0:06

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This

0:09

is Sam

0:09

Harris. Just a

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0:46

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This

0:48

is Sam Harris.

0:50

Today I'm speaking with L.A. Paul. Lori

0:53

Paul is the Millstone Family Professor of Philosophy

0:56

and Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University.

0:59

Her main research interests are in metaphysics,

1:02

cognitive science, decision theory,

1:04

and the philosophy of mind. She's

1:07

tended to focus on questions about the nature of the self,

1:11

preference change, subjective value,

1:14

temporal experience, causation,

1:16

time, perception, among

1:19

others. And her most recent book is titled

1:22

Transformative Experience. And

1:24

that was really our focus in this conversation. We

1:27

talk about the nature of transformative experiences,

1:29

how they change the self that

1:32

has had the experience, often ways that

1:34

can't be understood once that change occurs.

1:37

We discuss the nature of regret, changing

1:39

belief systems, conspiracy

1:41

thinking, empathy, doing

1:44

good in the world, our relationship

1:46

to our future selves, what

1:48

it might mean to change our values, the

1:51

nature of possibility, the

1:53

ethics of punishment, moral

1:55

luck, the moral landscape, consequentialism.

2:00

and other topics. Anyway, fascinating

2:02

territory. I hope you enjoy it. And

2:05

now I bring you LA Paul.

2:08

I am here with LA Paul.

2:15

Lori, thanks for joining me. Thank you for having

2:17

me. So just we were talking

2:19

before we started recording here about

2:22

your name. If people want to find your writing,

2:24

it is under LA Paul, but

2:27

I will call you Lori. Can you summarize

2:29

your background as a philosopher?

2:31

What kinds of topics have you focused on?

2:34

Sure. So I got my PhD

2:37

in philosophy from Princeton

2:39

in 1999, working in the

2:41

area of metaphysics with the philosopher

2:43

David Lewis. And

2:46

I love metaphysics. I'm a metaphysician at heart. And

2:49

I focused on the nature of causation, but

2:51

I also do a lot of work on time

2:54

and how we experience ourselves in time

2:56

and how we understand and manipulate the world around

2:59

us.

2:59

When I spent about, I'd say

3:02

the first half of my career thus far,

3:04

last sort of 12 years, or the first 12

3:06

years

3:07

focusing on those, on sort of deep

3:09

metaphysical questions, what the nature

3:12

of reality, in particular,

3:14

the kinds of things that you can't sort of directly see,

3:17

like time and cause and

3:19

also the nature of the self.

3:21

And after, I don't

3:23

know, sort of exploring those topics for a while, I

3:25

turned to exploring the way that

3:28

we understand ourselves in the world. And there's this sort

3:30

of natural progression there. And started working

3:32

on, in particular, how we understand ourselves

3:35

through distinctive kinds of experiences

3:37

and

3:38

how, and sort of use, there's

3:40

a framework

3:42

involving decision theory that I have

3:44

often used because if you try to

3:46

embed these questions in a

3:49

framework, like decision-making,

3:51

all kinds of interesting questions come out. So it's a way

3:53

of sort of, I don't know, kind of

3:55

pulling apart something that seems

3:57

maybe simple on the surface and realizing there's

3:59

a lot of. complexity underneath. Well,

4:02

I was introduced to your work through

4:04

what you've written and said on

4:07

the topic of what you call transformative experience.

4:11

And I thought we'd focus on that, but I

4:13

love the connection to David Lewis and I would

4:15

love to talk about the nature of

4:18

possibility and causation and

4:20

all of the metaphysics there too. I hadn't thought we would

4:23

talk about that, but that's... Did you hear

4:25

my conversation with Tim Modlin? I did

4:27

not, but I'm a big fan of Tim's and

4:30

I should say that these topics are intimately

4:32

related. I'm working on a book now actually that brings

4:35

out

4:35

some of those deeper connections, but the topic

4:37

is the same. We can just view it from

4:40

different perspectives. Great. Great.

4:42

So let's start with the transformative piece

4:45

and then hit all the metaphysics you might want to

4:47

touch there. I think

4:49

the... Yeah, I mean, we'll just... We'll

4:52

see where we go, but it's all fascinating. So

4:54

this phrase, transformative experience,

4:57

what do you mean by that? And because

5:00

I think it's easily misunderstood. So

5:02

let's bound the concept. So

5:04

good question. So I use the phrase

5:06

transformative experience.

5:08

In part, you can think of this as a bit of a pun

5:10

on what people ordinarily think of as

5:13

transformative experience. So the ordinary

5:15

meaning is

5:16

some kind of wow, amazingly, change-filled

5:19

experience that changes who you are.

5:21

And I mean that too, but I mean something

5:23

a little bit, maybe more philosophically

5:26

detailed.

5:27

I mean that when you face a transformative

5:29

experience,

5:30

you're facing an experience that at

5:33

once you can't know in important

5:35

essential details what it's going to be like.

5:37

And also, that is going to change you fundamentally.

5:40

It's going to destroy some part

5:43

of the self that you are now and recreate

5:46

you

5:47

by creating a new self.

5:49

So there's those two parts. It's really important that both of

5:51

those things happen together. Well, I guess let's

5:54

ground this in some

5:56

canonical life decisions

5:58

that tend to be... transformative

6:01

in this way. My first thought

6:03

is something like having kids. Perhaps

6:06

you have a favorite, but let's

6:08

talk about some of the details

6:10

there. OK, so you've touched

6:12

on one of my two favorite

6:14

examples. And so I think that

6:17

for people who haven't had children,

6:19

when someone becomes a parent, that

6:22

often that really is a transformative experience.

6:25

It's not that everyone has a transformative

6:27

experience in virtue of producing. Adoption

6:30

is included here, although I often just talk about physically

6:32

producing a child.

6:33

But the process of attaching

6:36

to the child, which is, I think,

6:38

crucial for becoming a parent, a kind of

6:40

psychologist will describe this as an identity defining,

6:43

an identity changing attachment relation,

6:46

changes you

6:48

as a person. It changes in the way that

6:50

I said before the self that you are.

6:53

And I think many people, before

6:56

they become parents, or if they're

6:58

deliberating or maybe agonizing or ruminating

7:01

about, well, maybe they'll become a parent, they know

7:04

something dramatic and big is going to happen

7:06

to them.

7:07

And they know in essentials like you're going to have a baby

7:09

or you're going to adopt a child or whatever. So there's a sense

7:12

in which they know. And then there's a sense in which they absolutely

7:14

do not know.

7:15

And only when they actually

7:18

become a parent, when they actually form

7:20

this attachment relation to this

7:22

other being,

7:23

will they both experience the

7:25

change that's involved and also then in virtue

7:27

of experiencing that change, understand the

7:30

nature of that experience.

7:32

So I could say more about that, but that's

7:34

a big one. Well, it

7:36

seems like these kinds of experiences

7:39

pose a certain kind of challenge

7:41

to

7:42

rational decision making because

7:45

the decider is in advance

7:47

of making the decision. You

7:50

are one person. And then if you

7:52

decide to have this experience, you

7:55

will become somebody quite different. And

7:57

you may in fact know that

7:59

in advance. right, but you know that

8:01

the person who

8:03

will be judging the

8:04

consequences of having made

8:06

a certain decision will be different

8:08

from the person who is deciding

8:11

whether or not to take one

8:14

branch or another in that decision tree. And

8:17

so to take the decision to become

8:19

a parent, as the example here, so

8:21

I'm imagining that very few

8:24

people ever regret

8:26

having kids, even if the

8:29

person

8:30

they were before they had kids

8:32

would have judged the outcome to be

8:35

less than desirable, right?

8:37

Like, I mean... Totally, yeah. So there's

8:40

something beautiful about that. There's something beautiful about the

8:42

kind of human psyche that allows

8:44

that to happen. But let me back up

8:46

for a second, if you don't mind. So I think

8:49

of it this way. So imagine you're thinking

8:51

about, well, if you're deliberating about whether

8:53

you want to become a parent, so for at least

8:56

a kind of standard version of rational decision theory, there's

8:58

a process you're supposed to undergo where you

9:00

map out your options, you

9:03

look at the different values, like the value of having

9:05

a child, the value of not having a child,

9:07

and then you think about, well, which option

9:09

is going to maximize my happiness

9:11

or my life satisfaction or something like that.

9:14

And a natural way that you

9:16

think about doing this is you imaginatively

9:19

evolve yourself into, well, here I am

9:21

with my baby, or here I am

9:23

hiking the world, or

9:25

whatever, crossing

9:28

amazing vistas, child free,

9:31

living my life to the fullest, and that kind of way.

9:33

And then you have to compare these options

9:36

to decide because each

9:39

one involves trade-offs, and you can't

9:41

do both,

9:42

which one is going to be better for you.

9:44

And when I had said before

9:46

that the complex thing about

9:48

transformative experience, as I understand it, is that

9:51

first there's a dimension of the experience that you

9:53

can't kind of grasp for yourself.

9:56

In addition to the personal change

9:58

that you just described, there's a process you can do to help you get through it.

9:59

problem because then you can't

10:02

reliably envision

10:03

the

10:06

self that you're going to become and understand the

10:08

process that's going to make you into that new self.

10:10

So if you're sure you want to become a parent,

10:12

well,

10:13

maybe it's not such a big deal. Yeah, and

10:15

as you said, you'll be happy most

10:17

likely afterwards. We should come back to that, by the way, because

10:19

there's something really interesting and tricky about that,

10:21

I think.

10:22

But if you're not sure, then what

10:24

are you going to do? Like

10:28

you can then go and get evidence,

10:30

like find out about what other people have said

10:32

and done and

10:33

ask your mother and that sort of thing. But

10:36

that evidence is all about what people think after

10:39

they've gone through the experience. But if they've

10:42

changed as a result of going through the experience,

10:44

then there's a certain way in which that evidence is

10:47

not

10:47

relevant. If you're not sure, say you

10:50

really don't want to have a child or you're kind of inclined

10:52

against and you go and you ask

10:54

your mom and she says, oh no, you'll be so happy if you

10:56

did. You might think, well, fine,

10:58

but that's because my brain will have been changed.

11:00

I mean, I'll be changed into a different kind

11:02

of person.

11:03

It's like I'm sometimes mentally

11:05

kidnapped and sure, I know that parents are really

11:07

happy, but I don't want that

11:11

kind of mental magic worked on me. I'm

11:13

very happy the way that I am. And so that's

11:15

part of the problem.

11:16

The self that you are who's trying to evaluate

11:19

these things first maybe doesn't have the same

11:21

desires as the self that you would become.

11:24

And you can't even kind of imagine to put

11:26

yourself in the shoes of that other being, that other

11:28

self that you could become

11:31

to kind of evaluate

11:32

what it would be like. So you're kind of stuck.

11:35

Yeah. Now that I think about it, I'm wondering

11:37

if regret is

11:39

also rare and perhaps even equally

11:41

rare on the side of the people who don't

11:43

have kids

11:44

and who haven't had kids by choice,

11:47

right, as opposed to just kind of

11:49

a failure of opportunity. There are obviously people

11:51

who really want to have kids and it just

11:53

never happens

11:54

for one reason or another, but

11:56

there are people who decide they don't want to have kids.

11:59

And I... I guess I would imagine they experience

12:02

probably

12:04

a vanishingly small rate of regret

12:06

as well. I don't know if there's any research on

12:09

this, but how do you think about regret

12:11

in light of, or its absence

12:13

in light of this?

12:14

No, it's a great question. So I think, for

12:16

me, what I immediately think of is regret, what

12:18

is the regret or absence of it

12:20

evidence of? You might think, oh,

12:23

if you don't regret your decision, that's evidence that you

12:25

made the right decision for you. And

12:28

there's a sense in which that's true, maybe you made the right decision

12:30

for the self that you are. But there's

12:32

maybe a larger sense in which it's kind of incoherent

12:35

to say, I made the right decision for me because

12:37

there's the right decision for you

12:39

afterwards and there's the right decision for you beforehand.

12:43

And so, like, so, okay, so I have

12:45

two children, I love them both.

12:46

I remember my mother saying to me, wow, I never

12:49

really expected you to have children, I wasn't really

12:51

sure early on. And I said, well, I'm so

12:53

happy. But, you know, is my happiness

12:56

the result of me knowing all along I wanted to have children?

12:58

No, it's actually that the process

13:01

of forming this attachment relation to

13:03

both of my children

13:05

made me so

13:06

satisfied and happy to have

13:08

them. There's a kind of circularity here, that's absolutely

13:11

what some of these experiences involve.

13:13

So, of course, I don't regret it for a second.

13:15

But there's no way I can even access the

13:17

person or the self that I would have been

13:19

if I had never had children.

13:21

And I think she also might have been perfectly

13:23

happy to live her life the way that

13:26

she had chosen for it to go and think, oh,

13:28

you know, who she is, or

13:31

would have been, wouldn't have been happy

13:33

with children. Yeah, yeah, I mean,

13:35

they're even stranger. So this is

13:37

pretty easy to understand. I think

13:40

there's a, whether in fact it's

13:43

a real fundamental change in what one

13:45

values and one sense

13:47

of what is

13:48

good, or if it's a psychologically

13:51

protective mechanism of just not wanting

13:53

to admit in the case where

13:55

one would still could regret

13:58

this life decision. Given.

13:59

that it's irrevocable and so

14:02

much turns on one's kind

14:04

of averting one's eyes from the

14:06

dark reality that you in fact do

14:08

regret

14:09

having kids or not having kids. It's

14:12

easy to see why one wouldn't

14:14

want to be keenly

14:16

aware of that moment to moment. But

14:18

there are simpler cases where

14:21

we experience a,

14:23

actually we can experience the full tour. So

14:25

you take something like eating ice cream,

14:28

you want to be on a diet, you want to lose weight,

14:30

you don't want to eat ice cream, but when

14:32

presented with ice cream, you actually want to

14:34

eat that ice cream. And so

14:37

the person whose willpower

14:39

is overcome and who decides to eat ice cream

14:41

and who's enjoying the ice cream while eating it,

14:44

gets to experience the full tour of not

14:47

having the meta desire of not wanting

14:49

to want the ice cream,

14:51

wanting it, enjoying it, and

14:53

then later regretting having eaten

14:55

as much as one ate. There's

14:58

a strange picture of what the self is and what

15:00

personal identity is all about

15:02

when one experiences that full

15:05

tour, but that's different than the

15:07

transformative, it's a transiently

15:10

transformative experience. Maybe that falsifies

15:12

the concept, but one can experience

15:14

this fluctuation between being the person

15:17

who is inhabiting

15:19

a kind

15:20

of a higher order desire

15:23

and then the person who, you're

15:25

the person who gives into a lower order

15:27

desire, which nonetheless is

15:29

sincere in the moment

15:31

and its satisfaction is no less pleasurable.

15:34

But then after the fact, one boomerangs

15:36

back to the

15:38

higher order desire and wishes one hadn't

15:40

done that

15:41

thing. Yeah. So I think

15:43

that the way to maybe pull these

15:45

apart a little bit is to say, I

15:47

want to focus on whatever the highest

15:49

order values are. And so

15:52

the ice cream case, it might be that

15:54

there's a difference between like all along, you

15:56

kind of wish you weren't, you know, that you

15:59

don't want to be someone who's eating. eating the ice cream and then you kind

16:01

of give in and you eat the ice cream and it's fabulous and you're

16:03

really enjoying it.

16:04

And then afterwards, once the enjoyment is over,

16:06

it's like, oh God, why did I

16:08

do that? That might be a bit different from

16:10

say someone who is like an

16:13

addict, like someone who throws up an addiction

16:16

might have something where even like their higher

16:18

order valuing, you know, involves

16:20

like wanting the, like the willing at

16:22

someone who's just like embracing their

16:24

drug addiction versus someone who then rejects

16:28

the appeal of the drug. There you might

16:30

actually get someone who all of their values,

16:33

their highest order values are consistent

16:35

with their action. And that

16:37

might be in a case of someone kind of transforming

16:40

and transforming and transforming in the sense that in the way

16:42

that I'm trying to articulate

16:44

for maybe more

16:46

minimal cases. I mean religious

16:48

experience might be one of those cases where somebody

16:51

converts

16:52

or loses their faith.

16:54

And so, and that's I think is a transformation

16:57

and then they can revert.

16:59

People sometimes do revert. And I think there,

17:01

if

17:01

you're fully believing or fully

17:04

not believing, then

17:05

you're kind of consistent up and down the

17:08

hierarchy of values.

17:11

How do you think about this in terms

17:13

of knowledge and belief

17:15

and just epistemology? So we

17:17

have the experience of changing one's

17:20

beliefs in response to evidence,

17:23

but many of us have an experience

17:25

of

17:26

deciding not to entertain

17:29

certain ideas or expose ourselves to

17:31

certain images

17:33

because we have prejudged

17:35

that either it's a waste of time

17:37

or we actually don't want to become the

17:40

person we would be if we

17:42

spent all the time exposing ourselves

17:45

to that information. I mean, I'm thinking this

17:48

guy, I guess this can be an

17:49

expression of cognitive bias or wishful

17:52

thinking or cognitive closure in a way,

17:54

but it can also just be an expression of

17:56

a concern for mental hygiene. Like

17:58

the instant...

17:59

is where I know I've done this is, I

18:01

recall, at the

18:04

time I was very focused on issues of terrorism

18:07

and religious

18:08

sectarianism and its consequences.

18:10

And yet

18:11

I decided that I didn't

18:14

want to see the decapitation videos

18:16

produced by the Islamic State. I was super

18:18

focused on the issue, but I

18:21

just decided I didn't need those images in my head

18:24

because I was protecting myself from being

18:27

the person who then had those images in

18:29

his head for the rest of his life. There

18:31

are other cases where, if I have to take

18:33

a certain medication, I will decide

18:36

that I actually don't want to study

18:38

the list of side effects. Because

18:40

I've decided

18:42

generically that I need to

18:44

take this medication.

18:46

I know in

18:47

the abstract that all of the side

18:49

effects are low enough probability

18:53

that I'm not likely to suffer them.

18:55

And I think I'm better served

18:58

not actually priming

18:59

the nocebo effect

19:02

in my case and just being on guard for the side

19:04

effects. So perhaps

19:05

there are other examples of this sort of thing. How do you

19:07

think about deciding to have

19:09

certain information or not

19:11

and the ways in which this

19:14

can either be

19:15

productive or go awry

19:17

when we're actually closing ourselves off

19:19

to

19:20

evidence and ideas that

19:21

are true and would be useful to know?

19:23

Dr. Kline Right. So I think there

19:25

are appropriate times to

19:29

protect yourself from, let's say,

19:31

having a cognitive bias in the way that you are,

19:33

these images and other kinds of things which are actually

19:36

intended to manipulate in various ways.

19:38

The connection to transformative experience is

19:41

that if the

19:43

problem is if you can't

19:46

actually...

19:47

So when you think about, I don't want to see an image, a

19:49

particular image,

19:50

you know enough about it to know how

19:53

you're going to react and to know that, well,

19:55

actually, the effect is going to be negative.

19:57

So you make, I think, a good judgment to... to

20:00

set that aside so that you're not,

20:02

you know, you're not affected by it in a negative

20:04

way. But

20:05

what if you don't know about

20:07

the nature of the experience? It could

20:09

be great or it could be bad, and there's

20:11

no kind of high order evidence that's going to tell you either

20:13

way. This, I think, can be a way to understand

20:16

questions about religious belief, because

20:18

there's no sort of independent way of ascertaining

20:20

whether or not

20:22

the deity in question exists.

20:25

And those that are advocates

20:27

of the belief will

20:30

argue that the evidence is all around us. It's just you're failing

20:32

to detect it. And those that are opponents

20:35

of the belief will say, no, there's no evidence. Right?

20:37

And then if the way to

20:39

being able to, learning how to grasp that evidence involves

20:42

opening your mind to

20:43

the possibility of having an

20:45

experience, but where you

20:48

as the, like, would, you know, fear

20:50

that this experience could corrupt you, then

20:52

you have a problem because you don't

20:54

know about the nature of the experience independently. And to

20:56

discover the nature of the experience

20:58

involves a kind of corruption. It's basically Ulysses

21:00

and the Sirens. I think the nice thing about

21:03

free Ulysses was that the insanity that he

21:05

experienced when hearing the Song of the Sirens

21:07

was temporary, but in this kind

21:09

of case, it wouldn't be temporary. So

21:11

you have a problem. So that's what I mean. So what

21:14

I'm saying is I think it can be perfectly rational to set aside

21:16

evidence, so-called evidence, and perfectly

21:18

rational to try to control

21:20

various kinds of options when you know enough about them.

21:23

But I'm really interested in cases where we don't know,

21:25

and because it's

21:27

transformative, it can kind of work on you at the highest

21:29

level, right? And transform

21:32

the way that you regard the nature of reality, for example.

21:34

That's, I think,

21:36

psychedelics involves that possibility. I think religious

21:38

belief involves that possibility. I think

21:41

possibly certain kinds of love could involve that kind

21:44

of possibility. Maybe even questions

21:46

about the border of sanity and insanity,

21:48

which is kind of a fascination for me. So.

21:51

Yeah, this one, as

21:53

a social phenomenon, I'm noticing the

21:56

consequences of conspiracy

21:58

thinking

21:59

and the social contagion component

22:02

of that. And also

22:05

the quasi-religious

22:07

aspect of sunk cost with

22:09

respect to having just spent

22:12

so much time down any one of those rabbit

22:15

holes. I see people whose

22:17

podcasts or newsletters or books

22:20

just become a testament

22:21

to how much time

22:23

they've spent entertaining certain

22:25

ideas. And

22:27

it seems like it's becoming harder and harder for

22:29

them to step out of it because

22:32

again, in part,

22:34

it's got to be the fallacy of the sunk

22:36

cost or

22:37

the perceived reputational

22:40

harm of recognizing that

22:42

they've just wasted a

22:44

tremendous amount of time on certain topics.

22:46

But

22:47

it's also just the style of thinking that

22:49

gets inculcated there where

22:51

none of them are truly falsifiable.

22:54

There's a style of connecting

22:56

random anomalies without an underlying

22:58

theory that is coherent.

23:00

And you can always find more anomalies.

23:02

So it becomes

23:04

self-perpetuating in a way that

23:06

is very difficult to arrest. And

23:09

so yeah,

23:10

it could be rational to

23:12

decide in advance, okay, spending my

23:14

time and attention in a certain

23:16

way could

23:17

erode

23:19

some of the epistemic values.

23:21

I actually want to be anchored to and

23:23

so you do have a Ulysses and

23:25

the Mast kind of decision

23:27

in advance where it's like, yes, there's

23:30

a siren song that I may want to hear,

23:32

but if I'm going to hear it, I

23:34

need to at least maintain my

23:36

purchase on something now that

23:38

I know as a kind

23:40

of meta norm, I'm

23:43

going to want to stay attached

23:45

to no matter what happens in the intervening

23:48

hours.

23:48

Yeah, but the problem

23:50

is, I mean, I think that sounds right. The problem is, what

23:53

if the siren song is so seductive that

23:55

you lose your attachment to that matter?

23:57

I mean, that's the risk. I take

23:59

it.

23:59

conspiracy theories are often

24:01

that the whole idea is open your mind to this possibility.

24:04

And then what happens is that people lose, they

24:06

lose kind of control over the

24:08

other norms of thought that they had embraced.

24:11

Yeah.

24:12

How do you think about empathy in this context

24:15

or just taking the perspective of

24:18

other people or failing

24:20

to? I mean, just how does that fit in? No,

24:23

it's a good question. I think with

24:25

a lot of the things that I like to think about, I think there's

24:28

a lot to say on both sides.

24:29

I do think that

24:31

affective empathy, so just feeling what others

24:33

feel, is a really good source of cognitive

24:36

bias. And Paul Bloom has written on

24:38

this, I think, really, really well. But that's

24:40

different from

24:42

cognitive empathy, which

24:44

is technically, I guess, is

24:46

a kind of empathy where you

24:49

aren't just kind of randomly opening

24:51

yourself up to the feelings of others, but rather

24:53

in a kind of reasoned way you attempt to kind of enter

24:55

into the perspective of the other

24:57

and attempt to represent their

24:59

beliefs and

25:01

their emotions and their

25:03

mindset,

25:04

but without kind of losing yourself in it.

25:06

Again, though, the kinds of

25:07

problems that we're talking about, I think they're right here

25:10

because

25:11

if you really are opening your

25:14

mind to someone else and really are kind of

25:16

empathizing with them, even if you're

25:18

trying to do so in a kind of cognitively careful

25:21

way, I see the possibility for losing

25:24

yourself in that.

25:25

And I think that does happen sometimes to people.

25:27

Yeah.

25:28

Yeah, there's kind of an adjacent

25:30

issue for me that I've resolved

25:33

very much in the way that Ulysses resolved

25:36

his problem with philanthropy

25:38

because I just know that the kinds

25:41

of causes that really tug at

25:43

my heartstrings

25:45

are not the kinds of causes that tend

25:47

to survive are a truly rational analysis

25:50

about

25:50

how you can do the most good in the world. And

25:53

there's really, they basically don't even overlap.

25:56

The causes that I can

25:58

rationally identify as...

25:59

the most

26:01

efficient and reliable ways to mitigate

26:03

human suffering or needless death or

26:06

long-term risk.

26:07

Those are almost without exception

26:10

less compelling to me

26:12

than any cause that has a

26:14

single identifiable victim

26:17

and a good story and something

26:20

that just really drives my altruism

26:23

and compassion circuits in a very

26:26

social primate sort of way.

26:28

So the classic example

26:30

here is one little girl falls down a well,

26:33

we have endless interest

26:35

and availability to pay attention to that.

26:37

The CNN does 72 hours

26:40

of continuous coverage

26:41

of the story,

26:42

but at the same moment, there's probably

26:45

a genocide raging in sub-Saharan

26:47

Africa and it's just a matter of statistics

26:50

and nobody cares, right? You can hear about 500,000

26:53

dead and it's just too boring

26:55

to even allocate 10 minutes in

26:57

a broadcast too.

26:58

So just knowing that, I just

27:01

decide in advance to give to the

27:04

causes that I can rationally

27:06

identify and then anything

27:08

I give to other causes that are more

27:11

compelling emotionally, I just do that

27:13

over and above what I've allocated

27:15

in advance to the rational one.

27:17

So it is a sort of have your cake and eat

27:20

it too strategy, but

27:21

I have the rational

27:23

priorities

27:25

front loaded in that paradigm.

27:27

So I agree with this,

27:29

but I want to say one thing, and

27:31

that is that

27:32

in these kinds of discussions, I think it's really

27:34

important

27:35

to see that the rational calculus

27:38

needs to include the value of experience.

27:40

Because it can be the thing... So I agree

27:44

with what you're saying. It's just that sometimes I think

27:47

people can think

27:48

about a rational calculus in a

27:50

kind of robotic way, one might say, and

27:52

I mean that in the sense of like, take AI, which is

27:54

not sentient and lacks any kind

27:56

of feeling or consciousness.

27:59

form a mathematical calculation,

28:02

one that doesn't account for

28:04

the feelings and experiences of the

28:06

human beings involved. Your example was

28:08

great because it's like the experiences of one little girl

28:10

versus the experience of 500,000 or whatever, the

28:12

number

28:13

that you mentioned, and obviously, then we're

28:15

comparing

28:18

experiences to experiences.

28:20

So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's really important

28:23

to not remove the human element

28:25

from the rational calculus. Because

28:27

otherwise, it becomes like a mathematical calculation

28:29

versus a kind of gut emotion. And

28:31

I just don't think that's the right, that's the false opposition. I

28:33

think it's really that in

28:35

both cases, there's an enormous amount of pain

28:38

and suffering. It's just that we can comprehend the

28:40

smaller amount in a way that we can't comprehend infinity

28:43

in certain ways as well. We can represent it, but there's a

28:46

way you can't imagine it. And that's just a

28:48

limitation of the human brain.

28:48

Yeah. Yeah. So

28:51

I guess it's just an acceptance of that limitation

28:53

in advance. Because

28:55

what I noticed is

28:57

despite my efforts to make doing

29:00

good

29:01

psychologically and emotionally salient,

29:03

I think we run up against an

29:06

intrinsic limitation to that because

29:08

so much of our doing

29:11

good philanthropically is by definition

29:14

telescopic. You

29:16

write a check and you send it to an organization that's

29:18

doing the work. You have no face-to-face

29:21

encounter with any of it. And yet it

29:23

is just in fact real that that

29:26

check and the organization funded

29:28

by it is doing the

29:30

best work, say, that can be done on that

29:33

particular front

29:34

and that your giving to that cause really

29:36

does matter. And yet I just noticed

29:39

in my day-to-day life that the thing

29:41

that is going to brighten my day is not

29:44

going to be sending a check

29:46

of whatever size to the

29:48

best possible organization. It might just be this random

29:52

and altogether brief encounter with a

29:54

stranger in a coffee shop. Literally

29:57

like, the example I've used before is I

29:59

did. actually notice this in the span of 24 hours

30:02

in my life.

30:03

I noticed that just like holding the door open

30:05

for a stranger at a

30:07

Starbucks

30:08

and just sharing a mutual smile

30:11

was

30:12

more important. In the psychological

30:15

change it created in me, then

30:16

having

30:19

given a rather large

30:21

donation to an obviously

30:24

good cause within the same day. And

30:27

yet I know I did much more good in the world,

30:29

making that donation than holding the

30:32

door open for somebody. But given that these

30:34

are just sort of bugs in our psychological

30:37

and moral makeup, this

30:39

is the kind of thing that Adam Smith pointed out.

30:41

He said that if someone knew they were going to lose

30:43

the tip of their pinky finger the

30:45

next day, they wouldn't sleep

30:47

a wink that night for ruminating

30:50

on it. But if that same person heard that an entire

30:52

generation of people was annihilated by an

30:55

earthquake in China, they might

30:57

give it just a few minutes thought and then move

30:59

on to what they're going to have for dinner. It's

31:02

just that mismatch is something that

31:04

I think if we can change it, it'd be wonderful.

31:06

But if we can't change it, we just need

31:08

to figure out how to navigate around

31:10

it and do the most good we can on

31:13

the one hand, but also be as happy

31:16

and flourish

31:18

as much as we can psychologically and socially

31:20

on the other

31:21

by whatever means govern

31:24

that process. Yeah, I

31:26

agree with that.

31:28

I think that's

31:30

right. The trouble is

31:32

that there's this gulf between the

31:35

concrete exchange

31:37

with another human being that we can have that

31:39

involves the way that we experience and feel,

31:42

and then the much more abstract kind

31:44

of good that we can do that propagates

31:47

through a long causal chain

31:49

where there's no kind of direct contact with any of the

31:51

human beings. And I mean,

31:54

you're right. If we're

31:56

looking at how much good one can do, and

31:59

we think we can

31:59

measure that from our feelings,

32:02

or if we're also just looking at

32:04

what's going to motivate us in various ways, there's

32:06

a mismatch there. In either case,

32:09

it's hard to

32:11

detect how much good you're doing

32:13

in the experiential sense when

32:15

there's a long causal chain between what you

32:17

do and then the final output when

32:20

some percentage of that money makes its way to the

32:22

intended recipients.

32:24

And not only that, but you

32:26

don't get any kinds of... You don't feel

32:29

it. If there's no direct

32:31

exchange whatsoever.

32:33

If you were confronted with the people, that would

32:35

be an entirely different experience and an entirely

32:38

different kind of exchange.

32:39

Yeah. And knowing

32:41

that it might be wise to

32:44

have the transformative experience

32:47

of leveraging that

32:49

change. For instance,

32:51

I can be telescopically

32:54

philanthropic. I can just write a check to help

32:56

solve a famine in some distant country,

32:59

or I could decide to get on a plane and

33:01

just confront the reality

33:03

of that famine face to face and

33:06

write the same check, but also be

33:08

the person who had the experience of witnessing

33:10

these human events directly. I can

33:13

know in advance that that would be

33:15

much more impactful and it would

33:18

be a much closer marriage thereafter

33:20

when I was writing a check, my connection

33:23

to the good I was doing or intending to do would

33:26

be much more salient having met

33:28

the people or some of the people suffering

33:30

from that calamity.

33:32

Yeah. Can I make a

33:34

connection here? Yeah.

33:35

So we're talking about causal

33:37

chains between ourselves and other people,

33:39

but

33:40

part of the work that I've been doing is

33:42

saying that, look, just as

33:44

we can understand there

33:46

are all these problems with our relationships with other people,

33:48

understanding how they feel and act and think, and

33:50

again, these kinds of

33:52

sometimes long chains

33:54

of causes and events between

33:56

us.

33:57

That same kind of structure can exist

33:59

between yourself and other selves,

34:01

both past selves and also future selves,

34:04

or even merely possible selves.

34:06

So some of the things that you're raising,

34:08

those problems I think are reflected back into

34:10

even like individual lives.

34:13

Can you say more about that? How do you think

34:15

about

34:16

one's relationship to one's

34:18

past and future selves and

34:20

possible selves?

34:21

Well, so think about something

34:23

that you're doing now. It's going to have,

34:25

through a long chain of events,

34:28

most likely an impact on the

34:30

future, Sam, maybe 10 or 15

34:32

years from now.

34:34

And

34:35

there's a sense in which that's a very remote effect,

34:38

right? In fact, we do things like

34:40

we throw our future selves under the bus all the time. Like when

34:42

you agree to do something unpleasant for someone, if

34:45

they're smart, they're going to ask you to do it like

34:47

in the future, maybe six months from now,

34:49

rather than six minutes from now.

34:52

Because when it's six months from now,

34:54

that future self just seems quite

34:56

remote. It's like those people on the other side of the world, as opposed

34:58

to the person, the

35:00

self that's going to be existing

35:02

six minutes or even six hours from now is much

35:04

closer. Although I must say I'm getting much better

35:06

at saying no to those things. I

35:09

actually now consciously think, okay, if this thing

35:11

were happening tomorrow, would I be saying

35:14

yes or no? And if the answer is no, it

35:16

doesn't matter if it's six months or six years,

35:18

I'm going to say no to it at this point.

35:20

That's the right thing to do. So that's like navigating

35:23

it. But you see that the

35:25

point is that

35:26

the closeness or distance,

35:28

we rely on what we

35:30

experience and feel and project a lot of times when

35:33

making decisions. And what you realize is, oh, wait

35:35

a minute, we shouldn't rely on that. Or at least we can

35:37

rely on it if we can model it in the right way

35:39

to give the right response, as

35:41

opposed to just neglecting that

35:44

difference.

35:45

Yeah, well, we're not strictly rational

35:47

with respect to how we discount

35:50

the importance of our future

35:52

states of self because

35:54

there's nobody who has

35:57

a greater opportunity to ensure

35:59

the happiness of your future self

36:02

than your current self does. I

36:04

mean, you really have just an enormous

36:06

amount of control over your future

36:08

health and your future wealth and

36:11

your future happiness, your future relationships.

36:13

And yet, it's

36:14

all too common for us to

36:17

hyperbolically discount

36:19

the significance of all of those effects

36:21

and to have just a much

36:24

shorter term concern for

36:27

our pleasures and pains. And that's

36:29

just what we value over time is

36:31

just, as you say, it's just very hard

36:34

to think about

36:35

oneself 10 years hence or

36:38

beyond that. One thing that's really interesting is

36:40

like, I think that when you think about yourself 10 years

36:43

from now, you think about it yourself

36:45

differently from if you think about yourself 10 seconds

36:47

from now.

36:48

It feels different. Like, so if I think about

36:50

myself 10 seconds from now, I'm gonna imagine, I don't

36:53

maybe like, I might have

36:55

a sense of how I'm feeling or I

36:58

might imagine the scene like from my first person

37:00

perspective here, like from what I can see.

37:02

But if I, like, you know, from a GoPro

37:04

camera kind of a vantage point,

37:06

but if I imagine myself 10 years from now,

37:09

I think of like, it's like I have a camera on the

37:11

situation and I can see myself there like performing

37:13

some task. But that's like, I'm observing

37:15

myself. I'm not occupying the

37:18

perspective that I'm in right now. It's rather that I,

37:20

there's this kind of distance that's encoded into

37:22

that representation.

37:24

And I think that's really weird and really interesting.

37:28

And I think it affects the way that we think

37:30

about things. And it might come back to, I

37:33

think there's a relationship there between what we were talking about before,

37:35

which is

37:36

when someone's pain is very

37:39

close to you, like it's in proximity with you,

37:41

you can understand it and make sense

37:44

of it and respond to it in a way that

37:46

you can't when there's this, like, it's like you're viewing

37:48

it through a telescope or something.

37:51

Do you recall Derek Parfit's thought experiment

37:53

about meant to

37:56

highlight the strangeness of future

37:58

bias? He talked

38:00

about somebody who

38:02

found himself in a hospital,

38:04

either awaiting surgery or recovering from

38:06

surgery, and the nurse couldn't tell him whether

38:08

or not he had had an

38:10

extremely painful surgery or would soon have

38:12

a

38:13

more normal surgery, and she had to go look up

38:15

his chart. Do you remember this thought experiment? Yes. Yes.

38:18

Yeah. So what's interesting there,

38:20

I recently spoke about this on the podcast,

38:22

but maybe I'll just revisit it for

38:24

those who didn't hear it. Because I can't, as

38:26

with many of Parfit's

38:29

puzzles, I'm not always sure whether

38:31

it really is a puzzle or whether it's

38:33

a kind of pseudo puzzle, but

38:36

a little bit like Zeno's paradoxes of motion.

38:39

But here he seemed

38:41

to be remarking on how arbitrary

38:44

it seems that we care

38:47

so much about the future and so little about

38:49

the past, and it might be more

38:51

strictly rational simply to care

38:54

about all of our experience

38:56

in the aggregate, just like the whole area under

38:58

the curve of phenomena, and

39:01

to be timeless with respect to

39:04

how we weight its value. And so the histonic

39:06

experiment here is that

39:08

someone is in a hospital,

39:10

so they just woke up, they're not sure whether they are

39:12

going to get a surgery or have they've already

39:14

had it and they don't remember it. But the

39:16

two surgeries on offer is one

39:19

of two things is possible. Either they had an absolutely

39:22

harrowing protracted surgery

39:24

that they don't remember

39:26

because they were given an amnesic drug

39:29

afterwards. So they were in fact tortured

39:31

for 10 hours, but their

39:34

memory was wiped clean, but they

39:36

did in fact have that lived experience of torture,

39:39

or they're going to have a more normal operation

39:42

in the future. And if

39:45

you had asked them on the previous week,

39:47

which would you rather have, let's say the

39:50

present moment is on Tuesday, if you'd

39:52

asked them the previous Friday, you

39:54

can be tortured for 10 hours and have this awful experience

39:56

and then have your memory erased,

39:58

or you can have a normal procedure with

40:00

normal anesthesia,

40:02

which would you want? Well, they

40:04

absolutely want the normal one,

40:06

let's say on Wednesday, rather

40:09

than the torture on Monday. But if

40:11

you wake them on Tuesday and

40:14

they're given a choice of either having gone through

40:16

this thing they can now no longer remember,

40:19

which was bad,

40:20

or they have they yet have this more

40:23

normal but still unpleasant procedure

40:25

in their future, well, they're going to want they're

40:27

going to wish they had the thing in the past that was

40:30

awful and worse, because

40:33

what people really care about is happiness

40:36

or suffering in the future.

40:38

It's enormously more important

40:39

what's coming rather than what's in

40:41

the rearview mirror.

40:43

And he thought that was kind of weird.

40:45

I'm not. Yeah. What do you think about

40:47

that? So I hate to say it, but

40:50

with all due respect to Derek Proffitt, I think

40:52

he was kind of weird. I mean, he was brilliant.

40:54

He was a brilliant philosopher. But okay,

40:57

so I have views about this. And so

41:00

what I think is that there's this kind of

41:02

objective perspective that a metaphysician takes

41:04

where

41:04

they're just looking at what exists.

41:07

And if you're interested in

41:09

the value of a life and you think of it as, and

41:12

you can calculate it in terms of the area under

41:14

the curve, where you collect up all the kind of temporal

41:16

stages of that life and what matters is maximizing

41:19

that area,

41:20

then this

41:21

kind of detached perspective where it doesn't

41:24

matter if that temporal stage is in the future, in the past,

41:26

or in the present

41:27

is fine. But if you

41:29

have a view where it's not just those

41:32

objective facts, but rather also the

41:34

kind of subjective conscious experience of the

41:36

observer,

41:37

which is just because of the way the human

41:39

brains work, we're immersed in our present. And

41:42

we anticipate the future and

41:44

we feel that the past is fixed

41:46

and over

41:47

in most cases. And so we

41:49

value things differently depending on where they're arranged

41:52

in time. And that's, I think that's

41:54

just a fact of human psychology, even if

41:56

there's an objective way to justify that

41:58

there's the contingent.

41:59

about how we experience the world.

42:02

And so, as I was saying, as much as

42:04

I love the parfit exploration,

42:07

I feel that regularly he was kind

42:09

of a detached person, and he didn't

42:11

really care about this immersed

42:14

asymmetric and, yeah, not kind of objectively

42:16

rational way of experiencing, but it's just

42:18

the way we are psychologically, and

42:20

that I think should be accommodated.

42:22

So if you do that, there is definitely a future

42:25

bias. And actually, A.N. Pryor,

42:28

when he talked about the nature of time, he

42:31

had a famous example about a headache, when

42:33

you say, thank goodness that's over. And

42:35

the example was intended to illustrate how

42:37

we feel differently about the present versus the past.

42:41

We would be glad that the painful experience is in the past rather

42:43

than the future.

42:44

And so, part of what I guess I

42:46

want to say is, when we were talking about rationality and decision-making,

42:49

I think it's really important to

42:51

not lose sense of the maybe bizarre

42:53

psychological contingencies

42:56

of how we, as thinking and feeling human beings, experience

43:00

the world

43:01

and to bring that in somehow

43:03

into the rational calculus. Well, this does sort

43:05

of

43:06

relate to this notion of a transformative

43:08

experience because, so when you think about many painful experiences,

43:15

even most painful experiences, there is this common

43:17

feature, which

43:22

is

43:23

once they're over, the

43:25

net result isn't necessarily

43:28

even negative. In many cases, it's positive.

43:31

You have the people who go through some terrible

43:33

ordeal. They have cancer and then they recover.

43:37

And

43:39

they can honestly say that the cancer is the best

43:42

thing that ever happened to them. They

43:43

reoriented their priorities and they got

43:46

their lives straight and

43:49

their heads straight, and they couldn't have done it but

43:51

for having had everything interrupted

43:54

by what was, in fact, a truly

43:57

terrible experience while it was happening.

43:59

And

44:00

yes, so they're not in a position of

44:02

regret or

44:05

wishing it hadn't happened once

44:07

it's over.

44:08

And

44:10

if we can know that about most

44:12

bad experiences, if we

44:14

know that generally speaking, what

44:17

doesn't kill you makes you stronger,

44:19

shouldn't that change how

44:21

we view

44:23

most future bad experiences? I mean,

44:25

shouldn't we be able to price that in?

44:27

Wouldn't

44:28

that be psychologically helpful

44:31

to try to do that if insofar

44:33

as we can do that? So it's a

44:35

good question. I mean, I do think that we should be able to price

44:37

it in, but I think it's more complicated,

44:39

which is I know unsatisfactory, but I'm a philosopher,

44:41

so I'm always like raising problems. And

44:44

so here's the, I'm fascinated by cases, for example,

44:47

of disability. So

44:49

I think it makes perfect sense for someone to,

44:51

let's say someone has cancer, they

44:53

have a terrible accident,

44:54

they undergo this horrific transformative

44:56

experience, because

44:59

in the sense that the person who emerges

45:01

or the self that emerges is quite different

45:04

from the self that began.

45:07

And I think there's a very sensible way in

45:09

which someone can say the self that emerges,

45:12

I value who I am now. I have

45:14

all these strengths that I didn't

45:16

have before, but I just, I value who I am now.

45:18

And so I don't regret having the experience

45:21

because that experience produced me who I am now

45:23

by the same token. I think it can make perfect

45:25

sense for the person,

45:27

for someone else to say, I don't want to have a horrific accident.

45:29

I don't want to be diagnosed with

45:32

cancer. In other words,

45:33

the self

45:34

that someone is before they undergo the transformative

45:36

experience can also value who they are.

45:38

And so... And you

45:41

don't think one of them is right? Well, I think

45:43

that's where the problem is. I mean, sometimes I think you

45:45

can say one of them is right and one of them is wrong,

45:47

but going back to having a child

45:49

case, I actually don't think either

45:53

of them is objectively right. I don't think

45:55

there's an objective fact of the matter. I

45:57

think each self, say there's the

45:59

self that...

45:59

doesn't want to have children, and then the self

46:02

that has had children is very happy that they

46:04

did. I

46:05

think each self can glory in their

46:07

own set of values and can, you know,

46:09

I think it's,

46:11

can, can respect their own values and say the

46:13

values that I have are the ones that I want to have, okay,

46:15

and that there's just no objective fact about

46:17

which set of values is better, like the one, the

46:20

child is person versus the person who never,

46:23

who's a parent, or the

46:24

person who's never had an accident versus the person who

46:26

is.

46:27

There are, I mean, we could step back and say the person

46:29

who had the accident, maybe they're living a better life in various

46:31

ways, maybe they're, you know, they have a kind of larger

46:34

measure of happiness,

46:35

but to tell someone that

46:38

they should act against their values

46:41

as long as they have respectable values, I think isn't

46:43

really something that we should be doing.

46:45

What about the possibility of changing one's

46:47

values deliberately? I mean, this is something

46:50

that we,

46:50

we can do inadvertently just by, you

46:53

know, the ways in which we get educated or miseducated,

46:55

the type of company we keep,

46:58

the sorts of practices we do, but

47:00

I think we're at some

47:03

point going to experience

47:05

a much more direct and intrusive

47:09

opportunity to change our values. I mean,

47:11

we, you know, if you just imagine

47:13

directly changing the brain,

47:15

if insofar as we ever

47:18

arrive at something like a completed science

47:20

of the mind, you

47:21

would be able to pose the question, well,

47:23

do you want to value X as

47:26

much as you do? And might you want

47:28

to remove that value? You know, are

47:31

you happy

47:32

being

47:33

as compassionate as you are? Would you want to be more

47:35

compassionate? You want the Dalai Lama's

47:38

version of compassion? Or would you like to

47:40

be a little bit more of a sociopath than

47:42

you are and

47:43

be super productive? I mean,

47:46

you can have the optimal CEO

47:49

sociopathy implant and

47:51

you'll care less about the consequences

47:53

of your decisions, but you'll make those decisions,

47:56

you know, far more efficiently and you'll sleep peacefully

47:58

at night and all of it. if we can decide

48:00

these things,

48:02

we would be making these decisions knowing

48:04

that opting for a certain change

48:07

would change the very basis

48:10

upon which we would judge the goodness

48:12

of the change, right? I mean, if what's

48:15

eventually on the menu is changing your

48:18

intuitions about good and bad,

48:20

then you can ask in advance, well,

48:22

would it be good to

48:24

do that, all the while knowing

48:26

that

48:26

the standard by which you would judge its goodness

48:29

is one

48:31

of the things that can be changed.

48:33

Exactly.

48:33

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

48:35

So this is what, I mean, for me,

48:37

this is fascinating, but also very murky

48:40

territory. And this is the territory of

48:42

transformative

48:42

experience as well, right? There's this kind

48:45

of, it's an endogenous change, basically,

48:47

that changes the very thing that's

48:50

sort of at issue. And I

48:52

don't know. If

48:55

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