I'm not all here today, but I'm getting better. I guess this coffee
is home. Not what your country can do for you, ask what you
can do for your country. Mister Gerbatcheff, tear down this wall, read
my lips. Either you're with us or you were with the terrorists. It's
the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilax. Rob Long is out
this weekend. We're going to talk to Peter Schweitzer about Chinese influence and David
Berlinsky about well you're just gonna have to listen, so let's rails a podcast.
So it's hard to believe that an expungeible gun charge in two misdemeanors is
what Hunter Biden gets. It's an intentional production by the DJ and my administration.
No one and known is above the law. Welcome everybody. It's the
Ricochet Podcast. Number nine billion, seven and forty three million, six hundred
and forty two thousand. If you're keeping track now, just seems like that,
Actually no, it doesn't. It feels like number ten, number fifteen.
The spirit of adventure and newness is still in the air. As Peter
Robinson, who's been doing this is longer than I have steps up to the
mic once again with that fresh courage of a man who's willing to take on
the world and let the opinions fly and damn the consequences, right Peter,
Well, damn it anyway, No, damn it anyway. Yeah, we're
just saying before we start at the show, that you know, here we
are at the end of the week. I don't know when you're listening to
it, but chances are that the things, the objects, the fascinations,
the concerns that have churned through the American mind for the last week are probably
as with us seeping out into sort of torpid state where we want to move
on. For example, the whole week everyone was concerned about the Titanic submersible,
and now we know there's really nothing more to be said about it except
to home a few bars for those in peril at the sea and regret and
move on. Maybe you can talk about knock on things the way that some
people took this as a as an opportunity to let the world know what horrible
people that they are. Ben Dreyfussy actor did a piece on his substack about
empathy and the basic human quality of and how these people who were taking just
absolute delight in the fact that there were rich people down there who were probably
lost, end or dead or are suffering was a good thing actually, and
that it is a sign of virtue to wish ill of those people and define
that their situation was almost a delight in some sort of cosmic sense. The
people who see things the explicitly and entirely through a title economic prism themselves are
are miserable, unhappy people who go about every day in a state of fury
because the world is not conforming to what they know to be the truth and
the inevitability of things, and they have to get it out like this in
a way that is the most curious form of virtual signal signaling I can imagine.
I don't know if you saw a lot of this, Peter, But
is this new to our age as social media amplified it, or as social
media just allowed us to see that there are just rotten people out there and
they're always at man social What is there to say social media permitted people?
We don't we know, I haven't there's studies. I don't even know how
you'd structure this study. But don't we know that being on social media is
like driving in your car, you James, mild mannered person that mild wealth
not mild mannered, is not right. But you wouldn't ordinarily, strolling down
the sidewalk flip the bird to a to someone no one else on the sidewalk
in the car. I have I have to say momentary anger. I have
said nasty things twitters like that. Is this is? This is this hatred
for the rich? Anything new? No envy is one of the seven Deadly
sins? And do you think it stems from envy? Oh? Yeah,
for sure, for sure. It seems to me perfectly obvious. And this
last week was really really First of all, they missed the economic point.
They missed the story, and the story is that the richest man on that
submersible Hamish something or other can't recall. But as far as I can tell,
he was largely a self made man. So this is a man who
had gone through life creating enterprises, employing people, creating value of all kinds.
He wasn't. He wasn't. He did not pull together his fortune from
the from the sweat of the brow of oppressed peoples. It was a free
market economy in which he was operating. The second economic point, of course,
is that when rich people spend money on things that seemed frivolous to the
rest of us, they permit things to happen. Electric vehicles were originally just
it was a rich people around here in Silicon values started buying Tesla's. Now
they're a mass mark get commodity. On and on we go. So I
don't know exactly what the future is of deep sea exploration, but that people
were paying a quarter of a million dollars a seat for the last some number
of years. I know. Bill Buckley was one of the very first who
went down end up submersible and looked at the Titanic, wrote a marvelous piece
about it that all strikes me as admirable, and I'm waiting for you to
him the usual ode to the human spirit. So the other bit of this,
I have to say, looking at the news this morning, and it
now seems to be clear that something went wrong with that submersible. Very quickly
the Navy picked up the sound of an implosion. I read a couple of
pieces that if that is indeed what happens, and it now seems clear that
that is what happened, then death would have been instantaneous for everybody aboard.
And I have to say, for me personally, that was a relief because
even as all over Twitter people were mocking the five down below the surface,
I was thinking to myself, I can't imagine a worse way to die,
slow asphyxiation over ninety six hours, a mile and a half beneath the surface
of the ocean, total darkness. I just can't how, I just it's
a relief to me to know that it all happened instantly. I can't watch
videos of people spelunking, so I can't imagine putting myself in a situation where
I hear I hear the seventeen bolts being being put in place to seal me
in the two before I'm dropped down at the Yankee depth. So no,
yes, right, no, you're absolutely correct. I mean, although when
driving, I've never flipped anybody off. What I have done is have you
never you? Okay, let the record show you are a better human what
everyone a better human being than I am. What I have done is given
the Minnesota Midwestern equivalent of it, which is the raised hand, just a
raise head like like like what and I would if you're watching this on video,
of course you can see me making that distinctive gesture. But no,
you're right because as you are, you are ensconced in your own little intellectual
emotional bubble as you scroll through social media, ping, pogging, amongst a
dozen different things that make you angry. And so when you land on something,
yes, you can bring all the full force of the peevishness that you've
brought from the other tweets into this one. It's not a pleasant place.
It has you know, it has a great boon, and I'm glad it's
there. It's revelatory in what it says about people. But you're right,
social media doesn't make kids happy. It doesn't that, so it's not you
know, could we do without it? I'm just I'm thinking back to the
way we were talking before the show started, and I know there's nothing more
compelling than telling people what we were talking about before the short started. But
we were talking about, Hey, I'm called in radio and somebody who's bemoaning
the fact that, well, when you know, when Reagan got rid of
the Fairness Doctor, and all of a sudden it's turned into hate radio,
and all these crazy people started calling there was the same thing. It is
nonsense, but there is the There was at the time the sort of notion
that opening up the airwaves to everybody allows you, allows these voices, allows
these these these crazy people to say these things unmediated, and that conversation continues
to this day where you have my own Senator Amy Klobuscher, who's who's being
very concerned about the layoffs at Meta and Twitter and the rest of it,
and whether or not they will be able to get in front of disinformation for
the next campaign. I'm just I'm looking at these people the same way we
looked at the people talking about the callers. Let me decide, let me
listen or read and figure out exactly so the idea and this is this big,
overarching, top down idea that has come about from you want to say
the left, but it's probably our technocratic betters are handlers the idea that disinformation
is this great threat and that freedom of speech, while it may sound nice
and the abstract, certainly has to be constrained by the smart people or we're
going to get the wrong outcomes. And looking at Twitter this week, as
people talked about this, it's like, you know, all this is sort
of emotional disinformation what they were saying about these people. But I'm still glad
it's out there. Like I said, I'd rather I'd rather all the flowers,
you know, all the poisons in the mud hatch out, as Robert
Graves had Claudius say, right, I'm with you on that. I have
to say I'm also with you on I don't know. Every time I say
I'm shocked by something, you say, oh, come on, get with
it. Maybe you should. Maybe it's acceptable to be shocked. You should
have been shocked a decade ago. I was shocked a decade ago. But
I'm still shocked at I don't know. How is it that I am i
the only person left who considers free speech the most important of our rights.
It seems like it sometimes. I just don't understand the way the country has
just let it go and again again again. I say it. Go right
ahead, pile on me for continuing to be shocked. But that the mains
the journalists, their entire profession, the whole tradition in which they're working depends
upon freedom of speech, and they're the first to do the We now know,
thanks to the work of Matt Tayyee, beyond others that the federal government,
agency after agency after agency was telling Twitter and Facebook take that downtake,
that downtake, that down, and when they didn't do it, the federal
agency would leak to the New York Times or other members of the press,
and the reporters would call and say, are you taking this down? Because
if it doesn't go down, there's going to be a story. Journalists at
major and formerly honorable institutions permitted themselves to become knowingly to become instruments of censorship.
I am in justice staggered by this instruments of the state in order to
do the right thing exactly exactly. The younger crop of journalists do not believe,
and they speak sarcastically of what about. You know, both sides is
um If one side is illegitimate and destructive, there's no point in giving it.
If the planet is going to die because of climate change or climate crisis,
then both sides is hastening the decline the demise of us all. So
it is actually injurious to the body politics to get to let the other side
seem to have the same amount of weight and merit as the other. That's
part of the problem. But that's another podcast. This podcast is going to
be as current as is possible because we're going to talk about well, we're
going to talk with Peter Schweizer, founder of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is
the host of the Drill Down podcast and the author of Clinton Cash, Secret
Empires, Profiles and Corruption, and most recently of Red Handed. Welcome Peter,
Thanks for joining us in the podcast. So Peter found out this week
that Hunter Biden, you know, that fellow who left the laptop and which
was of course the subject of Russian information. I think, so he pled
guilty federal tax misdemeanors and he struck a deal to resolve a federal gun charge.
Gosha. That was sweet or was it? They say he got a
sweet heart deal? Is that so? Absolutely no question about it. Sweetheart
deal on a couple levels. Number one, the level of a criminal activity
that he agreed to, in other words, really what he was engaged in,
his felony tax evasion. That's what these whistleblowers are I think, showing
and demonstrating and arguing, but also in terms of what was not in that
agreement. It seems pretty clear that the US attorney in Delaware wanted a charge
Hunter Biden with felony violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act Farah, that was
not allowed to proceed by the Department of Justice. So it was a sweetheart
deal on multiple levels for Hunter Biden. And I think that this issue is
only going to further unspool. And let's remember, this pleagree is subject to
the approved full of a judge during sentencing. That judge is a Trump appointee,
and in light of the revelations of these irs whistleblowers, I'm not so
sure that judge is going to go along. The judge may refuse to accept
the plea agreement. Yes, yeah, the judge has that option. Peter,
we are old friends. I want to disclose that as if it's I'm
actually I'm not disclosed. I'm boasting about it. I know, Peter Schweitzer,
I want to get to red handed in a moment, of course,
I want to talk about this topic the other topic. But you know what
I want to do is just say thanks, because you're doing what a lot
of people used to do but almost nobody does anymore, and that is called
journalism. You are a genuine investigative reporter. You go after big stories,
and you dig, and you dig and you dig. And since we are
long past the days when the Washington Post or the New York Times will publish
big stories that tend to reflect badly on members of the establishment, you publish
these as books. You go on. So truly I want to say thank
you. And the other thing I want to ask is is there are we
now at the stage at which we can feel confident that an alternative business model
for journalism real journalism has emerged. That is to say, we now have
our own Fox News. Peter Schweitzer, you're heading something called the Government Accountability
Institute. I'd like you to tell us about that. But can we now
feel confident a that our side of each story is going to get out,
but also that real journalism will continue. I think of you, and I
think of Matt Taiebi, although I'd be willing to bet that you never voted
the same way in either of your lives. But he's now said, wait
a minute. The whole journalistic enterprises I used to know it is gone and
he's setting up himself. So can we relax? You have people figured out
a new model or are you still struggling. That's a great question. And
it's always great to be with you. Peter. I don't think that we've
quite got the model yet, and that's not because we don't have great people.
I think Matt does fantastic journalism. Michael Schellenberger is great journalism. It's
it's it's a combination of things. Number One, you have to have the
resources for these deep investigative dives. It takes a lot of time and a
lot of money. News organizations, mainstream media news organizations used to have it.
That has dwindled. But at the same time, you've seen this ideological
tilt you talk we were talking about this earlier among journalists, where you know,
Donald Trump is an existential threat or climate change is an existential threat,
so we're going to do tilted stories because we're saving the planet, right,
those two trends. I think that the sort of showing how the journalists are
biased and only showing one side of the story has emerged. You still have
the resource problem. I mean, you know, we exposed the Biden deals
in China in twenty eighteen. I had seven researchers working full time. Did
you really for ten months to uncover that story? We're a five to one
c three we get donations. The point being we found that story because there
was a Chinese social media website that had pictures of Hunter Biden's standing with the
equivalent in China of the head of Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve,
the Treasury Secretary in twenty eleven, and I was thinking, what is
going on here? It takes a lot of time and money to unschool very
complex stories, and I don't think we have the resources to do that yet.
But if I can interject you, I mean, I work for a
newspaper, a pretty solidly staffed in newspaper, and yeah, we're not going
to do that story because we're concentrated here on our home state. But the
New York Time Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have
the resources to do that. And if the New York Times and you know,
the Washington Post does that story, it will be amplified through the wire
services to willing papers elsewhere. So it's it's resources, yes, but it's
also desire. I mean, as we saw m MPR came out right away
and said we're not going to handle the laptop story because obviously this is just
all you nonsense. Something for which they've never been brought to account. So
it's a choice. I mean resources, yes, but it is a choice.
And the problem with that is that that since so the mainstream journals aren't
doing it, it's easier to delegitimize guys like you because you're seen as being
partisan hacks who come to this with bushels and axe handles and in the agendas
to grind. No. I think you're right, it's it's resource. The
resources exist in these mainstream media outlets. They don't want to cover these stories.
When I first covered the Bidens and exposed it in twenty eighteen in China,
I actually had a very nice launch with a with a very experience seasoned
a well known reporter for the New York Times who covers China and other issues.
And in that book in twenty eighteen, I had you profile exposing things
related to Mitch McConnell's family and their ties to China, as well as the
Bidens. They followed up with a story on Mitch McConnell. The New York
Times did themselves sort of standing on the shoulders of my work, which is
fine, which is great. That reporter told me in twenty eighteen. If
Joe Biden runs for president, we are absolutely going to cover this story.
They never did. They never did. I don't think it's because he didn't
want to cover it. I think it's because the editorial leadership did not want
to cover it. So, yeah, they don't. They don't have a
desire to cover these stories. But honestly, what they are doing is they
are completely trashing their brands. If you look at if you look a Pew
research you know that looks at trust in American institutions, Congress is at nineteen
percent, it's the lowest. Right next to them at twenty one percent,
is the media. They are destroying their brands by selectively reporting what they're choosing
to cover and what they're not covering, And it's only going to get worse,
and they're only damaging themselves because they can't muscle these stories anymore. Precisely
because of what Peter said, You've got these alternatives that are putting this stuff
out. Okay, two red handed? Then, Peter, how did I
was about to say what attracted you to this story? But in you've already
made clear that in a certain sense, this is a story you've been covering
for years. Give us, well, let's sell some books. Give us
one or two of the most arresting revelations. What's the book about. Just
give us, let's just let's just take it through and give listeners are not
they'll be hearing about this for the first time. What is the book about.
Give us one or two really arresting findings red handed? I mean,
the subtitle is you know how Americans get rich helping China win? And so
it focuses on Washington d Silicon Valley in Wall Street and just three quick illustrations.
When it comes to the Bidens based on the laptop, the Bidens have
received thirty one million dollars from four Chinese businessmen who are named in the laptop,
who are named in the book, and all four of those businessmen who
transferred money to the Bidens with no services or anything given in return for that
money. All of those businessmen have links to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.
One of them, at the same time he set up the Bidens in
a twenty million dollars deal, was at the same time business partners with a
Vice Minister for State Security in China. All of them have that profile.
So the Biden money in my mind is not just about corruption. It's about
compromont, it's about espionage, it's about possible recruitment. Go to Silicon Valley.
The biggest, most talented companies in Silicon Valley are aiding and abetting China
in its military words to exploit artificial intelligence. They know it's going on.
They've helped those companies in China that are developing these military technologies enhanced their capabilities.
Microsoft, Facebook, or Meta and Elon Musk regularly say very favorable things
about China because they want access to the China market. And then go to
All Street and you can find the same thing, inglorious things that are being
said by major hitters on Wall Street who are prostrating themselves let's be honest about
this and saying wonderful things about China in exchange for access to the market.
So that's really what the book is about. And if you look at the
front cover, you can see the collection of individuals that we expose in the
book. If you know this, the FBI does or should know it,
The National Security Agency does or should know, the CIA does or should know
it, And the New York Times and the Washington Post do or should know
it. Why is only Peter Schweitzer writing about this? Well, good question.
I know the FBI knows about it, and I can say this now
because the New York Times ran a piece about it. The FBI knows about
it because the FBI has been in communication with me on a myriad of research
projects going back to twenty fifteen, and we're always happy to cooperate with law
enforcement. What's interesting is the New York Times story was basically saying the FBI
is relying on people like Peter Schweitzer rather than checking the veracity of what was
being reported. So the FBI knows about this, I think a lot of
government agencies know about it. The New York Times and the Washington Post know
about it. They choose not to cover it. And part of the reason
we don't get a lot of action in Washington on this cap hill we're getting
some movement is you, frankly, have some powerful Republicans that benefit commercially mightily
from their relationships with China, and they're over a barrel. I mean,
as I talk about in the book, Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine
Choo. The Chow family has a shipping business. The ships are all built
by Chinese state owned companies. The construction of these ships, it's hundreds of
millions of dollars, are financed by Chinese state banks. The crews that manned
these ships are all recruited from China, and the contracts that they have to
ship goods on these big vessels across the Pacific come from Chinese state owned enterprises.
If Mitch McConnell does something that ticks off China, they can destroy the
Chow family business overnight, and that's the kind of leverage that China wants over
its political opponents. Peter out here in Silicon Valley where I live, I
couldn't. I'm not going to name name is because nobody this is the kind
of talk that takes place among friends. Name any one of the big operations
out here, and they all employ a lot of Chinese, some are Chinese
nationals, some are Chinese Americans, and the general feeling is it's hopeless,
meaning we can either do business. We can either code and work on our
next product, or we can run our own intel operation and try to make
sure that whatever we develop doesn't get to Beijing. But we can't do both
because we have so many Chinese employees that it is simply taken for granted that
when a major innovation takes place, it gets flipped over to Beijing pretty quickly.
Now, in one sense that's chilling, but in another sense, you
just describe the kind of actual reality that people are dealing with here. All
of these operations that we're describing are publicly listed companies. They have fiduciary responsibilities
to their shareholders. They are in competitive marketplaces, they must continue to innovate.
And so the question, I mean, the first impulse is to say,
well, they're just not good Americans. But on the other hand,
you say, wait a minute, when did it become their job. Where
is the United States government? It's up to them. It's up to the
federal government to enforce certain rules on all actors, so that making sure that
your fundamental security measures get put in place within companies becomes a fundamental way of
doing business across the competitive space. I don't know. So there's a premise
there, which is that in some sense it's hopeless that in some sense these
people are in business. They have to do business. And then maybe really
it's the federal government that's falling failing here. Attack any of those if you
want to, what do you make of that that is in the air out
here. That's a kind of stand standard conversation. Yeah, no, and
I think there's there's some truth to that. What I would say is,
yes, we cannot totally disengage from China, but we should at least make
it harder for them. So I'll give you an example. Yes, Google
has Chinese employees. You could argue Google needs Chinese employees because we don't have
the STEM talent in the United States. But that's different than Google funding literally
funding and sponsoring research facilities for artificial intelligence in China that are controlled by the
Chinese military. It seems to me that is something on a order of magnitude,
you know, exponentially worse than recognizing you're going to have certain employees in
your company and they may you may engage in intellectual property that So that's kind
of what I'm talking about. And I think it's really incompany upon shareholders and
consumers in the United States to effectively shame these companies, you know, to
make clear that this is a problem, that you're subsidizing our enemy and we
don't want you to do it. The federal government has been lax here.
But I also think that you know, it's high time that we hold some
of these companies into account. They're certainly concerned about their posture on other,
let's say, social issues. I would think this is one we need to
make sure that they're being clear on as well. Last question, Peter,
doesn't matter if you look at China demographically, they're going to suffer collapse.
They have a huge amount of debt and an economy based on a real estate
bubble that is popping and popping and popping and being refilled and popping and popping.
In the long run, of course, we're all did But in the
long run, really do we have to worry that much about China? Or
can we just shit it out and let them fall apart? Well, the
question really a minute, it's a great question. The question really comes down
to what do you think President ge or the man that follows President Gees posture
is going to be given the realities they face. Is it going to make
him more aggressive or is it going to make them softer towards the West?
All indications with ge since twenty twelve is that it has made him harder,
It has made him more aggressive, it's made him more desperate. That's what
I think we need to be concerned about, and we also need to realize
this is sort of the subject the research I'm working on right now and the
next book is in a lot of respects, it's not a question of whether
we're going to be at war with China. I would contend China's already at
war with the United States. Their involvement with Fentonel, the things that they
did during COVID to exascerbate the body count of American dying, other things that
they are doing, so they kind of view their posture already at war with
the United States. They're serious casualties, I would argue, in the millions
that have died as a result of China's policies, that's the present reality.
I don't think we have the comfort of looking twenty five thirty years down the
road because of these trans as you correctly point out, are against China.
I don't have the comfort of looking thirty five years down the road. The
two of you may Peter Schweitzer from the Governmental Accountability Institute, the books that
are Clinton Cash, Secret, Empire's Profile and Corruption, and most recently Red
Handed, We like to have you back again soon. There's so much to
talk about, and thanks for joining us here in the podcast today. Peter
Peter Schweitzer, one of the best working journalists in the country get red Handed.
Thanks guys to kill Peter. And now we pivot to the philosophical,
theisophical, to different matters entirely than we were talking about before. And we
aren't honored to have with us. David Berlinski, Senior Fellow the Discovery Institute's
Center for Science and Culture, the author of Deniable Darwin, The Devil's Delusion,
Human Nature, and just out this month, Science After Babbel. David,
welcome. I was reading an excerpt of your book today, and what
are the lines that struck me and I copied it down, was that talking
about science and the constellations are lack thereof of science. Talking about the arid
nature of the things we are discussing, you said, there remains a curious
fact that no one much likes what everyone accepts. I found that interesting that
we are in this world of scientism, that we are in this world where
we had erected this edifice of knowledge, but it hasn't brought in anybody happiness
as a matter of fact, the more the more it comes out with what
you regard as outlandish ideas be unhappier. Our viewer of ourselves in the world,
in the universe seems to be So, why is it? Why why
do we all just trust the science? I guess I should ask you,
Well, I don't know that we all trust the science. We just find
ourselves in a world in which we are obliged to accept certain features of the
world which are clearly the user fructs of the scientific system of belief. We
don't have much choice with respect to many of those artifacts. Telephonies, the
food system, habitation, sanitation, all of those are just given to us,
and as givens we have to accept it. So our margin of choices
relatively narrow. When I remark or remark that none of us much likes this
system of belief, it's not for the technological benefitiis from may or may not
be particularly satisfactory. It's for the underlying vision of what it means to be
a human being in a human universe that I'm speaking. And it seems to
me that without a great deal of careful reflection on the part of the scientific
community, it has nonetheless given us a certain perspective that as we occupy a
minor planet in the Solar System, we are of no cosmic significance whatsoever.
There's nothing particularly remarkable about human life. It's a continuity with animal life,
and animal life with an accident. There's no intrinsic meaning, purpose, dignity,
or teleology associated with human life. Religious beliefs completely arbitrary and lacking in
all credibility as far as we can see. The ultimate constituents of reality,
so speaks the scientific community, are things like quantum fields erupting every now and
then into some shower of particles. And that's about it. Now, it's
perfectly obvious why most people don't consider that a particularly attractive world view. But
there is any way. That is a worldview. It's a dominant worldview.
It's a very pervasive worldview, and it's a worldview that's not all that easy
to rebut and yet rebutted. David Berlinski does do in his book Science After
Babbel. David, may, I tell you why you're just an execrable human
being for having the temerity to write such a book and offer such arguments.
Here's why, Because we know better. We know what religion leads to.
We've been through the wars of religion. It was only science, only the
discovery and steady application of the scientific method, of empiricism, of trial and
error, of serious engagement with reality around us, that got us out of
our heads, out of useless, unprovable speculation on how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin, that enabled us to climb out of poverty,
that gave us the industrial revolution that is now giving us gave us the
communications revolution that's now giving us a green a world of green energy, and
that has imposed a certain peace that has let us get along together in a
pluralistic way by putting religion and this whole dark age of human thought in a
box where it belongs and giving us science instead. And this is the existential
We speak to you in Paris. Paris is the city of camu and sac.
If it is the case that we are alone in a vast universe,
that life has no meaning except the meaning that we impute to it, well,
then welcome to existentialism. Great minds have been there all ready in the
twentieth century. That is just we just are going to have to learn to
live with reality, be brave, embrace it, and don't try to knock
it down, to which David Berlinski responds, how all that sounds good to
me, at least the first forty seconds of your remark. If you stop
after forty seconds, yeah, if you could point me in the direction of
where I would find the Enlightenment in its full flower, I would at least
consider leaving my apartment and going there. But as far as I can,
sitting where I am in my apartments in Europe, the Enlightenment is about as
far from contemporary concerns as it has always been. It seems to be even
on the contrary that the Enlightenment has proven itself feckless and incompetent in the face
of twentieth century of horrors, and it seems to be doing no better in
the face of twenty first century. But more to the point that we had
been offered on the part of the scientific establishment in the late twenty is not
embracing manly confrontation with the reality. But across the border with is prawl from
the reality. And I think that withdrawl, the melancholing law withdrawing row is
the overwhelming fact of the scientific enterprise in the twenty four century. Every sense
of reality is now trembling because there's a very cold wind blowing. The Enlightenment
ideal, which is really a Greek ideal, that we can know the world
as it really is, seems very fragile. No, we can't really know
the world as it is. What we can know of various theories, very
various perception. Look, all of our social life today is consumed with the
idea that the believer proposition is exactly what is meant by knowing that proposition.
That's what the phrase so often used, my truth really comes to the standard
for epistemological commitment now is not knowledge but belief interconviction. That's not a confrontation
with theology. That's a withdrawal from reality. Every sense that the stertal world
imposes constraints on human cognition, that's proven to be very flabby. Look at
the chat GPT. Interact with chat GPT, and it's a remarkable technological achievement,
no doubt, and interacting with it is very constructive, very salutary.
Look, the thing hallucinates, It says things which are not so it's a
form of intelligence. I think it's a prophetic form of intelligence, because that
is where we are headed to a universe in which what is imagined, believed,
conjecture, construe has epistemological promise over what is known and what is true.
It's no hallucinating, it's just behaving the way we're all going to behave
in fifty years. I don't know where to start to start to pull out
questions from from the remarkable answers. I mean, we can know the world
in a sense I know that if I bang my head against that wall,
it will hurt. I know that if I slam my hand on that door
over there, it will be a similar sensation. I also know that there
are things that I do not see that birds and bugs see because they are
looking at the world through different wavelengths and for different purposes. But we can
all agree on a certain number of things that exist, that are true,
that are solid, that are right. That's the whole. That's the whole.
But what we have now is in the absence of a dominating idea with
such gravity that everything revolves around it, we have instead just a kaleidoscope of
individual constellations in which everybody has their own beliefs and they're all equally valid,
and we have nothing uniting us except for the belief that all beliefs are valid.
If I'm summing up correctly, what you have to say, The question
isn't how do we get back to a central organizing principle again, because that
could be a very bad central organizing principle. How do we get back to
a good one? And is it possible in these days where identity and information
and knowledge and belief is so prismatically scattered that there's no hope of gathering it
back into a single shaft of light. Again, If that sounds like a
sort of question that makes any sense, what do we do? I guess,
well, I don't know what we are going to do. I'm going
to finish my cigar. Well, let me ask chat GPT. What is
David Berlinski going to do? But here's the point. Everything you just said
it is common sensical the people with a certain kind of education, position,
certain background. But this was accommodated in the eighteenth century by Bishop Barker,
who said, to be is to be perceived. There's nothing else. You
bang your hand on a door, you can dismiss the door as an external
object and savor or regret the pain that has just been induced in your hand.
Einstein had the same discussion with proponents of quantum theory. I had forgot
who he asked, Heisenberg or Niels bought. Do you really believe that when
I'm not looking at the moon it disappears There's no such to which the obvious
answer from Barkley's position, from any idealist position, any solipsis position, is
yes, there is no such thing as the external object. There are only
ideas in your mind or in the mind of God. Interesting, interesting way
to present that. When I was in graduate school in the mid nineteen sixties,
the philosopher to which everyone repaired was Unan, and after yun Count and
then after Count the twentieth century critical analysts Burton Russell all the way to Plant.
I would bet that the philosophers who are being read avidly now in the
graduate schools not un but Barkley, not Count but Hagel, and following Barkley
and Hagel, all the old forgotten British idealists. Because we are clearly living
in a time bordering on the form of collective solipcism. The fact that when
I smack my hand on my own table, I feel something my hand is
undoubted. We all agree to that. But the further inference that there's a
system of permanently existing objects beyond the ken of my senses can be denied,
and it has very consistently been denied by Barkley. For example, to be
is to be perceived, its replaced in the twenty first century by the apathem.
To be is to be believed, and even more notable, to be
is to be believed by a great many people. That increases the strength of
conviction which we can bring to bear on a belief. Something that Botley has
changed, and the way we look at these issues David Boswell's Life of Johnson,
Sir, how do you refute Bishop Berkeley? And I refute them?
Thus he kicked the stone? Because that convince you. After what I've just
said, it convinces me. But that's because I start in a certain position
in the first place, to which I now come. You have named this
book science after Babel. You're going to tell us in a moment quite what
you mean by that, But I can't help observing it's in the title,
and it's in you, and you and I have known each other a while
now that not only are you totally conversant with all the philosophers of the twentieth
century, the mathematical under the only man I know who really understands quantum mechanics,
I mean, really understands it. Here you are putting right into the
title an allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures, which means what you take this late
Bronze Age early Modern period book collection of scriptures? Seriously? You think there
is wisdom to be found there relevant to us today. I know better than
to say, David, do you believe in God? Because I've tried that
before and it's gotten me nowhere. Why is Babbel in the title? Well,
there are two reasons. One you pointed out yourself. It's a magnificent
biblical story. It's pregnant story. It's also the something to the Great painting
by Peter Bordal. Yes, I think, I'm not sure. I'm looking
for a copy of mile. I don't know where it is, but I
think there's a copy of the painting on the book cover. The statement,
but it's an ambiguous title. The story of the Tower Babbles, the story
of the extent to which the arrogance of architects. Architects building a tower to
reach the heavens was confounded by God because he divided their tongues so they could
no longer successfully communicate. And that's in the picture too, because you can
see looking at the picture that there's enormous squat tower is incoherent. I like
that image. I like the story because even though it makes a point about
the incoherence of the architecture, the fact visible in front of your eyes remains
the tower is still selling that architects or no architects. I think that's the
real meaning of the title. We are clearly in a position where we had
begun to examine the scien. We've worked with three centuries incredible songs that we've
worked with three centuries with an eye to consistency, coherence, and further development.
Discovered that there are places of info inherence. But we on the outside,
and I'm certainly on the outside, nonetheless, are obliged to admit that
this great power is still standard despite any any math versions I many I could
express, And it can be finished if people get together, solve the language
problem, learning one another's tongues, work out a way to do it.
But now Unfortunately, where we are today, we have the very notions of
empiricism are being eroded by this, this insistence on personal truth, on my
truth, because all of the things that undergird the ability to construct the tower,
things like just basic mechanics, things like math, are being held up
as products of a of an errant, evil civilization, with colonialism and racism
and everything else baked right into the bones of it. I mean, it's
critical race theories, as you have to demolish all of these institutions in order
to create the one that will bring about the utopia, So you can't even
the tower may stand, but we look at it like dumb apes goddling,
because we will end up without the skills to begin construction. Anew, I
agree with you. I agree with you completely. I don't look forward to
aher army. The best of circumstances in which languages are suddenly reconciled and the
development of the science since taking place between the sixteen and the twentieth century once
again proceeds on upload, something new will happen. I think something new is
happening right now on artificial intelligence. That's a separate discussion. But I agree
with you that they're real and serious threats to the integrity not only of the
scientific establishment, but of intellectual itself. Our ability clearly and predicting the reason
about anything is compromised when some sense of the superiority of certain ways of addressing
issues is dismissed from consideration in favor of rather squalid political deals in which every
identity boot in society is represented in proportion to its numbers, so that at
the Institute for Advanced Study, if you're proposed to study the latest developments in
quantum field theory, at least two percent of your professorship must be composed of
Swiss Chinese lesbians. That is a recipe for disaster. Everybody understands that.
Everybody knows it, everyone's afraid of it, and no one can do a
blessed thing about it. That is a fact of life. It's not a
fact if everybody, it's a fact of life. Anyone, whether any form
of organized intellectual life is going to survive the present moment of collective solecism.
It's very difficult to answer. But all that being said, and I agree
with you completely on the shrewdness of your political analysis. You must not forget
that every squalid movement in contemporary life can be traced back intellectually to philosophical or
mathematical or physical principles that are much deeper than the squalidness of the present day
would indicate compromising with truth, for example, drawing back from empiricism, these
are not simply matters of identity quality. They have their roots and philosophical and
mathematical developments of the nineteen filities, and that should be that should be acknowledged.
It's not a trivial phenomena in your faces, it's a very deep It
has its trivial aspects. I'm the first one to make fun of it,
but it has its much more significant expense as well. We know certain things
now in the fashion of no go theorems in physics, that is to say,
we know certain things are just not possible when we want to speak of
the truth. We know there is no terminal point. We consistently and continuously
we will be forced to move to evermore expansive definitions. And that's just a
fact of logic. And there are many, many other similar considerations that could
be adduced. It's not the fact that all progress in mathematics and philosophy leads
in the direction we would like it to lead. Sometimes it leads in the
reverse direction. And that's happened in the twentieth century. The fact that quantum
mechanics is not support naive and criticism. Nobody wanted that, nobody expected it,
but it doesn't. And that's just a fact. We're talking with David
Berlinski, philosopher and mathematician whose new book is Science After Babel, and if
you are like me and unlike David, you will need to savor Science after
Babel, page by page by page. David, here's we have to talk
more. We just have to. But here's here's a question, a kind
of closing question from me for now, recognizing that it's morning over here for
us, and James and I have commitments, and it's evening over there for
you, and you'd like to I got all the time in the world you
have, Okay, I was about to say, you want to you want
a NEGRONI to go with that cigar? All right? So we have been
through an episode in this country and in the West generally, but of COVID,
of public health officials standing on the science, the science, the science,
using that, using the science to justify a certain political well, I
think it was just ham fistedness, but to shut down opposition. And so
this is in mind you seem you being you. Of course, there are
many arguments taking place at many different levels. But are you arguing in science
after Babbel, that we have been untrue to the scientific project, that we
have failed to treat science as science, that during the COVID lockdown, for
example, even as Burke said, a thousand knights should have sprung to the
defense of the Queen of Marie Antoinette of France, a thousand scientists should have
sprung up to say to Fauci, no, no, no, there's still
debate over this and over this and over this, and you should use some
of your budget of billions to set up rapid tests, in other words,
to pursue the science. Or are you making the argument that at this stage
of the game, one of the many things we now know about science is
that it is in and of itself limited, that, far from giving us
the sword with which we can slash every Gordian knot that stands between us and
a deep understanding of reality, it's a limited tool. It can slash some
knots, but not others. I guess what I'm asking, And of course,
by comparison with whatever you're about to say, it's a crude question.
Are you saying more science, but we must be true to science, we
have permitted ourselves to misunderstand it. Or are you saying the whole scientific project
became infused with a grand kind of pomposity and science is isself very limited?
Can I adopt both positions simultaneous, sho being you? Of course, look
the one thing I have to remind you of yours. I was not in
the United States during COVID. I was in France, and I think experiences
as between France and I say, in retrospect then look rather different. There
is no comparable movement in France attacking French health officials, for example, in
the way that Fauci is being attacked. And I'm not even sure what the
what the graverman of the attack is. That's how far away I am from
current affairs in the United States. But apparently he made some serious mistakes with
respect to masking, with respect to school shutdowns exactly the masking school shutdowns,
and I forgot there was there was really nothing comparable. I think there was
a fairly widespread, indeed sense of admiration in France for the way health officials
actually managed the pandemic. In the end, everybody agrees that the French government
blundered very badly in the first two or three months. They didn't take the
lesson of Italy very seriously. There was slow to respond, and people were
horrified to discover that they had no masks, that they had never bothered to
stock up in masks. The mask program ended in two thousand and eight or
something like that, but thereafter I think the government very successfully rebounded. It
did launch a program of vaccination which continues to this day. It did obtain
I think something like eight vaccinal coverage. I can't say it was a triumph
because too many people died, but in certain respects it was France's public system
at its best. So I really can't comment on I do know that Fauci
seems to have played an extremely dishonorable role with respect to the origins of the
COVID virus in Uhan, and that I know from the inside, because I
published pieces and influence about that, and I know about the calls that he
made, and I know about his efforts to gain a unanimity of opinion with
respect to the impossibility of a laboratory. But I gather that's not really what
you are talking about. Well, even setting fout to your side, are
you saying we need to Our problem today is that we have misunderstood what science
can and cannot do, and we need to return to a true understanding of
science and back it. We need more science, but we need to understand
it properly. Or are you saying, ladies and gentlemen, after three hundred
years of this, science has an announcement to make. It can only do
so much, and we must while remaining true and appreciating these staggering goods that
science has given us. If we wish meaning in life, if we wish
to pursue the deepest philosophical questions that we've been working on for the last couple
of thousand years, we're going to have to We're going to have to accept
the limits on science and turn to other means. Is that closer to the
argument in science after babble? Well, I think it's a reasonable argument.
To the extent that it's reasonable. I hope I've made it for sure.
There are many areas of life. Perhaps the most important areas where none of
the great theories really is helpfully instruct or certainly not quantum field theory. Where
it comes to the aching questions of life and death, meaning, significance,
the inference to something beyond our brief human existence. None of these questions are
touched on by quantum field theory or the lang Lands program in mathematics, or
anything else. What we get from the science, since our glimpses of a
more ordered structural laws sharing in thot ways of world, that's something else.
That's a benefit. It's the same benefit we get from looking at work art
But in terms of science as its practice today, it seems to me there
is a farm or dangerous than eubristic sense of limit less possibilities than there was
Sage fifty years ago. After all, the introduction of artificial intelligence is not
supposed to end with a system that roughly mimits human intelligence. It's supposed to
introduce us to an inferior of ever superior intelligence in his own minds, and
that's a program of unlimited ambition. The same thing is true of various attempts
in Silicon Valley and beyond to merge consciousness into a computer system or to promote
various absurdain im dissolution personally republican transhumanist schemes. They all participate in the same
desire to push boundaries away and march well beyond the boundaries we thought we had
the opposed. So no, I don't. I don't think the message is
that the scientific community itself is discovering them. It never will, it never
has. The question is, and it's a it's a real philosophic as well
as the scientific question. Are there those limits? Is everything that's not forbidden
by the laws of physics actually possible? And it possible desirable? Those are
very significant questions. I didn't have an answer, but I think they should
be asked. Well. To Peter's point, there has been there's never been
a time in American culture where there hasn't been a desire for some sort of
spirituality. They just don't like Christianity because it's what their parents made them go
to when they were kids in the hand to where itchy church pants and being
a place to smell the old candles. They didn't like it, and so
they came accurrent They fell for every single little idiotic, newfangled or imported idea
that came along. So there's always been a desire for some sort of spirituality.
It's a question of whether we have something that can can can meet the
challenges that the new era of science is providing. When you say that there
are no boundaries there, that there's a sense of a desire for more and
more, almost theological forms of science that pause with these strange, these strange
quantum ideas that the brain really can't wrap itself around, and but maybe are
true when you need to find out, etc. Etc. It brings me
back to the one thing I've never been able to grasp in my gut and
head at the same time, and that's dark matter. I'm sure there's a
perfectly good reason for it, and that there are people who can explain it
to me, but it almost seems religious in its desire for we can't explain
this part about the universe, so we're going to make up a thing that
explains it. And what I love about this whole theory is that it comes
down to two views of human of humanity, of our of our destiny.
If there are a sufficient mass in the universe, at some point, expansion
stops and it contracts back down into that singular singularity, into that infinitely hot,
dense point. Then it explodes and starts the whole thing again. And
the whole universe is a series of this back and forth, almost like respiration.
And we're in one form of the breath now the other. If there
isn't sufficient mass to bring the universepect together, is heat death or the end
of the universe is every single particle separated by hundreds of billions of light years,
which is a bleak thing. And there are some people who find solace
in heat death. And there are some people who find solace the people,
the people who believe that, who believe that there is that humanity itself is
a is a uniquely loathsome thing of virus in the universe. Lots of those
nuts around, But they always believe that getting rid of humanity, you might
promote the welfare, say of cows. I don't want to confront them with
a prospect of an omnivorous heat that destroys everything. Everybody rebels against that,
scruples at that. But the idea of the multiverse that's equally repugnant, isn't
it. Imagine clambering to the edge of space and time only to find your
double on the other side of the fence, pursuing some inane course of correction
in your own life, and having all sorts of philosophical problems about which is
the real you. I think I prefer the heat death to that. I
would like to argue about the multiverse with you, and we probably already are
in some other multiverse, but we're gonna have to get to that in another
show. You're gonna have to come back because um, there is so much
to be found in what you say that it just takes me and I'm gonna
go back and listen to this and regret all the things that I've never asked
and h and feel stupid for the questions that I did. In the meantime,
however, day you know that one is exactly I know that's that's that's
exactly it. In any case, we enview you, Envy you, your
cigar, your view of the city. Almost done. It's a metaphor for
the show, right right, right right. That's so, buy an extra
long Romeo and Juliet next time and we'll have at it again. The book
is Science after Babble, and we're going to have you on again. We
vow it, we we pledge it, we demand it. David Berlinsky in
Paris joining us on the Ricochet podcast. What a pleasure, sir, good
night, good night. Thanks very much for having me, David, thank
you so much. Zike has done both of you. You know, this
is the point of the podcast where you usually tell people that they can meet
up in real space and have a meeting. But I think we should have
a Paris Ricochet meetup. I don't know how we're going to figure it out,
but I think we should, and we should all find some extraordinary restaurant,
complete with French beers and snails and the rest of it, and invite
David and just pepper him with questions for the entire evening, because I have
the feeling that fellow is inclined to a philosophical conversation of an unstinting nature,
and that would be a good idea, right Peter, Oh, I have
have I have experienced essentially unstinted, Yes, unstinted, two cigars, several
negrones. Talking with David is one of the great I was about to call
it mind blowing, which is a kind of banality from what the nineteen sixties,
but it does really feel almost as though after you do, you know,
there's some people it's almost the definition of a bore that you feel less
alive after talking to him, David. It's the other way around. Not
only do you feel more alive, but you feel as though, in some
basic way you're your brain is actually bigger inside your skull, that he has
somehow expanded your way, the very way in which you look at at at
anyway. Well, he drives me to bad radio. Good radio is where
you come back immediately with a question. There's no dead air. You gotta
be you just yes, you move along, and if you're trained in radio
or trained as a guest, you have the ability to start speaking even if
you do not know what you're going to say exactly. It just comes with
the profession telling me with David, I would I would take that paragraph and
I download it, and I'd pick it apart, and I would I would
be comfortable with forty five forty five seconds of dead air, which is an
eternity trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to say what I wanted to
say and not make a fool of myself for saying it. So that's absolutely
fun and I cannot imagine adding alcohol to the max. But we're going to
have to leave that for some other day. Like I say in the in
the multiverse, we're already doing this in Paris and we're on our third NEGRONI.
So what more can we say than that, Peter? Can we know?
We want to tell you. By the way, this podcast was brought
to you by us and by all the wonderful folks you've heard about in the
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become part of what some are saying is the last remaining sane sliver of the
Internet. And there are days when I doubt that, But there's never a
day where I dont hit Ricochet four or five times just to see what's new.
Peter, Um, that's it Rob? Next week, I hope,
or Charlie or somebody. We don't know what happened? Do we know?
Do we know what happened to Rob? We don't know what happened. Actually,
wait, isn't he how bizarre? Right? Curse? Isn't he in
Europe? He may be in Paris at this very moment. It would have
been great if he just wandered into the frame there exactly playing accord, like
a clown of money Python. But that would for all we know. He
you know, that says exactly what he is doing. He was sitting in
the other room, just biding his time. All right, that's it,
we're done, we're good. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four
as the main pusche and maybe now we Ricochet joined the conversation