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I'm not all here today, but
I'm getting better. I guess this coffee

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is home. Not what your country
can do for you, ask what you

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can do for your country. Mister
Gerbatcheff, tear down this wall, read

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my lips. Either you're with us
or you were with the terrorists. It's

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the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson.
I'm James Lilax. Rob Long is out

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this weekend. We're going to talk
to Peter Schweitzer about Chinese influence and David

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Berlinsky about well you're just gonna have
to listen, so let's rails a podcast.

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So it's hard to believe that an
expungeible gun charge in two misdemeanors is

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what Hunter Biden gets. It's an
intentional production by the DJ and my administration.

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No one and known is above the
law. Welcome everybody. It's the

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Ricochet Podcast. Number nine billion,
seven and forty three million, six hundred

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and forty two thousand. If you're
keeping track now, just seems like that,

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Actually no, it doesn't. It
feels like number ten, number fifteen.

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The spirit of adventure and newness is
still in the air. As Peter

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Robinson, who's been doing this is
longer than I have steps up to the

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mic once again with that fresh courage
of a man who's willing to take on

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the world and let the opinions fly
and damn the consequences, right Peter,

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Well, damn it anyway, No, damn it anyway. Yeah, we're

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just saying before we start at the
show, that you know, here we

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are at the end of the week. I don't know when you're listening to

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it, but chances are that the
things, the objects, the fascinations,

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the concerns that have churned through the
American mind for the last week are probably

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as with us seeping out into sort
of torpid state where we want to move

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on. For example, the whole
week everyone was concerned about the Titanic submersible,

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and now we know there's really nothing
more to be said about it except

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to home a few bars for those
in peril at the sea and regret and

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move on. Maybe you can talk
about knock on things the way that some

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people took this as a as an
opportunity to let the world know what horrible

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people that they are. Ben Dreyfussy
actor did a piece on his substack about

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empathy and the basic human quality of
and how these people who were taking just

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absolute delight in the fact that there
were rich people down there who were probably

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lost, end or dead or are
suffering was a good thing actually, and

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that it is a sign of virtue
to wish ill of those people and define

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that their situation was almost a delight
in some sort of cosmic sense. The

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people who see things the explicitly and
entirely through a title economic prism themselves are

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are miserable, unhappy people who go
about every day in a state of fury

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because the world is not conforming to
what they know to be the truth and

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the inevitability of things, and they
have to get it out like this in

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a way that is the most curious
form of virtual signal signaling I can imagine.

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I don't know if you saw a
lot of this, Peter, But

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is this new to our age as
social media amplified it, or as social

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media just allowed us to see that
there are just rotten people out there and

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they're always at man social What is
there to say social media permitted people?

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We don't we know, I haven't
there's studies. I don't even know how

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you'd structure this study. But don't
we know that being on social media is

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like driving in your car, you
James, mild mannered person that mild wealth

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not mild mannered, is not right. But you wouldn't ordinarily, strolling down

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the sidewalk flip the bird to a
to someone no one else on the sidewalk

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in the car. I have I
have to say momentary anger. I have

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said nasty things twitters like that.
Is this is? This is this hatred

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for the rich? Anything new?
No envy is one of the seven Deadly

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sins? And do you think it
stems from envy? Oh? Yeah,

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for sure, for sure. It
seems to me perfectly obvious. And this

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last week was really really First of
all, they missed the economic point.

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They missed the story, and the
story is that the richest man on that

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submersible Hamish something or other can't recall. But as far as I can tell,

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he was largely a self made man. So this is a man who

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had gone through life creating enterprises,
employing people, creating value of all kinds.

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He wasn't. He wasn't. He
did not pull together his fortune from

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the from the sweat of the brow
of oppressed peoples. It was a free

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market economy in which he was operating. The second economic point, of course,

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is that when rich people spend money
on things that seemed frivolous to the

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rest of us, they permit things
to happen. Electric vehicles were originally just

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it was a rich people around here
in Silicon values started buying Tesla's. Now

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they're a mass mark get commodity.
On and on we go. So I

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don't know exactly what the future is
of deep sea exploration, but that people

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were paying a quarter of a million
dollars a seat for the last some number

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of years. I know. Bill
Buckley was one of the very first who

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went down end up submersible and looked
at the Titanic, wrote a marvelous piece

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about it that all strikes me as
admirable, and I'm waiting for you to

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him the usual ode to the human
spirit. So the other bit of this,

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I have to say, looking at
the news this morning, and it

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now seems to be clear that something
went wrong with that submersible. Very quickly

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the Navy picked up the sound of
an implosion. I read a couple of

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pieces that if that is indeed what
happens, and it now seems clear that

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that is what happened, then death
would have been instantaneous for everybody aboard.

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And I have to say, for
me personally, that was a relief because

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even as all over Twitter people were
mocking the five down below the surface,

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I was thinking to myself, I
can't imagine a worse way to die,

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slow asphyxiation over ninety six hours,
a mile and a half beneath the surface

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of the ocean, total darkness.
I just can't how, I just it's

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a relief to me to know that
it all happened instantly. I can't watch

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videos of people spelunking, so I
can't imagine putting myself in a situation where

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I hear I hear the seventeen bolts
being being put in place to seal me

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in the two before I'm dropped down
at the Yankee depth. So no,

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yes, right, no, you're
absolutely correct. I mean, although when

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driving, I've never flipped anybody off. What I have done is have you

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never you? Okay, let the
record show you are a better human what

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everyone a better human being than I
am. What I have done is given

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the Minnesota Midwestern equivalent of it,
which is the raised hand, just a

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raise head like like like what and
I would if you're watching this on video,

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of course you can see me making
that distinctive gesture. But no,

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you're right because as you are,
you are ensconced in your own little intellectual

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emotional bubble as you scroll through social
media, ping, pogging, amongst a

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dozen different things that make you angry. And so when you land on something,

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yes, you can bring all the
full force of the peevishness that you've

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brought from the other tweets into this
one. It's not a pleasant place.

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It has you know, it has
a great boon, and I'm glad it's

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there. It's revelatory in what it
says about people. But you're right,

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social media doesn't make kids happy.
It doesn't that, so it's not you

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know, could we do without it? I'm just I'm thinking back to the

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way we were talking before the show
started, and I know there's nothing more

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compelling than telling people what we were
talking about before the short started. But

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we were talking about, Hey,
I'm called in radio and somebody who's bemoaning

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the fact that, well, when
you know, when Reagan got rid of

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the Fairness Doctor, and all of
a sudden it's turned into hate radio,

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and all these crazy people started calling
there was the same thing. It is

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nonsense, but there is the There
was at the time the sort of notion

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that opening up the airwaves to everybody
allows you, allows these voices, allows

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these these these crazy people to say
these things unmediated, and that conversation continues

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to this day where you have my
own Senator Amy Klobuscher, who's who's being

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very concerned about the layoffs at Meta
and Twitter and the rest of it,

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and whether or not they will be
able to get in front of disinformation for

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the next campaign. I'm just I'm
looking at these people the same way we

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looked at the people talking about the
callers. Let me decide, let me

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listen or read and figure out exactly
so the idea and this is this big,

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overarching, top down idea that has
come about from you want to say

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the left, but it's probably our
technocratic betters are handlers the idea that disinformation

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is this great threat and that freedom
of speech, while it may sound nice

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and the abstract, certainly has to
be constrained by the smart people or we're

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going to get the wrong outcomes.
And looking at Twitter this week, as

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people talked about this, it's like, you know, all this is sort

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of emotional disinformation what they were saying
about these people. But I'm still glad

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it's out there. Like I said, I'd rather I'd rather all the flowers,

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you know, all the poisons in
the mud hatch out, as Robert

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Graves had Claudius say, right,
I'm with you on that. I have

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to say I'm also with you on
I don't know. Every time I say

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I'm shocked by something, you say, oh, come on, get with

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it. Maybe you should. Maybe
it's acceptable to be shocked. You should

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have been shocked a decade ago.
I was shocked a decade ago. But

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I'm still shocked at I don't know. How is it that I am i

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the only person left who considers free
speech the most important of our rights.

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It seems like it sometimes. I
just don't understand the way the country has

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just let it go and again again
again. I say it. Go right

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ahead, pile on me for continuing
to be shocked. But that the mains

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the journalists, their entire profession,
the whole tradition in which they're working depends

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upon freedom of speech, and they're
the first to do the We now know,

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thanks to the work of Matt Tayyee, beyond others that the federal government,

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agency after agency after agency was telling
Twitter and Facebook take that downtake,

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that downtake, that down, and
when they didn't do it, the federal

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agency would leak to the New York
Times or other members of the press,

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and the reporters would call and say, are you taking this down? Because

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if it doesn't go down, there's
going to be a story. Journalists at

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major and formerly honorable institutions permitted themselves
to become knowingly to become instruments of censorship.

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I am in justice staggered by this
instruments of the state in order to

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do the right thing exactly exactly.
The younger crop of journalists do not believe,

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and they speak sarcastically of what about. You know, both sides is

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um If one side is illegitimate and
destructive, there's no point in giving it.

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If the planet is going to die
because of climate change or climate crisis,

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then both sides is hastening the decline
the demise of us all. So

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it is actually injurious to the body
politics to get to let the other side

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seem to have the same amount of
weight and merit as the other. That's

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part of the problem. But that's
another podcast. This podcast is going to

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be as current as is possible because
we're going to talk about well, we're

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going to talk with Peter Schweizer,
founder of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is

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the host of the Drill Down podcast
and the author of Clinton Cash, Secret

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Empires, Profiles and Corruption, and
most recently of Red Handed. Welcome Peter,

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Thanks for joining us in the podcast. So Peter found out this week

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that Hunter Biden, you know,
that fellow who left the laptop and which

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was of course the subject of Russian
information. I think, so he pled

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guilty federal tax misdemeanors and he struck
a deal to resolve a federal gun charge.

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Gosha. That was sweet or was
it? They say he got a

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sweet heart deal? Is that so? Absolutely no question about it. Sweetheart

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deal on a couple levels. Number
one, the level of a criminal activity

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that he agreed to, in other
words, really what he was engaged in,

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his felony tax evasion. That's what
these whistleblowers are I think, showing

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and demonstrating and arguing, but also
in terms of what was not in that

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agreement. It seems pretty clear that
the US attorney in Delaware wanted a charge

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Hunter Biden with felony violation of the
Foreign Agents Registration Act Farah, that was

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not allowed to proceed by the Department
of Justice. So it was a sweetheart

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deal on multiple levels for Hunter Biden. And I think that this issue is

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only going to further unspool. And
let's remember, this pleagree is subject to

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the approved full of a judge during
sentencing. That judge is a Trump appointee,

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and in light of the revelations of
these irs whistleblowers, I'm not so

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sure that judge is going to go
along. The judge may refuse to accept

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the plea agreement. Yes, yeah, the judge has that option. Peter,

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we are old friends. I want
to disclose that as if it's I'm

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actually I'm not disclosed. I'm boasting
about it. I know, Peter Schweitzer,

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I want to get to red handed
in a moment, of course,

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I want to talk about this topic
the other topic. But you know what

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I want to do is just say
thanks, because you're doing what a lot

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of people used to do but almost
nobody does anymore, and that is called

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journalism. You are a genuine investigative
reporter. You go after big stories,

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and you dig, and you dig
and you dig. And since we are

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long past the days when the Washington
Post or the New York Times will publish

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big stories that tend to reflect badly
on members of the establishment, you publish

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these as books. You go on. So truly I want to say thank

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you. And the other thing I
want to ask is is there are we

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now at the stage at which we
can feel confident that an alternative business model

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for journalism real journalism has emerged.
That is to say, we now have

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our own Fox News. Peter Schweitzer, you're heading something called the Government Accountability

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Institute. I'd like you to tell
us about that. But can we now

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feel confident a that our side of
each story is going to get out,

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but also that real journalism will continue. I think of you, and I

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think of Matt Taiebi, although I'd
be willing to bet that you never voted

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the same way in either of your
lives. But he's now said, wait

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a minute. The whole journalistic enterprises
I used to know it is gone and

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he's setting up himself. So can
we relax? You have people figured out

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a new model or are you still
struggling. That's a great question. And

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it's always great to be with you. Peter. I don't think that we've

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quite got the model yet, and
that's not because we don't have great people.

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I think Matt does fantastic journalism.
Michael Schellenberger is great journalism. It's

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it's it's a combination of things.
Number One, you have to have the

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resources for these deep investigative dives.
It takes a lot of time and a

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lot of money. News organizations,
mainstream media news organizations used to have it.

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That has dwindled. But at the
same time, you've seen this ideological

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tilt you talk we were talking about
this earlier among journalists, where you know,

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Donald Trump is an existential threat or
climate change is an existential threat,

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so we're going to do tilted stories
because we're saving the planet, right,

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those two trends. I think that
the sort of showing how the journalists are

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biased and only showing one side of
the story has emerged. You still have

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the resource problem. I mean,
you know, we exposed the Biden deals

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in China in twenty eighteen. I
had seven researchers working full time. Did

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you really for ten months to uncover
that story? We're a five to one

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c three we get donations. The
point being we found that story because there

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was a Chinese social media website that
had pictures of Hunter Biden's standing with the

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equivalent in China of the head of
Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve,

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the Treasury Secretary in twenty eleven,
and I was thinking, what is

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going on here? It takes a
lot of time and money to unschool very

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complex stories, and I don't think
we have the resources to do that yet.

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But if I can interject you,
I mean, I work for a

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newspaper, a pretty solidly staffed in
newspaper, and yeah, we're not going

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to do that story because we're concentrated
here on our home state. But the

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New York Time Times, the Washington
Post, and the Wall Street Journal have

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the resources to do that. And
if the New York Times and you know,

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the Washington Post does that story,
it will be amplified through the wire

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services to willing papers elsewhere. So
it's it's resources, yes, but it's

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also desire. I mean, as
we saw m MPR came out right away

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and said we're not going to handle
the laptop story because obviously this is just

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all you nonsense. Something for which
they've never been brought to account. So

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it's a choice. I mean resources, yes, but it is a choice.

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And the problem with that is that
that since so the mainstream journals aren't

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doing it, it's easier to delegitimize
guys like you because you're seen as being

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partisan hacks who come to this with
bushels and axe handles and in the agendas

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to grind. No. I think
you're right, it's it's resource. The

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resources exist in these mainstream media outlets. They don't want to cover these stories.

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When I first covered the Bidens and
exposed it in twenty eighteen in China,

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I actually had a very nice launch
with a with a very experience seasoned

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a well known reporter for the New
York Times who covers China and other issues.

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And in that book in twenty eighteen, I had you profile exposing things

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related to Mitch McConnell's family and their
ties to China, as well as the

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Bidens. They followed up with a
story on Mitch McConnell. The New York

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Times did themselves sort of standing on
the shoulders of my work, which is

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fine, which is great. That
reporter told me in twenty eighteen. If

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Joe Biden runs for president, we
are absolutely going to cover this story.

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They never did. They never did. I don't think it's because he didn't

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want to cover it. I think
it's because the editorial leadership did not want

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to cover it. So, yeah, they don't. They don't have a

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desire to cover these stories. But
honestly, what they are doing is they

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are completely trashing their brands. If
you look at if you look a Pew

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research you know that looks at trust
in American institutions, Congress is at nineteen

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percent, it's the lowest. Right
next to them at twenty one percent,

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is the media. They are destroying
their brands by selectively reporting what they're choosing

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to cover and what they're not covering, And it's only going to get worse,

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and they're only damaging themselves because they
can't muscle these stories anymore. Precisely

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because of what Peter said, You've
got these alternatives that are putting this stuff

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out. Okay, two red handed? Then, Peter, how did I

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was about to say what attracted you
to this story? But in you've already

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made clear that in a certain sense, this is a story you've been covering

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for years. Give us, well, let's sell some books. Give us

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one or two of the most arresting
revelations. What's the book about. Just

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give us, let's just let's just
take it through and give listeners are not

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they'll be hearing about this for the
first time. What is the book about.

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Give us one or two really arresting
findings red handed? I mean,

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the subtitle is you know how Americans
get rich helping China win? And so

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it focuses on Washington d Silicon Valley
in Wall Street and just three quick illustrations.

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When it comes to the Bidens based
on the laptop, the Bidens have

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received thirty one million dollars from four
Chinese businessmen who are named in the laptop,

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who are named in the book,
and all four of those businessmen who

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transferred money to the Bidens with no
services or anything given in return for that

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money. All of those businessmen have
links to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.

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One of them, at the same
time he set up the Bidens in

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a twenty million dollars deal, was
at the same time business partners with a

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Vice Minister for State Security in China. All of them have that profile.

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So the Biden money in my mind
is not just about corruption. It's about

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compromont, it's about espionage, it's
about possible recruitment. Go to Silicon Valley.

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The biggest, most talented companies in
Silicon Valley are aiding and abetting China

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in its military words to exploit artificial
intelligence. They know it's going on.

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They've helped those companies in China that
are developing these military technologies enhanced their capabilities.

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Microsoft, Facebook, or Meta and
Elon Musk regularly say very favorable things

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about China because they want access to
the China market. And then go to

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All Street and you can find the
same thing, inglorious things that are being

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said by major hitters on Wall Street
who are prostrating themselves let's be honest about

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this and saying wonderful things about China
in exchange for access to the market.

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So that's really what the book is
about. And if you look at the

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front cover, you can see the
collection of individuals that we expose in the

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book. If you know this,
the FBI does or should know it,

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The National Security Agency does or should
know, the CIA does or should know

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00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:08,039
it, And the New York Times
and the Washington Post do or should know

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00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:14,559
it. Why is only Peter Schweitzer
writing about this? Well, good question.

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I know the FBI knows about it, and I can say this now

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because the New York Times ran a
piece about it. The FBI knows about

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it because the FBI has been in
communication with me on a myriad of research

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projects going back to twenty fifteen,
and we're always happy to cooperate with law

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enforcement. What's interesting is the New
York Times story was basically saying the FBI

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is relying on people like Peter Schweitzer
rather than checking the veracity of what was

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being reported. So the FBI knows
about this, I think a lot of

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government agencies know about it. The
New York Times and the Washington Post know

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about it. They choose not to
cover it. And part of the reason

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we don't get a lot of action
in Washington on this cap hill we're getting

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00:23:00,839 --> 00:23:07,720
some movement is you, frankly,
have some powerful Republicans that benefit commercially mightily

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from their relationships with China, and
they're over a barrel. I mean,

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as I talk about in the book, Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine

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Choo. The Chow family has a
shipping business. The ships are all built

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by Chinese state owned companies. The
construction of these ships, it's hundreds of

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millions of dollars, are financed by
Chinese state banks. The crews that manned

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these ships are all recruited from China, and the contracts that they have to

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ship goods on these big vessels across
the Pacific come from Chinese state owned enterprises.

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If Mitch McConnell does something that ticks
off China, they can destroy the

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Chow family business overnight, and that's
the kind of leverage that China wants over

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its political opponents. Peter out here
in Silicon Valley where I live, I

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couldn't. I'm not going to name
name is because nobody this is the kind

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of talk that takes place among friends. Name any one of the big operations

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out here, and they all employ
a lot of Chinese, some are Chinese

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nationals, some are Chinese Americans,
and the general feeling is it's hopeless,

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meaning we can either do business.
We can either code and work on our

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next product, or we can run
our own intel operation and try to make

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sure that whatever we develop doesn't get
to Beijing. But we can't do both

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because we have so many Chinese employees
that it is simply taken for granted that

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when a major innovation takes place,
it gets flipped over to Beijing pretty quickly.

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Now, in one sense that's chilling, but in another sense, you

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just describe the kind of actual reality
that people are dealing with here. All

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of these operations that we're describing are
publicly listed companies. They have fiduciary responsibilities

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to their shareholders. They are in
competitive marketplaces, they must continue to innovate.

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And so the question, I mean, the first impulse is to say,

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well, they're just not good Americans. But on the other hand,

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you say, wait a minute,
when did it become their job. Where

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is the United States government? It's
up to them. It's up to the

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federal government to enforce certain rules on
all actors, so that making sure that

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your fundamental security measures get put in
place within companies becomes a fundamental way of

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doing business across the competitive space.
I don't know. So there's a premise

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there, which is that in some
sense it's hopeless that in some sense these

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people are in business. They have
to do business. And then maybe really

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it's the federal government that's falling failing
here. Attack any of those if you

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want to, what do you make
of that that is in the air out

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here. That's a kind of stand
standard conversation. Yeah, no, and

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I think there's there's some truth to
that. What I would say is,

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yes, we cannot totally disengage from
China, but we should at least make

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it harder for them. So I'll
give you an example. Yes, Google

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has Chinese employees. You could argue
Google needs Chinese employees because we don't have

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the STEM talent in the United States. But that's different than Google funding literally

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funding and sponsoring research facilities for artificial
intelligence in China that are controlled by the

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Chinese military. It seems to me
that is something on a order of magnitude,

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you know, exponentially worse than recognizing
you're going to have certain employees in

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your company and they may you may
engage in intellectual property that So that's kind

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of what I'm talking about. And
I think it's really incompany upon shareholders and

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00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:11,400
consumers in the United States to effectively
shame these companies, you know, to

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make clear that this is a problem, that you're subsidizing our enemy and we

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don't want you to do it.
The federal government has been lax here.

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But I also think that you know, it's high time that we hold some

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of these companies into account. They're
certainly concerned about their posture on other,

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let's say, social issues. I
would think this is one we need to

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make sure that they're being clear on
as well. Last question, Peter,

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doesn't matter if you look at China
demographically, they're going to suffer collapse.

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They have a huge amount of debt
and an economy based on a real estate

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bubble that is popping and popping and
popping and being refilled and popping and popping.

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In the long run, of course, we're all did But in the

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long run, really do we have
to worry that much about China? Or

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can we just shit it out and
let them fall apart? Well, the

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question really a minute, it's a
great question. The question really comes down

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to what do you think President ge
or the man that follows President Gees posture

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00:28:15,079 --> 00:28:17,799
is going to be given the realities
they face. Is it going to make

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00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,400
him more aggressive or is it going
to make them softer towards the West?

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00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:26,519
All indications with ge since twenty twelve
is that it has made him harder,

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It has made him more aggressive,
it's made him more desperate. That's what

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00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:33,839
I think we need to be concerned
about, and we also need to realize

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this is sort of the subject the
research I'm working on right now and the

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next book is in a lot of
respects, it's not a question of whether

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we're going to be at war with
China. I would contend China's already at

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war with the United States. Their
involvement with Fentonel, the things that they

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00:28:47,799 --> 00:28:52,720
did during COVID to exascerbate the body
count of American dying, other things that

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they are doing, so they kind
of view their posture already at war with

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the United States. They're serious casualties, I would argue, in the millions

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that have died as a result of
China's policies, that's the present reality.

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I don't think we have the comfort
of looking twenty five thirty years down the

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road because of these trans as you
correctly point out, are against China.

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I don't have the comfort of looking
thirty five years down the road. The

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00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:26,599
two of you may Peter Schweitzer from
the Governmental Accountability Institute, the books that

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00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,400
are Clinton Cash, Secret, Empire's
Profile and Corruption, and most recently Red

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00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:32,920
Handed, We like to have you
back again soon. There's so much to

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00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:34,480
talk about, and thanks for joining
us here in the podcast today. Peter

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00:29:34,799 --> 00:29:41,319
Peter Schweitzer, one of the best
working journalists in the country get red Handed.

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00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:48,440
Thanks guys to kill Peter. And
now we pivot to the philosophical,

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00:29:48,599 --> 00:29:52,880
theisophical, to different matters entirely than
we were talking about before. And we

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00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:57,279
aren't honored to have with us.
David Berlinski, Senior Fellow the Discovery Institute's

386
00:29:57,359 --> 00:30:03,319
Center for Science and Culture, the
author of Deniable Darwin, The Devil's Delusion,

387
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:07,640
Human Nature, and just out this
month, Science After Babbel. David,

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00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:11,680
welcome. I was reading an excerpt
of your book today, and what

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00:30:11,759 --> 00:30:15,279
are the lines that struck me and
I copied it down, was that talking

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00:30:15,279 --> 00:30:21,680
about science and the constellations are lack
thereof of science. Talking about the arid

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00:30:21,759 --> 00:30:26,359
nature of the things we are discussing, you said, there remains a curious

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00:30:26,359 --> 00:30:33,400
fact that no one much likes what
everyone accepts. I found that interesting that

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00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:37,799
we are in this world of scientism, that we are in this world where

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00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:44,880
we had erected this edifice of knowledge, but it hasn't brought in anybody happiness

395
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,839
as a matter of fact, the
more the more it comes out with what

396
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:55,240
you regard as outlandish ideas be unhappier. Our viewer of ourselves in the world,

397
00:30:55,519 --> 00:30:57,680
in the universe seems to be So, why is it? Why why

398
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:00,039
do we all just trust the science? I guess I should ask you,

399
00:31:02,519 --> 00:31:07,839
Well, I don't know that we
all trust the science. We just find

400
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:12,920
ourselves in a world in which we
are obliged to accept certain features of the

401
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:21,599
world which are clearly the user fructs
of the scientific system of belief. We

402
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:26,759
don't have much choice with respect to
many of those artifacts. Telephonies, the

403
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:33,960
food system, habitation, sanitation,
all of those are just given to us,

404
00:31:33,079 --> 00:31:37,920
and as givens we have to accept
it. So our margin of choices

405
00:31:37,079 --> 00:31:45,960
relatively narrow. When I remark or
remark that none of us much likes this

406
00:31:45,119 --> 00:31:49,759
system of belief, it's not for
the technological benefitiis from may or may not

407
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:56,720
be particularly satisfactory. It's for the
underlying vision of what it means to be

408
00:31:56,799 --> 00:32:01,039
a human being in a human universe
that I'm speaking. And it seems to

409
00:32:01,039 --> 00:32:07,200
me that without a great deal of
careful reflection on the part of the scientific

410
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:13,799
community, it has nonetheless given us
a certain perspective that as we occupy a

411
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:17,559
minor planet in the Solar System,
we are of no cosmic significance whatsoever.

412
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:22,519
There's nothing particularly remarkable about human life. It's a continuity with animal life,

413
00:32:22,519 --> 00:32:28,400
and animal life with an accident.
There's no intrinsic meaning, purpose, dignity,

414
00:32:28,519 --> 00:32:34,960
or teleology associated with human life.
Religious beliefs completely arbitrary and lacking in

415
00:32:35,039 --> 00:32:39,759
all credibility as far as we can
see. The ultimate constituents of reality,

416
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:46,160
so speaks the scientific community, are
things like quantum fields erupting every now and

417
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:52,519
then into some shower of particles.
And that's about it. Now, it's

418
00:32:52,519 --> 00:32:59,160
perfectly obvious why most people don't consider
that a particularly attractive world view. But

419
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,799
there is any way. That is
a worldview. It's a dominant worldview.

420
00:33:01,799 --> 00:33:08,440
It's a very pervasive worldview, and
it's a worldview that's not all that easy

421
00:33:08,519 --> 00:33:16,160
to rebut and yet rebutted. David
Berlinski does do in his book Science After

422
00:33:16,839 --> 00:33:23,559
Babbel. David, may, I
tell you why you're just an execrable human

423
00:33:23,599 --> 00:33:28,680
being for having the temerity to write
such a book and offer such arguments.

424
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:35,359
Here's why, Because we know better. We know what religion leads to.

425
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:40,880
We've been through the wars of religion. It was only science, only the

426
00:33:42,559 --> 00:33:47,839
discovery and steady application of the scientific
method, of empiricism, of trial and

427
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:57,559
error, of serious engagement with reality
around us, that got us out of

428
00:33:57,599 --> 00:34:05,160
our heads, out of useless,
unprovable speculation on how many angels can dance

429
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:09,199
on the head of a pin,
that enabled us to climb out of poverty,

430
00:34:09,199 --> 00:34:14,800
that gave us the industrial revolution that
is now giving us gave us the

431
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:20,679
communications revolution that's now giving us a
green a world of green energy, and

432
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:25,079
that has imposed a certain peace that
has let us get along together in a

433
00:34:25,119 --> 00:34:34,440
pluralistic way by putting religion and this
whole dark age of human thought in a

434
00:34:34,519 --> 00:34:40,119
box where it belongs and giving us
science instead. And this is the existential

435
00:34:40,599 --> 00:34:45,840
We speak to you in Paris.
Paris is the city of camu and sac.

436
00:34:46,119 --> 00:34:51,280
If it is the case that we
are alone in a vast universe,

437
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,639
that life has no meaning except the
meaning that we impute to it, well,

438
00:34:54,679 --> 00:35:00,440
then welcome to existentialism. Great minds
have been there all ready in the

439
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:02,159
twentieth century. That is just we
just are going to have to learn to

440
00:35:02,199 --> 00:35:08,039
live with reality, be brave,
embrace it, and don't try to knock

441
00:35:08,079 --> 00:35:15,960
it down, to which David Berlinski
responds, how all that sounds good to

442
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:21,719
me, at least the first forty
seconds of your remark. If you stop

443
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,039
after forty seconds, yeah, if
you could point me in the direction of

444
00:35:24,079 --> 00:35:30,320
where I would find the Enlightenment in
its full flower, I would at least

445
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,000
consider leaving my apartment and going there. But as far as I can,

446
00:35:35,199 --> 00:35:40,199
sitting where I am in my apartments
in Europe, the Enlightenment is about as

447
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:45,800
far from contemporary concerns as it has
always been. It seems to be even

448
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:52,719
on the contrary that the Enlightenment has
proven itself feckless and incompetent in the face

449
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:57,519
of twentieth century of horrors, and
it seems to be doing no better in

450
00:35:57,559 --> 00:36:02,159
the face of twenty first century.
But more to the point that we had

451
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:09,159
been offered on the part of the
scientific establishment in the late twenty is not

452
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:15,159
embracing manly confrontation with the reality.
But across the border with is prawl from

453
00:36:15,199 --> 00:36:23,039
the reality. And I think that
withdrawl, the melancholing law withdrawing row is

454
00:36:23,079 --> 00:36:29,239
the overwhelming fact of the scientific enterprise
in the twenty four century. Every sense

455
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:38,159
of reality is now trembling because there's
a very cold wind blowing. The Enlightenment

456
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:42,960
ideal, which is really a Greek
ideal, that we can know the world

457
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:45,960
as it really is, seems very
fragile. No, we can't really know

458
00:36:46,079 --> 00:36:50,360
the world as it is. What
we can know of various theories, very

459
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:54,119
various perception. Look, all of
our social life today is consumed with the

460
00:36:54,239 --> 00:37:01,400
idea that the believer proposition is exactly
what is meant by knowing that proposition.

461
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:07,960
That's what the phrase so often used, my truth really comes to the standard

462
00:37:08,039 --> 00:37:15,400
for epistemological commitment now is not knowledge
but belief interconviction. That's not a confrontation

463
00:37:15,519 --> 00:37:22,039
with theology. That's a withdrawal from
reality. Every sense that the stertal world

464
00:37:22,119 --> 00:37:29,800
imposes constraints on human cognition, that's
proven to be very flabby. Look at

465
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:35,519
the chat GPT. Interact with chat
GPT, and it's a remarkable technological achievement,

466
00:37:35,599 --> 00:37:39,079
no doubt, and interacting with it
is very constructive, very salutary.

467
00:37:39,159 --> 00:37:45,920
Look, the thing hallucinates, It
says things which are not so it's a

468
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:50,719
form of intelligence. I think it's
a prophetic form of intelligence, because that

469
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:54,920
is where we are headed to a
universe in which what is imagined, believed,

470
00:37:55,000 --> 00:38:01,880
conjecture, construe has epistemological promise over
what is known and what is true.

471
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:07,320
It's no hallucinating, it's just behaving
the way we're all going to behave

472
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:12,400
in fifty years. I don't know
where to start to start to pull out

473
00:38:12,519 --> 00:38:17,719
questions from from the remarkable answers.
I mean, we can know the world

474
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:22,760
in a sense I know that if
I bang my head against that wall,

475
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:24,800
it will hurt. I know that
if I slam my hand on that door

476
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:29,119
over there, it will be a
similar sensation. I also know that there

477
00:38:29,159 --> 00:38:34,599
are things that I do not see
that birds and bugs see because they are

478
00:38:34,639 --> 00:38:37,800
looking at the world through different wavelengths
and for different purposes. But we can

479
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:42,039
all agree on a certain number of
things that exist, that are true,

480
00:38:42,079 --> 00:38:45,559
that are solid, that are right. That's the whole. That's the whole.

481
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:52,320
But what we have now is in
the absence of a dominating idea with

482
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:59,559
such gravity that everything revolves around it, we have instead just a kaleidoscope of

483
00:38:59,599 --> 00:39:02,280
individual constellations in which everybody has their
own beliefs and they're all equally valid,

484
00:39:02,519 --> 00:39:07,000
and we have nothing uniting us except
for the belief that all beliefs are valid.

485
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,480
If I'm summing up correctly, what
you have to say, The question

486
00:39:12,599 --> 00:39:15,519
isn't how do we get back to
a central organizing principle again, because that

487
00:39:15,559 --> 00:39:20,639
could be a very bad central organizing
principle. How do we get back to

488
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:25,840
a good one? And is it
possible in these days where identity and information

489
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:32,320
and knowledge and belief is so prismatically
scattered that there's no hope of gathering it

490
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:37,679
back into a single shaft of light. Again, If that sounds like a

491
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:39,440
sort of question that makes any sense, what do we do? I guess,

492
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,039
well, I don't know what we
are going to do. I'm going

493
00:39:45,079 --> 00:39:50,079
to finish my cigar. Well,
let me ask chat GPT. What is

494
00:39:50,159 --> 00:39:53,039
David Berlinski going to do? But
here's the point. Everything you just said

495
00:39:54,159 --> 00:40:00,360
it is common sensical the people with
a certain kind of education, position,

496
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:06,960
certain background. But this was accommodated
in the eighteenth century by Bishop Barker,

497
00:40:07,639 --> 00:40:13,679
who said, to be is to
be perceived. There's nothing else. You

498
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,480
bang your hand on a door,
you can dismiss the door as an external

499
00:40:17,519 --> 00:40:23,000
object and savor or regret the pain
that has just been induced in your hand.

500
00:40:24,119 --> 00:40:29,599
Einstein had the same discussion with proponents
of quantum theory. I had forgot

501
00:40:29,639 --> 00:40:32,559
who he asked, Heisenberg or Niels
bought. Do you really believe that when

502
00:40:32,599 --> 00:40:37,320
I'm not looking at the moon it
disappears There's no such to which the obvious

503
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:45,079
answer from Barkley's position, from any
idealist position, any solipsis position, is

504
00:40:45,159 --> 00:40:49,039
yes, there is no such thing
as the external object. There are only

505
00:40:49,199 --> 00:40:53,400
ideas in your mind or in the
mind of God. Interesting, interesting way

506
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:58,000
to present that. When I was
in graduate school in the mid nineteen sixties,

507
00:40:58,039 --> 00:41:01,719
the philosopher to which everyone repaired was
Unan, and after yun Count and

508
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:07,480
then after Count the twentieth century critical
analysts Burton Russell all the way to Plant.

509
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:12,639
I would bet that the philosophers who
are being read avidly now in the

510
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:20,079
graduate schools not un but Barkley,
not Count but Hagel, and following Barkley

511
00:41:20,199 --> 00:41:24,400
and Hagel, all the old forgotten
British idealists. Because we are clearly living

512
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:31,880
in a time bordering on the form
of collective solipcism. The fact that when

513
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:37,719
I smack my hand on my own
table, I feel something my hand is

514
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,920
undoubted. We all agree to that. But the further inference that there's a

515
00:41:42,079 --> 00:41:49,079
system of permanently existing objects beyond the
ken of my senses can be denied,

516
00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:53,440
and it has very consistently been denied
by Barkley. For example, to be

517
00:41:53,639 --> 00:41:59,880
is to be perceived, its replaced
in the twenty first century by the apathem.

518
00:42:00,079 --> 00:42:04,719
To be is to be believed,
and even more notable, to be

519
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:08,760
is to be believed by a great
many people. That increases the strength of

520
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:14,480
conviction which we can bring to bear
on a belief. Something that Botley has

521
00:42:14,559 --> 00:42:20,000
changed, and the way we look
at these issues David Boswell's Life of Johnson,

522
00:42:20,679 --> 00:42:24,639
Sir, how do you refute Bishop
Berkeley? And I refute them?

523
00:42:24,679 --> 00:42:29,079
Thus he kicked the stone? Because
that convince you. After what I've just

524
00:42:29,159 --> 00:42:32,480
said, it convinces me. But
that's because I start in a certain position

525
00:42:32,519 --> 00:42:36,519
in the first place, to which
I now come. You have named this

526
00:42:36,599 --> 00:42:42,840
book science after Babel. You're going
to tell us in a moment quite what

527
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,880
you mean by that, But I
can't help observing it's in the title,

528
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:50,400
and it's in you, and you
and I have known each other a while

529
00:42:50,519 --> 00:42:58,719
now that not only are you totally
conversant with all the philosophers of the twentieth

530
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:05,920
century, the mathematical under the only
man I know who really understands quantum mechanics,

531
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:10,400
I mean, really understands it.
Here you are putting right into the

532
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:21,440
title an allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures, which means what you take this late

533
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:29,719
Bronze Age early Modern period book collection
of scriptures? Seriously? You think there

534
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:32,840
is wisdom to be found there relevant
to us today. I know better than

535
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:36,320
to say, David, do you
believe in God? Because I've tried that

536
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:42,400
before and it's gotten me nowhere.
Why is Babbel in the title? Well,

537
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,400
there are two reasons. One you
pointed out yourself. It's a magnificent

538
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:50,159
biblical story. It's pregnant story.
It's also the something to the Great painting

539
00:43:50,239 --> 00:43:54,039
by Peter Bordal. Yes, I
think, I'm not sure. I'm looking

540
00:43:54,039 --> 00:43:55,920
for a copy of mile. I
don't know where it is, but I

541
00:43:55,920 --> 00:44:00,519
think there's a copy of the painting
on the book cover. The statement,

542
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:09,159
but it's an ambiguous title. The
story of the Tower Babbles, the story

543
00:44:10,039 --> 00:44:15,519
of the extent to which the arrogance
of architects. Architects building a tower to

544
00:44:15,599 --> 00:44:22,800
reach the heavens was confounded by God
because he divided their tongues so they could

545
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:27,760
no longer successfully communicate. And that's
in the picture too, because you can

546
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:32,840
see looking at the picture that there's
enormous squat tower is incoherent. I like

547
00:44:34,159 --> 00:44:39,800
that image. I like the story
because even though it makes a point about

548
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:46,280
the incoherence of the architecture, the
fact visible in front of your eyes remains

549
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:52,519
the tower is still selling that architects
or no architects. I think that's the

550
00:44:52,599 --> 00:44:57,679
real meaning of the title. We
are clearly in a position where we had

551
00:44:58,039 --> 00:45:01,760
begun to examine the scien. We've
worked with three centuries incredible songs that we've

552
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:07,199
worked with three centuries with an eye
to consistency, coherence, and further development.

553
00:45:07,639 --> 00:45:13,159
Discovered that there are places of info
inherence. But we on the outside,

554
00:45:13,159 --> 00:45:16,480
and I'm certainly on the outside,
nonetheless, are obliged to admit that

555
00:45:16,519 --> 00:45:22,800
this great power is still standard despite
any any math versions I many I could

556
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:28,880
express, And it can be finished
if people get together, solve the language

557
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:31,599
problem, learning one another's tongues,
work out a way to do it.

558
00:45:32,159 --> 00:45:37,559
But now Unfortunately, where we are
today, we have the very notions of

559
00:45:37,599 --> 00:45:45,719
empiricism are being eroded by this,
this insistence on personal truth, on my

560
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:50,880
truth, because all of the things
that undergird the ability to construct the tower,

561
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:57,360
things like just basic mechanics, things
like math, are being held up

562
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:05,800
as products of a of an errant, evil civilization, with colonialism and racism

563
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:07,119
and everything else baked right into the
bones of it. I mean, it's

564
00:46:07,159 --> 00:46:10,199
critical race theories, as you have
to demolish all of these institutions in order

565
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:15,079
to create the one that will bring
about the utopia, So you can't even

566
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:17,880
the tower may stand, but we
look at it like dumb apes goddling,

567
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:25,519
because we will end up without the
skills to begin construction. Anew, I

568
00:46:25,559 --> 00:46:30,320
agree with you. I agree with
you completely. I don't look forward to

569
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:36,559
aher army. The best of circumstances
in which languages are suddenly reconciled and the

570
00:46:37,119 --> 00:46:42,239
development of the science since taking place
between the sixteen and the twentieth century once

571
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:45,199
again proceeds on upload, something new
will happen. I think something new is

572
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:50,039
happening right now on artificial intelligence.
That's a separate discussion. But I agree

573
00:46:50,079 --> 00:46:54,920
with you that they're real and serious
threats to the integrity not only of the

574
00:46:55,000 --> 00:47:02,039
scientific establishment, but of intellectual itself. Our ability clearly and predicting the reason

575
00:47:02,079 --> 00:47:13,039
about anything is compromised when some sense
of the superiority of certain ways of addressing

576
00:47:13,079 --> 00:47:20,719
issues is dismissed from consideration in favor
of rather squalid political deals in which every

577
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,480
identity boot in society is represented in
proportion to its numbers, so that at

578
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:30,480
the Institute for Advanced Study, if
you're proposed to study the latest developments in

579
00:47:30,639 --> 00:47:37,400
quantum field theory, at least two
percent of your professorship must be composed of

580
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:43,599
Swiss Chinese lesbians. That is a
recipe for disaster. Everybody understands that.

581
00:47:43,679 --> 00:47:45,519
Everybody knows it, everyone's afraid of
it, and no one can do a

582
00:47:45,559 --> 00:47:49,440
blessed thing about it. That is
a fact of life. It's not a

583
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:52,679
fact if everybody, it's a fact
of life. Anyone, whether any form

584
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:59,079
of organized intellectual life is going to
survive the present moment of collective solecism.

585
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,639
It's very difficult to answer. But
all that being said, and I agree

586
00:48:02,639 --> 00:48:08,000
with you completely on the shrewdness of
your political analysis. You must not forget

587
00:48:08,199 --> 00:48:20,000
that every squalid movement in contemporary life
can be traced back intellectually to philosophical or

588
00:48:20,039 --> 00:48:25,800
mathematical or physical principles that are much
deeper than the squalidness of the present day

589
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:35,000
would indicate compromising with truth, for
example, drawing back from empiricism, these

590
00:48:35,039 --> 00:48:39,199
are not simply matters of identity quality. They have their roots and philosophical and

591
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:45,599
mathematical developments of the nineteen filities,
and that should be that should be acknowledged.

592
00:48:45,639 --> 00:48:50,639
It's not a trivial phenomena in your
faces, it's a very deep It

593
00:48:50,679 --> 00:48:53,159
has its trivial aspects. I'm the
first one to make fun of it,

594
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:58,760
but it has its much more significant
expense as well. We know certain things

595
00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:04,719
now in the fashion of no go
theorems in physics, that is to say,

596
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:08,559
we know certain things are just not
possible when we want to speak of

597
00:49:08,599 --> 00:49:15,119
the truth. We know there is
no terminal point. We consistently and continuously

598
00:49:15,159 --> 00:49:20,280
we will be forced to move to
evermore expansive definitions. And that's just a

599
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:28,159
fact of logic. And there are
many, many other similar considerations that could

600
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:32,920
be adduced. It's not the fact
that all progress in mathematics and philosophy leads

601
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:36,719
in the direction we would like it
to lead. Sometimes it leads in the

602
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:39,920
reverse direction. And that's happened in
the twentieth century. The fact that quantum

603
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:45,239
mechanics is not support naive and criticism. Nobody wanted that, nobody expected it,

604
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:51,039
but it doesn't. And that's just
a fact. We're talking with David

605
00:49:51,039 --> 00:49:58,360
Berlinski, philosopher and mathematician whose new
book is Science After Babel, and if

606
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:05,320
you are like me and unlike David, you will need to savor Science after

607
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:12,000
Babel, page by page by page. David, here's we have to talk

608
00:50:12,039 --> 00:50:15,079
more. We just have to.
But here's here's a question, a kind

609
00:50:15,079 --> 00:50:22,239
of closing question from me for now, recognizing that it's morning over here for

610
00:50:22,360 --> 00:50:25,280
us, and James and I have
commitments, and it's evening over there for

611
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:29,480
you, and you'd like to I
got all the time in the world you

612
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:30,440
have, Okay, I was about
to say, you want to you want

613
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:35,599
a NEGRONI to go with that cigar? All right? So we have been

614
00:50:35,599 --> 00:50:40,400
through an episode in this country and
in the West generally, but of COVID,

615
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:49,360
of public health officials standing on the
science, the science, the science,

616
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:55,559
using that, using the science to
justify a certain political well, I

617
00:50:55,639 --> 00:51:01,760
think it was just ham fistedness,
but to shut down opposition. And so

618
00:51:02,079 --> 00:51:08,039
this is in mind you seem you
being you. Of course, there are

619
00:51:08,079 --> 00:51:14,960
many arguments taking place at many different
levels. But are you arguing in science

620
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:22,920
after Babbel, that we have been
untrue to the scientific project, that we

621
00:51:22,039 --> 00:51:29,039
have failed to treat science as science, that during the COVID lockdown, for

622
00:51:29,079 --> 00:51:36,480
example, even as Burke said,
a thousand knights should have sprung to the

623
00:51:36,559 --> 00:51:42,440
defense of the Queen of Marie Antoinette
of France, a thousand scientists should have

624
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:46,280
sprung up to say to Fauci,
no, no, no, there's still

625
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:51,519
debate over this and over this and
over this, and you should use some

626
00:51:51,599 --> 00:51:55,119
of your budget of billions to set
up rapid tests, in other words,

627
00:51:55,159 --> 00:52:01,039
to pursue the science. Or are
you making the argument that at this stage

628
00:52:01,039 --> 00:52:07,199
of the game, one of the
many things we now know about science is

629
00:52:07,199 --> 00:52:15,199
that it is in and of itself
limited, that, far from giving us

630
00:52:15,280 --> 00:52:21,519
the sword with which we can slash
every Gordian knot that stands between us and

631
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:29,119
a deep understanding of reality, it's
a limited tool. It can slash some

632
00:52:29,199 --> 00:52:34,360
knots, but not others. I
guess what I'm asking, And of course,

633
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,280
by comparison with whatever you're about to
say, it's a crude question.

634
00:52:37,679 --> 00:52:42,119
Are you saying more science, but
we must be true to science, we

635
00:52:42,679 --> 00:52:49,119
have permitted ourselves to misunderstand it.
Or are you saying the whole scientific project

636
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:55,719
became infused with a grand kind of
pomposity and science is isself very limited?

637
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:07,039
Can I adopt both positions simultaneous,
sho being you? Of course, look

638
00:53:07,079 --> 00:53:10,679
the one thing I have to remind
you of yours. I was not in

639
00:53:10,719 --> 00:53:15,760
the United States during COVID. I
was in France, and I think experiences

640
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:21,679
as between France and I say,
in retrospect then look rather different. There

641
00:53:21,800 --> 00:53:28,159
is no comparable movement in France attacking
French health officials, for example, in

642
00:53:28,199 --> 00:53:31,559
the way that Fauci is being attacked. And I'm not even sure what the

643
00:53:31,599 --> 00:53:35,880
what the graverman of the attack is. That's how far away I am from

644
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:39,880
current affairs in the United States.
But apparently he made some serious mistakes with

645
00:53:39,920 --> 00:53:46,679
respect to masking, with respect to
school shutdowns exactly the masking school shutdowns,

646
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:52,039
and I forgot there was there was
really nothing comparable. I think there was

647
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:58,039
a fairly widespread, indeed sense of
admiration in France for the way health officials

648
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:02,480
actually managed the pandemic. In the
end, everybody agrees that the French government

649
00:54:02,519 --> 00:54:07,039
blundered very badly in the first two
or three months. They didn't take the

650
00:54:07,159 --> 00:54:12,320
lesson of Italy very seriously. There
was slow to respond, and people were

651
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:15,079
horrified to discover that they had no
masks, that they had never bothered to

652
00:54:15,159 --> 00:54:20,440
stock up in masks. The mask
program ended in two thousand and eight or

653
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:24,320
something like that, but thereafter I
think the government very successfully rebounded. It

654
00:54:25,199 --> 00:54:30,400
did launch a program of vaccination which
continues to this day. It did obtain

655
00:54:31,039 --> 00:54:37,599
I think something like eight vaccinal coverage. I can't say it was a triumph

656
00:54:37,679 --> 00:54:45,360
because too many people died, but
in certain respects it was France's public system

657
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:51,199
at its best. So I really
can't comment on I do know that Fauci

658
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:55,719
seems to have played an extremely dishonorable
role with respect to the origins of the

659
00:54:55,800 --> 00:55:00,800
COVID virus in Uhan, and that
I know from the inside, because I

660
00:55:00,920 --> 00:55:06,519
published pieces and influence about that,
and I know about the calls that he

661
00:55:06,599 --> 00:55:09,880
made, and I know about his
efforts to gain a unanimity of opinion with

662
00:55:10,119 --> 00:55:15,360
respect to the impossibility of a laboratory. But I gather that's not really what

663
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:20,880
you are talking about. Well,
even setting fout to your side, are

664
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:24,639
you saying we need to Our problem
today is that we have misunderstood what science

665
00:55:24,679 --> 00:55:29,639
can and cannot do, and we
need to return to a true understanding of

666
00:55:29,639 --> 00:55:32,440
science and back it. We need
more science, but we need to understand

667
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:37,280
it properly. Or are you saying, ladies and gentlemen, after three hundred

668
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:43,079
years of this, science has an
announcement to make. It can only do

669
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:50,880
so much, and we must while
remaining true and appreciating these staggering goods that

670
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:55,400
science has given us. If we
wish meaning in life, if we wish

671
00:55:55,440 --> 00:56:00,559
to pursue the deepest philosophical questions that
we've been working on for the last couple

672
00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:05,199
of thousand years, we're going to
have to We're going to have to accept

673
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:09,320
the limits on science and turn to
other means. Is that closer to the

674
00:56:09,400 --> 00:56:15,159
argument in science after babble? Well, I think it's a reasonable argument.

675
00:56:15,519 --> 00:56:19,639
To the extent that it's reasonable.
I hope I've made it for sure.

676
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,320
There are many areas of life.
Perhaps the most important areas where none of

677
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:30,559
the great theories really is helpfully instruct
or certainly not quantum field theory. Where

678
00:56:30,599 --> 00:56:34,480
it comes to the aching questions of
life and death, meaning, significance,

679
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:40,320
the inference to something beyond our brief
human existence. None of these questions are

680
00:56:40,360 --> 00:56:45,039
touched on by quantum field theory or
the lang Lands program in mathematics, or

681
00:56:45,079 --> 00:56:50,559
anything else. What we get from
the science, since our glimpses of a

682
00:56:50,719 --> 00:56:54,880
more ordered structural laws sharing in thot
ways of world, that's something else.

683
00:56:55,639 --> 00:57:00,519
That's a benefit. It's the same
benefit we get from looking at work art

684
00:57:00,159 --> 00:57:06,199
But in terms of science as its
practice today, it seems to me there

685
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:13,599
is a farm or dangerous than eubristic
sense of limit less possibilities than there was

686
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:19,599
Sage fifty years ago. After all, the introduction of artificial intelligence is not

687
00:57:19,719 --> 00:57:24,599
supposed to end with a system that
roughly mimits human intelligence. It's supposed to

688
00:57:24,679 --> 00:57:31,280
introduce us to an inferior of ever
superior intelligence in his own minds, and

689
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:37,679
that's a program of unlimited ambition.
The same thing is true of various attempts

690
00:57:37,679 --> 00:57:45,000
in Silicon Valley and beyond to merge
consciousness into a computer system or to promote

691
00:57:45,199 --> 00:57:51,960
various absurdain im dissolution personally republican transhumanist
schemes. They all participate in the same

692
00:57:52,039 --> 00:57:58,400
desire to push boundaries away and march
well beyond the boundaries we thought we had

693
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:00,519
the opposed. So no, I
don't. I don't think the message is

694
00:58:00,559 --> 00:58:05,960
that the scientific community itself is discovering
them. It never will, it never

695
00:58:06,079 --> 00:58:09,719
has. The question is, and
it's a it's a real philosophic as well

696
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:15,039
as the scientific question. Are there
those limits? Is everything that's not forbidden

697
00:58:15,079 --> 00:58:20,880
by the laws of physics actually possible? And it possible desirable? Those are

698
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:24,159
very significant questions. I didn't have
an answer, but I think they should

699
00:58:24,199 --> 00:58:31,639
be asked. Well. To Peter's
point, there has been there's never been

700
00:58:31,679 --> 00:58:35,280
a time in American culture where there
hasn't been a desire for some sort of

701
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,400
spirituality. They just don't like Christianity
because it's what their parents made them go

702
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:42,679
to when they were kids in the
hand to where itchy church pants and being

703
00:58:42,719 --> 00:58:45,599
a place to smell the old candles. They didn't like it, and so

704
00:58:45,639 --> 00:58:50,360
they came accurrent They fell for every
single little idiotic, newfangled or imported idea

705
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:52,960
that came along. So there's always
been a desire for some sort of spirituality.

706
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:58,679
It's a question of whether we have
something that can can can meet the

707
00:58:58,760 --> 00:59:01,000
challenges that the new era of science
is providing. When you say that there

708
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:07,480
are no boundaries there, that there's
a sense of a desire for more and

709
00:59:07,639 --> 00:59:14,440
more, almost theological forms of science
that pause with these strange, these strange

710
00:59:15,360 --> 00:59:19,400
quantum ideas that the brain really can't
wrap itself around, and but maybe are

711
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,039
true when you need to find out, etc. Etc. It brings me

712
00:59:22,039 --> 00:59:25,480
back to the one thing I've never
been able to grasp in my gut and

713
00:59:25,599 --> 00:59:30,599
head at the same time, and
that's dark matter. I'm sure there's a

714
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:34,280
perfectly good reason for it, and
that there are people who can explain it

715
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:38,360
to me, but it almost seems
religious in its desire for we can't explain

716
00:59:38,519 --> 00:59:42,199
this part about the universe, so
we're going to make up a thing that

717
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:45,679
explains it. And what I love
about this whole theory is that it comes

718
00:59:45,679 --> 00:59:50,519
down to two views of human of
humanity, of our of our destiny.

719
00:59:50,960 --> 00:59:53,239
If there are a sufficient mass in
the universe, at some point, expansion

720
00:59:53,360 --> 01:00:00,400
stops and it contracts back down into
that singular singularity, into that infinitely hot,

721
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:02,000
dense point. Then it explodes and
starts the whole thing again. And

722
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:07,639
the whole universe is a series of
this back and forth, almost like respiration.

723
01:00:07,239 --> 01:00:09,800
And we're in one form of the
breath now the other. If there

724
01:00:09,840 --> 01:00:14,159
isn't sufficient mass to bring the universepect
together, is heat death or the end

725
01:00:14,199 --> 01:00:17,360
of the universe is every single particle
separated by hundreds of billions of light years,

726
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:22,000
which is a bleak thing. And
there are some people who find solace

727
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:27,320
in heat death. And there are
some people who find solace the people,

728
01:00:27,559 --> 01:00:31,599
the people who believe that, who
believe that there is that humanity itself is

729
01:00:31,679 --> 01:00:38,639
a is a uniquely loathsome thing of
virus in the universe. Lots of those

730
01:00:38,840 --> 01:00:44,239
nuts around, But they always believe
that getting rid of humanity, you might

731
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:49,599
promote the welfare, say of cows. I don't want to confront them with

732
01:00:49,639 --> 01:00:54,960
a prospect of an omnivorous heat that
destroys everything. Everybody rebels against that,

733
01:00:55,079 --> 01:01:00,800
scruples at that. But the idea
of the multiverse that's equally repugnant, isn't

734
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:05,519
it. Imagine clambering to the edge
of space and time only to find your

735
01:01:05,559 --> 01:01:09,480
double on the other side of the
fence, pursuing some inane course of correction

736
01:01:09,559 --> 01:01:14,880
in your own life, and having
all sorts of philosophical problems about which is

737
01:01:14,920 --> 01:01:19,440
the real you. I think I
prefer the heat death to that. I

738
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:22,719
would like to argue about the multiverse
with you, and we probably already are

739
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:24,000
in some other multiverse, but we're
gonna have to get to that in another

740
01:01:24,000 --> 01:01:29,880
show. You're gonna have to come
back because um, there is so much

741
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:34,880
to be found in what you say
that it just takes me and I'm gonna

742
01:01:34,880 --> 01:01:37,639
go back and listen to this and
regret all the things that I've never asked

743
01:01:37,679 --> 01:01:40,159
and h and feel stupid for the
questions that I did. In the meantime,

744
01:01:40,239 --> 01:01:49,480
however, day you know that one
is exactly I know that's that's that's

745
01:01:49,559 --> 01:01:52,679
exactly it. In any case,
we enview you, Envy you, your

746
01:01:52,760 --> 01:01:57,480
cigar, your view of the city. Almost done. It's a metaphor for

747
01:01:57,519 --> 01:02:00,199
the show, right right, right
right. That's so, buy an extra

748
01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:05,280
long Romeo and Juliet next time and
we'll have at it again. The book

749
01:02:05,320 --> 01:02:08,000
is Science after Babble, and we're
going to have you on again. We

750
01:02:08,119 --> 01:02:13,039
vow it, we we pledge it, we demand it. David Berlinsky in

751
01:02:13,079 --> 01:02:15,000
Paris joining us on the Ricochet podcast. What a pleasure, sir, good

752
01:02:15,079 --> 01:02:19,440
night, good night. Thanks very
much for having me, David, thank

753
01:02:19,480 --> 01:02:23,880
you so much. Zike has done
both of you. You know, this

754
01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:27,840
is the point of the podcast where
you usually tell people that they can meet

755
01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:32,679
up in real space and have a
meeting. But I think we should have

756
01:02:32,719 --> 01:02:37,639
a Paris Ricochet meetup. I don't
know how we're going to figure it out,

757
01:02:37,639 --> 01:02:42,039
but I think we should, and
we should all find some extraordinary restaurant,

758
01:02:42,679 --> 01:02:45,440
complete with French beers and snails and
the rest of it, and invite

759
01:02:45,480 --> 01:02:49,079
David and just pepper him with questions
for the entire evening, because I have

760
01:02:49,119 --> 01:02:54,119
the feeling that fellow is inclined to
a philosophical conversation of an unstinting nature,

761
01:02:54,239 --> 01:03:00,679
and that would be a good idea, right Peter, Oh, I have

762
01:03:00,599 --> 01:03:07,559
have I have experienced essentially unstinted,
Yes, unstinted, two cigars, several

763
01:03:07,599 --> 01:03:15,719
negrones. Talking with David is one
of the great I was about to call

764
01:03:15,760 --> 01:03:19,360
it mind blowing, which is a
kind of banality from what the nineteen sixties,

765
01:03:19,719 --> 01:03:23,079
but it does really feel almost as
though after you do, you know,

766
01:03:23,199 --> 01:03:27,920
there's some people it's almost the definition
of a bore that you feel less

767
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,239
alive after talking to him, David. It's the other way around. Not

768
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:32,639
only do you feel more alive,
but you feel as though, in some

769
01:03:32,679 --> 01:03:37,440
basic way you're your brain is actually
bigger inside your skull, that he has

770
01:03:37,519 --> 01:03:42,960
somehow expanded your way, the very
way in which you look at at at

771
01:03:43,159 --> 01:03:45,880
anyway. Well, he drives me
to bad radio. Good radio is where

772
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:49,519
you come back immediately with a question. There's no dead air. You gotta

773
01:03:49,519 --> 01:03:53,199
be you just yes, you move
along, and if you're trained in radio

774
01:03:53,360 --> 01:03:57,559
or trained as a guest, you
have the ability to start speaking even if

775
01:03:57,599 --> 01:04:00,679
you do not know what you're going
to say exactly. It just comes with

776
01:04:00,719 --> 01:04:03,440
the profession telling me with David,
I would I would take that paragraph and

777
01:04:03,440 --> 01:04:08,800
I download it, and I'd pick
it apart, and I would I would

778
01:04:08,800 --> 01:04:13,480
be comfortable with forty five forty five
seconds of dead air, which is an

779
01:04:13,519 --> 01:04:16,280
eternity trying to figure out exactly how
I wanted to say what I wanted to

780
01:04:16,320 --> 01:04:19,599
say and not make a fool of
myself for saying it. So that's absolutely

781
01:04:19,639 --> 01:04:23,840
fun and I cannot imagine adding alcohol
to the max. But we're going to

782
01:04:23,880 --> 01:04:26,400
have to leave that for some other
day. Like I say in the in

783
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:30,639
the multiverse, we're already doing this
in Paris and we're on our third NEGRONI.

784
01:04:30,199 --> 01:04:34,119
So what more can we say than
that, Peter? Can we know?

785
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:38,480
We want to tell you. By
the way, this podcast was brought

786
01:04:38,480 --> 01:04:42,119
to you by us and by all
the wonderful folks you've heard about in the

787
01:04:42,159 --> 01:04:45,199
interstitials, and of course by ricochet
dot com. Support us by supporting ricochet

788
01:04:45,239 --> 01:04:50,159
dot com, go to ricochet dot
com, slash join jo I n and

789
01:04:50,280 --> 01:04:56,800
become part of what some are saying
is the last remaining sane sliver of the

790
01:04:56,800 --> 01:04:59,760
Internet. And there are days when
I doubt that, But there's never a

791
01:04:59,840 --> 01:05:02,079
day where I dont hit Ricochet four
or five times just to see what's new.

792
01:05:02,639 --> 01:05:06,559
Peter, Um, that's it Rob? Next week, I hope,

793
01:05:06,599 --> 01:05:09,320
or Charlie or somebody. We don't
know what happened? Do we know?

794
01:05:09,480 --> 01:05:13,280
Do we know what happened to Rob? We don't know what happened. Actually,

795
01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:16,039
wait, isn't he how bizarre?
Right? Curse? Isn't he in

796
01:05:16,079 --> 01:05:19,320
Europe? He may be in Paris
at this very moment. It would have

797
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:24,719
been great if he just wandered into
the frame there exactly playing accord, like

798
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:28,639
a clown of money Python. But
that would for all we know. He

799
01:05:28,880 --> 01:05:30,559
you know, that says exactly what
he is doing. He was sitting in

800
01:05:30,639 --> 01:05:34,320
the other room, just biding his
time. All right, that's it,

801
01:05:34,360 --> 01:05:38,880
we're done, we're good. We'll
see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four

802
01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:48,280
as the main pusche and maybe now
we Ricochet joined the conversation