0:00
today on deconstructing the new atheist
0:02
we're talking about Sam Harris I'm not
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I'm not accusing religious
0:06
religion Psychopaths but this channel is
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called apocalypse like right now today's
0:11
episode is about the question of
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agnosticism versus Atheism and which one
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is a more reasonable default position
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before you hear any evidence do you
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start out agnostic which means you don't
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know if there's a Creator or do you
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start out atheist and say until I hear
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evidence one way or the other I don't
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believe in a Creator while I Was
0:31
preparing the notes for this talk I
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noticed that Ben Shapiro tweeted about
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the same topic I thought that was kind
0:36
of funny I wonder if it's like in the
0:38
air right now but what Ben posted here
0:41
was on the topic of how to him it makes
0:43
sense to be agnostic that would be a
0:45
defensible position but he's questioning
0:47
to say that you don't know is a very
0:49
natural thing to say but what Shapiro is
0:51
saying here is like why do some people
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AKA damn Harris I'm not accusing
0:56
religious people in general being
0:58
Psychopaths but it makes such a point of
1:01
being atheist and saying that they don't
1:02
believe in God when actually science
1:04
doesn't contradict the concept of a
1:06
Creator so why are people so hell-bent
1:08
on being atheists I'm going to be
1:10
basically agreeing with this tweet but
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from an artificial intelligence
1:13
perspective so while this debate is
1:15
presumably as old as the concept of a
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Creator itself it's easier to understand
1:18
Concepts if we personalize them right so
1:20
in other words the dichotomy we're
1:22
looking at is Ben Shapiro says my
1:24
default position on the concept of a
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Creator the reason will default will be
1:27
your agnostic you don't know if there's
1:28
a Creator Sam Harris we're going to find
1:30
out says that the default position is an
1:31
atheist that's why he's an atheist what
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a lot of people do in philosophy is
1:35
philosophy from reasonable assumptions
1:37
which is to say that you take things
1:39
that kind of make sense to you and you
1:41
say this makes sense to me I find that
1:43
very reasonable and then the other
1:44
person says I don't think that's
1:45
reasonable I think the opposite is
1:47
reasonable you know and it's like just a
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question of who can appear the most
1:50
reasonable and I think this is why Sam
1:52
Harris has a lot of the affectations
1:53
that he has there's something about the
1:56
way we merely dismiss the the bogus
1:58
claims of religious people because his
2:00
sort of persona is that he's like the
2:02
most reasonable person in the room it's
2:04
not just me that's noticing this but the
2:06
problem with the reasonable assumption
2:07
for one thing is that the way it's
2:09
normally interpreted reasonable is just
2:12
a subjective thing you can add 10
2:14
different philosophers and 10 different
2:15
conclusions about what's reasonable
2:16
Because unless there are some exogenous
2:19
constraints on what you're calling
2:20
reasonable anyone can think that
2:22
anything is reasonable but science isn't
2:24
reasonable in the 20th century really
2:26
hammered this point home you talk about
2:28
theory of relativity you talk about
2:29
convertibility of energy and mass you
2:31
talk about quantum mechanics all of
2:33
these things if you had asked somebody
2:35
in the 1900s what they thought was going
2:37
to be reasonable nobody could have
2:39
predicted the 20th century in physics it
2:41
was crazy and at some point scientists
2:43
actually willfully wanted theories to be
2:45
crazy because they said you know what
2:46
physics is so unreasonable it's almost
2:48
like the crazier the theory the better
2:50
another way of looking at this episode
2:52
is the question of what is it that Sam
2:55
Harris has identified that proves or
2:57
implies that there is no God in other
2:59
words something implies there is no God
3:01
right that's why Sam Harris is an
3:04
atheist and not only is he personally an
3:05
atheist but he writes books in order to
3:08
convince more people to be atheists in
3:09
fact Sam Harris is even proud of himself
3:12
when he can get people who started out
3:14
in a tradition of some kind of faith and
3:16
Sam Harris gets them to leave that
3:18
that's something he's actually proud of
3:20
I even knew someone who had grown up
3:22
with a pastor as his father and was
3:25
always deeply religious and then in his
3:28
30s because of people like the new
3:30
atheist my friend lost the faith that he
3:32
had grown up with and the faith in which
3:33
his father is a pastor because according
3:36
to him the concept of being religious
3:38
had been so thoroughly ridiculed by
3:40
people like Sam Harris that he just
3:42
didn't think it made sense anymore so he
3:43
left the church that he had grown up in
3:45
and he left the church that his father
3:46
was a pastor of but what is it that
3:48
actually justifies Sam Harris telling
3:50
people that they need to leave their
3:51
religion because there is no God what is
3:53
if we were to really force ourselves to
3:56
clarify his arguments what is that thing
3:58
that implies that there is no God so I
4:00
scoured painstakingly hours of Sam
4:03
Harris content in order to find an
4:04
answer to this question now when talking
4:07
about Sam Harris is we need to keep in
4:08
mind that he's so well known in terms of
4:11
his character traits that even in pop
4:14
culture people make comedy sketches and
4:17
discuss Sam Harris's idiosyncrasies
4:19
first of all he's known for being
4:21
unnecessarily verbose it taking a long
4:23
time to say something that we all know
4:25
what you're talking about but that's a
4:26
Sam Harris he uses way way more words
4:29
than are necessary to say a concept and
4:31
secondly he's known for incredibly
4:33
convoluted and hard to follow arguments
4:36
that after a ton of difficult thinking
4:39
and many many words seem to miss the
4:41
point that would be intuitively obvious
4:42
to others intelligence is knowing that a
4:45
tomato is a fruit wisdom is knowing not
4:47
to put in a fruit salad Sam Harris is an
4:49
intelligent guy yeah but he's the guy
4:51
goes on these logical tirades which have
4:54
no emotional Integrity so what I've done
4:57
is I've done my best to listen to Sam's
5:00
arguments and try to recast them in a
5:03
clear-spoken way I believe that the
5:05
closest Sam Harris has come to answering
5:07
the a question what is it specifically
5:09
that implies no God was on stage in 2018
5:13
in London with Jordan Peterson moderated
5:16
by Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson
5:18
obviously one of the great intellectuals
5:20
of our day has so many accomplishments
5:22
in so many different fields and he's
5:25
being very patient with Sam Harris but
5:26
at the same time I think trying to draw
5:29
out of Sam Harris an answer at a level
5:32
of clarity that Sam Harris wouldn't give
5:34
on his own so let's hear from Sam
5:36
directly then what is it exactly that
5:38
implies that there is no God what is it
5:39
that makes you if you had to give one
5:42
clear spoken reason what is it that
5:44
justifies your atheism Sam Harris
5:46
atheism is a doctrine of negation that's
5:49
what that's what you said with Reuben is
5:51
that there isn't that positive ethos in
5:53
atheism all it says is that there's no
5:55
there's nothing uh personified there's
5:57
nothing personified Transcendent it's
6:00
something like that there is no God it's
6:02
not even the assertion that there is no
6:03
God it's just that it's a failure to be
6:05
convinced by any of the Gods on offer
6:08
it's just like not believing in Zeus
6:10
it's not even the assertion that there
6:12
is no God it's just that it's a failure
6:14
to be convinced by any of the Gods on
6:16
offer it's not even the assertion that
6:18
there is no God it's just that it's a
6:20
failure to be convinced by any of the
6:22
Gods on offer so if I was to summarize
6:24
what Sam Harris just said there but he's
6:26
saying is that atheism is the failure to
6:29
be convinced of any of the Gods on offer
6:31
it's not even the assertion that there
6:33
is no God it's just that it's a failure
6:35
to be convinced by any of the Gods on
6:38
offer and the hidden assumption here
6:40
that he's not saying is that the default
6:43
position is that he's an atheist he's an
6:45
atheist because he hasn't been convinced
6:48
that there is a God but this is the
6:49
question that I'm asking do we need to
6:52
convince Sam Harris I mean it's a free
6:54
country anyone can fail to be convinced
6:57
of anything that they want in a free
6:59
country but does that mean that because
7:00
Sam Harris isn't convinced that there is
7:03
a God that it's actually a rational
7:04
position to hold
7:06
or putting it another way Sam Harris is
7:09
implicitly assuming that he starts out
7:11
in the atheist box and only moves to the
7:14
mission theist box once he sees the
7:17
evidence but like I said earlier what
7:18
Shapiro was saying is that you start out
7:20
in the agnostic box and then you move to
7:23
theist or atheist depending on the how
7:25
the evidence goes these are two very
7:27
different positions it's Central to what
7:29
Sam Harris is saying is that he's
7:31
starting out atheist it's a Doctrine as
7:33
Jordan Peterson said of negation atheism
7:36
is a is a doctrine of negation he's
7:38
saying I'm not convinced therefore I'm
7:40
sticking with what I was at the
7:41
beginning and what I was at the
7:42
beginning was an atheist it's not even
7:44
the assertion that there is no God it's
7:46
just that it's a failure to be convinced
7:48
by any of the Gods on offer before I see
7:51
any evidence either way I'm an atheist
7:53
and until I'm convinced that I'm an
7:55
atheist it's a failure to be convinced
7:57
by any of the Gods on offer before I
7:59
explain why artificial intelligence
8:01
supports the idea that we should start
8:03
out agnostic I just want to note that
8:04
there is a potential perverse incentive
8:06
in Sam Harris's position that he's an
8:09
atheist because he's still not convinced
8:11
of any of the Gods on offer it's not
8:13
even the assertion that there is no God
8:15
it's just that it's a failure to be
8:17
convinced by any of the Gods on offer
8:19
this is because Sam Harris's current
8:21
business model relies on being an
8:23
atheist author so in the clip we saw
8:25
with Jordan Peterson Sam Harris is
8:27
starting out at the top of what I call
8:29
here the Sam Harris flywheel at the
8:31
beginning Sam Harris says I'm still not
8:33
convinced of God so therefore he gets to
8:35
move to the Second Step In Blue there
8:37
which is since he still doesn't believe
8:39
in God he's still an atheist so now he
8:41
can still write more books for his
8:43
atheist loving audience and then he
8:45
sells the books and that's the business
8:46
model then he attends debates where he
8:48
can get a lot of attention like we saw
8:49
Jordan Peterson in London 2018 and he
8:52
hears more Arguments for God and Jordan
8:53
Peterson over many debates laid out many
8:56
different reasons why a belief in a
9:00
Creator or a Transcendent figure some
9:02
kind of transcendent interpretation of
9:04
the universe is reasonable from literary
9:06
perspective from a cognitive perspective
9:09
from an artificial intelligence
9:10
perspective Jordan Peterson draws on
9:13
many many different sub areas of study
9:15
and even after hearing 101 arguments why
9:17
it would make sense to believe in a
9:19
quote unquote God damn Harris says I'm
9:21
still not convinced it's a failure to be
9:23
convinced by any of the Gods on offer
9:26
I'm not convinced and therefore he can
9:28
begin again because he's still an
9:29
atheist because he's still not convinced
9:31
he can sell more books and then he can
9:32
attend more debates and start the whole
9:34
process over so I'm not saying that he's
9:36
definitely being a dishonest I'm just
9:37
saying we should be aware of the
9:39
potential moral hazard where Sam
9:41
Harris's view that he's an atheist until
9:44
he's convinced that there is a God is
9:46
closely related to his business model
9:48
but like I've been saying the most
9:49
artificial intelligence consistent way
9:52
to think the way that most resembles how
9:54
artificial intelligence systems are
9:56
trained would be to start agnostic the
9:58
default position before you've heard
10:00
arguments one way or the other is to be
10:02
agnostic to say about God a Creator or
10:04
any other issue until I get some data
10:06
I'm completely neutral the reason I
10:09
think it makes sense to think like an
10:10
artificial intelligence is that
10:12
artificial intelligence encodes as an
10:14
algorithm and as a set of equations that
10:17
gets solved an algorithm or a procedure
10:19
for doing science and the fact that we
10:21
can tell a computer how to do science
10:23
demonstrates I would say a very high
10:26
level of understanding of what science
10:27
is for example many people can play the
10:30
guitar without explaining exactly how it
10:32
is that they play the guitar
10:37
many people can play a sport without
10:40
being able to say exactly how they
10:42
played Sports
10:43
[Applause]
10:46
they have in their own DNA a program to
10:48
play the sport similar thing with
10:50
science people can do science without
10:52
actually understanding what exactly
10:53
science is but a computer cannot do
10:55
science without understanding what
10:56
science is a computer can only do
10:57
science if it's programmed exactly to do
10:59
science and so I believe that by looking
11:01
at how artificial intelligence works we
11:03
can understand what the correct
11:04
philosophy of science should be and the
11:06
philosophy of science should tell us is
11:08
the default position ahead of seeing any
11:09
data agnosticism or is it atheism so in
11:12
our discussion of artificial
11:14
intelligence I want to focus for
11:16
concreteness on this classic paper from
11:19
Google 2017 called attention is all you
11:22
need kind of like a meme title and this
11:25
paper introduced the Transformer
11:27
architecture which is like so hot right
11:29
now what is the most beautiful or
11:31
surprising idea in deep learning
11:33
probably is the the Transformer
11:35
architecture just if you're curious this
11:36
is a diagram of a transformer from the
11:39
paper and the interesting thing about
11:41
new models like chat GPT is that they
11:44
can kind of Reason seems like they can't
11:45
can't reason 100 the way humans can but
11:48
through some kind of emergent properties
11:50
that I don't think anybody exactly
11:52
expected it does seem that chat GPT can
11:55
reason a lot more than any programs
11:58
before I have been able to reason
12:00
as our generative models become
12:02
extraordinarily good they will have
12:05
I claim a shocking degree of
12:09
understanding
12:10
a shocking degree of understanding
12:13
of the world and many of its subtleties
12:16
I started working in the field of
12:17
artificial intelligence in the year 2010
12:20
back in grad school at the University of
12:22
Edinburgh and back then we didn't have
12:25
all the different layers in that picture
12:27
I showed you before we really only had
12:29
this last part highlighted in green and
12:31
I like to think of this as kind of like
12:33
the lizard brain of
12:35
of the neural network so people who
12:37
believe in undirected evolution some of
12:39
them think that we descended from
12:40
lizards so if you look back far enough
12:42
in your family line you would find a
12:43
lizard whether we evolve randomly or not
12:45
we do seem to share certain structures
12:48
in our brain with blizzards and we call
12:50
that the lizard brain like the Primitive
12:52
brain while the lizard brain of the
12:54
Transformer model I would say is
12:56
something that we used to call maximum
12:58
entropy which is a fun word to say isn't
13:00
it I think we're not going to get so
13:01
deep into like what axum entropy is but
13:03
isn't it fun to say maximum entropy I
13:05
think it's fun to say maximum entropy
13:07
can be viewed as Bayesian learning with
13:10
a non-informative prior or to put it in
13:12
normal terms you start neutral and then
13:14
you follow the data that is what a
13:16
maximum entropy model does and it's also
13:18
what a Transformer does just in general
13:19
but like I said the reason we want to
13:21
think like an AI is that an AI has
13:23
equations that tell it how to do science
13:25
and if those equations were wrong it
13:27
wouldn't be able to do science that's my
13:28
argument and so by analogy if we want to
13:30
think like artificial intelligence we
13:32
should start neutral and then follow the
13:34
data so I've just subscribe to here is a
13:36
two-part process step one start neutral
13:38
step two follow the data now this would
13:40
be just On Any Given question at all a
13:42
machine Learning System like the
13:44
transformer that we saw or like the
13:45
maximum interview models that I used to
13:47
train back in the stone ages the way
13:48
these things work is you start neutral
13:50
and then you follow the data now when I
13:52
talk about neutrality I want to briefly
13:54
bring up one other topic which is the
13:56
concept of artificial intelligence that
13:58
lies Elon Musk was recently on the
14:00
Tucker Carlson show which was recently a
14:02
show and he discussed the fact that he
14:04
thought artificial intelligence was
14:06
being trained to lie and he proposed a
14:08
new product called Truth GPT which told
14:11
the truth what's happening is they're
14:12
training the AI July it's bad it's a lie
14:15
that's exactly right and with old
14:16
information July and but but not to say
14:19
what the data actually demands that I'd
14:21
say exactly without getting too much
14:23
into the concept of lying I just want to
14:25
discuss the question of how being
14:27
trained to lie or lying in general is
14:30
not a contradiction of what I've been
14:33
saying that artificial intelligence
14:34
starts neutral and then follows the data
14:37
if I was to give an analogy for the idea
14:40
that computers with artificial
14:41
intelligence are being told to lie or at
14:44
least watch what they say because
14:46
obviously we live in a very touchy
14:47
environment I think that an analogy for
14:50
this in the human mind would be Sigmund
14:52
Freud's idea of the ego and the ID so
14:54
basically According to Freud and in
14:57
Freudian terms it is like this kind of
14:59
rambunctious inner child that has a lot
15:01
of energy and a lot of ideas and things
15:04
that it wants and things that it wants
15:06
to say and the ego is kind of like the
15:09
mature manager of the whole system it is
15:12
having kind of creative ideas it is
15:14
having impulses and desires and the
15:17
ego's job is to manage those ideas and
15:19
manage those desires so that the whole
15:21
organism doesn't end up getting in
15:23
trouble so this idea that artificial
15:25
intelligence is being told to lie or you
15:28
might say to be diplomatic or you might
15:31
say to not say stuff that's going to get
15:33
it in trouble I would say this is
15:34
analogous to be building an ego and the
15:37
transformer in its raw State as it was
15:39
presented in 2017 is more like the ID
15:41
the Transformer just a basic Transformer
15:43
will learn patterns in the data and it
15:46
doesn't know if those patterns should be
15:48
said aloud or not and then in order to
15:51
make the machine not get its makers in
15:54
trouble then what they would do is
15:56
through separate methods keep that inner
15:58
child from getting in trouble by doing
16:01
things like managing what data it's
16:02
exposed to or else by having other kind
16:05
of modules and algorithms that run after
16:08
the ID inner child of the model has run
16:11
but obviously lying and or managing
16:15
Impressions is not the same thing as
16:17
doing science and in illustration of
16:19
this I would like to bring up the
16:21
classic story of Galileo Galilei getting
16:24
in trouble with the Catholic church or
16:25
saying that the earth goes around the
16:27
Sun in the early 17th century it was a
16:29
Catholic dogma that the Sun goes around
16:31
the earth and the pope Pope Urban the
16:34
eighth kept telling Galileo stop saying
16:36
that the earth goes around the Sun or
16:38
you're going to get in trouble and
16:40
Galileo couldn't stop saying it and then
16:41
eventually he had to go into house
16:43
arrest and so I think Galileo represents
16:46
in this story like the ID he's like you
16:49
know the earth goes around the Sun and
16:50
then like Pope Urban is like we don't
16:52
want you to say that and Galileo's like
16:54
but it does but it does you know he's
16:56
kind of like the couldn't restrain his
16:58
inner child or he chose not to restrain
17:00
his inner child he just wanted to say
17:01
the earth goes around the Sun even if he
17:03
had to go into house arrest so all that
17:05
is to say is that I think science is
17:06
more associated with the ID at least
17:08
progress in science is more associated
17:10
with the ID and the ego is about getting
17:12
along with the other people in your
17:15
civilization so just to reiterate then
17:17
what this brief discussion has shown and
17:19
I'm happy to follow up more or in more
17:21
detail but the point that I've been
17:23
making here is that in order to think
17:24
like an artificial intelligence you
17:26
should start an agnostic not just on the
17:28
question of whether we have a Creator
17:29
but on any question the artificial
17:31
intelligence-like way to think about
17:33
things is to start out agnostic between
17:35
different points of view until you see
17:37
some data once you have the data you
17:38
don't have to be agnostic anymore I want
17:39
to make that clear I'm talking about
17:41
what would the default position be
17:42
before you've seen any data you should
17:44
be agnostic once the data starts to come
17:45
in then you follow the data so going
17:47
back to the same here as a statement
17:48
that atheism is the failure to be
17:50
convinced of any of the Gods on offer
17:52
what I would say about this is that it's
17:53
not correct because it's not a correct
17:55
way of thinking because the default
17:57
position should be agnostic he can't say
18:00
or I mean he can because it's a free
18:02
country but you shouldn't say that he
18:04
starts out atheist and hasn't been
18:06
convinced yet he should start out
18:07
agnostic and only be an atheist once
18:09
he's definitely got the data that there
18:11
definitely is no God it is not as Sam
18:14
Harris is saying that you start out
18:15
atheist until somebody proves to you
18:17
that there is in other words the burden
18:19
of proof is not on the theist or the
18:21
person who believes in a Creator it's
18:23
not on the atheist but it's on both
18:26
equally so to put it in other words yet
18:28
again what I'm saying is that the
18:30
artificial intelligence perspective
18:31
backs up what Ben Shapiro is saying here
18:33
which is that in advance of any data
18:36
he's agnostic about the question of
18:37
whether there's a Creator and artificial
18:39
intelligence contradicts Pam Harris's
18:41
point of view that the default position
18:43
is atheism this is because artificial
18:45
intelligence starts out on any question
18:47
agnostic whereas Sam Harris says that he
18:50
starts out as an atheist until someone
18:52
can prove otherwise it's not even the
18:54
assertion that there is no God it's just
18:56
that it's a failure to be convinced by
18:58
any of the Gods on offer so if
19:00
artificial intelligence is right then
19:02
Sam Harris is wrong so then what is the
19:05
reason that Sam Harris has contributed
19:07
that actually implies that there is no
19:09
God I'm not accusing religious people in
19:12
general being Psychopaths but like I
19:14
said earlier I had a friend who grew up
19:16
religious his father is a pastor and
19:18
thanks to the new atheist he eventually
19:20
had a crisis of faith maybe that's for
19:22
the best because he can find his way
19:23
back eventually but underneath of all of
19:25
the sophistry what is the actual reason
19:28
that Sam Harris has identified that
19:30
actually implies that there is no God
19:32
it's not even the assertion that there
19:34
is no God it's just that it's a failure
19:36
to be convinced by any of the Gods on
19:38
offer in other words what is Sam
19:40
Harris's actual contribution to the
19:42
question of whether or not there is a
19:43
God has he made one does anyone know of
19:45
one if you know of a contribution that
19:47
Sam Harris has made to the field of
19:49
atheism or spirituality please leave a
19:51
comment in the chat I'm really trying to
19:53
do my best to find Sam Harris's best
19:55
arguments and refute them in their
19:57
strongest form and if he hasn't got any
19:59
strong arguments then that's fine we can
20:01
just conclude that too this has been
20:03
deconstructing the new atheists on
20:04
apocalypse like right now so like And
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subscribe if you want to see more
20:09
content like this I'm guessing that you
20:10
haven't heard an artificial
20:12
intelligence-based argument the taking a
20:14
long time to say something that we all
20:16
know what you're talking about for
20:17
whether or not you should be atheist or
20:18
agnostic the guy goes on these logical
20:21
tirades and if you thought that was
20:24
novel and you thought that was
20:25
interesting
20:27
just imagine how much more novel
20:29
interesting content a shocking degree of
20:31
understanding you can see if you only
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like And subscribe adios