Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #117

The following is a conversation with Sheldon Solomon, a social psychologist, a philosopher, co developer of terror management theory, and co author of the Warm at the Core on the role of death in life. He further carried the ideas of Ernest Becker that can crudely summarize the idea that our fear of death is at the core of the human condition and the driver of most of the creations of human civilization. Quick summary of the sponsors Blinkist, ExpressVPN and Cash App. Click the links in the description to get a discount. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Let me say as a side note that Ernest Becker's book Denial of Death had a big impact on my thinking about human of our mind that are behind the surface behaviors we observe. Many people have told me that they think about death or don't think about death, fear death or don't fear death. But I think not. Many people think about this topic deeply, rigorously in the way that Nietzsche suggested. 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Well, from our perspective, the uniquely human awareness of death and our unwillingness to accept that fact, we would argue is the primary motivational impetus for almost everything that people do, whether they're aware of it or not.

So that's kind of been your life work. Your view of the human condition is that death. You've written the book Warm at the Core, that death is at the core of our consciousness, of everything, of how we see the world, of what drives us. Maybe. Can you, can you elaborate? Like what. How you see death fitting in? What does it mean to be at the core of our being?

So I think that's a great question and, you know, to be pedantic, I usually start, you know, my psychology classes and I say to the students, okay, you know, let's define our terms. And the ology part they get right away, you know, it's the study of. And then we get to the psyche part, and understandably, you know, the students are like, oh, that means mind. And I'm like, well, no, that's a modern interpretation, but in ancient Greek it means soul, but not in the Cartesian dualistic sense that most of us in the west think when that word comes to mind. And so you hear the word soul and you're like, well, all right, that's the non physical part of me that's potentially detachable from my corporal container when I'm no longer here. But Aristotle's who coined the word psyche, I think he was not a dualist, he was a monist. He thought that the soul was inextricably connected to the body. And he defined soul as the essence of a natural body that is alive. And then he goes on and he says, all right, let me give you an example. If, if an ax was alive, the soul of an ax would be to chop. And if you can pluck your eyeball out of your head and it was still functioning, then the soul of the eyeball would be to see. You know, and then he's like, all right, the soul of a grasshopper is to hop. The soul of a woodpecker is to peck. Which raises the question, of course, what is the essence of what it means to be human? And here, of course, there is no one universally accepted conception of the essence of our humanity. Aristotle gives us the idea of humans as rational animals. We're homo sapiens, but not the only game in town got Joseph Heisinger, an anthropologist in the 20th century. He called us homo ludens that were basically fundamentally playful creatures. And I think it was Hannah Arendt, Homo faber were tool making creatures. Another woman, Ellen Dizon Ayake, wrote a book called Homo Aestheticus. And following Aristotle and his Poetics, she's like, well, we're not only rational animals, we're also aesthetic creatures that appreciate beauty. There's another take on humans. I think they call us homo naritans, we're storytelling creatures. And I think all of those designations of what it means to be human are quite useful heuristically and certainly worthy of our collective cogitation. But what garnered my attention when I was a young punk was just a single line in an essay by a Scottish guy who was Alexander Smith in a book called Dreamthorpe. I think it's written in the 1860s. He just says right in the middle of an essay, it is our knowledge that we have to die that makes us human. And I remember reading that and in my gut I was like, oh man, I don't like that, but I think you're onto something. And then William James, the great Harvard philosopher and arguably the first academic psychologist, he referred to death as the worm at the core of the human condition. So that's where the worm at the core idea comes in. And that's just an allusion to the story of Genesis back in the proverbial old days in the Garden of Eden. Everything was going tremendously well until the serpent tempts Eve to take a chomp out of the apple of the tree of knowledge. And Adam partakes also, and this is, according to the Bible, what brings death into the world. And from our vantage point, the story of Genesis is a remarkable allegorical recount of the origin of consciousness, where we get to the point where by virtue of our vast intelligence, we come to realize the inevitability of death. And so, you know, the apple is beautiful and it's tasty, but when you get right into the middle of it, there's that ugly reality which is our finitude. And then fast forward a bit and I was a young professor at skidmore College in 1980. My PhD is in experimental social psychology. And I mainly did studies with clinical psychologists evaluating the efficacy of non pharmacological interventions to reduce stress. And that was good work and I found it interesting. But in my first week as a professor at Skidmore, I just walking up and down the shelves of the library, saw some books by a guy I had never Heard of Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist, recently deceased. He died in 1974 after weeks before actually. He was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for his book the Denial of Death.

And that was his last book.

It's actually his next to last book book. I don't know how you pulled this off, but he had one more after he died called Escape from Evil. And evidently it was supposed to originally, the Denial of Death was supposed to be this giant thousand page book that was both, and they split it up. And what became Escape from Evil, his wife, Marie Becker, finished. Well, be that as it may, it is in the Denial of Death where Becker just says in the first paragraph, I believe that the terror of death and the way that human beings respond to it or decline to respond to it is primarily responsible for almost everything we do, whether we're aware of it or not. And mostly we're not. And so I read that first paragraph, Lex, and I was like, wow, okay.

This dude, you're onto something.

You're onto something.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing. And then it reminded me, I think not to play psychologist, but, you know, let's face it, I believe there's a reason why we end up drifting where we ultimately come to. So I'm in my mid-20s, I got Ernest Becker's book in my hand, and the next thing I know, I'm Remembering when I'm 8 years old, the day that my grandmother died. And you know, the day before, my mom said, oh, say goodbye to grandma. She's not well, and okay. So I was like, okay, Grandma. And I knew she wasn't well, but I didn't really appreciate the magnitude of her illness. Well, she dies the next day and it's in the evening and I'm just sitting there looking at my stamp collection and I'm like, wow, I'm gonna miss my grandmother. And then I'm like, no, wait a minute, that means my mother's gonna die after she gets old. And that's even worse. After all, who's gonna make me dinner? And that bothered me for a while. But then I'm looking at the stamps, all the dead American presidents, and I'm like, there's George Washington, he's dead. There's Thomas Jefferson, he's dead. My mom's going to be dead. Oh, I'm going to get old and be dead someday. And at 8 years old, that was my first explicit existential crisis. I remember it being, you know, one of these blood curdling realizations that I tried My best to ignore for the most of the time I was subsequently growing up. But fast forward back to Skidmore College, mid-20s. You know, reading Becker's book in the 1980s, Thinking to Myself, wow, one of the reasons why I'm finding this so compelling is that it squares with my own personal experience. And then to make a short story long, and I'll shut up, Lex, but what grabbed me about Becker, and this is in part because I read a lot of his other books. There's another book, the Birth and Death of Meaning, which is framed from an evolutionary perspective, and then the Denial of Death is really more framed from an existential psychodynamic vantage point. And as a young academic, I was really taken by what I found to be a very potent juxtaposition that you really don't see that often. Yet usually evolutionary types are eager to dismiss the psychodynamic types and vice versa. And maybe only John Bowlby, there's other folks, but the attachment theorist John Bowlby was really one of the first serious academics to say these. These ways of thinking about things are quite compatible.

And can you comment on what's. What a psychodynamics view of the world is versus an evolutionary view of the world just in case people are not.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's. That's a fine question. Well, for the evolutionary types in general are interested in how it is and why it is that we have adapted to our surroundings in the service of persisting over time and being represented in the gene pool thereafter.

Used to be a fish. Yeah, we used to be a fish. And, yeah, and I ended up talking on a podcast how we came to be that way.

How we came to be that way. And so whereas the existential psychodynamic types, I would say, are more interested in development across a single lifespan. And. But, but the evolutionary types dismiss the psychodynamic types as overly speculative and devoid of empirical support for their views. They, you know, they'll just say, these guys are talking shit, if you'll pardon the expression. And of course, you can turn right around and say the same about the evolutionary types. They are often and rightfully criticized evolutionary psychologists for what are called the just so stories, where it's like, oh, this is probably why fill in the blank is potentially adaptive. And my thoughts again early on was I didn't see any intrinsic antithesis between these viewpoints. I just found them dialectically compatible and very powerful when combined.

So one question I would ask here is about science being speculative. You know, we understand so little about the Human mind. You said you picked up Becker's book and, you know, it felt like he was onto something. That's the same thing I felt when I picked up Becker's book. Probably also in my early 20s. You know, I read a lot of philosophy, but it felt like the question of the meaning of life kind of. You know, this seemed to be the most. The closest to the truth. Somehow it was onto something. So I guess the question I want to ask also is, like, how speculative is psychology? How, like all of your life's work, how do you feel, how confident do you feel about the whole thing about understanding our mind?

I feel confidently unconfident to have it both ways.

Like, what do we make of psychology? What do we make. Starting with Freud, you know, starting just. Just our. Or even just philosophy, even the aspects of the sciences, like, you know, my field of artificial intelligence, but also physics, you know, it often feels like, man, we don't really understand most of what's going on here. And certainly that's true with the human mind.

Yeah, well, to me, that's the proper epistemological stance.

I don't know anything.

Well, it's the Socratic. I know that I don't know which is the first step on the path to wisdom. I would argue forcefully that we know a lot more than we used to. I would argue equally forcefully, not that I have a PhD in the Philosophy of science, but I believe that Thomas Koons of the world are right when they point out that change is not necessarily progress. And so, on the one hand, I do think we know a lot more than we did back in the day when if you wanted to fly, you put on some wax wings and jumped off a mountain.

Yeah.

On the other hand, I think it's quite arrogant when scientists, I'll just say, speak about psychological scientists, when they have the audacity to mistake statistical precision for knowledge and insight, and when they make the mistake, in my estimation, that Einstein bemoaned, and that's this idea that the mere accumulation of data will necessarily result in conceptual breakthroughs. And so I. I like the. Well, we're all, I hope, appreciative of the people who trained us. But I remember my first day in graduate school at the University of Kansas. They brought us into a room, and on one side of the board was a quote by Kurt Lewin or Levine, famous German social psychologist, and was nothing. And the quote is, there's nothing more useful than a good thing theory. And then on the other side was another quote by a German physicist. His Name eludes me. And it was all theories are wrong. And I'm like, which is it? And of course the point is that it's both. Our theories are, I believe, powerful ways to direct our attention to aspects of human affairs that might render us better able to understand ourselves in the world around us. Now I also, as an experimental psychologist, I adhere to the view that theories are essentially hypothesis generating devices and that at its best, science is a dialectical interplay where you have theoretical assertions that yield testable hypotheses and that either results in the corroboration of the theory, the rejection of it, or the modification thereafter.

If you look at the existentialists or even like modern philosopher psychologist types like Jordan Peterson, I'm not sure if you're familiar with.

I know Jordan pretty well. We go way back, actually. If he were here with us today, we would. He would be jumping in and I believe very interesting and important ways. But yeah, we go back 30 years ago. He was basically saying our work is nonsense.

Let's get into this. I'm sure I'll talk to Jordan eventually on this thing. Going through some rough times right now.

Oh, absolutely. And I, and I wish him well. Jordan was working on his maps of meaning and we were publishing our work. And I think Jordan at the time was concerned about our vague claims to the effect that all meaning is arbitrary. He takes a more Jungian as well as evolutionary view that I don't think is wrong, by the way, which is that there are certain kinds of meanings that are more important, let's say religious types, and that we didn't pay sufficient attention to that in our early days.

So can you try to elucidate what his worldview is? Because he's also a religious man. So what was some of the interesting aspects of the disagreements that then?

Yeah, well, back in the day I just said, you know, Jordan was a young punk. We were young punks. He was just kind of flailing in an animated way at some conferences saying that we.

You're still both kind of punks.

Yeah, we are both kind of punks. So I saw him three or four years ago. We spoke on a. It was an awesome day. We were in Canada at the Ontario Shakespeare Festival where we were asked to be on a Canadian broadcast system program. I think we were talking about Macbeth from psychodynamic perspective. And I hadn't seen him in a ton of years. And we spent two days together, had a great time. You know, we had just written our book, the Worm at the Core and he's like, you know, you're missing a big opportunity. Every time you say something, you have to have your phone and you have to film yourself and then you have to put it on YouTube.

Yeah, he was onto something that, you know, just as a small tangent. Yeah, it's. It's almost sad to look at Jordan Peterson, somebody like yourself. After having done this podcast, I've realized that there is really brilliant people in this world. And oftentimes, especially like when they're. I mean, it would love. Are a little bit like punks.

That's right.

They. They kind of do their own thing and like the world doesn't know they exist as much as they should. And it's so interesting because most people are kind of boring and then the interesting ones kind of go on their own and there's not a smartphone.

No, that's.

That's so interesting. He was on to something that. I mean, it's interesting that he. I don't think he was thinking from a money perspective, but he was probably thinking of, like, connecting with people or sharing his knowledge. But people don't often think that way.

That's right.

So maybe we can try to get back to you're both brilliant people. And I'd love to get some interesting disagreements earlier and later about. In your psychological work, in your worldviews.

Well, our disagreements today would be along two dimensions. One is he is. And again, I wish he was here to correct me.

Yes.

When I say that he is more committed to the virtues of the Judeo Christian tradition, particularly Christianity, and in a sense is a contemporary Kierkegaard of sorts when he's saying there's only one way to leap into faith. And I would take ardent issue with that claim on the grounds that that is one, but by no means not the only way to find meaning and value in life. And so. And I see his.

What's his warm at the core. What is like. So we're talking about a little bit of a higher level of discovering meaning.

Yeah.

What's his. What does he make of death?

Oh, I don't know. And this is where it would be nice to have him here. He has, you know, from a distance, criticized our work as misguided. Having said that, though, when we were together, he said something along the lines that there is no theoretical body of work in academic psychology right now for which there is more empirical evidence. And so I appreciated that. He's great researcher, He's a good clinician. The other thing that we will agree to disagree about rather vociferously is Ultimately political, economic. So I remember being at dinner with him, telling him that the next book that I wanted to write was going to be called why Left and Right Are Both Beside the Point. And my argument was going to be, and it is going to be, that both liberal and political. No, liberal and conservative political philosophy are each intellectually and morally bankrupt because they're both framed in terms of assumptions about human nature that are demonstrably false. And Jordan didn't mind me knocking liberal political philosophy on those grounds. That would basically be like Steven Pinker's blank slate. But he took issue when I pointed out that actually it's conservative political philosophy, which starts with John Locke's assumption that in a state of nature, there are no societies, just autonomous individuals who are striving for survival. That's one of the most obviously patently wrong assertions in the history of intellectual thought. And Locke uses that to justify his claims about the individual right to acquire unlimited amounts of property, which is ultimately the justification for neoliberal economics.

And can you linger on a little bit? What's the. Can you describe his philosophy again as view of the world?

Sure.

And what neoliberal economics is?

Yeah, let me translate in English. So basically, on all these days, anybody who says, I'm a conservative, free market type, you're following John Locke and Adam Smith, whether you're aware of it or not. So here's John Locke, who, by the way, all of these guys are great. So for me to appear to criticize any of these folks, it is with the highest regard. And also we need to understand, in my estimation, how important their ideas are. Locke is working in a time where all rule was topped down by divine right. And he's trying desperately to come up with a philosophical justification to shift power and autonomy to individuals. And he starts in his second treatise on government, 1690 or so, he says, okay, let's start with a state of nature. And he's like, in a state of nature, there's no societies, there's just individuals. And in a perfect universe, there wouldn't be any societies. There would just be individuals who, by the law of nature have a right to survive. And in the service of survival, they have the right to acquire and preserve the fruits of their own labor. But his point is, and it's actually a good one, you know, he's following Hobbes here. He's like, well, the problem with that is that people are assholes, and if they would let each other alone, then we would still be living in a state of nature. Everybody just doing what they did to get by each day. But it's a whole lot easier, you know, if I see, like, an apple tree a mile away, well, I can go over and pick an apple. But if you're 10 meters away with an apple in your hand, it's a lot easier if I pick up a rock and crack your head and take the apple. And his point was that the problem is that people can't be counted on to behave. They will take each other's property. Moreover, he argued, if someone takes your property, you have the right to. You have the right to retribution in proportion to the degree of the magnitude of the transgression. English translation if I take your apple, you have the right to take an apple back. You don't have the right to kill my firstborn. But people being people, they're at to escalate retaliatory behavior, thus creating what Locke called a state of war. So he said, in order to avoid a state of war, people reluctantly give up their freedom in exchange for security. They agree to obey the law and that the sole function of government is to keep domestic tranquility and to ward off foreign evasion in order to protect our right to property. All right, so now here's the property thing, all right? So Locke says, if you look in the Bible and in nature, there is no private property. But Locke says, well, surely if there's anything that you own, it's your body, and surely you have a right by nature to. To stay alive. And then by extension, anything that you do where you exert effort or labor, that becomes your private property. So back to the apple tree. If I walk over to an apple tree, that's everybody's apples until I pick one. And the minute I do, that is my apple, right? And then he says, you can have as many apples as you want as long as you don't waste them and as long as you don't impinge on somebody else's right to get apples. Right? So far, so good.

Yep.

And then he says, well, okay, in the early days, you could only eat so many apples or you could only trade so many apples with somebody else. So he was like, well, if you put a fence around a bunch of apple trees, those become your apples. That's your property. If somebody else wants to put a fence around Nebraska, that's their property. And everybody can have as much property as they want because the world is so big that there is no limit to what you can have if you pursue it by virtue of your own effort. But then he says, money came into the picture. And this is important because he noticed long before anybody, before the Freuds of the world that money is funky because it has no intrinsic value. He's like, ooh, look at that shiny piece of metal that actually has. If you're hungry and you have a choice between a carrot and a lump of gold in the desert, most people are going to go for the carrot. But his point is that the allure of money is that it's basically a concentrated symbol of wealth, but because it doesn't spoil, Locke said, you're entitled to have as much money as you're able to garner. Right? Then he says, well, the reality is that some people are more. The word that he used was industrious. He said, some people more industrious than others. Today we would say smarter, less lazy, more ambitious. He just said, that's natural. It's also true. Therefore, he argued over time, some people are going to have a whole lot of property and other people not much at all. Inequality for luck is natural and beneficial for everyone. His argument was that the rising tide lifts all boats and that the truly creative and innovative are entitled to relatively unlimited worth because we're all better off as a result. So the point very simply is that, well, that's based. And then you have Adam Smith in the next century with the invisible hand, where Adam Smith says, everyone pursuing their own selfish. That's not necessarily pejorative. If everyone pursues their own selfish interests, we will all be better off as a result.

And what do you think is the flaw in that way of thinking?

Well, there's two flaws. One is that, well, one flaw is, first of all that it is based on an erroneous assumption to begin with, which is that there never was a time in human history when we were an asocial species.

In a sense, you don't feel like there's this emphasis of individual autonomy is a flawed premise, like there's something fundamentally deeply interconnected between us?

I do. I think that Plato and Socrates in the Crito were closer to the truth when they started with the assumption that we were interdependent and they derived individual autonomy as a manifestation of a functional social system.

That's fascinating.

So when Margaret Thatcher, you're too young, you know, in the 1980s, she said, societies, there's no such thing as societies. There's just individuals pursuing their self interest. So that's one point where I would take issue respectfully with John locke. Point number two is when Locke says, in 1690, well, England's filled up. So if you Want some land? Just go to America. It's empty. Or maybe there's a few savages there. Just kill them. So. And Melville does the same thing in Moby Dick where he thinks about, will there ever come a time where we run out of whales? And he says, no, but we have run out of whales. And so Locke was right, maybe in 1690, that the world was large and had infinite resources. He's certainly wrong today, in my opinion. Also wrong is the claim that the unlimited pursuit of personal wealth does not harm those around us. There is no doubt that radical inequality is tragic psychologically and physically. Poverty is not that terrible. It's easy for me to say because I have a place to stay and something to eat. But as long as you're not starving and have a place to be, poverty's not as challenging as having the impoverished and close proximity to those who are obscenely wealthy.

So it's not the absolute measure of your well being, it's the inequality of that well being is, quite frankly, painful. So maybe just to linger on the Jordan Peterson thing in terms of your disagreement in his worldview. So he went through quite a bit, you know, there's been quite a bit of fire. Right. In his defense, or maybe his opposition of the idea of equality of outcomes. So looking at the inequality that's in our world, looking at, you know, certain groups measurably having an outcome that's different than other groups, and then drawing conclusions about fundamental unfairness, injustice, inequality in the system. So like systematic racism, systematic sexism, systematic. Anything else that creates inequality. And he's been kind of saying pretty simple things to say that the system, for the most part, is not broken or flawed, that the inequality of outcomes is part of our world. What we should strive for is the equality of opportunity.

Yeah. And I do not dispute that as an abstraction. But again, to back up for a second, I do take issue with Jordan's fervent devotion to the free market and his cavalier dismissal of Marxist ideas, which he has, in my estimation, mischaracterized in his public depictions.

Let's get into it. So he seems to really not like socialism, Marxism, communism. Yeah, historically speaking, sort of. I mean, how would I characterize it? I'm not exactly sure. I don't want to. Again, he's. Yeah, he'll eventually be here to defend himself. John Locke. Unfortunately not here to define exactly. But what's, what's your sense about Marxism and, and the, the way Jordan talks about, the way you think about it from the economics, from the philosophical perspective.

Yeah. Well, if we were all here together, I'd say we need to start with Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1944, before Marx became more of a polemicist. And I would argue that Marx's political philosophy. He's a crappy economist. I don't dispute that. But his arguments about human nature, his arguments about the inevitably catastrophic psychological and environmental and economic effects of capitalism, I would argue every one of those has proven quite right. Marx maybe did not have the answer, but he saw in the 18, whenever he was writing that inevitably capitalism would lead to massive inequity, that it was ultimately based on the need to denigrate and dehumanize labor to render them, in his language, a fleshy cog in a giant machine, and that it would create tension and conflict between those who own things and those who made things that over time would always, you know, the Thomas Pikerty guy who writes about capital and just makes the point that return on investment will always be greater than. Than wages. That means the people with money are going to have a lot more. That means there's going to come a point where the economic house of cards falls apart. Now, the Joseph Shumpters of the world, they're like, that's creative destruction. Bring it that. That's great. So I think it's Niles Ferguson. He was. He's a historian. He may be at Stanford now. He was at Harvard. You know, he writes about the history of money. And he's like, yeah, there's been 20 or whatever depressions and big recessions in the last several hundred years. And when that happens, half of the population or whatever is catastrophically inconvenienced. But that's the price that we pay for progress. Other people would argue, and I would agree with them, that I will happily sacrifice the rate of progress in order to flatten the curve of economic destruction. To put that in plainer English, I would direct our attention to the social democracies that. Forgetting for the moment of whether it's possible to. To do this on a scale in a country as big as ours, on all of the things that really matter, you know, gross domestic GDP or whatever, that's just an abstraction. But when you look at whatever the United nations says, how we measure quality of life, you know, life expectancy, education, you know, rates of alcoholism, suicide and so on, the countries that do better are the mixed economies. They're market economies that have high tax rates in exchange for the provision of services that come as a right for citizens.

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the Question is, you've kind of mentioned that, you know, like as Marx described capitalism with a slippery slope, eventually things go awry in some kind of way. So that's the question is when you have, when you implement a system.

Yeah.

How does it go wrong? Eventually, you know, the, you know, eventually we'll all be dead.

That's exactly right. No, no. So look, that's. No, that's right.

So. And then the criticism, I mean, I think these days, unfortunately, Marxism as like is a dirty word. I say unfortunately because even if you disagree with a philosophy, it should. You should. Like, calling somebody a Marxist should not be a thing that shuts down all conversation.

No, that's right. And the fact is, I'm sympathetic with Jordan's dismissal of the folks and popular, the talking heads these days who spew Marxist words. To me, it's like fashionable nonsense. Do you know that book that the physicist wrote, mockingbird, you're too young. So in the 20 or so years.

We'Re all pretty young.

Yeah, that's right. But there, I think there were these NYU physicists, they wrote a paper just mocking the kind of literary postmodern types.

Oh, those kinds of.

Yeah, yeah. It was just nonsense and of course it was made the lead article. And, and you know, my point is, Marx wouldn't be a Marxist.

True. I've read and listened to some of the work of Richard Wolff. He speaks pretty eloquently about Marxism.

I like him.

He's one of the only, you know, one of the only people speaking about a lot about Marxism in the way we are now in. In a serious way in it. In a sort of saying, you know, what are the flaws of capitalism? Not saying like, yeah, basically sounding very different. People should check out his work.

No, I.

Because all this kind of work, this kind of outrage, mob culture of sort of demanding equal equality of outcome. That's not Marxism.

It is not Marxism. He, he didn't say that. You know, he literally said each. What was it like? Each according to their needs and each according to their abilities, or something like that.

So the question is the implementation, like, absolutely. Humans are messy, so how does it go wrong? Like it is.

There you go, Lex. Messy, brilliant. It's messy. And this gets back to my rant about the book that I want to try. If I don't stroke out. Why? Left and right are both beside the point. You know, the people, the conservatives are right when they condemn liberals for being simple minded by assuming that modification of external conditions will yield changes in human nature. You know, again, that's Where Marx and Skinner are odd bedfellows, you know, here they are just saying, oh, let's change the surroundings and things will inevitably get better. On the other hand, when conservatives say that people are innately selfish and they use that as the justification for glorifying the unbridled pursuit of wealth, well, they're only half right. Because it turns out that we can be innately selfish, but we are also innately generous and reciprocating creatures. There's remarkable studies, I think they've been done at Yale of, you know, babies, 14 month old babies. If someone hands them a toy and then wants something in return, babies before they can walk and talk will reciprocate. All right, fine. If someone, if they want a toy, let's say, or a bottle of water, baby wants a bottle of water and I look like I'm trying to give it to the baby, but I dropped the bottle so the baby doesn't get what she or he wanted. When given a chance to reciprocate, little babies will reciprocate because they're aware of and are responding to intention. Similarly, if they see somebody behaving unfairly to someone, they will not help that person in return. So my point is, yeah, we are selfish creatures at times, but we are also simultaneously uber social creatures who are eager to reciprocate. And in fact, we're congenitally prepared to be reciprocators to the point where we will reciprocate on the basis of intentions above and beyond what actually happens.

How close? So I mean, your work is on the fundamental role of the fear of mortality in ourselves. How fundamental is this reciprocation, this human connection to other humans?

Oh, I think it's really innate. Yeah, I think it's because, yeah, bats reciprocate not by intention, but you know, this. I'm going here from Richard Dawkins, the selfish gene, you know, to. I love the early Dawkins. I'm less enamored. The early Beatles. Yeah. No, no, no. And again, I say this with great respect, but you know, Dawkins just points out that, you know, reciprocation is just fundamental. Cooperation is fundamental. You know it is. It's a one sided view of evolutionary takes on things when we see it solely in terms of individual competition.

It's almost from a game theoretic perspective too. It's just easier to see the world that way. It's easier to, I don't know, I mean, you see this in physics. There's a whole field of folks like complexity, that kind of embrace the fact that it's all an intricately connected mess and it's just very difficult to do anything with that kind of science. But it seems to be much closer to actually representing what the world is like.

Genius, Adam Smith, genius. When he uses the notion that we're bartering creatures. So he uses that reciprocation idea as the basis of his way of thinking about things.

But that's not at the core. The bartering is not at the core of human nature.

It's not at. Well, he says it is. He says we're fundamentally bartering creatures.

Well, that doesn't even make sense then, because then how, how can we then be autonomous individuals?

Well, because we're going to barter with an eye on.

On for self.

For ourselves.

Self interest.

Yeah, but. All right, so. But back to Adam Smith for a second. Lex is like Adam Smith, here's. He's got the invisible hand and my conservative friends, I'm like, you need to read his books because he is a big fan of the free market. And this is my other gripe with folks who support just unbridled markets. Adam Smith understood that there was a role for government for two reasons. One is, is that just like Locke, people are not going to behave with integrity. And he understood that one role of government is to maintain a proverbial, you know, even playing field. And then the other thing Smith said was that there's some things that can't be done well for a profit. And I believe he talked about education and public health and infrastructure as things that are best done by governments because you can make a profit. But that doesn't mean that the institutions themselves will be maximally beneficial. Yeah. So I'm just eager to engage people by saying let's start with our most contemporary understanding of human nature, which is that we are both selfish and tend to cooperate. And we also can be heroically helpful to folks in our own tribe. And of course how you define one's tribe becomes critically important. But what some people say is, look, what would then be what kind of political institutions and what kind of economic organization can we think about to kind of hit that sweet spot? And that would be, in my opinion, how do we maximize individual autonomy in a way that fosters creativity and innovation and the self regard that comes from creative expression while engaging our more cooperative and reciprocal tendencies in order to come up with a system that is potentially stable over time? Because the other thing about all capital.

Based systems, the stability, it's fundamentally unstable.

Yeah. Because it's based on infinite growth. And, you know, it's a positive feedback loop. To be silly, infinite growth is only good for malignant cancer cells and compound interest. Otherwise, you know, we want to seek a steady state. And that would be, you know, so when Steven Pinker writes, for example, again, great scholar, but I'm going to disagree when he says the world has never been better and all we need to do is keep making stuff and buying stuff.

So your sense, is the world sort of in disagreement with Steven Pinker, that the world is like facing a potential catastrophic collapse in multiple directions?

Yes.

And the fact that there are certain, like the, the rate of violence and aggregate is decreasing, the death, you know, the quality of life, all those kinds of measures that you can plot across centuries, that it's improving, that doesn't capture the fact that our world might be dis. We might destroy ourselves in very painful ways in the, in the, in the next century.

So I'm with Jared diamond, you know, in the book Collapse, where he points out studying the collapse of major civilizations, that it often happens right after things appear to never have been better. And in that regard, I mean, there are more known voices that have taken issue with Dr. Pinker. I'm thinking of John Gray, who's a British philosopher and here in the States, I don't know where he is these days, but Robert J. Lift and the psycho historian. Yeah, they're both of my view, which I hope is, by the way, wrong.

Me too.

Yeah. No, but between ongoing ethnic tensions, environmental degradation, economic instability, and the fact that, you know, the world has become a petri dish of psychopathology.

Like, what really worries me is the, the quiet economic pain that people are going through, the businesses that are closed, dreams that are broken because you can no longer do the thing that you've wanted to do. And how. I mentioned to you off camera that I've been reading the. The Rise and Fall, the Third Reich. And I mean the amount of anger and hatred and on the flip side of that sort of nationalist pride that can arise from deep economic pain. Like what happens with that economic pain is you become bitter.

Yeah.

You start to find the other. Whether it's other European nations that mistreated you, whether it's other groups that mistreated you, it always ends up being the Jews. Somehow. Somehow our fault here. Yeah, that's what worries me is where this quiet anger and pain goes in 2021, 2022, 2030, if you look. Sorry to see the parallels.

No, no, no.

Rise and fall, the Third Reich. But you know what happens 10, 15 years from now, from what's because of the COVID pandemic that's happening now.

And Lex, you make, I think a really profoundly important point. Back to our work for a bit or Ernest Becker rather. His point is that the way that we manage existential terror is to embrace culturally constructed belief systems that give us a sense that life has meaning and we have value. And in the form of self esteem, which we get from perceiving that we meet or exceed the expectations associated with the role that we play in society. Well, here we are right now in a world where first of all, if you have nothing, you are nothing. And secondly, as you were saying before we got started today, a lot of jobs are gone and they're not coming back.

And that's where the self esteem, that's.

Where the self esteem and identity come in people. It's not only that you don't have anything to eat, you don't even have a self anymore to speak of because we typically define ourselves. You know, as Marx put it, you are what you do. And now who are you when your way of life as well as your way of earning a living is no longer available?

Yeah. And it feels like that yearning for self esteem that we could talk a little bit more because you about defining self esteem is quite interesting. The more I've read sort of Warmth the Core and just in general your thinking it made me realize I haven't thought enough about the idea of self esteem. But the thing I want to say is it feels like when you lose your job, then it's easy to find. It's tempting to find that self esteem in a tribe that's not somehow often positive.

That's exactly.

It's like a tribe that defines itself on the hatred of somebody else.

So that's brilliant. And this is what John Gray, the philosopher in the 1990s, he predicted what's happening today. He wrote a book about globalism. And actually Hannah Arendt in the 1950s said the same thing in her book about totalitarianism when she said that economics has reached the point where most money is made not by actually making stuff. You use money to make money. And therefore what happens is money chases money across national boundaries. Ultimately, governments become subordinate to the corporate entities whose sole function is to generate money. And what John Gray said is that that will inevitably produce economic upheaval in local areas which will not be attributed to the economic order. It will be misattributed to whoever the scapegoat du jour is. And the anger and the distress associated with that uncertainty will be picked up on by ideological demagogues who will transform that into rage. So both Hannah Arendt as well as John Gray, they, they just said, watch out. We're going to have right wing ish populist movements where demagogues who are the alchemists of hate, what makes them brilliant is they don't. They don't. The hate's already there, but they take the fears and they expertly redirect them to who it is that I need to hate and kill in order to feel good about myself. So back to your point, Lex. That's right. So the self regard that used to come from having a job and doing it well, and as a result of that having adequate resources to provide a decent life for your family, well, those opportunities are gone and. Yeah, what's left? So Max Weber, German sociologist at the Beginning of the 20th century, he said, in times of historical upheaval, we are apt to embrace. He was the one who coined the term charismatic leader. Seemingly larger than life, individuals who often believe or their followers believe are divinely ordained to rid the world of evil.

Yeah, all right.

Now, Ernest Becker, he used Weber's ideas in order to account for the rise of Hitler. Hitler was elected, and he was elected when Germans were in an extraordinary state of existential distress. And he said, I'm going to make Germany great again. All right. Now what Becker adds to the equation is his claim that what underlies our affection for charismatic populist leaders, good and bad, come in. We're egghead experimental researchers. Becker wrote this book, the Denial of Death, and he couldn't get a job. People just dismiss these ideas as fanciful speculation for which there's no evidence.

And you've done some good experimental.

Yeah, here's where I can be more cavalier and where. What I would urge people like what you said, Lex, is ignore my histrionic and polemic language if possible, and step back if you can, myself included. And let's just consider the research findings. Because in September 11, 2001, people that are old enough to remember that horrible day two days before, George W. Bush had the lowest approval rating in the history of presidential polling. Three weeks later, after he said, we will rid the world of the evildoers. And then a week or two after that, he said in a cover story on Time magazine that he believed that God had chosen him to lead the world. During this, to lead the country, rather, during this perilous time, he had the highest approval rating. And so we're like, well, what happened? You know what happened to Americans that their approval of President Bush got so high so fast. Well, our view following becker is that 2001 was like a giant death reminder. The people dying, plus the symbols of American greatness, World Trade center and the Pentagon. So we did a bunch of experiments, and most of our experiments are disarmingly simple. We have one group of people and we just remind them that they're going to die. We say, hey, write your thoughts and feelings about dying. Or in other cases, we stop them outside, either in front of a funeral home or 100 meters to either side. Our thought being that if we stop you in front of a funeral home, then death is on your mind, even if you don't know it. And then there's other studies, they're even more subtle, where we bring people into the lab and they read stuff on a computer.

And.

And while they're doing that, we flash the word death for 28 milliseconds. It's so fast, you don't see anything. And then we just measure people's reactions or bang. Up to the election of 2004 was that Americans did not care for President Bush or his policies in Iraq in control conditions.

A lot more so, by the way, just a small pause. You said they're disarmingly simple experiments. I think that's. And people should read warm at the core for some other descriptions. You have a lot of different experiences of this nature. I think it's a brilliant experiment connected to the Stoics, perhaps of how your worldview on anything. On how delicious that water tastes.

Yes.

After you're reminded of your own mortality. It's such a fascinating experiment that you could probably keep doing, like millions of them to draw insight about the way we see the world.

No, that's right. Lex and I appreciate the compliment. Not because we did anything, but because what these studies, many of which are now done by other people around the world in labs that we're not connected with. What I'm most proud about our work. I am proud of the experiments that we've done. But it's not science until somebody else can replicate your findings and independent researchers are interested in pursuing them.

It's such a fascinating idea. I have to think about a lot about the experiments you've done and that you've inspired, about the fact that death changes the way you see a bunch of different things. I think the Stoics talked about the. I mean, in general, just memento mori, like just thinking about death and meditating on death is a really positive. Not a positive. It's an enlightening way to live life. So what do you think about that at the. And the individual level? Like, what is the role about being. Bringing that terror of death, fear of death to the surface and being cognizant of it?

For us, that's the. That's the ball game. So what we write in our book, and here we're just paying homage to the philosophers and theologians that come before us, is to point out that literally since antiquity, there has been a consensus that to lead a full life requires. Albert Camus had come to terms with death. Thereafter, anything is possible. And so you've got the. The Stoics and you got the Epicureans, and then you got the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and then you got, like, the medieval monks that, you know, worked with, like, a skull on their desk. And the whole idea. I should back up a bit because. And just remind folks that our studies, you know, when we remind people that they're going to die and we find that, yeah, they drink more water. If a famous person is. Is, you know, advertising it, they eat more cookies, they want more fancy clothes, they sit closer to people that look like them, it changes who they vote for. But all of those things, those are very subtle death reminders. You don't even know that death is on your mind. And so our point is that. And this is kind of counterintuitive, and that is that the most problematic and unsavory human reactions to death anxiety are malignant manifestations of repressed death anxiety. You know, we try and bury it under the psychological bushes, and then it comes back to bear bitter fruit. But what the theologians and the philosophers of the world are saying is it behooves each of us to spend considerable time. You don't have to be a goth death rocker, you know, wallowing in death imagery to spend enough time entertaining the reality of the human condition, which is that you too, will pass to get to the point where there is to lapse into a cliche, the capacity for personal transformation and growth.

Let's go personal for a second. Are you yourself afraid of death?

Yeah.

I mean, and how much do you meditate on that thought? Like maybe your own study of it is a kind of escape from your own mentality.

Absolutely, Lex. So you got it.

And, like, if you figure out death, somehow, you won't die.

So, no.

No.

So my colleagues and good friends Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pasinski, we met in graduate school in the 1970s. We've been doing this work for 40 years. And we cheerfully admit, even Though it doesn't reflect well on us as humans that I should just speak for myself. But I feel like there's a real sense in which doing these studies and writing books and lecturing has been my way of avoiding directly confronting my anxieties by turning it into an intellectual exercise. And every once in a while, therefore, when I think that I'm making some progress as a human, I have to remind myself that that is probably not the case and that I have at times, like all humans, been more preoccupied with the implications of these ideas for my self esteem. It's like, oh, we're going to write a book and maybe we'll get to go on TV or something. Well, no, that's not the same as to actually think about it in a way that you feel it rather than just thinking think it.

Yeah, like you did when you were eight at first. Exactly right.

So when I first read the Denial of Death, I was so literally flabbergasted by it that I took a leave of absence for a year and just like, did what would be considered menial jobs. I. I did construction work, I worked in a restaurant. And I, I was just like, well, wait a minute. If I understand what this guy is saying, then I'm just a culturally constructed meat puppet doing things for reasons that I know not in order to assuage death anxiety. And I was like, that's not acceptable.

Maybe. Another interesting person to talk about is Ernest Becker himself.

Sure.

So how did he face his death? Is there something interesting, personal?

I think so. So interesting to me is Becker also from a Jewish family, claimed to be atheistic, did not identify, ultimately is Jewish. I believe he converted to Christianity, but was himself a religious person. And he said he became religious when his first child was born.

Now, religious, what does that mean? Does he have a faith? Well, let's talk more. Most importantly is the afterlife.

He was.

His view on the afterlife.

He was agnostic on that, but he did. Now, the Denial of Death is. There's a chapter devoted to Kierkegaard, and he talks about. For Kierkegaard, if you want to become a mature individual, you know, if you want to learn something, you go to the university. If you want to become a more mature individual, according to Kierkegaard, you got to go to the unit. You got to go to the school of anxiety. And what Kierkegaard said is that we have to let this vague dis. Ease. Put a hyphen between dis and ease about death. Kierkegaard's point is you have to really think about that. You have to think about it and feel it. You got to let it seek in or seep into your mind. At which point, according to Kierkegaard, basically, you realize that your present identity is fundamentally a cultural construction. You didn't choose the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your name. You didn't choose necessarily even the social role that you occupy. You might have chosen from what's available in your culture, but not from the full palette of human opportunities. And so what Kierkegaard said is that we need to realize that we've been living a lie of sorts. Becker calls it a necessary lie, and we have to momentarily dispose of that. And so now Kierkegaard says, well, here I am. I have shrugged off all of the cultural accoutrements that I have used to define myself, and now what am I, or who am I? This is like the ancient Greek tragedy where the worst thing was to be no one or no thing. At this point, Kierkegaard said, you're really dangling on the precipice of oblivion. And some people tumble into that abyss and never come out. On the other hand, Kierkegaard said that what you can now do, metaphorically and literally, is to rebuild yourself from the ground up. And there's a. In the New Testament, there's something you have to die in order to be reborn. And Kierkegaard's view, though, is that there's only one way to do that. This is his proverbial leap into faith. And in Kierkegaard's case, it was faith in Christianity. That you can't have unbridled faith in cultural constructions. The only thing that you can have unequivocal faith in is some kind of transcendent power. All right, but of course, this raises the question of, well, is that just another death denying belief system?

Right?

And at the end of the denial of death, Becker admits that there's no way to tell while still advocating for what is ultimately a religious stance. Now, one of the things that I don't understand, and I. Becker has been the most singularly potent influence in my academic and personal life. But a year or two ago, I started reading Martin Heidegger. I'm reading Being in Time. And what I now wonder is why Becker, who refers to Heidegger from time to time in his work, why he didn't take Heidegger more seriously? Because Heidegger is like a secular Kierkegaard. He has the same thing, which is death anxiety. Oh, and I should have pointed out that what Kierkegaard says is that death anxiety. Most people don't go to the school of anxiety. They flee from death anxiety by embracing their cultural beliefs. Kierkegaard says they then tranquilize themselves with the trivial. And I love that phrase. It's a beautiful phrase. Because at the end of the Denial of Death, Becker's like, look, the average American is either drinking or shopping or watching television, and they're all the same thing. Heidegger says the same thing. He says, look. And he acknowledges Kierkegaard. He says, what makes us feel unsettled? Evidently, that's an English translation of angst, that it's, we don't feel at home in the world. Heidegger says that's death anxiety. And one direction is the Kierkegaard one. Heidegger calls it a flight from death. You just unself reflexively cling to your cultural constructions. And Heidegger borrows the term tranquilized, but he points out that he doesn't care for that term because tranquilized sounds like you're subdued, when in fact, what most culturally constructed meat puppets do is to be frenetically engaged. Engaged with their surroundings to ensure that they never sit still long enough to actually think about anything consequential. Heidegger says there's another way, though. He's like, yo, what you can do is to come to terms with that death anxiety in the following way. Thing number one is to realize that not only are you going to die, but your death can happen at any given moment. So for Heidegger, if you say, I know I'm going to die in some vaguely unspecified future moment, that's still death denial. Because you're saying, yeah, not me, not now. Heidegger's point is you need to get to the point where you need to realize that I need to realize that I can walk outside and get smote by a comet, or I can stop for gas on the way home and catch the virus and be dead in two days, or any number of potentially unanticipated and uncontrollable fatal outcomes.

But it's brilliant, by the way. Sorry to bring into the now.

Yeah, it is brilliant. I agree, Lex. And this is why I'm wondering, why didn't Becker notice this? Because that's the being and time thing, is it's got to be now. And then he says, so, okay, so now I've dealt somewhat with the death part. And now he says, now you've got to deal with what he calls existential Guilt. And he says, well, all right. What. You have to, you have to realize that, like it or not, you have to make choices. You know, this is Jean Paul Sartre. We are condemned by virtue of consciousness to choosing. But Heidegger is a little bit more precise. He's like, look, as I was saying earlier, you're in reality, you're an insignificant speck of respiring carbon based dust born into a time and place not of your choosing, but when you're here for a microscopic amount of time after which you are not. And for Heidegger, you have to realize that, like I said, I didn't choose to be born a male or Jewish or in America, the offspring of working class people. And Heidegger, what he says is, yeah, but you still have to make choices and accept responsibility for those choices, even though you didn't choose any of the parameters that ultimately limit what's available to you. And moreover, you're going to not always make good choices. So now you're guilty for your choices. And then he uses the, the poet Rilke, he has a phrase, Becker uses it in the denial of death, the guilt of unlived life. I just love that you have to accept that you have already diminished and in many ways amputated your own possibilities by virtue of choices that you've made or just as often have declined to make because you are reluctant to accept responsibility for the opportunities that you are now able to create by virtue of seeing the possibilities that lay before you. So anyway, Heidegger then says, look, okay, so, you know, I'm a professor and I live in America in the 21st century. Well, if I was in the third century living in a yurt in Mongolia, I'm not going to have an opportunity to be a professor. But what he submits is that there is some aspects of whatever I am that are independent of my cultural and historical circumstances. In other words, there is a me of sorts. Heidegger would take vigorous issue, and so would Heidegger scholars, because I'm not claiming to understand him. This is my classic comic book rendering. But Heidegger's point is that you get to the point where you're able to say, okay, I am a contingent historical and cultural artifact, but so what? You know, if I was, you know, now if I was transported a thousand years in the past in Asia, I'd be in the same situation. I would still be conditioned by time and place. I would still have choices that I could make within the confines of what opportunities are afforded to me. And then heidegger says, if I can get that far. And this is his language, he says that there is a transformation. And he literally, he calls it a turning. You're turning away from a flight from death, and you are allowed, therefore, you see, a horizon is his word of opportunity. That makes you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure, perfused with unshakable joy. All right, let me unpack those things. It is beautiful. I love Lex, that you're resonating to the time thing. So he's like, okay, we already talked about now. Anticipatory is already hopeful because it's looking forward to be resolute. It means to be steadfast and to just have confidence in what you're doing moving forward. All right. Solicitous. I had to look up all these words, by the way. It just means that you are concerned about your fellow human beings and. But I love the idea, even if it seems allegorical. I don't mind that at all. This idea. You said love earlier. And I think that when Heidegger is talking about being solicitous, that's as close as he can get. There's an Italian.

Yes. Sighting drop. Well, so what was that line again with the solicitors of the. Okay, the whole thing of the turning away from death and. I mean, all the words you said are just beautiful.

I love those words.

Yeah.

Anticipatory resoluteness that is accompanied with solicitous regard to our fellow humans, which makes life appear to us to be an ongoing adventure that is permeated by unshakable joy. Now, again, Heidegger is not Mary Poppins.

This. I just got a tattoo.

No, great. I just love it.

That exact quote.

No, I'm piecing together. These are his exact words that. And I spent the last two years reading almost everything that I can find because I want to. I'm sick of death. You said it, so I want to second what you say, Lex. So it's not about death. It's the Sherwood Anderson guy. He's a novelist that I like about. He wrote a book called Winesburg, Ohio. And now I'm going to forget what he said on his tombstone. But, you know, it was something to the effect. Oh, he said life, not death, is the great adventure. The point being is that, you know, to consider that we must die and the existential implications of that. Really, the goal, the way I see it, is getting from hate to love. And I feel like Heidegger has a way of thinking about things that moves us more in that direction. And so that's kind of my current preoccupation, is to take what I just said to you and to talk about it with my colleagues and other academic psychologists. Because the way we started with Ernest Becker, remember I said earlier, I wasn't trained in any of these things. I'm an egghead researcher that was doing experiments about biofeedback. And then we read these Becker books, and I thought they were so interesting that for the first few years we didn't have any studies. I just would travel around and I'd be like, here's what this Becker guy says. I think this is cool. Well, my present view is I'm like, here's what this Heidegger guy says. I think these ideas are consistent with what Becker is saying because they are anchored in death anxiety. But I like that direction as an alternative to the Kierkegaardian insistence that the only psychologically tenable way to extricate ourselves from maladaptive reactions to death anxiety is through faith in the traditional sense.

Yeah. I always kind of saw Kierkegaard unfairly, like you said in a comic book sense of the word, faith is a non traditional sense. I kind of like the idea of leap of faith.

Oh, I love that idea. And so what I've been babbling about with, you know, Kierkegaard or Heidegger, you know, I'm like, yeah, Kierkegaard is a leap of faith in God. Heidegger's a leap of faith in life. And I just. Yeah, I like it.

I found the leap of faith really interesting in so. In the technological space. So of I've talked to. On this thing with Elon Musk, but I think he's also just in general, for our culture, a really important figure.

Oh, absolutely.

That takes. I mean, he's sometimes a little bit insane on. On social media, on. And just in life, when I met him was kind of interesting that of course there's a. I mean, he's a legit engineer, so he's fun to talk to about the technical things.

Yeah.

But he also just. Just the way the humor and the way he sees life, it just like, refuses to be conventional.

Yeah.

So it's a constant leap into the unknown. And one of the things that he does. And this isn't even. This isn't even like, fake, a lot of people say because he's a CEO, there's a business owner, so he's trying to make money No, I think I looked him in his eyes. I mean, this is real. Is a lot of the things he believes that are going to be accomplished that a lot of others are saying are impossible, like autonomous vehicles. He truly believes it. To me, that is the leap of faith of almost going like. We're like. The entirety of our experience is shrouded in mystery.

Yeah.

We don't know what the hell's going to happen. What. You don't know what we're actually capable of as human beings. And he just takes the leap. He fully believes that we can, you know, we can go to Mars. We can colonize Mars.

Yeah.

I mean, how could. How crazy is it to just believe and dream and actually be taking steps towards it.

Yeah.

To colonizing Mars. When most people are like, that's the stupidest idea ever.

Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm in agreement with you on that. You know, two things. You know, one is it reminds me of Ben Franklin, who in his autobiography, you know, has a similarly childish, in the best sense of the word, unbridled imagination for what might become. You know, Ben Franklin's like, yeah, I got electricity. That's cool, but we'll be levitating soon. And I. We can't even begin to imagine what we are capable of. And of course, people are like, dude, that's crazy. And there's a guy with. It's FCS Schiller, some humanistic guy at the beginning of the 20th century. He's like, you know, lots of things that people think about may appear to be absurd to the point of obscene, but the reality is, historically, every fantastic innovation has generally been initiated by someone who was condemned for being a lunatic. And it's not that anything is possible, but surely things that we don't try will never manifest as possibilities. Yeah.

And that, that's, that's. That there's something beautiful to that. That's the embracing the abyss. And again, it's like the. It's the embracing the fear of death. The, the. The. The. The reality of death and then turning and to look at all the opportunities.

Oh, I. Yeah, that's right.

Let me ask you, whenever I bring up Ernest Becker's work, which I do, and yours quite a bit, I find it surprising how that it's not a lot more popular in a sense that. No, not. I don't mean just your book. Yeah, that's well written. People should read it, should buy it, whatever. I think it has the same kind of qualities that are useful to think about is like Jordan Peterson's work and stuff like that. But I, I just mean like why people are not. Don't think of that as a compelling description of the core of the human condition. Like, I think what you mentioned about Heidegger is quite, connects with me quite well. So I ask on this podcast, I often ask people if they're afraid of death. That's like almost every single part. I almost always get criticized for asking world class people, scientists and technologists and about fear of death and the meaning of life. And on the fear of death, they often like, don't say anything interesting. What I mean by that is they haven't thought deeply about it. Like what? Yeah, you kind of brought this up a few times of really letting it sink in. They kind of say this thing about what exactly you said, which is like, it's something that happens. Not today. Like, I'm aware that it's something that happens and I'm not. The, the thing they usually say is I'm not afraid of death, I just want to live a good life kind of thing.

Yeah.

And what I'm trying to express is like when I look in their eyes and the kind of the core of the conversation, it looks like they haven't really become like they haven't really meditated on death. I guess the question is, what do I say to people that there's something to really think about here? Like there's some demons, some realities that need to be faced by more people.

Well, that's a tough one. You know, I could tell you what not to do, you know, so when.

We are like, don't say anything interesting. What I mean by that is they haven't thought deeply about it. Like what? Yeah, you kind of brought this up a few times of really letting it sink in. They kind of say this thing about what exactly you said, which is like, it's something that happens, not young and annoying.

A lot of famous people, mostly psychologists, because that's who we intersected with that, you know, we would lay out these ideas and they would be, well, I don't think about death like that, so these ideas must be wrong. And we would say, well, you don't think about death because you're lucky enough to be comfortably ensconced in a cultural worldview from which you derive self esteem and that has spared you the existential excruciations that would otherwise arise. But that's like Freud, you know, you're repressing. So you either agree with me, in which case I'm right, or you disagree with me, in which case you're repressing. And I'm right.

Well, so that's the Nietzsche thing. I. What I felt when I've. There've been moment in my life. Moments in my life when I really thought about death. I mean, there's not too many, like, really, really thought about it and feel the thing when you felt that. 8. Maybe I'm dramatizing or romanticizing it, but I feel like it's the conservatives call it popular, like, or the movie Matrix call it the red pill.

Yeah.

Moment. I feel like it's a dangerous thought because I feel like I'm taking a step out of society. Like, there's a nice narrative that we've all constructed today. Like, I'm aware that it's something that happens.

Yeah.

And I'm not The. The thing they usually say is I'm not afraid of death. I just want to live a good life kind of thing.

Yeah.

And what, What I'm trying to express is like when I look in their eyes and the kind of the, the core of the conversation, it looks like the heav and I'm taking a step out. And it feels. It's this, this feeling like you're basically drowning. I mean, it's. It's not a good feeling.

It is not. But this gets back to the Heidegger Kierkegaard school of anxiety. You are stepping out.

Yeah.

And you are momentarily shrugging off the. Again, the culturally constructed psychological accoutrements that allow you to. To stand up in the morning.

And so, I mean, in that sense, it feels like. I mean, what do you. How do you have that conversation? Because I guess I'm dancing around. Haven't really become like, they haven't really meditated on death. I guess the question is, what do I say to people that there's something to really think about here. Like, there's some demons, some realities that need to be faced by more people. Well, a set of questions which is like, I guess I'm disappointed that people don't. Are not as willing to step outside. Like, even just, Even any kind of thought experiment.

Yeah.

Let's forget denial, death. Like, there's, There's.

That's a tough one. You know, I could tell you what not to do. You know, so when we are young and annoying.

Yeah.

A lot of famous people, mostly psychologists, because that's who we intersected with that, you know, we would lay out these ideas and they would be. Well, I don't think about that now.

A community of people. Let's take an easy one that I think is Scientifically ridiculous. Which is there's a community of people that believe that the earth is flat.

Yeah.

Or actually even even better that space is fake.

Yeah.

Like what I find surprising is that a lot of people I talk to.

Are not willing like that.

So these I to be like, imagine if it is like imagine the earth is flat. Like think about it, right. Like a lot of people just like, no, the earth is round.

This must be wrong. And we would say, well, you don't think about death because you're lucky enough to be comfortably ensconced in a cultural worldview from which you derive self esteem and that has. It's spared you the existential excrement.

They're like, like scientists too. They're like yeah. Well actually wait, have you actually like thought about it like imagine like as a thought experiment that like basically step outside the little narrative that we are comfortable with now that one in particular is. Has really strong evidence and scientific validation so on is a pretty simple thing to show that it at least is.

Not flat appreciations that would otherwise arise. But that's like Freud, you know, you're.

But just the willingness to take a step outside of the stories that bring us comfort. It's been disappointing that people are not willing to do that.

Yeah.

And I think the philosophy that you've constructed and that Ernest Beck has constructed pressing.

So you either agree with me, in which case I'm right, or you disagree with me, in which case you're repressing and I'm right.

Well so that's the Nietzsche thing. What I felt and you've tested, I think is really compelling. And the fact that people aren't. There have been moment in my life. Moments in my life when I really thought about death. I mean there's not too many like really, really thought about it and often willing to take that step.

Yeah.

Disappointing.

Well, yes, but perhaps understandable. I mean one of this is an anecdote of course, but when we were trying to get a publisher for our book, I had a. We had a meeting with Feel the.

Thing when you felt that 8 maybe I'm dramatizing or romanticizing it, but.

I feel like it's a publisher who published some Malcolm Gladwell books and she said I'm very interested in your book, but can you write it without mentioning death? Because people don't like death. And we're like no, it's really kind of central.

The conservatives call it popularly like or the movie Matrix call it the red pill.

Yeah.

Moment. I feel like it's a dangerous thought Because I feel like I'm taking a step out of society. Like, there's a nice narrative that we've all constructed.

You are.

And I'm taking a step out.

And.

It feels, it's this feeling like you're basically drowning. I mean, it's not a good feeling.

It is not. But this gets back to the Heidegger Kierkegaard school of anxiety. You are stepping out and you are momentarily shrugging off again the culturally constructed psychological accoutrements that allow you to stand up in the morning.

In that sense, it feels like, I.

Mean.

What do you, how do you have that conversation? Because I guess I, I, I'm dancing around a, a set of questions which is like, I guess I'm disappointed that people don't, Are not as willing to step outside, like, even just, even any kind of thought experiment.

Yeah.

Let's forget denial, death. Like, there's, there's now a community of people. Let's take an easy one that I think is scientifically ridiculous, which is there's a community of people that believe that the Earth is flat.

Yeah.

Or actually, even, even better, the space is fake.

Yeah.

Like, what I find surprising is that a lot of people I talk to are not willing to, to be like, imagine if it is. Like, imagine the Earth is flat. Like, think about it.

Right.

Like, a lot of people just like, no, the Earth is round. They, they're like, like scientists too. They're like, yeah. Well, actually, wait, have you actually, like, thought about it? Like, imagine, like, there's a thought experiment that, like, basically step outside the little narrative that we are comfortable with now that one in particular is, has a really strong evidence and scientific validation, so on. It's a pretty simple thing to show that it at least is not flat. But just the willingness to take a step outside of the stories that bring us comfort has been disappointing that people are not willing to do that.

Yeah.

And I think the philosophy that you've constructed and that Ernest Beck has constructed and you've tested, I think is really compelling. And the fact that people aren't often willing to take that step.

Yeah.

Disappointing.

Well, yes, but perhaps understandable. I mean, one of this is an anecdote, of course, but when we were trying to get a publisher for our book, I had a, we had a meeting with a publisher who published some Malcolm Gladwell books. Yeah. And she said, I'm very interested in your book, but can you write it without mentioning death? Because people don't like death. And we're like, no, it's really kind of Central. And I think that's part of it. I think again if these ideas have merit. And I actually like the way that you put it, Lex. It's that to step away is to momentarily expose yourself to all of the anxiety.

Yeah.

That our identity and our beliefs typically enable us to manage. I think it's as simple as that.

Yeah. I had this experience in college with my best friend who got really high and he forgot it was in the winter. It was really freezing. It was memorable to me. I think as an analogy is very useful. So he went to get some pizza and of course. And he. So I. And he left me outside and said I'll be back in five minutes. And he forgot that he left me outside. And I remember it was. I was in like shorts.

Yeah.

It was freezing winter.

Wow.

And I remember standing outside. It's a dorm and I'm looking from the outside in. It's a light and it's warm and I'm just standing there frozen I think for an hour or more. And I. That's how I think about it. Like I just. I don't give a damn about the stupid winter or any. I just wanna like. It's like a. I'm drawn to be back to the warmth.

Yes.

And that's how I feel about thinking about like death. It's like.

Yeah.

At a certain point it's like it's too much. It's like that cold. I like, I want to be back into the warm.

Back. And I. Getting back to Heidegger for a moment. I. I like the. Yeah. He uses a lot. The idea of feeling at home. Not as. Like in your house but just feeling like you're comfortably situated.

Maybe we can talk about like. I had a conversation about this with my dad a little bit. How does religion relate to this?

I see it as the disease and the cure in a sense. A few things. One is that I think a case could be made that humans are innately religious. So now we're going to get into territory where there's going to be a lot of disputes.

What do you mean by religious?

The religion is an evolutionary adaptation.

And religion is like a belief in something outside of yourself kind of thing.

Not necessarily. So here we got to be a little bit more careful. And again, I'm not a scholar. How about. I'm a well intentioned dilettante in this. In this regard.

Yeah.

Because what. What I have read is that religion evolved very early on, long before our ancestors were conscious and the issue of death arose. And the word religion evidently is From a Latin word, regattar. We can look it up, but. And it means to bind. And Emile Durkheim, the dead French sociologist, he said, you know, originally religion is darcellesing, who's a dead novelist. She calls it the substance of we feeling that it's literally that it arose because we're uber social creatures who from time to time took comfort in just being in physical proximity with our fellow humans. And that there is this kind of sense of transcendent exuberance. Just back to the unshakable joy that Heidegger alludes to. And that the original function of religion was to foster social cohesion and coordination and that it was only subsequently some claim that a burgeoning level of consciousness made it such that religious belief systems that included the hope of some kind of immortality were just naturally selected thereafter. So there are some people. Sue, it's David Sloan Wilson wrote a book called Darwin's Cathedral and he said religion has nothing to do with death. It's a. It evolved to make groups viable. He's actually a group selection guy.

What's group selection?

The idea that it's the group that is selected for rather than the individual. Yeah. So people have vigorous disagreements about that. But I guess our point would be we see religion as being inextricably connected ultimately to assuaging concerns about death.

Well, I guess another question to ask around this, like, what does the world look like without religion? Will we. If it's inextricably. Inextricably connected to our fears of death, do you think it always returns in some kind of shape? Maybe it's not called religion, but whatever, it just keeps returning.

Yeah, who knows? So that's a, that's a great question, Lex. So there's a woman named Karen Armstrong, she was a nun turned historian and geez, I can't remember the name of the book, but no matter, we could look that up.

But if you want, I can look it up, but I can also. I'll just add it.

Okay. Yeah, her point, it has God in the title, of course. But you know, she's like, look, all religions are generally fairly right minded in that they advocate the golden rule. And all religions at their best do seem to foster pro social behavior towards the in group. And that confers both psychological as well as physical benefits. That's the good news. And the bad news is historically all religions are subject to being hijacked by a lunatic French who declares that, you know, they're the ones in sole possession of the liturgical practices or whatever they call them. And they're the ones that turn, you know, religion at its best, into your crusades and Holocausts. My view, not that it should matter for much, but I. I'm. And I think that's part of it. I grew up just skeptical of religion because I'm like, as a kid, like, well, if we didn't have these beliefs, we wouldn't be killing each other because of them. And I'd be like, to my parents, well, you're telling me that all people should be judged on the merits of their character. But don't come home if you don't marry a Jewish woman, which is implying that if you're not Jewish, you're an inferior form of life.

That's what tribes always do.

And there's the tribal thing. And so there's a guy named Amin Malouf, a Lebanese guy who writes in French, who in the 1990s, I think, wrote a book called in the Name of Identity, Violence and the need to Belong. And that was. His point, is unless we can overcome this tribal mentality, this will not end well. But you said earlier something, Lex, that I think is profound and profoundly important, and that is you did not recoil in horror when I mentioned Kierkegaard's use of the term faith. And so I'm a big fan of faith, and I'm not sure what that implies. And by the way, this is just a peripheral comment, but I find less resistance to Becker's ideas in our work when I'm in, like, Jesuit schools. You know, it's the Americans that, you know, the secular humanists, who are most disinclined to accept these ideas.

It's an important side comment because I think it's mostly because they don't think philosophically. That's. I mean, I speak with a lot of scientists, and I think that's. My main criticism is you don't. I mean, that's the problem with science.

Exactly.

Is it's so comforting to focus in on the details that you can escape thinking about the mystery of it all. The big picture things, the philosophical, like the fact that you don't actually know at all. Like that. That. That. That. Yeah. So that in terms of Jesuit, like, that's. Yeah, that's the beauty of the experience of faith and so on, is like, how wherever that journey takes you is you actually explore the biggest questions of our world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't see religion going away, but because I don't see humans as capable of surviving without faith and hope. And everyone from the Pope to Elon Musk will acknowledge that it is a world that is unfathomably mysterious. And like it or not, in the absence of beliefs, here I'm Charles Peirce, the pragmatic philosopher. He just said beliefs are the basis of action. If you don't have any beliefs, you're paralyzed with indecision. Whether we're aware of it or not, whether we like it or not, in order to stand up in the morning, you have to subscribe to beliefs that can never be unequivocally proven right or wrong. Well, then why do you maintain them? Well, ultimately, it's because of some form of faith.

But also. Also, faith shouldn't be a dogmatic thing, that you should always be leaping. Yeah, I guess the problem with science or with religion is you could sort of all of a sudden take a step into a place where you're super confident that you know the absolute truth of things.

There you go. And again, back to Socrates, Plato, back in the cave. You know, at Skidmore, where I work, that's what I have the students read in their first week, you know, and Plato's like, oh, look at all those poor bastards. You know, they're in the cave, but they don't know it, you know, and then they are freed from their chains and they have to be dragged out of the cave, by the way, which is another interesting point. They don't run out. But that gets back to why people don't like to be divested of their comfortable illusions. But anyway, they get dragged out of the cave into the sunlight, which he claims is a representation. Run out. But that gets back to why people don't like to be divested of their comfortable illusions. But anyway, they get dragged out of the cave into the sunlight, which he claims is a representation of truth and beauty. And I say to the students, well, what's wrong with that? And they're like, nothing. That's like, awesome. And then I'm like, yo, dudes, you added the cave. But how do you know that you're not in another cave? The illumination may be better, but the minute you think of truth and beauty. And I say to the students, well, what's wrong wrong with that? And they're like, not. You're at the end of the proverbial intellectual slash epistemological trail. Then you have already succumbed to either laziness or that's like, awesome. And then dogmatism or both. That's really well put.

Ah, that's both terrifying and exciting that we're always. It's. There's always a bigger Cave. A little bit of an out there question but I think some of the interesting qualities of the human mind is the ideas of intelligence and consciousness. So what do you make of consciousness?

I'm like yo dudes, you out of the cave. But how do you.

So do you think death creates consciousness? Like the fear of death, the terror of death creates consciousness and.

Consciousness in turn magnifies the terror of death. I do.

Like what is consciousness to you?

Oh, don't ask me that. So now because if I could answer that I'd be chugging rum out of a coconut with my Nobel Prize that you know, it's literally, you know, Steven Pinker, I do agree with his claim and I think how the mind works that it is the key question for you know, that you're not in another cave. The illumination the psychological science is broadly defined in the 21st and maybe better but the minute you think century.

What is consciousness?

Yeah, what is consciousness? And I don't think it's an epiphenomenological afterthought. So a lot of people, I think Dan Wagner at Harvard a lot of folks consider it just that you're at the end of the proverbial intellectual slash ass end of a process that by the time we are aware of what it is, it's just basically an integrated rendering of something that's already happened. You know, evidently there's a half second delay between when something happens, you know those studies and our awareness epistemological trail of it. I'm.

Yeah. And then that's where like ideas of free will will step in. Yeah, you can explain away a lot of stuff.

And I think those are all important and interesting questions. I'm of the persuasion. I mean even. Not even. But Dawkins in the Selfish Gene is very thoughtful actually in a lot of. It's actually more in notes than in the text of the book. But he's just like it's hard for me to imagine that consciousness doesn't have some sort of. Then you have already succumbed to either laziness or portent and highly adaptive function. And what Dawkins says is he thought about it in terms of just that we could do mental simulations. That one possibly extraordinary product of consciousness is to rather than find out often or dogmatism or both. That's really well put.

Ah, that's both terrifying and exciting that we're always. It's. There's always a bigger cave.

By adverse consequences through trying something would be to run mental simulations. And so one possibility is that consciousness is highly adaptive. Another Possibility is Nicholas Humphrey, a British dude who wrote a book about, I think it's called Regaining Consciousness. And he hypothesized, I think this is 1980s, maybe even earlier.

A little bit of an out there question, but I think some of the.

Interesting qualities of that consciousness arose as a way to better predict the behavior of others in social settings. That by knowing how I feel, makes me better able.

The human mind is the ideas of intelligence and consciousness. So what do you make of consciousness? So do you think death creates consciousness? Like the fear of death, the terror of death, creates consciousness, and.

Consciousness in turn magnifies the terror of death. I do. To know how you may be feeling. This is like the rudiments of a theory of mind. And it really may not have had anything to do with intelligence so much as social intelligence.

So. So in that sense, consciousness is a social construct.

Like, yes.

It's just a useful thing for interacting with other humans.

Yeah, I don't know.

So. But there seems to be something about realizing your own mortality that's somehow intricately connected to the idea of consciousness.

Well, I think so also. So this is where. And. And Nietzsche, he said a solitary creature would not need consciousness.

What do you think?

Well, I don't know what I think about that, but what I do. And then he goes on to say that consciousness is the most calamitous stupidity by which we shall someday perish. And wow. I was like, dude, relax.

But so what if you. I mean, say you were on an island alone and you saw a reflection of yourself in. In the water, like if you were alone your whole life.

Yeah, great question. The. His view, Nietzsche's view would be that.

Like, what is consciousness to you?

Oh, don't ask me that. So now your thoughts of yourself would never come to mind. I don't know how I feel about that, though.

In a sense, it's that if I.

Could answer that, you know, I'd be chugging rum out of a coconut with my Nobel Prize. That.

This sounds weird, but in a sense, I feel like my mental conversation has always been with death. It's almost like another, you know, another notion. Like, you know, there's these, you know.

It'S literally, you know, Steven Pinker, I do agree with his claim.

Visualizations of a death in a cloak. Like, I always felt like I am a living thing, and then there's an other thing that is the end of me and I'm having like a conversation with that. So in this sense, that's. That's the way I construct my. The fact That I am a thing is because there's somebody else that tells me well you won't be a thing eventually.

Wow.

It feels like a conversation.

And I think how the mind works that it is the key question for station perhaps.

But that's. That might be kind of this mental simulation kind of idea that you're. You're kind of. It's not really. It's a conversation with yourself essentially. Sure, yeah. But yeah. I don't know how I feel about.

The psychological sciences broadly defined in the 21st that.

But I tend to be in agreement with you when we're talking about economics more so that. That we're deeply social beings. Like everything the way it just century. What is conscious.

Yeah. What is consciousness? And I don't think it's an.

It feels like we're humans. I'm. I'm with Harari, with the sapiens that were kind of. We seem to construct ideas on top of each other and that's a fundamentally. A social process.

Absolutely. I think that's a fine book. It overlaps considerably with our take on these matters and the fact that we get to these points that be phenomenological afterthought. So a lot of people drawing on different sources I think makes me more confident that it's so.

It's so fascinating. Just like reading your book. Sorry, on a small tangent that Sapiens is like one of the most popular books in the world. Like.

Yep.

And just reading your book is like. Well, this sounds.

Yeah.

I mean like I don't know. I don't know what makes a popular book.

Well, if you want me to be petty and stupid, I will tell you that from time to time. I think Dan Wagner at Harvard, a lot of folks consider it just that. We also wander why our book. You know, like all books, people can take issue with it but we thought it would be a bigger hit that would be more widely read.

It's funny because I don't know if I have good examples because I forgot already.

But I'm ass end of a process that by the time we are aware of what it is.

It's just often saddened by like Franz Kafka. I think he wasn't known in his life.

Yeah.

But I always wonder like these great.

Yeah.

Like some of the greatest books ever written are completely unknown during the author's lifetime. And it's like man, for some reason that it's again this. That identity thing. I think, oh man, that sucks.

Well, I'm basically an integrated rendering of something that's already happened. You Know comforted by that. So Van Gogh sold one painting in his life and evidently thoreau sold like 75 copies of Walden Nietzsche's books did not sell well.

And how did Ernest Beck herself.

He. He is the. His books are published by the Free Press and have sold more than any other books that they have published. So.

So what does that mean? That's a lot.

I don't know if it's like Jordan Peterson millions, but it's hundreds of thousands.

Was he respected? I just don't see him. Okay.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Evidently the. There's a half second delay between when something happens, you know, those studies and.

Our awareness see him brought up as like in the Top 10 Philosophers of.

No, not at all.

So how far away is he? Is he in the top hundred for people?

I don't think so.

Like, he doesn't. He's not brought up that often because.

Again, like your work has brought up more off it.

Yeah. And then that's where like ideas of free will will step in.

Yeah.

You can explain away a lot of stuff.

And I think those are all.

Yeah, like term, like. Because I think it gotten. Yeah. I mean, I think he's one of the great philosophers of the 20th century.

So what we say, Lex, is that our goal certainly when we first started and now just as much actually. But what I say at all my talks is, look, if these ideas have interest you enough to go reporting and interesting questions. I'm of the persuasion. I mean, even Pete, Ernest Becker, then this has been good. I consider him to be one of the most important voices of the 20th century who does not get the attention that he deserves. Similarly, our work I believe to be important because point by point we provide empirical corroboration and not even. But Dawkins for all of the claims, if you know when that. So that's literally the students that read the Denial of Death and then Escape from Evil, they're like, yeah, wow. Every chapter of the book you have studies. And I'm like, yeah. Because for 40 years, if a Skidmore student said, oh, that's gotta be bullshit. In the selfish Gene is very thoughtful, actually. I'm like, well, let's do a study.

Let's do a study. In my. My own dreams are in creating robots and artificial intelligence systems that a human can love. And I think there's something about mortality and fear mortality that is essential for implementing in our AI system systems in a lot of.

It's actually more in notes than in the text of the book.

And so maybe can you comment on that? Like, well, on. So this is. This is a different perspective on. On your work.

Sure.

Which is like, how do we engineer a human?

Yeah. So. No, this is awesome, Lex. I'm delighted that you said that first of all. And I may mention. But he's just like, it's hard for me to imagine that consciousness to you. I can't remember because I'm seeing out. When you first contacted me, I had just been told I have to learn more about your work because I'm working with some very talented people in New York and they're writing a screenplay for a movie doesn't have some sort of. About an artificial intelligence. It's a female AI set in like 30 years in the future. And basically the little twist. This is how I had to read Heidegger. So these people call me and they're like, we're making a movie. It's based on important and highly adaptive function. And what Dawkins says is he thought about Becker and your work and Heidegger and this other philosopher, Levinas, and then another philosopher, Silvia Benzo, who's an Italian philosopher. And the long short story is the movie is about supposedly the most advanced artificial intelligence in terms of just that we can do mental simulations. The entity, an embodied one. And who human form. Human form. Who finds out who is having. Having essentially one possibly extraordinary really existential anxieties. And I think the project is called A dinner with her or something. And it doesn't really matter, but the punchline is that she finds out that her creator has made her mortal. And so the question is what happens product of consciousness is to rather than find out often phenomenologically and behaviorally to an artificial intelligence who now knows that it's mortal. And it's actually the same question that you're posing.

Yeah.

And that is, is that necessary by adverse consequences through Chasseri in order for an AI to approximate humanity?

Yeah, I think. Yeah. So the intuition again, it's. It's unknown, but I think it's absolutely. I think it's absolutely necessary. A lot of people this the same.

Kind of trying something would be to run mental simulations. And so one possibility is that kind.

Of shallow thinking that people have about our own end of life, our own death, is the same way people think of. I think about artificial intelligence. It's like, well, okay, so, yeah, so within the system there's a. There's a terminal position where like there's. There's a point at which it ends. You just. The program ends. There's A goal state. There's a. You reached an end point. But the thing is making that end, a thing that's also within the program. Like, like the making the thing like. And then it's also the mystery of it. So the thing is we don't know what the hell this death thing is. I mean, it's not like, it's not like we. I mean, the program doesn't give us information about the meaning of it all.

Exactly.

And that's where the terror is. And it feels like, I mean in the language that you would think about is. Is the terror of this death or like anticipation of it or thinking about it is the creative force that builds everything.

Right.

And that feels like, you know, that feels really important to implement. Again, it's very difficult to know how to do technically currently, but it's important to think about. What I find is, you mentioned like screenplays and so on is sci fi folks and philosophers are the, the only ones thinking about it currently.

And that's what these folks have convinced me.

Yeah. And engineers aren't, which is. I get. Yeah. Most of the most, Most of the things I talk about, I get kind.

Of Consciousness is highly adaptive. Another possibility is Nicholas Humphrey, a British dude who wrote a book about, I think it's called regaining consciousness. And he hypothesized, I think this is 1980s, maybe even earlier, that consciousness arose.

People roll their eyes from the engineering perspective.

Not these folks that they're like, because again, I saw your name and they're like, wait a minute, I've just seen that as a way to better predict the behavior. They're like, here's someone you should check out. Yeah. So this was a delightful confluence.

Yeah. I was a huge fan of.

Your.

Work and Ernest Becker. And it's funny that not enough people are talking about it. Yeah. I don't know what to do with that. I think that there's a possibility to create real, deep, meaningful connections between AI systems and humans.

Absolutely.

And I think some of these things of fear, mortality are of others in.

Social settings that by knowing how I feel makes me better, able, essential.

Essential for the element of human experience. I don't, I don't think it might be essential to create general intelligence like very intelligent machines, but to create a machine that connects to human in some deep way.

What to know how you may be feeling. This your view? Not to make me the interviewer, but what's your view about machine ethics? Can you imagine an ethical AI without some semblance of.

Yeah.

Finitude, let's say.

Well, I, I think ethics is. It's a, you know, there's a, There's a trolley problem that's often used in the work that I've done. Yeah. With. With autonomous vehicles in particular.

Oh yeah, yeah.

That people, I think they offload, they ask like how would a machine deal with an ethical situation that they themselves, the humans don't know how to deal with.

Exactly. It's like the rudiments of a theory of mind. And that it really may not have had anything to do with intelligence so much as social intelligence.

So in that sense conscious. And so I don't know if a machine is able to do a better job on ethical. On difficult ethical questions. But I certainly think to behave properly and effectively in this world it needs to be. Have a fear of mortality is a social construct. It's just a useful thing for interacting with other human quality and be able to even dance. Because I don't think you can solve ethical problems. But you have to. I think like ethics is like a dance floor. You have to just. You have to dance properly with the rest of the humans. Like if people are dancing, I don't know. So but there seems to tango. You have to dance in the same kind of way. And for that you have to have a. Fewer mortality. Like I think of more practically speaking, I said autonomous vehicles, like the way you interact with pedestrians fundamentally has to have a sense of mortality. So when pedestrians cross the road. Now I've watched, well certainly 100 plus hours of pedestrian videos. There's a kind of social contract where to be something about realizing your own mortality that somehow intricately connected to the idea of consciousness. Well, I think you walk in front of a car and you're putting your life in the hands of another human being.

That's right.

And like death is, is. Is in the car, in the game that's being played, death is right there. It's part of the calculus. It's not. But it's not like a simple calculus. It's not a simple equation. It's.

It's so also. So this is where and, and Nietzsche, he said a solitary.

It's a. I mean, I don't know what it is, but it's. It's in the, it's in there and it has to be part of the optimization problem. Like it's not as simple as. So from the computer vision, from the artificial intelligence perspective, it's detecting there's a human estimating.

Right.

Estimating the trajectory. Like treating everything like it's billiard balls.

As opposed to like Creature would not need consciousness.

What do you think? Being able to construct an effective model, the world model of the. What the person's thinking, what they're going to do. What are the different possibilities of how the scene might evolve. I think requires having some sense of. Yeah. Fear of. Fear of mortality. Of mortality. I don't see the. The thing is, I think it's really important to think about. I can be honest enough to say that it's. I haven't been able to figure out how to engineer any of these things.

Right.

But I do think it's really, really important. Like I have. So I have a bunch of roombas here. I can show it to you. After that I've room.

Well, I don't know what I think about that, but what I do. And then he goes, this is a.

Robot that does vacuum.

Not to say that consciousness is the most calamitous stupidity by which we shall someday perish.

And the floor. And I've had them make different sounds like I had them scream in pain. And. You immediately anthropomorphize.

Absolutely.

And it creates a. I don't know. Knowing that they can feel pain. See, I'm.

Wow. I was like, dude, relax.

But speaking like knowing that. So what if you say you were on an island alone and you saw. I immediately imagine that they can feel pain and then immediately draws me closer to them.

Yes.

At the human experience. And that there's. There's something in that. That should be engineered in. In our. In our systems. It feels like I. I believe. Personally, I don't know what you think, but I believe it's possible for a robot and a human to fall in love, for example, in the. In the future.

Oh, I think it's. Yeah. It's already there. No.

Well, there's a certain kind of deep connection with technology. I mean a real. Like you would choose to marry a reflection of yourself. And in the water.

I mean, again, it sounds. I'll find a book title and I'll send it to you. And it's a serious consideration of people who started out with these sex dolls. But it turned into a relationship of endorsement.

Like if you were alone your whole life.

Yeah, great question. The ranks significance that the woman who wrote the book is not willing to dismiss as a perversion.

Yeah, that's what, you know, people kind of joke about sex robots. Which is funny. Like it's a. It's a funny. I mean there's a lot of stuff about robots that's just kind of fun to talk about. That is not Necessarily connected to reality. People joke about sex robots, but if you actually look how.

His view. Nietzsche's view would be that robots, which.

Are pretty rare these days, are used. They're not used by people who want sex precisely. They're actually.

They're companions.

They're compared. They become companions.

Yeah. Your thoughts of yourself would never come to mind. I don't know.

It's. Yeah, it's fascinating. And they're just. We're not even talking about any kind of intelligence. We're talking about just. I mean, human beings seek companionships. We're deeply lonely. I mean, that was the other sense I have that I don't know if I can articulate clearly. You can probably do a better job. But I have a sense that there's a deep loneliness within all of us.

Absolutely.

In the face of death, it feels like we're alone.

So, you know, the. What drew me to the existential, How I feel about that, though, in a sense, take on things. Lex was the. Who is it? Rollo May and Erwin Yalam. Right. About existentialism. And they're like, look, there's different flavors of existentialism, but this sounds weird, but.

In a sense, I feel like they.

All have in common. What is it? Four universal concerns. The overriding one is about death, and that next is choice and responsibility. The next.

My mental conversation has always been with death.

Next one is existential isolation. And they're like, that's one of the things about consciousness, that. And the last one is meaninglessness. But the existential isolation point is, you.

Know, it's almost like another, you know, another notion.

Like, we are, by virtue of consciousness, able to apprehend that unless you're a Siamese twin, you are fundamentally alone. And because it is claimed. It's Eric Fromm in a book called Escape from Freedom, he's like, look, you're smart enough to know that the most direct way that we typically communicate with our fellow human beings is through language.

But you also, you know, there's these.

Know that language is a pale shadow of the totality of our interior phenomenological existence. Therefore, there's always going to be times in our lives where, even under the best of circumstances, you could be trying desperately to convey your thoughts and feelings.

Visualizations of a death in a cloak. I always felt like I am a living thing.

And somebody listening could be like, yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it. And you're like, you have no fucking idea what I'm talking about. So you can be.

And then there's an other thing that is the end of me.

Desperately lonely in a house where you live with 10 people in the middle of Tokyo where there's millions.

Ah, yeah. It's the Great Gatsby.

Yeah.

It could be alone.

Precisely.

Party.

Exactly.

Maybe this is a small tangent, but let me ask you on the topic of academia, you're kind of. I'm having like a conversation with that. So in this, we talked about Jordan Peterson. There's a lot of sort of renegade type of thinkers, certainly in psychology, but it applies in all disciplines. What are your thoughts about academia being a place to harbor people like yourself? But, you know, since that's, that's the way I construct my. The fact that I am a thing. People who think deeply about things, who are not constrained by sort of the who. I don't think you're quite controversial.

No, not really.

But you are a person who thinks deeply about things and it feels like it's because there's somebody else that tells me, like, academia can sometimes stifle that.

I think so. So my concern right now, Lex, for.

You, well, you won't be a thing eventually.

Wow.

Feels like a conversation.

Scholars is that the restrictions and expectations are such that it's highly unlikely that anybody will do anything of great value or innovation.

Conversation, perhaps, but that's.

Except for. And this is not a bad thing, but stepwise improvement of existing paradigms. So the, you know, in simple English, you know, I went to Princeton for a job interview 40 years ago, and they're like, what are you going to do if we give you a job? And I'm like, I don't know. I want to think about it and read and, And I, I saw that that interview was over. The window of opportunity shut in my face. And they actually called my mentors in there.

That might be kind of this mental simulation kind of idea that you're, you're kind of. It's not really a.

It's like, what are you doing? Tell this guy to buy some pants. I had hair down to my waist also. He's like this guy looks like Charles Manson of Jesus. But, but. So the expectation is that you come.

To a post, it's a conversation with yourself, essentially.

Sure, yeah.

But. Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that. But I, I tend to be in agreement with you when we're talking.

You know, you start publishing so that you can get grants.

That's certainly true. But there's also kind of a behavioral thing you said, like long hair. There's, there's a certain style of the way you're supposed to behave. For example, like I'm wearing a suit. Talking about economics more so that it sounds. It sounds weird, but I feel comfortable in this. You know, I wore it like when I was teaching at mit. I wore it. Sure, I wore it to meetings and so on. The different. Sometimes a blue and red tie. But like that was an outsider thing to do at mit. So like there was a strong pressure to not wear a suit.

No, that's right, it's.

And there's a pressure to behave, to have a hair thing.

No, that's right.

The way you wear your hair, the way you. This isn't like a liberal or a left or anything. It's just in tribes.

That's right.

And academia to me. Or a place, any place that drew. That we're deeply social beings. Like everything the way it just dreams of having like renegade free thinkers, like really deep thinkers should in fact like glorify the outsider. Right? Yeah, should welcome. Just should welcome, you know, people that don't fit in. Yeah, no, that sounds weird, but I don't. I could just imagine an interview. Feels like we're humans. I'm. I'm with the Harare, with the sapiens, that were kind of. We seem to construct ideas on top of each other and that's a fundamentally. A social process.

Absolutely. I think that you with.

At Princeton, you know, I can imagine why aren't people. Why aren't you at Harvard, for example, or mit?

Yeah, well, so that. Look, I would love to, you know, I. I haven't lectured at mit, but I've lectured at Harvard. It's a fine book. It overlaps considerably. I. I've gotten to lecture at almost every place that wouldn't consider me for a job.

Yeah.

And I. Well, a few things. I'm lucky because I, you know, I go to Princeton, I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. And then two days later I go to Skidmore and I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. And they offered me a job later that day, which I declined for months because of the extraordinary pressure of my mentors who right mindedly felt that I wouldn't get much done there. But what they told me at Skidmore was, take your time, show up for your classes and don't molest with our take on these matters and the fact that we get to these points, those barnyard animals, and you'll probably get tenure. And I'm like, I'll show up for my classes.

We'll talk about was. That was the negotiation.

Yeah, I negotiated. I drove a hard bargain. But. But honestly, Lex, that drawing on different sources, I think, makes me more confident that I feel I'm very committed to Skidmore because I was given tenure when our first terror management paper.

It's so fascinating, Just like reading your book. Sorry, on a small tangent.

Wasn't published. It took eight years to publish. It was rejected at every journal, and I submitted it as, like, a purple ditto sheet thing. I'm like, here's what I've been doing. Here's the reviews. Here's why I think this is still. That sapiens is a pretty good idea. And I don't know that this would happen even at Skidmore anymore. But I was very lucky to be given the latitude and to be encouraged. I took classes at Skidmore. That's how I learned all this stuff. I got a PhD unscathed by knowledge. We were great statisticians and methodologists, but we didn't have any substance. You know, I. And I don't mean this cynically, but we were trained in a method, in search of a question. So I appreciate having five years at.

Skidmore, like, one of the most popular.

Books in the world, like, yeah, basically, to read books. And I also appreciate that I look like this 40 years ago. And my view is that this is how I comported myself, other people. The guy I learned the most from at Skidmore is now.

And just reading your book is like, well, this sounds.

You have had a history professor, Tad Kuroda.

I mean, like, I don't know. I don't know what makes a popular book.

Well, he wore a bow tie. And there's another guy, Darnell Rucker, who taught me about philosophy, and he was very proper, and he had, like, his jacket with, like, the leather patches. You want me to be petty and stupid. I will tell you that from time to time. But these guys weren't pompous at all. They were. This is the way I am. And I always felt that that's important, that somebody who looks at you and says, oh, what a stiff. He's probably an mba. Well, they're wrong. And someone who looks at me. When I first got to Skidmore, other professors would ask when I'd be coming to their office to empty the garbage. They just assumed, you know, I was in my 20s. They assumed I was housekeeping. I always felt that was important, that the students learn not to judge an idea. But we also wonder, why are the appearance of the person who purveys it.

Yeah. I mean that's. I guess this is such a high concern now because I personally still have faith that academia is where the great geniuses will come from.

I do too.

And great ideas.

I love book. You know like all books people can take issue with it but we thought of hearing you say that I still and it's one of the reasons why really apprehensive about the future of education right now in the context of the pandemic. It would be a bigger hit that would be more widely read and it's funny.

Oh yeah.

Is that a lot of folks and a lot of these are Google type people who I don't. You know, they're geniuses also because I, I've.

I don't know if I have good examples because I forgot already but I'm.

Oh but I don't like this idea that all learning can be virtual and that much could happen. I'm big on embodied environments with actual humans.

Yeah.

Interacting.

I mean there's. There's so much to the university education but I think the key part that I is the often saddened by like Franz Kafka. I think he wasn't known in his life. The mentorship that occurs somehow at the human level. Like I've gotten a lot of flack like this conversation. We're in person now and I've even with Edward Snow Snowden who done all interviews remote. I'm a stickler to in person. It has to be in person like and yeah. But I always wonder like these great.

Yeah.

Like a lot of people just don't get it. They're like well why can't this is so much easier? Like why go through the pain? Like I've traveled. I'm traveling in next month to Paris for a single stupid conversation nobody cares about. Just to be in person.

Well, it's important to me. I.

Some of the greatest books ever written are completely unknown during the author's lifetime. And it's like man, for some reason that it's again this, that identity thing.

I honestly I was like this and.

Thank you for coming down today.

It's my pleasure. But again, very self serving. I've enjoyed this. I knew I was going to but it's not about our enjoyment per se. Again, at the risk of sounding cavalier, there are a host of factors beyond verbal that I don't believe can be adequately captured. I don't care how much the acuity is decent on a zoom conversation. I feel again I think man, that sucks. Well I felt within five minutes that this was going to be for me, easy in the sense that I could speak freely. I just don't see that happening so easily from a distance.

Yeah, I. I tend to. Well, I'm hopeful. I agree with you on the current technology, but I am hopeful, unlike some.

Others, comforted by that. So Van Gogh sold one painting in his life.

And on the technology eventually being able to create that kind of experience.

Oh, I think it's.

Or quite far away from that. But yeah, it might be able. My hope is, you know, I'm hopeful.

I was at Microsoft in Seattle and I can't remember why and no, I can't. Evidently thoreau sold like 75 copies of Walden. That's how I'm in my early Mr. Magoo phase. And somebody there was showing us like a virtual wall where the entire wall, you know when you're talking to somebody. So it's life size. And they were beginning the get the Chis books did not sell well.

And how did Ernest Beck herself appearance.

Of motion and stuff? It looked pretty.

Yeah. With virtual reality too. I don't know if you've ever been inside a virtual world. Yeah, it's. To me, it's. I can just. I can see the future. It's. It's. It's quite real.

Yeah.

In terms of like a terror of death. I'm afraid of heights.

Me too.

And there's. I don't know if you've ever. He.

He is the. His books are published by the Free press and have sold more than any.

Or tried. You should if you haven't. There's a virtual reality experience where you can walk a plank.

Yeah.

You can look down and man, I was on the ground like I was. Like I was afraid. I was deeply afraid. I was. Is. It was. It was as real as y. As anything else could be. And I mean, these are very early days of that technology.

The other books that they have published. So.

So what does that mean? It's a lot.

I. I don't know if it.

Relatively speaking. So. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to do with that. Same with like crossing the street. We did these experiments across the street in front of a car and, you know, just being run over by a car. It's terrifying.

Yeah. It's like Jordan Peterson Millions, but it's hundreds of thousands.

You respect it. It's just that. Yeah. So there is a rich experience to be created there. We're not there yet, but. Yeah. And I've seen a lot of people try. Like you said, the Google folks, Silicon Valley folks try to create a virtual online education. I don't know. I think they've raised. Really. I. I just don't see him. I. Okay.

Yeah.

I don't. Important questions. Absolutely. Like what makes the education experience fulfilling? What makes it effective.

Yeah, these are important questions and I.

Think what they highlight is we have no clue like they've seen brought up as like in the Top 10 Philosophers of. No, there's Thomas Sowell wrote a book about recent book on charter schools.

Yeah. I would like to talk to him.

Yeah he's an interesting guy.

We will disagree about a lot but respectfully.

Yeah. Such a powerful mind.

Yeah.

Not at all so but he. I need to read. I've only heard him talk about the book but he argues quite seemingly effectively that. That. That the public education system is broken. That we blame. They basically says that we kind of blame. How far away is he? Is he in the top hundred for people?

I don't think so.

Like he doesn't. He's not brought up like the conditions or the. The environment but the upbringing of people like parenting. Blah blah like the. The set of opportunities. But okay, putting that aside it seems like charter schools no matter who it is that attends them does much better than up that often because again like your work is brought up more often in. In public schools and he puts a bunch of data behind it and in his usual way as you know just is very eloquent in arguing his points.

Yeah.

So that to me just highlights man. We don't. Education is like one of the most important. The. It's probably the most important thing.

Yeah.

In our civilization and we're doing a shitty job of it Y. In academia in. In university education and you know. Young. Yeah like term like because I think it gotten. Yeah. I mean I think he's one of the great philosopher education.

Yep.

The whole thing.

The whole thing. And yet we value. Just about anyone or anything more than educators. You know, part of it is just the relatives of the 20th century. So what we say Lex is that low regard that Americans have for teachers.

For teachers also similarly like just people. People of service. I think great teachers our goal certainly.

When we first started and now just as much actually. But what I say at all my talks is look, if these ideas have interest you enough to go read are.

The greatest thing in our society. And I would say now on a controversial note like Black Lives Matter, you know great police officers is the greatest thing in our society also like all people that do service, we undervalue cops severe like this whole defund the police is missing the point and it's a stupid word.

I'm with you on that, Lex. Our neighbors to one side of our house are three generations of police. Our neighbors across the street, our police. They know my, you know, political predilections. And we've gotten along fine for 30 years. And I beat Ernest Becker then this has been good. I consider him to be one of the most important voices of the 20th cent. Go out and tell them every day. You know, when you go in today, you tell the people on the force that I appreciate what they're doing. I think it's really important to not tribalize those concerns.

I mean we mentioned so many brilliant entry.

Who does not get the attention that.

He deserves and books and philosophers. But it would be nice sort of in a focused way try to see if we can get some recommendations from you. So what three books, technical or fiction or philosophical, had a.

Similarly our work, I believe to be important because point by point we provide empirical corroboration. Oh man.

The worst question had a big impact in your life than you would recommend.

Spent four hours driving here perseverating about that. I didn't. I. Everything else you sent me, that's fine. And I actually, I skimmed it. And I'm like, I don't want to look at it because I want. I want us to talk. Yeah, the ones in blue. I'm like, all right. And you know, for all of the claims, if you know when that. So that's literally. I've already said that I've found Becker's work and I put the Denial of Death out there.

Is that his best. Sorry, on a small tangent, is there other books that of his.

Yes, if I could have this count as one. That the Birth and Death of Meaning, the Denial of Death and Escape from Evil are three books of Ernest Becker's that I believe to all the profound in a.

In a little sort of brief dance around topics. I've only read Denial Death. Like how do those books connect in your.

Yeah, nice. So the. The Birth and Death of Meaning is where Becker situates the students that read the Denial of Death and then Escape from Evil. They're like, yeah, wow. Every his thinking in more of an evolutionary foundation. So I like that for that reason Escape from Evil is where chapter of the book you have studies. And I'm like, yeah. Because for 40 years, if a Skidmore student said, oh, that's got to be. He applies the ideas in the Denial of Death more directly to economic matters and to inequality. And also to our inability to peacefully coexist with other folks who don't share our beliefs. So I would put Ernest Becker out there as one. I also like novels a lot. And here I was like, God damn it, no matter what I say, I'm gonna be like, yes, but.

But the existentialists. You like all those folks, Camus. Do you like that literary existential.

I do, but I mean, I'm like, well, let's do a study.

Let's do a study. And my own dreams are in creating.

I've read all those books. I will tell you the last line of the Plague. We learn in times of pestilence that there's more to admire in men than to despise. And I love that.

Plagues such a. I don't know. I. I find the Plague is a brilliant.

Me too.

Before. Before the plague has come to us in 2020. It was just so book about love about. But robots and artificial intelligence systems that a human can toss a.

One that may be less known to folks. I'm enamored with a novel by a woman named Carson McCullers, written in 1953 called Clock Without Hands, and I find it a brilliant literary depiction of many of the ideas that love.

And I think there's something about mortality and fear. Mortality that is essential for implementing in our AI systems.

We have spoken about fiction. Fiction. Yeah.

What's. What kind of ideas are we talking about it?

All of the existential ideas that we have encountered today, but in the context of a story of someone who finds out that he is terminally ill. It's set in the south in the heyday of, like, segregation. So there's a lot of social issues, a lot of existential issues, but it's basically a fictional account of someone who finds out that they're terminally ill and who reacts originally, as you might expect, anyone becomes more.

And so maybe. Can you comment on that? Like, well, on.

Or hostile to people who are different. Like, petty and stupid. Denies that anything's happening. But as the book goes on and he comes more to terms with his own mortality, it ends lovingly. And.

So this is. This is a different perspective on. On your work.

Sure.

Which is like, how do we engineer a human?

Yeah. So, no, this is awesome, Lex. I'm delighted that you said that, first of all. And I may mention back to your idea about, you know, love being incredibly potent.

That's the nice thing, as you mentioned before with Heidegger, I really like that idea. And I've seen that in people who are terminally ill is they bring. You know, the idea of death becomes current.

Yes.

It becomes like a thing. You know, I could die. I really like that idea. I. I can die. Not just tomorrow, but like. No, no, no. Yeah, that's a really useful. I don't even know. I think I've been too afraid to even think about that. Like, I have, like. Like sit here and think, like, in five minutes, me, it's over.

Yeah.

This is it. In five minutes, it's over.

Yeah. So that would be my. To you. And I don't. I can't remember because I am seeing out when you first contacted me.

Yeah.

I had the most recent addition as I. I really am struck by Heidegger.

What would you recommend?

Well, okay. Well, if you have a few years.

I remember I tuned out Being in Time. I was like, I try to read it. I was like, that's it.

It's a look. It took me 40 years to read Ulysses. I could not get past the first five pages. And it took me 40 years to read Being in Time. It's a slog.

Yeah. And I took a James Joyce course in college, so I've. I even, I guess read parts of Finnegan's Wake.

No way.

But like, there's a difference between reading and, like. I don't think I understood anything.

Just been told I have to learn more about your work because I'm working with some very talented people in New York and they're. They're writing a screenplay for a movie.

I like his short stories, the Dead. The Dead, yeah.

Yeah. Love that. And I like Faulkner. Absalom. Absalom is a fine book, but would you.

Is there something Heidegger, connected in a book you would recommend or. No?

No. So maybe I got to abandon him. I mean. I mean, being in time is awesome, but here's an interesting thing. And not to get all academic, but, you know, it's. There's two parts to it, and most of the. Most philosophers are preoccupied with the first part. It's in the second part where he gets into all the flight from death stuff and this idea of, you know, a turning. And philosophers don't like about an artificial intelligence. It's a female AI. And I'm like, this is where he's.

Starting to really shine.

To really shine for me. So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. That's a beautiful set of books. So what advice would you give to a young person today about their career, about life, about how to survive in this world full of suffering?

Yeah, great. Yeah. My advice is to get competent advice that's what I tell my students at.

Stim are like, don't listen to me.

Yeah, don't listen to me. Well, you know, I think my, my big piece of advice these days is, you know, I'm like 30 years in the future. And basically the little twist, this is how I had to read Heidegger. So these people call me and they're like, we're making a movie. It's based on. Again, it's at the risk of sounding like a simpleton, but it's to emphasize a few things. One is. One of your questions, I think was what's the meaning of life? And of course the existentialists say life has no meaning, but it doesn't follow from that that it's intrinsic, that it's meaningless. You know what the existential point is? Not that life is meaningless so much as it doesn't have one inevitable and intrinsic meaning which then opens up. I think it was Kierkegaard who said consciousness gives us the possibility of possibilities. But there's another Ecker in your work and Heidegger and this other philosopher, Levin lunatic, Oswald Spengler, who wrote a book called Decline of the West. And he says that the philosopher, the German philosopher, Goethe, he says the purpose of life is to live. So that's one of my pieces of advice.

So the possibility of possibilities. It's interesting. So what do you do with this kind of sea of possibilities? Like, well, this is one of the. When young folks talk to me, especially these days, is there swimming in a sea of possibilities?

Yeah, well, so this, it's great. And so that's another existential point, which is that Avinas and then another philosopher, Silvia Benzo, who's an Italian philosopher and the long short story is the movie. We yearn for freedom. We react vigorously when we perceive that our choices have been curtailed. And then we're paralyzed by indecision in the wake of seemingly unlimited possibilities because we're now choking on choice and is about supposedly the most advanced artificial intelligence. And I'm not sure if this is helpful advice or not, but what I say to folks is that the fact of the matter is, is the, you know, for most people, choice is a first world problem. And sometimes the best option, entity, an embodied one, is to do something as silly as it sounds. And then if that doesn't work, do something else. Which just sounds like my mom torturing me when I was young. But part of the thing that I find myself singularly ill equipped is that I may be at the tail end of the Last generation of Americans where you picked something and that's what you did. Like I've been at it and who Human form. Human form. A job for 40 years where you can expect to do better than your parents because those days are gone. And where you can make a comfortable. Who finds out who is having. Having a sensible inference that the world in a decade or two will have any remote similarity to the one existential anxieties that we now inhabit.

But still you recommend just do.

Yeah. And to do so again. This is. I'm so back to the Heidegger guy because all right, I consider myself a professor, but what happens if most of the schools go out of business? Somebody else may consider themselves a restaurateur, but what happens if there's no more restaurants? So what I. This is negative advice, but I tell folks, don't define yourself as a social. And the. I think the project is called a dinner with her or something and it doesn't really matter, but the punk caricature.

Yeah.

Don't limit how you feel about yourself through identification with a host of variables that may be uncertain, maybe temporary and temporary. No. But of course that gets back to your point earlier, Lex, where you're like, yeah, but when you start. Step out of that. It's extraordinarily discombobulating punchline is that she finds out that her creator.

So what I think you talked about an axe of chopping wood.

Yeah.

And soul from Socrates.

Yeah.

What is your soul? What is the.

Has made her mortal. And so the question is, what happened?

The essence of Sheldon.

Wow, that was like, awesome.

Like when God, when you show up at the end of this thing, he kind of looks at you. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember you.

Yeah. Well, you know, I. To be honest, what I muse about is to me, the When. When people are. I told you, I've. We have two kids, late 20s, early 30s. And over the years, when we meet people that know our kids and they're like, oh, your kids are kind and decent and phenomenologically and behaviorally. And I'd be like, that's what I would like to be. Because I think intelligence is vastly overrated. The Unabomber was a smart guy, and I do admire intelligence and I do venerate education, and I. I find that to be tremendously important. But if I had to pay the ultimate homage to myself, it would be to be known as somebody who takes himself to Lee. To an. An artificial intelligence who now knows that it's mortal and it's actually the same question that you're too seriously to take myself too seriously. Again, as corny as it sounds, I like to leave posing.

Yeah.

And that is, is that ness of the world a tad better than I found it or at least do no harm. And.

I think you did all right in that regard.

I love that question, Alex. That's a good one. I think everyone should be asked that what is your soul?

Do you have maybe just a few lingering questions around it? So I mean on the point of the soul you've talked about the meaning of life. Do you have. On a personal level, do you have an answer to.

In order for an AI to approximate.

The meaning of your life, of something that brought you meaning, happiness, some, some sense of sense.

Yeah, no, I, I mean yes, yes and no. I mean I, I, you know I'm sick to mate humanity.

Yeah. I think. Yeah. So the intuition again it's, it's unknown but I think it's absolutely desex.

So I'm in the kind of not ready to wrap it up literally.

I think it's absolutely necessary. A lot of people this the same.

Kind of or metaphorically but you look, I look back and just really with a sense of awe and wonder, gratitude.

And is there memories that stand out to you from childhood, from earlier that like. It's like, you know, stand out as something you're really proud of or just happy to have been on this earth.

Mainly that stuff happened. Yeah, that. I mean you know my family also a chunk were my folks so my grandparents are from eastern Europe, you know, Russia.

Kind of shallow thinking that people have about our own end of life strea.

As far as we know, some of them never made it out. I consider myself very fortunate to have been a so called product of the American dream. You know my grandparents are, were basically peasants. My parents, my dad worked two full time jobs when I was growing up and I would see him on the weekend.

Our own death is the same way people think of I think about artificial intelligence.

It's like well because I'd be like why are you working all the time? He'd be like so you won't have to.

Okay, so yeah. So within the system there's a, there's a terminal position where like there's, there's a, there's a point.

He said look, the world does not owe you a living. And so your first responsibility is to take care of yourself.

And then your next which it ends.

He's just the program ends responsibility is to take care of other people.

And I think you did A pretty good job with that.

Well, I don't know, but I, I, I, I. So those are the things that I'm proud of.

Well, it's funny, you've been, you've talked about just yourself as a human being, but you've also contributed some really important ideas for your ideas and also kind of integrating and maybe even popularizing the world. There's a goal state, there's a. You reached an end point. But work of Ernest Becker of connecting it, of making it legitimate, scientifically. I mean, you know, as a human, of course you want to be you. You want your ripple to be one that makes the world a better place. But also, I think in the span of time, I think it's of great value. What you've contributed in terms of the thing is making that end a thing. That's how we think about the human condition also within the program, like, like the. Making the thing like. And then it's also the mystery. Think about ourselves assuming as finite beings in this world, and I hope also in our technology, of engineering, of it. So the thing is, we don't know what the hell this death thing is. I mean, it's not like nearing intelligence, I think. At least, at least for me. And I'm sure there's a lot of other people like me that your work has been a gift for, so.

Oh, well, thank you. I like that. And we have described ourselves as giant interneurons. I'm like, we have had no original ideas and, and maybe that's the only thing that's original about our work, is we don't claim to be original. What we claim to have done is to integrate, to connect.

It's not like we, I mean, the program doesn't give us information about the meaning of it.

All these disparate and superficially unconnected discourses, you know, so existentialists, they'd be like evidence. What's that? And yeah, there's now a branch of psychology, experimental existential psychology, that I think we could take credit for having encouraged the formation of. And that in turn has gotten these ideas in circulation and academic communities. Exactly.

And that's where the terror is. And it feels like, I mean, where.

They may not have otherwise gotten. So I think that's good.

Well, Sheldon, is the language that you would think about is. Is the terror of this death or like, anticipation of it, or thinking about it is the creative force that builds everything.

Right.

And that feels like a huge honor. I can't believe you came down here. I've been a fan of your work I hope we get to talk again. Huge honor to talk to you. Thank you so much for talking today.

Thanks, Lex. We'll do it again soon, I hope.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Sheldon Solomon and thank you to our sponsors, Blinkist, ExpressVPN and Cash App. Click the links in the description to get a discount. It's the best way to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter lexfriedman. And now let me leave you with some words from Vladimir Nabokov that feels really important to implement again that Sheldon uses in his book Warm at the Core. The cradle rocks above an abyss. And common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Thanks for listening and hope to see you next time. And it's very difficult to know how to do technically, currently, but it's important to think about. What I find is you mentioned, like screenplays and so on. Is sci fi folks and philosophers of the. The only ones thinking about it currently.

And that's what these folks have convinced me.

Yeah. And engineers aren't. Which is. I get. Yeah. Most of the most. Most of the things I talk about, I get kind of people roll their eyes from the engineer.

Not these folks that they're like. Because again, I saw your name and they're like, wait a minute, I've just seen that. They're like, here's someone you should check out. Yeah. So this was a delightful confluence.

Yeah. I was a huge fan of your work and Ernest Becker. And it's funny that not enough people are talking about it. Yeah. I don't know what to do with that. I think that there's a possibility to create real, deep, meaningful connections between AI systems and humans.

Absolutely.

And I think some of these things of fear, mortality are essential, are essential for the element of human experience. I don't, I don't think it might be essential to create general intelligence like very intelligent machines, but to create a machine that connects to human in some deep way.

What's your view? Not to make me the interviewer, but what's your view about machine ethics? Can you imagine an ethical AI without some semblance of.

Yeah.

Finitude, let's say.

Well, I, I think ethics is, it's a, you know, there's a. There's a trolley problem that's often used in the work that I've done. Yeah. With. With autonomous vehicles and particular oh yeah, yeah. That people, I think they offload, they ask like, how would a machine deal with an ethical situation that they themselves, humans don't know how to deal with.

Exactly.

And so I don't know if a machine is able to do a better job on ethical, on difficult ethical questions. But I certainly think to behave properly and effectively in this world, it needs to be. Have a fear of mortality and like be able to even dance. Because I don't think you can solve ethical problems. But you have to. I think like ethics is like a dance floor. You have to just. You have to dance properly with the rest of the humans. Like if people are dancing tango, you have to dance in the same kind of way. And for that you have to have a fear of mortality. Like I think of. More practically speaking, I said autonomous vehicles, like the way you interact with pedestrians fundamentally has to have a sense of mortality. So when pedestrians cross the road. Now I've watched, well, certainly 100 plus hours of pedestrian videos. There's a kind of social contract where you walk in front of a car and you're putting your life in the hands of another human being.

That's right.

And like death is, is. Is in the car, in the game that's being played, death is right there. It's part of the calculus. It's not. But it's not like a simple calculus. It's not a simple equation. It's. It's an est. It's a. I mean, I don't know what it is, but. But it's in there and it has to be part of the optimization problem. Like it's not as simple as. So from the computer vision, from the artificial intelligence perspective, it's detecting. There's a human estimating, estimating the trajectory, like treating everything like it's billiard balls, as opposed to like being able to construct an effective model, the world model of the. What the person's thinking, what they're going to do, what are the different possibilities of how the scene might evolve. I think requires having some sense of. Yeah, fear of. Fear of mortality. Of mortality. I don't see the. The thing is, I think it's really important to think about. I can be honest enough to say that it's. I haven't been able to figure out how to engineer any of these things.

Right.

But I do think it's really, really important. Like I have. So I have a bunch of Roombas here. I can show it to you. After that I've. Roombas is a robot that does vacuums the floor. And I'VE had them make different sounds. Like I had them scream in pain. And. You immediately anthropomorphize.

Absolutely.

And it creates. I don't know, knowing that they can feel pain. See, I'm. I'm speaking like, knowing that I immediately imagine that they can feel pain and then immediately. Immediately draws me closer to them.

Yes.

At the human experience. And that there's. There's something in that. That should be engineered in. In our. In our systems. It feels like. I. I believe. Personally, I don't know what you think, but I believe it's possible for a robot and a human to fall in love, for example, in the. In the future.

Oh, I think it's. Yeah, it's already there.

No, well, there's a certain kind of deep connection with technology.

Yeah.

I mean, a real. Like you would choose to marry.

I mean, again, it sounds. I'll find a book title and I'll send it to you. And it's a serious consideration of people who started out with these sex dolls, but it turned into a relationship of enduring significance that the woman who wrote the book is not willing to dismiss as a perversion.

Yeah, that's what, you know, people kind of joke about sex robots, which is funny. Like, it's a. It's a funny. I mean, there's a lot of stuff about robots. It's just kind of fun to talk about that is not necessarily connected to reality. People joke about sex robots, but if you actually look how sex robots, which are pretty rare these days, are used. They're not used by people who want sex.

Precisely.

They're actually their companions. They're compared. They become companions.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's fascinating. And they're just. We're not even talking about any kind of intelligence. We're talking about just. I mean, human beings seek companionships. We're deeply lonely. I mean, that was the other sense I have that I don't know if I can articulate clearly. You can probably do a better job. But I have a sense that there's a deep loneliness within all of us.

Absolutely.

In the face of death, it feels like we're alone.

So, you know what drew me to the existential take on things? Lex was the. Who is it? Rollo May and Erwin Yalam. Right. About existentialism. And they're like, look, there's different flavors of existentialism, but they all have in common. What is it? Four universal concerns. The overriding one is about death, and that next is choice and responsibility. The next one is existential isolation. And they're like, that's one of the things about consciousness that. And the last one is meaninglessness. But the existential isolation point is, you know, we are, by virtue of consciousness, able to apprehend that unless you're a Siamese twin, you are fundamentally alone. And because it is claimed, it's Eric Fromm in a book called Escape from Freedom, he's like, look, you. You're smart enough to know that the most direct way that we typically communicate with our fellow human beings is through language. But you also know that language is a pale shadow of the totality of our interior phenomenological existence. Therefore, there's always going to be times in our lives where, even under the best of circumstances, you could be trying desperately to convey your thoughts and feelings, and somebody listening could be like, yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it. And you're like, you have no fucking idea what I'm talking about. So you can be desperately lonely in a house where you live with 10 people in the middle of Tokyo where there's millions.

Yeah, it's the Great Gatsby.

Yeah.

Could be alone.

Precisely. Exactly.

Maybe this is a small tangent, but let me ask you. On the topic of academia, you're kind of. We talked about Jordan Peterson. There's a lot of sort of renegade type of thinkers, certainly in psychology, but it applies in all disciplines. What do you think? Thoughts about academia being a place to harbor people like yourself, but, you know, people who think deeply about things, who are not constrained by sort of the who. I don't think you're quite controversial.

No, not really.

But you are a person who thinks deeply about things, and it feels like academia can sometimes stifle that.

I think so. So my concern right now, Lex, for young scholars, is that the restrictions and expectations are such that it's highly unlikely that anybody will do anything. Great value or innovation, except for. And this is not a bad thing, but stepwise improvement of existing paradigms. So the, you know, in simple English, you know, I went to Princeton for job interview 40 years ago, and they're like, what are you going to do if we give you a job? And I'm like, I don't know. I want to think about it and read. And. And I. I saw that that interview was over. The window of opportunity shut in my face. And they actually called my mentors, and they're like, what are you doing? Tell this guy to buy some pants. I had hair down to my waist also. He's like, this guy looks like Charles Manson of Jesus. But.

But.

The expectation is that you Come to a post, you know, you start publishing so that you can get grants.

That's certainly true, but there's also kind of a behavioral thing, you said, like long hair. There's. There's a certain style of the way you're supposed to behave. For example, like, I'm wearing a suit. It sounds. It sounds weird, but I feel comfortable in this. You know, I wore it, like, when I was teaching at mit. I wore it.

Sure.

Warranty meetings and so on. The different. Sometimes a blue and red tie. But, like, that was an outsider thing to do at mit, so, like, there was a strong pressure to not wear a suit.

No, that's right. It's.

And there's a pressure to behave, to have a hair thing.

No, that's right.

The way you wear your hair, the way you. This isn't like a liberal or anything. It's just in tribes.

That's right.

And academia, to me. Or a place, any place that dreams of having, like, renegade free thinkers, like really deep thinkers should, in fact, like, glorify the outsider.

Right? Yeah, should.

Welcome. Just should welcome, you know, people that don't fit in.

Yeah.

No, that sounds weird, but I don't. I could just imagine an interview with. At Princeton, you know, like, I imagine. Why aren't people. Why aren't you at Harvard, for example, or at mit?

Yeah, well, so that. Look, I would love to, you know, I. I haven't lectured at mit, but I've lectured at Harvard. I. I've gotten to lecture at almost every place that wouldn't consider me for a job.

Yeah.

And I. Well, a few things. I'm lucky because I, you know, I go to Princeton, I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. And then two days later I go to Skidmore and I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. And they offer me a job later that day, which I declined for months because of the extraordinary pressure of my mentors, who right mindedly felt that I wouldn't get much done there. But what they told me at Skidmore was, take your time, you know, show up for your classes and don't molest barnyard animals, and you'll probably get tenure. And I'm like, I'll show up for my classes, we'll talk about was.

That was the negotiation.

Yeah, I negotiated. I drove a hard bargain. But. But honestly, Lex, that's. I feel I'm very committed to Skidmore because I was given tenure when our first terror management paper wasn't published. It Took eight years to publish. It was rejected at every journal, and I submitted it as, like, a purple ditto sheet thing. I'm like, here's what I've been doing. Here's the reviews. Here's why. I think this is still a pretty good idea. And I don't know that this would happen even at Skidmore anymore. But I was very lucky to be given the latitude and to be encouraged. I took classes at Skidmore. That's how I learned all this stuff. I graduated. I got a PhD unscathed by knowledge. We were great statisticians and methodologists, but we didn't have any substance. And I don't mean this cynically, but we were trained in a method, in search of a question. So I appreciate having five years at Skidmore, basically, to read books. And I also appreciate that I look like this 40 years ago. And my view is that this is how I comported myself, other people. The guy I learned the most from at Skidmore is now dead. A history professor, Ted Kuroda, he wore a bow tie. And there's another guy, Darnell Rucker, who taught me about philosophy, and he was very proper, and he had, like, his jacket with, like, the leather patches. But these guys weren't pompous at all. They were, this is the way I am. And I always felt that that's important, that somebody who looks at you and says, oh, what a stiff. He's probably an mba. Well, they're wrong.

Yeah.

And someone who looks at me. When I first got to Skidmore, other professors would ask when I'd be coming to their office to empty the garbage. They just assumed, you know, I was in my 20s. They assumed I was housekeeping. I always felt that was important, that the students learn not to judge an idea by the appearance of the person who purveys it.

And, yeah, I mean, that's. I guess this is such a high concern now, because I personally still have faith that academia is where the great geniuses will come from.

I do, too.

And great ideas.

I love hearing you say that. I still. And it's one of the reasons why. Really apprehensive about the future of education right now in the context of the pandemic, is that a lot of folks, a lot of these are Google type people who. I don't. You know, they're geniuses also. But I don't like this idea that all learning can be virtual and that much could happen. I'm big on embodied environments with actual humans interacting.

I mean, there's so much to the university education but I think the key part that I is the the mentorship that occurs somehow and at the human level like I've gotten a lot of flack like this conversation we're in person now and I've even with Edward Snow Snowden who done all interviews remote I'm a stickler to in person it has to be in person like and a lot of people just don't get it they're like well why can't this is so much easier like why go through the pain like I've traveled I'm traveling in the next month to Paris for a single stupid conversation nobody cares about just to be in person well it's.

Important to me I I honestly I was like this and thank you for.

Coming down today well it's my pleasure.

But but again it's very self serving I've enjoyed this I knew I was going to but it's not about our enjoyment per se again at the risk of sounding.