Name: "Thoughts" with Sam Harris (from Joe Rogan Experience #543)
Uploaded: 2014-10-02T19:37:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video '"Thoughts" with Sam Harris (from Joe Rogan Experience #543)' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2014-10-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video '"Thoughts" with Sam Harris (from Joe Rogan Experience #543)' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2014-10-02. Transcript available.

hello freak bitches 30 the last time I sat a I was exactly 30 last time I said
a
three-month retreat but you just get you you're unplugging from your life
you're saying goodbye to everyone you know you know if you for all you know
someone's gonna die while you're on retreat and so you there's this real
discontinuity with every project and every aspiration everything you have
going on and and also most of the people in your life can't believe you're
doing this it's not much support you know the people just it's just totally
inscrutable yeah that you would decide to do this and then you'll essentially
lock yourself in a closet I mean like you essentially lock yourself in a room
as
big as you know these two tables and then you're just left with your thoughts
and
the the problem is is that just thinking itself even thinking happy thoughts is
stressful and when you when you actually when you really start paying attention
to it that there's the sheer automaticity of it to just just to be just to not
be
able to stop the conversation and you just can't stop talking to yourself for a
second and that now you eventually you can eventually you become concentrated
on in
this case the practice I was doing is called vipassana which is mindfulness
meditation and the practice there is just to become very keenly aware of you
start
the breath as as an object of meditation but but once you get a little
concentration you
open it up to everything so sounds and sensations and even thoughts themselves
become objects of meditation where you're just noticing whatever arises in
consciousness and but the difference between noticing a thought arise and pass
away and
being lost in thought is is huge and this is the all-important difference and
it takes some real
concentration to act to see a thought arise and pass away because without the
concentration all of a sudden
the thoughts just you it just comes up from behind in a way and you were just
you're just you feel
identical in a strange way you feel identical to this sentence in your head you
do you feel this
I miss thoughts are just sentences and images and it's when you actually look
at what a thought is it's it's very hard to see how you could how could ever
define your subjectivity in the first place it's just like your thoughts are no
more substantial than the sound of my voice
you're just hearing the sound of my voice as a kind of appearance and
consciousness right now and it's not it's not defining you it's not you don't
feel identical to it it doesn't have a real implication so much for how you
feel
uh you're you're not uh it's just it it's easy to see or to in this case here
that it is a and it's just an appearance in consciousness it comes and it goes
it starts and it stops and it's all sort of in plain view but with your own
thoughts with the only with with your own voice
it it it it sneaks up on you in a way that is and even to use the word you in
this case is a little misleading because it but it colors consciousness and
trims it down in such a way that it just feels like you it doesn't it doesn't
feel it doesn't it's it's it's you you feel I mean the the feeling of being a
self the feeling that we call I the feeling of being an ego in the head is what
it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you're thinking it's the it's
the feeling of this
next thought capturing consciousness so when you say that thoughts you are
identical to thoughts so if you're thinking something really fucked up like I'm
fat I'm a loser I'm always going to be a loser like that is identical to who
you are because you are sort of framing yourself in this thought yeah these
thoughts that are you're carrying around your mind they are what's occupying
your consciousness and if those thoughts are in the forefront of your
consciousness that they identify you you are that you are those thoughts and
you are
you are identical to that idea yeah and they're and they're driving behavior
and they're driving emotion and they're driving each subsequent train of
thought so it's it's just it's determining the the the future expressions of
your consciousness and your body as well so you're you're and again I'm not I'm
not separating the mind from the body here I mean all of this is we could talk
about this in terms of events in the brain as well but it's much easier to talk
about it in terms of our first-person experiences thoughts and moods and
emotions and emotions
etc but you know for the purpose of this argument you know there's no doubt
that the brain is doing this it's just we're not you know the that side of the
story there's much less to say about that side of the story at the moment the
brain is doing it but your your whatever it is your personality your
consciousness your your center is sort of what guides the brain one way or
another like it is possible to while in the middle of having these thoughts to
say you know what I'm not going to entertain these anymore and I'm
I'm going to think about something positive but it's very difficult yeah
surprisingly difficult even as someone like myself who spent a lot of times a
lot of time meditating especially a lot of time in isolation tanks I it's still
difficult every now and then if something's bothering you to just get it out of
your head like yeah especially for me one of my main issues is my work like
like stand-up comedy for instance like if I have a show and I
I fuck a bit up if it goes wrong like if I have two shows in a night and I fuck
a bit up on the first show I'm okay if I could redo it on the second show we're
good but if I fuck it up on the second show god damn it now I have to think
about that thing all night and I'll try to let it go I'll try to get it out of
my head but
I rationalize it by saying the only reason why I've gotten so good is because
of this crazy obsession that I have with getting it correct and that when
things go awry or when I go down a bad path that doesn't quite pan out and then
I have to sort of restart the whole conversation on stage
that that uncomfortable moment and then the subsequent uncomfortable recollection
of that moment is the very motivation that's led me to be a good stand-up in
the first place
so I kind of rationalize it but fuck man when I'm eating dinner after a show
and I just flub one word that fucks up a joke I'll be in the middle of eating
pancakes going shit
yeah like I can't get it out of my head it doesn't matter I have a wonderful
wife and a beautiful family and great friends and a fantastic job and a wonder
of just a
dream life doesn't matter I flubbed a word you fucking idiot you know like why
I'm cutting into my food
yeah well that that's an interesting moment because so there's a moment before
the thought has arisen right where you have
not yet remembered the flub line so you're just cutting into your dinner and
then it's an image or part image part sentence something there's some
expression of thought that arises in consciousness and you are you do not you
do not witness it arise it's not like you it's a difference between seeing it
watching a movie and being totally lost in the movie forgetting that you're
sitting in a room with a bunch of other people looking at light on a
wall you're just you're totally captured by the movie it's different between
that and actually just seeing the screen the light on the wall hearing the
sound of the projector seeing seeing the seeing the artifice and it's possible
to see thoughts just as essentially like a play of light on the wall you just
you see it before it captures you and the difference is total and it is kind of
like it's almost like playing a video game where you can now not
get killed in the same spot over and over again it's like you know not losing
in the same boss fight over and over again yet we we lose in that same fight a
thousand times a day but when you can actually see thoughts for what they are
so the next time you flub a line and the next time you recall it it's possible
with and again it takes a certain degree of concentration to be able to do this
but concentration becomes kind of a native capacity at a certain point it's
like jujitsu or anything else I mean you have certain skills
skills and you don't really lose them then you can just see it and it just
comes and it goes and it doesn't have and it's going it's going it's really
gone it's and it doesn't have the same emotional necessity it doesn't trigger
the same mental state and now that's not to say that these negative mental
states haven't had the benefit that you ascribe to them so yeah it could be
that you're as good as you are
because you were motivated to not embarrass yourself ever again because it felt
so terrible right so you hated this experience of flubbing a line you hated the
memory of of of and the reliving of it the next day you hated what it did to
your your time with your family and so you thought I'm the next tour I'm going
to get this I'm going to get up earlier I'm going to work harder etc.
So yeah that's all part of the clockwork that's causing you to hone your craft
but I would argue that a little mental suffering goes a long way I think we
nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100 we suffer unnecessarily and there's
not no good comes from it it's just it's not actually making us better people
it's making us more neurotic people we're more worried we're worse husbands we're
worse fathers and it's time to break that spell and
and then you can selectively be as uptight and neurotic as you want but it
gives you a kind of freedom to pick your priorities in a way rather than be
captured by just whatever the next thought happens to be.
I've also found for me personally the discipline and diligence are the the best
mitigating factors for dealing with neurotic thoughts like if I have an issue
one of the big issues if I've ever had anything go wrong was that I didn't work
hard enough so if I know for a fact that I worked as hard as I could like back
when I was competing that was a huge issue.
And it also mitigated nervousness because look whenever you're involved in a
competition as terrifying as a full contact martial arts tournament where concussions
are not just likely but it's someone in there's 100 people fighting in this
tournament someone's going to sleep someone's going to get knocked out is it
going to be you someone's going to get their nose broken someone's going to get
hit a lot of people are probably.
If I if I if I trained really hard if I know I did everything that I could I
ate right I slept right I put in all the practice I worked on all my weaknesses
I you know I didn't neglect my strengths I was much less nervous.
Much less nervous and much better at dealing with losses whereas losses I think
losses for martial artists can be insanely devastating like I was listening to
this interview with Travis Brown do you know who he is no UFC heavyweight one
of the top top five guys in the world great fighter lost recently to Fabricio
Verdum okay in a title elimination fight so Fabricio has gone on and he'll be
fighting Cain Velasquez for the heavyweight title now in October right in
Mexico in a huge
October November November November believe it's November whatever one of those
he's fighting Cain Velasquez for the title huge fight it could have been Travis
Brown right Travis Brown lost the fight by decision and you know it was it was
he lost without a doubt but you know wasn't embarrassing it wasn't he didn't
get knocked out in the first round he didn't get submitted really quickly but
he did lose the fight and it was apparently devastating to him I mean he's
talked in great depth about lying in bed in the fetal position
in the fetal position crying I mean he's just fucking 250 pound gladiator and
he's curled up in a fetal position crying well the truth is the ego is always
curled up in the fetal position crying we all have that part of ourselves and
it's yeah I mean that's what is so excruciating about the self and the self
really is the center of the center of our problem you know and and when things
are really going well
we are consoled by how well we are consoled by how well they're going but we
know it's it's vulnerable to change I mean you're only as good as your last
appearance in some sense I mean I could do something incredibly embarrassing
in the middle of this podcast and that will be the thing I'm thinking about
tonight and I'll be I'm thinking you know god I can't believe I fucked that up
so bad in Joe's podcast and that it's you're always vulnerable to that for the
right for as long as you as long as you're in the center of this thing
vulnerable to what other other people think about you and captive of your
really crazy rehearsal of experience when you when something like this happens
to you just think of how many times you repeat it to yourself it's like you
tell yourself the same story 15 times a minute for hours and
it doesn't strike you as insane but it actually is insane it's like if you're
if your thoughts could be broadcast on a monitor for other people to hear and
they could hear you repeat yourself
over and over and over again it would seem starkly crazy it just it and yet it
seems normal it's it's kind of like like the dream state where you go to sleep
and you're in your bed and you
you know you're everything's obeying the laws of physics and then in the next
conscious moment you are you know at a party somewhere is talking to someone
who you know is dead and saying oh I can't believe
you're you're alive now and and and then you know there's a gorilla in the room
and and and none of this strikes you as crazy is that the craziest things about
dreams is that the mind seems to just accept them
accept these changes one after the other without any sense that there should be
continuity and this is due there's no question that this is due to the
diminished activity of the frontal lobes during REM sleep
I mean we just our truth our reality testing hardware has come largely offline
during dreams but there's something analogous happening when we're just
thinking in the waking state because thoughts are thoughts don't make much
sense because the repetition is we don't notice how crazy the repetition is and
we would notice it if we were talking to each other if I was telling you the
same thing 15 times in a row without you know without honoring your expectation
that I might move on to another topic you know you
would you would you would notice and I would notice right and yeah and the
other thing that's crazy about thoughts is that much of our thinking certainly
our linguistic thoughts
are it's structured as though it were a conversation and we play both signs of
the conversation so I you know I'll sit down here and you know I said I came in
I sat down and and I brought you a book and I wanted to sign the book and I see
this pen over
here and I think oh good there's a pen over there right now I can see that
there's a pen over there so who am I why do I have to say there's a pen over
there right who am I telling is there someone in me who can't see that there's
a pen over there right so there's a conversation that started like and I'm both
sides of it that doesn't make any sense right and yet we are can our subjectivity
is continually
uh just it is it is it is discursive in that way and there's just voices
talking to each other and there's not only not only are there not two of us in
there there's not even one of us in there there's not the thinker isn't there
but we seem to have two of them it's like we're constantly talking to mommy and
daddy
uh and we in fact that could be the way this conversation gets internalized
because you know
I can see it in my kids now where they sometimes I'll leave you know I'll
listen to my daughter playing by
herself and she's talking to herself out loud in the way that that you know you'd
have to be sort of crazy
to do as an adult but as a kid you're just you know you're just talking out
loud
um and eventually we all learn to internalize that conversation but um and when
you don't when people
who can't internalize it well they're the crazy ones you know the the person
who's walking down the street
just saying oh good there's a pen over there and what god we're late and uh god
you know joe i mean joe's
gonna really be pissed um i can't believe i should i should have checked the
traffic before i left so
these are the kinds of thoughts i could think silently in in the space of my
mind but um and it wouldn't be
starkly crazy but to verbalize them then you're a madman and that that
difference between letting them out
and just knowing to keep your mouth shut is captures a large part of the
difference between being you know
a proper lunatic uh and a normal person but what i argue in this book is that
it's normal isn't good enough
you know i mean normal the normal uh state of consciousness wherein you are
just chased out of bed every
morning by your thoughts and you think think think think think every waking
moment until you fall
helplessly asleep at night um that's not necessarily a happy place to be and it's
not the only alternative
and and so um and again and thought it's not that you're the goal is not to
have a mind without
thoughts i mean we need thoughts and and you can't you know everything we do as
human beings
for the most part it requires thought to get off the ground so our
relationships are based on thoughts and
our every public institution and science it's all it's this conversation we
have with ourselves
and with others is based on on language uh almost and uh and concepts that are
mediated by language and
uh so you need thought but the difference is the difference is between thinking
and knowing that
you're thinking in really knowing that you're thinking in the moment of
thoughts arising or being lost in
thought and then when you're lost in thought it doesn't really matter what the
the content is you're still
confused about who and what you are i mean you could be thinking about the most
you could be thinking
about the most profound things in science or in in ethics or whatever it is but
if you're just
thinking without knowing that you're thinking there is a kind of delusion there
it is analogous to
to the dream state in a way where you're just you're not it's not clear to you
what's going on you think
you're the thinker of the thoughts you think you're authoring your thoughts in
a way that you're
you're not i mean because thoughts just arise we don't we don't actually author
them

"Thoughts" with Sam Harris (from Joe Rogan Experience #543)

hello freak bitches 30 the last time I sat a I was exactly 30 last time I said
a
three-month retreat but you just get you you're unplugging from your life
you're saying goodbye to everyone you know you know if you for all you know
someone's gonna die while you're on retreat and so you there's this real
discontinuity with every project and every aspiration everything you have
going on and and also most of the people in your life can't believe you're
doing this it's not much support you know the people just it's just totally
inscrutable yeah that you would decide to do this and then you'll essentially
lock yourself in a closet I mean like you essentially lock yourself in a room
as
big as you know these two tables and then you're just left with your thoughts
and
the the problem is is that just thinking itself even thinking happy thoughts is
stressful and when you when you actually when you really start paying attention
to it that there's the sheer automaticity of it to just just to be just to not
be
able to stop the conversation and you just can't stop talking to yourself for a
second and that now you eventually you can eventually you become concentrated
on in
this case the practice I was doing is called vipassana which is mindfulness
meditation and the practice there is just to become very keenly aware of you
start
the breath as as an object of meditation but but once you get a little
concentration you
open it up to everything so sounds and sensations and even thoughts themselves
become objects of meditation where you're just noticing whatever arises in
consciousness and but the difference between noticing a thought arise and pass
away and
being lost in thought is is huge and this is the all-important difference and
it takes some real
concentration to act to see a thought arise and pass away because without the
concentration all of a sudden
the thoughts just you it just comes up from behind in a way and you were just
you're just you feel
identical in a strange way you feel identical to this sentence in your head you
do you feel this
I miss thoughts are just sentences and images and it's when you actually look
at what a thought is it's it's very hard to see how you could how could ever
define your subjectivity in the first place it's just like your thoughts are no
more substantial than the sound of my voice
you're just hearing the sound of my voice as a kind of appearance and
consciousness right now and it's not it's not defining you it's not you don't
feel identical to it it doesn't have a real implication so much for how you
feel
uh you're you're not uh it's just it it's easy to see or to in this case here
that it is a and it's just an appearance in consciousness it comes and it goes
it starts and it stops and it's all sort of in plain view but with your own
thoughts with the only with with your own voice
it it it it sneaks up on you in a way that is and even to use the word you in
this case is a little misleading because it but it colors consciousness and
trims it down in such a way that it just feels like you it doesn't it doesn't
feel it doesn't it's it's it's you you feel I mean the the feeling of being a
self the feeling that we call I the feeling of being an ego in the head is what
it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you're thinking it's the it's
the feeling of this
next thought capturing consciousness so when you say that thoughts you are
identical to thoughts so if you're thinking something really fucked up like I'm
fat I'm a loser I'm always going to be a loser like that is identical to who
you are because you are sort of framing yourself in this thought yeah these
thoughts that are you're carrying around your mind they are what's occupying
your consciousness and if those thoughts are in the forefront of your
consciousness that they identify you you are that you are those thoughts and
you are
you are identical to that idea yeah and they're and they're driving behavior
and they're driving emotion and they're driving each subsequent train of
thought so it's it's just it's determining the the the future expressions of
your consciousness and your body as well so you're you're and again I'm not I'm
not separating the mind from the body here I mean all of this is we could talk
about this in terms of events in the brain as well but it's much easier to talk
about it in terms of our first-person experiences thoughts and moods and
emotions and emotions
etc but you know for the purpose of this argument you know there's no doubt
that the brain is doing this it's just we're not you know the that side of the
story there's much less to say about that side of the story at the moment the
brain is doing it but your your whatever it is your personality your
consciousness your your center is sort of what guides the brain one way or
another like it is possible to while in the middle of having these thoughts to
say you know what I'm not going to entertain these anymore and I'm
I'm going to think about something positive but it's very difficult yeah
surprisingly difficult even as someone like myself who spent a lot of times a
lot of time meditating especially a lot of time in isolation tanks I it's still
difficult every now and then if something's bothering you to just get it out of
your head like yeah especially for me one of my main issues is my work like
like stand-up comedy for instance like if I have a show and I
I fuck a bit up if it goes wrong like if I have two shows in a night and I fuck
a bit up on the first show I'm okay if I could redo it on the second show we're
good but if I fuck it up on the second show god damn it now I have to think
about that thing all night and I'll try to let it go I'll try to get it out of
my head but
I rationalize it by saying the only reason why I've gotten so good is because
of this crazy obsession that I have with getting it correct and that when
things go awry or when I go down a bad path that doesn't quite pan out and then
I have to sort of restart the whole conversation on stage
that that uncomfortable moment and then the subsequent uncomfortable recollection
of that moment is the very motivation that's led me to be a good stand-up in
the first place
so I kind of rationalize it but fuck man when I'm eating dinner after a show
and I just flub one word that fucks up a joke I'll be in the middle of eating
pancakes going shit
yeah like I can't get it out of my head it doesn't matter I have a wonderful
wife and a beautiful family and great friends and a fantastic job and a wonder
of just a
dream life doesn't matter I flubbed a word you fucking idiot you know like why
I'm cutting into my food
yeah well that that's an interesting moment because so there's a moment before
the thought has arisen right where you have
not yet remembered the flub line so you're just cutting into your dinner and
then it's an image or part image part sentence something there's some
expression of thought that arises in consciousness and you are you do not you
do not witness it arise it's not like you it's a difference between seeing it
watching a movie and being totally lost in the movie forgetting that you're
sitting in a room with a bunch of other people looking at light on a
wall you're just you're totally captured by the movie it's different between
that and actually just seeing the screen the light on the wall hearing the
sound of the projector seeing seeing the seeing the artifice and it's possible
to see thoughts just as essentially like a play of light on the wall you just
you see it before it captures you and the difference is total and it is kind of
like it's almost like playing a video game where you can now not
get killed in the same spot over and over again it's like you know not losing
in the same boss fight over and over again yet we we lose in that same fight a
thousand times a day but when you can actually see thoughts for what they are
so the next time you flub a line and the next time you recall it it's possible
with and again it takes a certain degree of concentration to be able to do this
but concentration becomes kind of a native capacity at a certain point it's
like jujitsu or anything else I mean you have certain skills
skills and you don't really lose them then you can just see it and it just
comes and it goes and it doesn't have and it's going it's going it's really
gone it's and it doesn't have the same emotional necessity it doesn't trigger
the same mental state and now that's not to say that these negative mental
states haven't had the benefit that you ascribe to them so yeah it could be
that you're as good as you are
because you were motivated to not embarrass yourself ever again because it felt
so terrible right so you hated this experience of flubbing a line you hated the
memory of of of and the reliving of it the next day you hated what it did to
your your time with your family and so you thought I'm the next tour I'm going
to get this I'm going to get up earlier I'm going to work harder etc.
So yeah that's all part of the clockwork that's causing you to hone your craft
but I would argue that a little mental suffering goes a long way I think we
nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100 we suffer unnecessarily and there's
not no good comes from it it's just it's not actually making us better people
it's making us more neurotic people we're more worried we're worse husbands we're
worse fathers and it's time to break that spell and
and then you can selectively be as uptight and neurotic as you want but it
gives you a kind of freedom to pick your priorities in a way rather than be
captured by just whatever the next thought happens to be.
I've also found for me personally the discipline and diligence are the the best
mitigating factors for dealing with neurotic thoughts like if I have an issue
one of the big issues if I've ever had anything go wrong was that I didn't work
hard enough so if I know for a fact that I worked as hard as I could like back
when I was competing that was a huge issue.
And it also mitigated nervousness because look whenever you're involved in a
competition as terrifying as a full contact martial arts tournament where concussions
are not just likely but it's someone in there's 100 people fighting in this
tournament someone's going to sleep someone's going to get knocked out is it
going to be you someone's going to get their nose broken someone's going to get
hit a lot of people are probably.
If I if I if I trained really hard if I know I did everything that I could I
ate right I slept right I put in all the practice I worked on all my weaknesses
I you know I didn't neglect my strengths I was much less nervous.
Much less nervous and much better at dealing with losses whereas losses I think
losses for martial artists can be insanely devastating like I was listening to
this interview with Travis Brown do you know who he is no UFC heavyweight one
of the top top five guys in the world great fighter lost recently to Fabricio
Verdum okay in a title elimination fight so Fabricio has gone on and he'll be
fighting Cain Velasquez for the heavyweight title now in October right in
Mexico in a huge
October November November November believe it's November whatever one of those
he's fighting Cain Velasquez for the title huge fight it could have been Travis
Brown right Travis Brown lost the fight by decision and you know it was it was
he lost without a doubt but you know wasn't embarrassing it wasn't he didn't
get knocked out in the first round he didn't get submitted really quickly but
he did lose the fight and it was apparently devastating to him I mean he's
talked in great depth about lying in bed in the fetal position
in the fetal position crying I mean he's just fucking 250 pound gladiator and
he's curled up in a fetal position crying well the truth is the ego is always
curled up in the fetal position crying we all have that part of ourselves and
it's yeah I mean that's what is so excruciating about the self and the s