Name: Joe Rogan Experience #804 - Sam Harris
Uploaded: 2016-06-02T04:45:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #804 - Sam Harris' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #804 - Sam Harris' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-06-02. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #804 - Sam Harris

The infamous Jamie double finger gun and we're live. How are you sir? Good to
see you man. I'm good. Good to be back.
You're looking healthy. Looking fresh. I'm glad you're here. Well, I stopped
eating meat since I last saw you.
I heard about that. I want to talk to you about that. Yeah, and I don't know
that it's correlating with health.
Every time I worry about this out loud, I get hate mail from vegans and vegetarians
who say stop.
Yeah, I'm putting your bullshit on us. Well, you they don't like when you
associate any negative consequences whatsoever with only eating vegetables.
Yeah, it's a because it's essentially a cult. It's a wonderful cult of people
that want to take care of animals and be nice to animals.
But they're very tribal very tribal very cult like and if you say anything that's
negative against vegans they gang up
I go to forums and I read the things they say they organize like little troll
attacks and they make YouTube videos
It's kind of hilarious like from a psychological standpoint. Yeah, I mean, you
know
Obviously, I don't want to become a new religion or my my one religion
but I mean there is a moral high ground to the position that I find very
attractive because I felt like a hypocrite as a meat-eater now
And I don't think this necessarily extends to someone like you who hunts and
feels okay about hunting
I don't have an argument against hunting the way I do against factory farming
or more or more or less any of the way we get meat
You know the the environmental implications of it, but it's so it's very captivating
as a position and you feel like an asshole
Once you once you once you go far enough into the the inquiry you feel like an
asshole not being sensitive to these concerns and just
Ignoring how you're getting your food three times a day, but
I'm not you for me. I mean, I'm sure there's individual variation and I'm not
the smartest vegetarian in the world in terms of how I
prepare my food and and how attentive I am to it. So the onus is somewhat on me,
but I
I'm not totally sure it's
The healthiest thing for me yet. So I you know, so you say this started you
said you look healthy
I mean, I feel like my health is somewhat withering under this it's been about
nine months
Withering
Are you getting your blood checked? Are you doing your 12 supplementation? Yeah,
that's a good as essential b12 is essential d3 is essential as well
Most people are just not going to get enough from the Sun
And are you monitoring your intake of?
Fatty acids and things along those lines not really beyond the supplementation.
I'm I'm just
Trying to get the food in yeah, well, it's good. It's all good stuff, but it's
really important. Like there's one of the things that people rage against
Unfortunately, it's the stigma and it's fats. It's dietary cholesterol
Yeah, dietary cholesterol and saturated fats which are critical for hormone
production
And it's one of the reasons why people when they get an all-vegetable diet if
they're not really careful with coconut oil
You gotta eat a lot of coconut oil. I'm a big fan of avocados
I eat a lot of avocados a lot of avocado oil a lot of coconut oil as well
though almond butter
Nuts things on those lines like you really need to get those essential fats.
Well, actually, I'm not vegan so
I would like to be vegan, but but I'm still eating dairy
Well, how could you say you would like to be no one's holding you?
No one's holding you down to goddammit Sam you need to have some milk
No, no, I think just I think I would screw it up. I mean again
I'm gonna reap the whirlwind when from the vegans, but I should have brought
you some eggs
Yeah, no, but I eat eggs, you know, I eat eggs and I eat dairy
But as you can only eat so many eggs and and so much dairy, but I eat a lot of
eggs
Yeah, legs are very good for you too. Here's another thing dietary cholesterol
Like people are always concerned with dietary cholesterol. Well, that was a big
myth for the longest time
Yeah, as a matter of fact dietary cholesterol barely moves the needle on blood
lipids a lot of when people have cholesterol issues
It's sedentary lifestyle. There's genetics. There's all sorts of other
variables
But people with healthy lifestyles, it doesn't seem to be that dietary
cholesterol is bad for you
And also it's essential for testosterone production. Yeah. Yeah, so no, I I get
a ton of
Not a ton, but I'm not
Trying to avoid saturated fat. So I am I get a fair amount of do you have a
yard?
Yeah, could you raise some chickens? No, no
No
Come over my house after this. I'll take you to my house. I'll show you the
chicken set up
We have we just got five new ones and we have an 18 now one of them died. They
just fucking die sometimes
Right, and you don't know why? No, they just go in the chicken coop. One of
them's dead. You're like all right
Father time got in there with his scythe and they're getting kind of old now
some of them
I don't know how old the chicken lasts honestly, but they're like pets that
give you food, right? Like there's no negativity
I open the door they come up to me they run around I feed them like there's no
they're not trapped as a matter of fact
They go into their their pen at night
Like you leave it open and they wander around my I have a big yard they wander
around my yard
They eat a bunch of bugs and stuff and then they go back inside when they want
to right
So there's no like animal captivity is no cruelty. There's nothing weird going
on and so those eggs
They're pretty much karma free. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I don't doubt that. It's
just that when you read the details of how
Our dairy and and I mean it's it's near arguably as bad if not worse than much
of the meat production
So, you know moving from eating eating meat to being a vegetarian
In some ways is a symbolic move ethically if you if you really wanted to to not
participate in the machinery
But there's an issue with me that's for vegetarianism. There is an issue with
how they gather food
I mean, there's there's a giant issue that people don't want to take into
consideration
It's like how are they growing all this food? How are they growing all these
plants?
Well, one of the things they're doing is they're displacing wildlife
They're chewing up this ground and these combines if you eat grain in
particular
Combines indiscriminately just chew up all that stuff and they get deer fawns
mice rabbits rats rodents
Untold amount of bugs if you want to get really deep, right?
I mean, there's no like being a vegan and being a vegetarian is most certainly
less cruel and less harmful
Overall, but it's not karma free. It can't be unless you're growing your own
stuff
If you can grow all your own vegetables and you essentially live on a small
farm
Yeah, you could you could do it and really feel good
But it's if you're buying it in a store
You're participating in factory farming whether you like it or not. You're just
participating in vegetable farming, but it's
There's still issues. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just just fewer I had this guy on
my podcast
Uma Valeti who's running this company called Memphis meats, which is a cultured
meat is a startup in Silicon Valley. Oh, okay
And they're trying to try that I haven't tried it
No, I want to try it, but it was a fascinating conversation because he
basically it what's what's fascinating to me on two levels is is
One is just it's fascinating that we're on the cusp of being able to produce
Actual you know biologically identical meat that is that is
Totally cruelty. I mean, yeah, it's it's there's no there's no implication of
cruelty at all in it, right?
And you just would just grow grow this in a vat the way you you know brew beer
essentially
and
So that's you know, that seems like the future but what's interesting
psychologically is that people have this
this creepy feeling around it, which is very strange because so you you I'm
telling you I can take the misery and death out of the process
Right. I can take the suffering animal out of it. I can take the chaos of the
slaughterhouse out of it
There's no you know
Cow that has been mistreated for its whole life
Stumbling in blood and feces on the way to the you know the the killing floor
And somehow removing all of that makes it creepy for people, right? They want
they want they want that
I mean, that's the natural way to get meat
And if I told you this is grown in a vat by a guy in a white lab coat and has
no
Xenoviruses and no bacteria nothing, you know antibiotics were used to you know
plump this thing up
And it's just the cells you want people start to this kind of an ick feeling
that that
I think we're gonna get over but it's interesting psychologically that it's
there in the first place
Did you get that ick feeling or are you just talking to the people that?
No, I understand it. I mean, I'm I'm past it, but I understand it
Who do you know that got it that feeling just I just see the reaction that you
know when I actually pulled this on twitter
Um and 25% of people like 15,000 people answered the poll
So it was like it was a it's not a scientifically valid poll of the general
population. It's just whoever got it on my on my feed, but
Um, it was interesting to see I asked
You know of the people who wouldn't switch as I asked would you switch and
something like 80% said they would switch if this was
affordable and available and safe
um
But of the people who wouldn't switch it was 25% wouldn't switch because it's
just creepy and 25% assume that it was um
uh
Not healthy. I think I forgot the for the breakdown. Um, another 25% were
already vegan or vegetarian and didn't want to eat meat
Um, but there's there was an ick factor for at least 25% of the people who
wouldn't do it. I understand it
I wonder how many people would go back to eating meat
If they could raise it this way, like how many people who had gone vegan would
go back to eating this
Scientifically created lab created beef
I think
Enough for a serious market. Yeah. Oh for sure
Well, there'd be a serious market for it for sure
If they could get the it cost effective because the last time I saw it was like
quarter million bucks for a cheeseburger
I think it's down. I think it's down to eighteen thousand dollars for a meatball
It's I mean it'll eventually be like you know the apollo computers now fit in
your pocket much stronger in fact than the apollo computers
Well, the sequencing the genome this this I just noticed which is fascinating
um
Sequencing the genome 15 years ago cost three billion dollars. It's now three
thousand
So why it's a million fold reduction in cost in 15 years. That's insane. So
something like the things
Tend to scale that way. So yeah, that's a giant scale though. And you talk
about human history. Yeah
Good lord. Imagine if you're a guy who spent three billion of it
Fifteen years ago, you're like god if I just fucking waited. Yeah, yeah, I
would have saved so much money
And that's we don't anticipate that when we think of how
Difficult it is to solve certain problems. We don't and this is ray kurtzweil's
point ray kurtzweil who I think is
is a bit of a cult leader and
um
A carnival barker on many topics this this point he makes again and again, I
think is quite valid which is
When you're factoring how difficult it will be to get into the end zone,
whatever that end zone is, right?
You're not tending to factor all of the improvements and and the compounding
improvements in technology along the way
So I would love to get back to ray korswell
But I wanted to bring up this point about did you one of the things about going
vegan
Especially when you proclaim and you go public with going vegan if you back out
of that. Yeah
Yeah, well, that's where I am as a vegetarian. Yeah
They get fucking mad at you. Yeah, they get mad. Did you see that family a
couple that runs a bunch of vegan restaurants?
And they decided to start eating meat again, even though they run vegan
restaurants. They decided to start they have their own farm
They raise their own 