Democracy and Truth, A Short History. So, she argues that, look, we've got this sort of, we're in this post-truth culture, that's what we're hearing, and we've got this issue where it's not just we're having disputes about how to interpret facts, but we can't even get on a common set of facts that, you know, we've talked about this, we've covered this ground a lot on the podcast. That, you know, we're in this place where, you know, we seem to be in a situation where the social media and other technological advances have made us sort of autonomous interpreters of information, right? You know, each person has their kind of private judgment. At the same time, we're more siloed and sort of self...

You know, it looks at not just modern tech, you know, late modern technology, but also certain deregulation in places like the United States with media and things. She's like, but now it's actually inherent in the kind of liberal democratic history itself. And you've always had this sort of tension between, you know, the elites... Who are kind of shaping truth and then... Right, and the populists, you know, and the sort of... Do we receive this truth or should we also have some say in shaping this truth? Yeah, and she argues that, you know, ideally it was supposed to work with sort of, you know, the experts are not just thermostat. You know, they were also taking the temperature like a thermometer. But, you know, eventually she argues this gave way to more and more thermostat, which then leads to people don't want to set the thermostat, right?

And then eventually you have all these tensions. So she thinks, like, when you look at, there's these populist arguments when Andrew Jackson got elected president. You know, the 19th century. So she thinks this is not, you know, the degree may be new with certain technological advances, but this reality of feeling like, you know, or at least all the ingredients were there for this sort of dish to be made, you know, long before we were arguing about Facebook.

Chris Right, right, kind of this point that... This isn't the first time that populists have stood up and claimed to speak for real people and their sense of the world, which the elites are disconnected from. They're not hearing, they're not listening, they're not occupying the same reality that we are occupying. That's got to be right, that this is in some ways part of the Part of the sort of fundamental tension maybe around democracy that – and we call it representative democracy in part because of that tension, right? Like most of us – like I've got to tend the fields. I've got to actually like create something productive in society. I don't have time to spend a lot of time forming a kind of – Well, so that's, you know, it's kind of one of the, I guess, you know, and we've all experienced this in, you know, so many examples. Like I think of, you know, a very simple example, you know, Basecamp Toronto, Basecamp London, the series of global gatherings that you and I are a part of. And you get a hundred people together and you say, okay, we're going to get together in a very special way. And here are the aspects that make how we get together special and different. And you can say that, you can live that, you can be consistent with that, and still a lot of people, when it comes to a moment, they're not going to operate that way. And so, you know, representative democracy, I mean, we get taught it in civics class when we're kids, all this stuff, but when it comes to, you know...

Forget to be bound by some of the choices that we've made about how we're going to do things. But I think it is also true that in choosing to have democracy function through representatives, we set up this tension to kind of play itself out from time to time in terms of there is this class of people who are going to not only, one,

Scott Yeah, and she's, you know, it's interesting. She's not unsympathetic to this populist concern about, we've talked about this before, the monopolization of truth by a certain sphere in public life. But she makes this great point, though, that she says, you know, at its best, the insistence on the perceptions of ordinary folk can be a vital corrective to expert arrogance and domination. But as should be apparent, when populist rhetoric starts to determine how politics is practiced, the risk becomes again not just bad policy, in this case of the simplistic, I keep my neighbors out by building a wall in my backyard so the nation should do the same variety. Ironically, the threat emerges that an equally undemocratic, anti-pluralistic politics will prevail. This time targeting individuals and groups associated with expertise and technocracy and pushing their dissenting voices and often those of their more marginal allies such as immigrants out of any broader conversation.

And then the path will be clear for a demagogic leader to come to the fore, someone who claims to speak for those real people and their sense of the world better than anyone else can. Gosh, I've never seen that happen in recent years.

Chris Where I disagree with how she frames the challenge of the now, the political challenge of the now is – so she's worried about the collapse of a kind of shared – at the risk of using her big words, like epistemic frame, right? Like a shared – there needs to be – for democracy to function, there needs to be kind of at least a shared, I don't know, foundation of how we get to truth. Almost like we need shared standards of what counts as legitimate fact and evidence toward what's true so that we can have a conversation and have compromise because, oh, you made a good point. And I have to accept that because we've all agreed that if a point kind of originates in this way, comes from that sort of fact-based and evidence or procedure, then that's a valid point. So I have to concede that you've brought that. And so she's worried about kind of the collapse of this shared evidence base and therefore the collapse of truth.

I think of it more as, I think the problem is that we've got too much truth in society. That what has really happened is not so much the collapse of the evidence base, of like a shared evidence base or something, but what has really happened is a collapse of the search for complex truths. And I think what has really collapsed, and maybe we never really, you know, Thank you very much.

Scott Do you think that she argues... I don't know that she argues that we all need this common epistemic frame. I think she thinks we need... I think she's actually agreeing with that. I think she's saying we need to keep in the struggle for the search for common truth or public... She's like, this is why we should keep the idea of serviceable truth alive. I think she thinks we're either tempted to sort of just say, either like... She even says that, you know... We could say that fights over truth claims are simply the price we have to pay for living in a democracy. Or maybe we would rather say good riddance to the whole thing after all, democracy can sometimes seem like a clever way to paper over various forms of exclusion, domination, and justice. Truth can possibly be seen as just another one of its pernicious mythologies, especially in this era of entrenched inequality. So you could sort of do this kind of critical theory. I think she's arguing that it's this sort of,

Chris We declare that truth is dead. You know, truth is dead. The whole notion that there's some kind of truth that we can share is, you know, never coming back. And instead, let's start searching for a replacement source of sincerity. And, you know, I argue that a lot of us are already made that truth.

Scott It's so interesting about that parable of the madman, too, when Nietzsche, when the madman's coming, telling people that God is dead. There are bourgeois people that already don't believe in God. He's telling them, you don't understand what a big effing deal this is. Like, he's like, no, you can't just be a bourgeois. Like, if this is Eclipse, like, we drank up the ocean.

Chris Like, this is, like... Right, you gotta, like, follow through all the implications of this.

Scott Yeah, yeah, I think he thinks, like, that people don't get it. The bourgeois kind of, oh, the guy is dead. Like, if you can be bourgeois and passe about it, then you don't understand what we're dealing with.

Chris Yeah, so, you know, and to argue that truth is dead is basically to say that, you know, so let's say, you know, if there is no sincerity in truth, then, you know, I think a lot of people now, instead of asking what's true, we are looking for sincerity in our groups, right? We buy what our group is buying. We believe what our group believes. And so, you know, and ironically, what I think a lot of people are finding is that the, you know, the truths or the beliefs that people consume through their groups, like through their social reference groups, they actually seem more authentic than the truths that they possessed before that, you know, came to us in the age of mass media and kind of when you were told that this is what's, you know, this is the dominant message. And so everybody kind of just subscribes to it. Like, you know, globalization is a good thing in the 90s. Like that was the truth. And it came to people.

Scott in a meaningful way because part of human development is like when I learn that there's truths outside of me, there's a world outside of me that doesn't conform to my will, that's how I learn decency. Like that everything in front of me is not just an object for my control, but they're really subjects. And I can't go I it, I have to go I thou. Like you have to learn that you're circumscribed and have limits. So I mean I think that...

Chris Yeah, whereas if truth is dead and I encounter that situation, then I just need to find a bigger group of people who think like I do. Yeah, exactly. So that we can hit you.

Scott Right, right. I mean, this becomes a problem from raising the child to raising the tribe.

Chris Right, right. And so, yeah, without some kind of commitment to the possibility of a truth where truth equals the reality that is bigger than myself. Without some kind of commitment to that, then democracy really is just an occasional contest to see who gets to dominate the other for a period of time.

Scott And that doesn't mean we need to have all the same epistemic frameworks. So, for instance, there's a great book, Ethics After Babel, Jeffrey Stout, the great Princeton professor of religion and political theorist. He argues, he talks about this, in the intro of the book, he talks about debates over ethics in a sort of post-modern world. He said, you know, you have your C.S. Lewis's of the world that say, unless there's something like the Dow, right, the sort of natural law, Then there can't be universal ethics. There can't be ethics, right? Stanley Harawas, a Christian sort of theologian, ethicist, and late post-minary, slash post-minary, argues that no, no, no, that's impossible. There can only be Muslim ethics, or Jewish ethics, or feminist ethics, or Christian ethics. There is no absolute. There's incommensurable stories, and ethics is about stories. And Stout says, no, I mean, we know, even if we couldn't, we might not be able to find this sort of natural law, and even if we could find it, it'd be contextualized in particular traditions. But these tribes can't be incommensurable because...

We know we're talking about ethics, right? So Stout's point as a pragmatist is like, we don't have to have a theory of how to translate to translate, right? Sometimes we don't have theories of things that we can do, and so I think we don't need, to get to the idea that we can have shared truths in inquiry, we don't necessarily need the corresponding universal theory of how we do it all the time.

Chris Yeah, so if I can dumb that down into language that I can understand, because most of that was over my head.

Scott Please do.

Chris Please do. But I think that, so I think what you're talking about is doubt versus certainty. Okay, and there's this interesting question of what do we need to get to, you know, a healthy, serviceable truth for a democracy? And the kind of the naive argument might be, well, obviously we need certainty, right? So we need, as you say, an epistemic frame. So we all agree that this is sort of where we start from, and there's kind of rules of evidence that we build up from that same framework so that we can get to certainty together. And we all have to acknowledge that, aha, the light goes on. Whereas, I think... More interesting and I just think more right is that actually truth depends upon doubt. And the need and the healthy functioning democracy really depends upon my ability to – and your openness to having doubts that I can give you doubt and you can give me doubt. So I come at the whole universal problems of the very economic worldview, for example.

And you come at it with a very spiritual view, you know, and they're just really different lenses on reality. But when you talk about things from your perspective, it makes me realize that, wow, you know, I have a lens that doesn't even acknowledge the reality of some of the things that are really important to you.

Scott We can both be describing a reality that's outside of us.

Chris Right. With different takes. And so there's a kind of, there's a humility around, like, I don't know if we can ever, you know, like a math problem, solve this equation. Because it's like, it's apples and oranges. Or it's like, it's apples and, you know, I don't know. They're just so different. But I recognize that there's nonetheless an important piece of truth or reality in where you're coming from. And so what we need is just a messy process of kind of allowing these different aspects of reality to kind of play into one another. And I think, just to go on my rant, I think that this is maybe where there is, you know, in this latest recurrence of populism, maybe this is the roots of where it has come from. If you look at the last 25 years, so, you know, the short version, Very narrow-eyed view of history. There has been so much kind of certainty, so much alignment in academics, in politics, in business, even in trade unionism around how to look at the world. A kind of technocratic view towards economic growth through trade and open borders. And so much sense of priority to economic arguments that it became very difficult to express arguments about, I don't know, cultural identity, personal identity, stability, risk.

So many views became marginalized. And I think that this gets to the point of, you know, did the truth sort of become a bit too hegemonic? Did sort of the ordering of society become a bit too certain so that we were kind of, you know, and an elite class that is driving things was almost primed for a reaction from people who felt like there's a lot of my reality that isn't being described here. That isn't being given enough weight in the conversation. And then as soon as somebody comes up and provides a valid outlet for that, then this is the result that we end up with.

Scott I go back to this book I've quoted a few times by Leslie Newbigin about epistemology. It's called Proper Confidence. And he says, the first chapter is faith is the way to knowledge. The second chapter is doubt is the way to truth. And the third chapter is certainty is the way to nihilism.

Chris Because he says, you know, you have to... Certainty is the way to nihilism.

Scott To get knowledge, you have to have faith. You believe that the teachers, the traditions and stuff, the professors, that you have a certain degree of faith that you lend them that they're passing things on. But to know that's true, you have to doubt. You have to be able to sort it through. And so anybody that... There's always this interplay between faith and doubt, whether you're religious, irreligious, whatever. There's a fiduciary framework to all-knowing, and to get to the truth, you have to believe and yet doubt, believe and yet doubt. But if the ground is certainty, if that's what we require, then it leads to nihilism, because there's no place outside of this messy interplay of faith and doubt to get to something like the truth.

Chris So I think where, if this is our analysis, that there's kind of... By the way, Siri just heard me say that on my iPad. Oh, did it buy you a book?

Scott She didn't get that. None of the listeners might have gotten it either.

Chris So I think there's something kind of fundamental here about... We need to, we society, we need to create more healthy space for doubt. Yeah. And there is so much certainty. We are all so certain in our truths and that that is toxic to, you know, a meaningful democracy where we, you know, we struggle towards an unattainable, complex truth together. And if that analysis is right, if we're suffering a crisis, not of truth, but of doubt, like doubt is in crisis, then what we're going through right now isn't just a rough patch. It's not something that automatically self-corrects. I think that just like government steps in and says, this industry is a natural monopoly, and so if we want to have competition, we're going to have to break up these monopolies and encourage them to compete with one another. I feel like the manufacturer of certainty is similarly one of these things where if we don't step in, we, society with a capital W, and actively try to manufacture doubt, it's not going to reappear on its own. And in my TED talk, I talk about... I talk about, as an analogy, the separation of powers because everybody kind of gets that idea that in a democracy, in order to have sort of healthy government, you need to separate the powers, legislative, executive, judiciary, so that no one authority gets to say what is right. That we only know what is right sort of as the outcome of their messy interaction. And I think we've got a similar problem with our truths.

I talk about the separation of proofs, right? I might have an economic lens on what's real. You've got a spiritual lens on what's real. But what we need is a society where no one perspective gets to say what is true, so that we can only say what is true when different perspectives kind of have to have this messy interaction with one another. And what are these proofs? Well, the academy, journalism, Wikipedia, religion. I think there are a lot of them. I don't know if anybody has ever made up the list of what are the engines of truth-making in society. But if you look at those engines, There are some kind of worrying trends. One of them is the monetization of everything. Money has a lot of influence over what journalists report. Money has more and more influence over what academics research in some countries about what positions politicians take. And so these engines that should be very separate projects of trying to kind of argue for what is real and what is important, they start to kind of cluster closer together. Thank you.

That's when the president that we elect becomes a tyrant over us. When the separation of proofs fails, that's when kind of doubt disappears, when we become really certain. And whatever truths we hold, they become tyrants over us. They become so strong that we just can't let them go. And I think that that, for me, is maybe the big fundamental project, is we've got to look structurally at how do we become a more doubtful society.

Scott I think we might have a crisis both of faith and doubt because I think within places where you're exercising faith and knowledge, we need more doubt, but also we need more faith that institutions are our repositive truth in the journey.

Chris What do you mean by faith?

Scott Because you come at it with such a broad... I think people have such a lack of belief in institutions. People are so cynical, right?

Chris Right, okay.

Scott And so there's a kind of cynicism about institutions and traditions as being stewards of truth and being able to critically sort through things. So when you're in the sort of faith-seeking knowledge context, you need more doubt, but you also need a collective sort of idea that there's these knowledge-seeking communities that are actually not full of shit, that are actually really trying to do something fallibly, imperfectly. So I think that we have this, in some sense, we have this sort of cynicism about the whole kind of faith doubt. It does lead to a kind of nihilism or cynicism. You need this critical faith in communities of knowledge that actually makes it possible to doubt with good faith while being a part of them.

Chris That's really interesting. That opens a whole can of questions that I don't know the answers to, which is why it's so interesting.

Scott That's why I need to go knock on Sophia's door.

Chris We both have to knock on Sophia's door.

Scott I really could do that. I'm going to be right by Penn's today. I might just go knock on her door. You totally should. Hi, Sophia. How are you?

Chris Totally should. I forgot what I was going to say.

Scott Maybe that's our ending point. We just pick it up next week.

Chris Doubt, faith, knowledge, certainty, quest, the truth. So now there's kind of two dimensions, right? So one option is truth is dead. And I think that's the easy choice, right? Because if we're too cynical to trust institutions and we're too wedded to our own truths to allow in... The truth is dead. And also, which you've now clued me to as completely nothing, like just missed my awareness, but you're totally right. So creating doubt, healthy space for doubt, and willing to take acts of faith in projects that are on quests to make sense of the world, whether it is the academic project, whether it is the religious-spiritual project, whether it is the You know, the bureaucratic project, whether it is Wikipedia. But we have to be willing to combat our cynicism with these acts of faith. And ultimately, you know, through that somehow shift from, you know,

hitting each other over the head with our little private truths to being more invested and more interested in building bigger truths together. That, I think, is kind of the task that we're left with. And then the question is, how do we begin that task when there is, right now, so much certainty and so much cynicism?

Scott You know, we're just kind of... How do we get people away from seeing themselves as members of a tribe and more as pilgrims on a journey? I don't know. That's a good question. Another question for Sophia.

Chris It's another question for Sophia. We don't have to answer all these questions in one podcast, but my hypothesis would be, kind of studying from history, Usually the answer is in the swing of the pendulum back. So much of these challenges have had to do with the dematerialization of our conversations, of the transfer of them into some kind of crude, stripped-of-all-context and nuanced... I mean, I'm not saying that that is easy, but I do think that that is the obvious place to start.

Scott Yeah, no, I agree. And I think it has to be in the context of also not just like, I think you have to have a sense that the truth is in the whole. So that in the particulars, you're getting closer to the universal. You can't just do it like, oh, okay, I'm going to just look at my peer group and try to mix it up a little bit. You've got to have the sense that you actually need other people with different perspectives to get to the whole. Otherwise, it'll just be an exercise in experimental sociology.

Chris Well, it's just an exercise in validating why I'm right. I mean, all these people around me are completely clueless and flaky.

Scott Right. You have to really believe that there's something there, that in that particularity, you're going to get to the whole.

Chris Yeah, that the only truth worth grasping is the one I can't grasp myself, kind of. Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah, that's good. But we should put that on a t-shirt.

Scott Exactly.

Chris By the way, we totally need that. We need, like, you know, we have so many t-shirts.

Scott That should be our Atlas Project on the back of the t-shirt.

Chris The only truth worth grasping is the one you can't grasp for yourself.

Scott I love that. That's good.

Chris Write that down somewhere. We should totally keep a log of, like, t-shirtable quotes.

Scott I like that.

Chris I'm into that. I'm with you. So, you know, which, and maybe this is going to be another theme of, you know, most of our conversations, is what we've managed to do once more is validate your investment in a philosophy degree. Absolutely. Man, the world needs more philosophers. It seems that that's the conclusion once again. Yes. Because we need those philosophers to kind of awaken our search for a truth, which I agree. I mean, if we're not motivated to complicate our own selves, then why would we put ourselves through that exercise? Which is, you know, interestingly, so this was also the conclusion of my TED Talk. One of the reasons that I'm proud about it is I deliberately – I was deliberately – not cynical, but I wasn't sort of naive and Pollyannic. Because I think if the choice in front of us is declare the truth is dead or resurrect truth, then I think that honestly what we've chosen is like the middle option, which is, no, let's just hang out with our zombie truths.

Scott It's the ostrich. I'll put my head in the sand and maybe I pull it out in three days and it'll look different.

Chris Yeah, the truths that we possess, they no longer do what truth is meant to accomplish in society. It doesn't persuade anyone who doesn't want to be persuaded. And probably when I declare it, I lose as many followers as I gain. So my truths are completely broken, and yet I'm holding onto them anyway because I prefer to hit people who don't share my truths over the head with them than to actually make them better. And so fundamentally, there is this kind of personal choice that we need to make around, you know, are we satisfied with our weak truths? Are we satisfied with truths that are so weak that, you know, lies look just as legitimate to other people? And if we are, well, then, you know, welcome to the world that you get as a result.

Scott Yeah. And it will only get worse.

Chris Well, that's... We got to end on a more positive note than that, dude.

Scott Yeah, I mean, I'm saying, yeah, I mean, I think, no, I think it's, I'm not, I'm not.

Chris I actually think, I actually think, and so here's my positive data point, you know, and you experienced it at, like, Basecamp Toronto, Basecamp London. Actually, I think that there is such a hunger to get together.

Scott Yeah.

Chris And to get into a small group, to get into, like, in simple words, to talk and listen. Thank you. Without having some big picture, complex philosophy about why I need to search for a higher truth, I think that there is a lot of hunger, just a feeling that I want that. And maybe it fails and it's frustrating, but I think there's a lot of it.

Scott When you connect, it's an exhilarating experience to connect to the truth through real human connection.

Chris Yeah, so, okay, so we have to stop this, but it reminds me. So a couple of days ago, I listened to, I watched Mark Zuckerberg's, this address that he gave at Georgetown University.

Scott Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris A couple of weeks ago or whenever it was. He's part of the Fifth Estate or whatever. It was awful, frankly. Surely you have enough money to hire Scott Kent Jones to come and write something. Yeah, I'm for hire. I'll write it for you. But what was so disappointing about his analysis was he was justifying the entire existence of Facebook as a vehicle to greater freedom of expression, bringing more voices into the conversation. And you know what? And that's great. But I think that what is abundantly obvious to everyone now is that that is not the connection that people want. That is not the connection that people want. And that adding voices to the conversation so that we can all be publishers and we can all broadcast. Our messages, that is not in just some automatic way. That doesn't lead to social progress. What we need is to add complexity.

What we actually need is to add more listening, not just talk. And that this leader of this titanic platform had such a simplistic view of what we need, of what kind of connectedness we need as a society. To me, it was just so disappointing.

Scott Dude, this was your opportunity. That kind of adding more voices, that's at best a means. It can't be an end. As an end unto itself, it could just be a cacophony. What are you adding voices to and to what ends? But we're asking laugh, we're asking truth, a depth from Zuckerberg.

Chris Okay, maybe that's fair. I mean, to be fair, I've never met him, so I have no – Neither have I. I have no personal – He might be incredibly cheap. I've met his sister, Randy, and she's very interesting. She tells this joke, and I'm sure she's told it like a billion times, that she's the Zuckerberg who graduated from Harvard. Ha, ha, ha. That's actually kind of funny.

Scott That's actually really funny.

Chris But, you know, it's got to kind of be boring when you're told the same joke like a billion times. Is she awkward? No, no, not at all. She's a perfectly pleasant and interesting person.

Scott But I think— He's perfectly pleasant, just like Donald Trump's phone call. It was a perfect call, a perfect phone call.

Chris Oh, my God. Good times, good times. Well, look, I mean, I think that this has been a great sort of getting back into the saddle with one another.

Scott We're getting back in it. We believe in the truth.

Chris And I think this is going to be like one of the threads of our conversation that we're going to keep— For the rest of the year, at least. Coming back to, yeah, yeah, because— Making sense of how are we going to be as a democratic society? I think it's one of the big projects that we do need to thoughtfully work on. I spent time, again, as we all know, living in China for a number of years. And there, it's very different. The relationship with truth is very different because there is a monopoly on the proofs and the academy and the religion and all of the resources and databases and political voices and the totality of speech does not complicate what is real. Yeah, yeah. Is a far muddier outlook. And so this question of is the kind of the mass collaborative project of forming, and I love Sophia's language around serviceable truths together. Can we figure out how to do that in a new technological moment with all of these new network effects?

And all of these new sort of concentrations of voice and power and openness and vulnerability to perspectives outside of our political community. Can we figure out how to make this work and thrive? I mean, this is the question that we're going to be asking, our kids are going to be asking, until we arrive at some settled sense of yes or no.

Scott Or if we don't keep asking it, our kids won't be able to ask it. I think, okay. I mean, that's the thing. There's no guarantee that it'll be, I mean, the real tragic thing is if people stop asking it.

Chris Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Scott Keep the question alive.

Chris Keep the question alive. Okay, well, we've certainly done a good job of keeping our questions alive because this now has to have been our longest podcast ever. It is, our longest conversation. Okay.

Scott And we'll be back hopefully next week, folks, so. We will, we will. Keep tuning in.

Chris All right.