Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1221 - Jonathan Haidt
Uploaded: 2019-01-07T21:18:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1221 - Jonathan Haidt' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-01-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1221 - Jonathan Haidt' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-01-07. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1221 - Jonathan Haidt

in four three two one hello hello Joe thanks for doing this man I really
appreciate it oh this is exciting I don't think I've ever had a conversation
as long as we're about to have I've been listening to the happiness hypothesis
over the last few days and I really really enjoy it I'm really enjoying it
it's really fascinating stuff man but one thing I wanted to talk about because
we're talking about it right before we got started was what's happening with
Peter Boghossian at Portland State University yeah for folks who don't
know the story he and I forget his two colleagues and James Lindsay yeah they
released these fake papers on like homo eroticism and rape culture in dog parks
and just really preposterous stuff papers that almost like an article from the
onion and some of them not only did they get peer-reviewed and accepted into
these
journals but they got lauded as being these amazing
one yeah one did one got yeah and now he's getting in trouble that's right yeah
and we were just talking about it and I just would love to know your thoughts
as
a professor like what oh sure yeah so you know for those who don't know I guess
most of your listeners probably do but you know it was called the grievance
studies
hoax yeah because and this is one of the big issues going on in the Academy
which I
hope we'll talk about is you know what does it take to have good scholarship
and and the
argument is that in some fields as long as you hate the right things and use
the right
words you'll get published and that's not scholarship that's activism and so
these three these three people who did this hoax they
were trying to show that that's the case and so they wrote these papers one of
them was
actually a section of Mein Kampf yes and they just substituted in something
about
feminism for nazism something like that and I don't remember that one actually
got
pumped I think it did at any rate the point is they were trying to show that
this is
some of these fields in the Academy are not really about scholarship they're
just
about showing that you hate the right things they're activism and so there's no
way to break in within those closed worlds so they did a time-honored thing
they did a
hoax they published they submitted these papers they made up fake names and and
a
lot of them got accepted and now what's happening is that the universe at
Portland
State University which is only one of the three is that a is a is a professor
is a
associate assistant professor so he's not tenured you know of course he has a
lot
of enemies and of course I don't know what's going on behind the scenes but it
looks like some of them wanted him investigated for violating the IRB the
internal review board because the claim is they fabricated data because one of
the
papers says I inspected the genitals of 10,000 dogs in the dog park you know it's
like obviously absurd yeah and he said you know in 63 percent of the of the
attempted hump because the thing thing of the article was that the idea that
you
know you go to a dog park and you see dogs humping each other and they were
interpreting this as rape as doggy rape and so he's got all these no you know
fake numbers in there so is that fraud is that data fraud and if you read so I'm
I'm writing a letter for a lot of us are now writing letters in support of of
Boghossian thank you for doing that but if you read the you know they they at
his
university the committee was impaneled and they looked at the literal
definition of data fabrication and it's possible that he does fall under that
but
the point of of of this whole thing it's okay so it's not I can't weigh in on
whether or not technically but but these rules are put in place to prevent the
corruption of the scientific record and what he was doing was not going to
corrupt
the scientific record it was done to correct it they were doing it to show
that there's a huge problem and then they were going to unveil it so the
question is is the university going to interpret it this in the worst possible
way the narrowest possible way and thereby make fools of themselves look like
laughingstocks or are they going to use some common sense and recognize this
for
what it was it wasn't data fabrication it wasn't a fraud yeah it was an expose
that's right yeah and I I hope that they come to their senses and they do have
a
point if I'm going to be completely objective about data fabrication I mean
technically I mean maybe they could have written that paper without saying that
they actually tested 10,000 genitals but what's really important I think is
that they recognize that regular people are paying attention to this now people
that aren't involved in this very insulated world and they're going this is
crazy like imagine if your children are going there and your children children
are being taught at this school that's willing to accept this kind of nonsense
like this what happened at evergreen State University is another example of
that and that's right it's incredibly damaging to them as a university I mean
their their enrollment is significantly down that's right their funding is in
real big trouble I mean it's a real bad situation for them and if you talk to
Brett Weinstein it was a wonderful place just a few years ago when he was
teaching there that's right and it's gotten crazier and crazier on these
campuses to the point where nonsense is never being it's not being questioned
at all
it's just being accepted as just some some it's almost like some religious dogma
that
you have to follow that's right so the way I think the way to make sense of all
of
this is you have to always look at what game is being played so human beings
evolved in small-scale societies we have all kinds of abilities to function in
those small-scale societies one of those is religious worship we're very good
at
making something sacred and circling around it another is war we're very good
at forming teams to fight the other side and we love that so much we create
sports and you know video game battles with team versus team so there's all
these
different games you can play and the truth-seeking game is a it was a really
special one and a weird one and we're not very good at it as individuals and in
my
view the genius of university is that it takes people and puts them together in
ways where each person each like scientists aren't these super rational
creatures that are you know looking to disconfirm their own ideas no we're not
looking we want to prove our ideas we love our ideas but a university puts us
together in a way in which you are really motivated to disprove my ideas and I'm
motivated to disprove yours you put us together we cancel out each other's
confirmation biases so the truth-seeking game is a very special game that can
only be
played in a very special institution with special norms okay so we're doing
this for
you know my whole time in academia I started grad school in 1987 at the
University of Pennsylvania and then just in the last few years it's like some
people are playing this really different game and it's like if you know if I'm
playing tennis I hit the ball to you like we're in a seminar class I give you a
question I challenge you you come back and we go back and forth and in the
process we learn so that's like kind of like playing tennis so I'm doing this
and
then suddenly like someone tackles me like what that you don't do that in
tennis no no but they're playing football you see and in football it's a much
rougher game and you're trying to destroy the others I'm not really in
football but I'm saying yes you know it's a and so as norms of combat come in
and what I mean by that is political combat as some people within universities
see that what we're doing here is not seeking truth we're trying to fight
fascism or we're trying to defeat conservatism or we're trying to fight
racism or whatever some sort of political goal and these games are
completely incompatible and so that's why this madness has erupted where you
see
professors saying something maybe it's a little provocative I'm going back to
Socrates that was kind of the point was to provoke and you see this bizarre
reactions emotional reactions groups organized to demand that a professor be
fired because we're playing different games yeah how did this start how did it
start because it seems like there there has to be an event or something or yeah
a
trend well so so the you know the book that the book that I just put out in
September with Greg Lukianoff the coddling of the American mind yeah I read the
first chapter that as well okay well thank you for admitting that was only one
chapter usually you know that one because unfortunately I was I was reading
that and then I got on a flight and I just wanted to zone out so I listened to
this one on tape okay all right well I'll tell you all about it but the key
thing is that that book the calling the American mind was something that we
wrote
because Greg began observing this weird stuff happening in universities in 2014
it all starts in 2014 most of your listeners have heard about safe spaces
microaggressions bias response teams trigger warnings all that stuff that stuff
didn't exist before 2014 it just begins creeping in then and then it kind of
blows up in
2015 and so our whole book is an explanation of why why did this happen and
so to your question about was there an event
our answer is there are six different causal threads there's like all these
social trends some going back to the 80s and 90s that came together around 2014
so
that students are a little different and then there are certain forces acting
on
them that are different and so you get this weird new game you get this
explosive mix you get some
students who are actually very drawn to grievance studies and so very briefly
like
the it's things like rising political polarization so left and right never
particularly liked each other but in the 70s and 80s if you look at surveys
done of
how much you hate people on the other side it's not that intense it begins
going up in the in the 80s and then especially after 2000 it's going up very
steeply
at the same time university faculty who have always leaned left throughout the
20th century but it was only a lean and in the 90s it begins shifting much
further left so that now faculties especially in the social sciences and
humanities are pretty purified they're overwhelmingly on the left so you have a
more left leaning university at a time when left right hostility is getting
more and more intense and so any question that has a political valence now
there's a lot more people who want to do the football game.
but it was only a lean.
And in the 90s, it begins shifting much further left
so that now faculties,
especially in the social sciences and humanities,
are pretty purified.
They're overwhelmingly on the left.
So you have a more left-leaning university
at a time when left-right hostility
is getting more and more intense.
And so any question that has a political valence,
now there's a lot more people
who wanna do the football game,
not the truth-seeking game,
but that we gotta defeat the other side.
Don't give me nuance, don't give me data.
We know what we believe,
and dammit, we're gonna, you know.
So you got this changing political situation.
And then you've got a couple of threads
about what we've done to kids.
So, and this is a whole 'nother area conversation for us,
but we basically took away free play
and gave them social media.
Basically kids who were born in 1995 and after Gen Z,
they had really different childhoods
and they're not as prepared for conflict and college.
We'll get into that later.
But you put all these things together,
you get kids who are much more anxious and fragile,
much more depressed coming onto campus at a time
of much greater political activism.
And now these grievance studies ideas
about America's a matrix of oppression
and look at the world in terms of good versus evil.
It's more appealing to them