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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Episode 264: Current Events 09 10 2021
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dangerous and interesting times well dr hawk is a political scientist uh that's a that's a bold statement i would love to hear more tell us about it i don't even i don't even know where to begin i mean it's uh we could start a lot of different places i just feel increased confusion and uh despondency every time i look at the news um every there there is this great divorce between uh public health reality and and how political maneuverings are dealing with that reality uh most most relevantly which we've talked about i think before um within the last couple of weeks the um the sort of total disconnect from natural immunity being part of any kind of long-term uh herd immunity plan or any part of the discussion whatsoever this this absolute fixation on mandates and apps to support mandates um at the at the cost of the the reality that uh vaccinated people are equally capable of spreading covet around of contracting it and spreading it around um and with this total denial of natural immunity those two things even if we were just to start there in the face of everything else that's going on and um i don't know where all doug wants to go but you know looking at what's happening in australia in particular this week has has caused me great despair um but even if we just started with that kind of public policy disconnect um it's it's unlike anything i've ever witnessed before and i i have run out of ways to make sense of it and so you know when you run out of ways to make sense of things you you can try evolutionary psychology and i'll generally uh help you understand a little bit of what's going on so i guess that's that's kind of what we wanted to do at least for the few minutes of the show this week before we get into the other stuff but yeah i i it's it's a set of circumstances that is either accidentally or but by design very apathy inducing it's very um it's very difficult to know what to do to make any kind of difference to the trajectory that it seems things are on with a permanent surveillance pharmaceutical state creeping into our lives and governing every aspect of them for those of us who are students of political science or history or both the writing is really on the wall with that and it's it's very discouraging it's very demobilizing um and i don't know maybe i'm just going through the various stages of grief um yeah so using you know what we have is we got a a very interesting complicated literally global mess you know it's literally all of humanity is involved in this so this is a uh a bizarre time so this isn't this isn't just you know israel against iran iran or something in the middle east and we're all watching and taking sides and and battling it out in congress about what we should be doing about it etc no this is a this is you know everybody has skin in the game and so um so this began its life um you know we could we can debate about whether or not this was created i think there i think there's a good chance that it was but if it was only merely a playing around in the lab and then having a natural mutation escape which i think is unlikely but it did it got out and now we have a worldwide mess and so this begins its life as a as a threat to you know some percentage of you of humanity and an inconvenience for all of us as we're all trying to figure out you know how it works and what should we be doing you know collectively and what should we be doing individually and at what what part is the government you know and governments going to play and do we have a united nations world health organization and and all kinds of scientists all over the place so we've got a problem of humanity against nature is what we have and before too long we figure out that that the we figure out there are parameters to the problem uh we can figure out that it's going to kill more or less you know something on the on the order of a half a percent of the individuals that in infects and we find out further that what that really means is that it's going to kill three percent of people you know over 80 and it's gonna kill very few you know other people and so uh it winds out that it's not a particularly dangerous thing for people under 50 years old uh but then something bizarre happens so then then we get a a theory that what we all need to do is we need to somehow dampen down the spread uh so that you know maybe stamp it out maybe we can get it to extinction if we behave carefully enough and and do our very best to isolate and stand six feet away and wear a mask if we all do this very fastidiously maybe we can you know sort of it's kind of like smothering a fire and if we can smother the fire then we can save the two or three percent of elderly people that might die if they would otherwise contract the virus well uh it it becomes apparent that that isn't going to fly that virus is going to mutate to forms that are going to be highly infectious it's going to weave its way into every place imaginable and it turns out that a virus is not the same thing as you know stopping people from wearing red shoes for god's sakes in other words you can't see the virus you don't even know half the time if you've got it and there's going to be no it doesn't it doesn't respect i mean we have these incredible concepts about how the canadians aren't going to let people from one province go to another province it's like well the virus couldn't give a damn about the boundaries what you do it's it's going to find its way all over the place sooner or later it's going to get to places where it has not been and so the concept of smothering the virus uh winds up being a ludicrous concept but it has some merit for a short period of time when there's the idea of let's keep the lid on the pot until we can possibly get a vaccine or we can also discover treatments that makes a lot of sense and that made some sense so that's what we saw we saw heroic and or extraordinarily expensive uh actions taken place by governments in singapore and vietnam or whatever and in germany uh heroically shutting down their countries and everybody hiding in their houses uh while we're we're sitting there wait praying for the scientists to come up with something uh but then we find something fascinating take place we find that there's virtually no energy at all and no government support no interest in treatment that uh what you have is a is a massive top down 110 trombones 76 strong bones and 110 trumpets or whatever it is it's all about the vaccine okay so it's vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine vaccine but that is the only viable solution and we wind up with a bizarre logic and the bizarre logic is even though it basically doesn't kill anybody under 50 which is like 70 percent of the united states population and 80 you know probably 80 percent of brazil or whatever it is even though that's true no now the concept is everybody needs to be vaccinated and we stand back and we say that's interesting tell us about this vaccine and it's not a sterilizing vaccine it never was was never intended to be you know it and it isn't and so as a result when you take it uh the government promised oh if you take it life's gonna go back to normal we'll all stamp this thing out everybody do their part and get vaccinated and then somehow we'll smother the fire no it's a complete lie uh all you know very responsible high level you know brilliant people said this is complete bs okay if you want to look at who those brilliant people are we're not just making this up look at the great barrington declaration you got oxford harvard and stanford university written all over it and so it doesn't matter these opinions of contrarians basically saying no this is no way to do this and it's not going to fly those concepts got carpet bombed from above so this is fascinating and now we move into an extraordinary thing that we're witnessing which is that literally a continent has little tyrants uh in australia saying no you if you're vaccinated you can come out and have a life that if you're unvaccinated you got to stay in your house you're not going anywhere you're not going to a store you're not going to a bar you're not going to a restaurant you're not going nowhere you're not leaving the country either not going on a plane this is incredible not even if you're a citizen of another country yeah this is unbelievable people you're watching this is like adolf hitler's dream he didn't have this much control so the the question is we might look at this from one perspective and we might say are these people really stupid okay are these people not very high in iq okay are these people you know somehow you know i've never really thought highly of politicians intelligence and you might think gosh you know is this a 115 iq individual that really can't follow the logic down two steps i mean is this a person that can't do a side angle side proof in ninth grade geometry is am i looking at the guy who slithers by with a b minus in in ninth grade geometry is that what i'm looking at here can't you can't look through three steps of logic i don't think so okay i don't think it's possible for these people to be that stupid i don't think joe biden's that stupid i don't think gavin newsom's that stupid i don't think that you know who's the guy in canada is that trudeau what who is that mm-hmm yeah i don't think he's junior no i don't think he's that stupid i don't know he might he might be he might be that stupid i don't know damn damn sure isn't that stupid no she's not but trudeau i don't know yeah maybe but the point is we could have an argument they all can't be this stupid okay and so the the underlying logic in other words up up until late july you could make a case that the cdc which had been absolutely misinforming everybody uh and very carefully shading the truth all over the place uh that that people looking to them if you're a gavin newsom and you are looking at the cdc and the cdc is telling you on april 1st hey vaccinated people won't spread the virus okay even though we had no reason to believe that that virus would be sterilizing none okay so very quickly we find out you know 100 days later now it's spreading all over the place and so the the watershed date for us to understand that we were actually in some interesting and interesting new level of trouble was by about august the 7th or 8th or 9th by that time you had evidence from studies in vietnam they're going to be published in the lancet i believe and you have study out of the university of wisconsin and you have studies out of the university of california san francisco you've got evidence all over the place okay saying hey the vaccinated people are spreading the virus like crazy they are in no way safer to you if you're standing next to one of those than if you're standing next to an unvaccinated person no difference okay that fact i could understand it might take a few days for some dumb dumb politician with 115 iq to have that seep through their head and then have to figure out how they're going to backtrack and then how they're going to have to break the news their constituency that it's a little different than they were saying before and it turns out that the game is different than we thought but that is not what we're seeing we're seeing them march forward looking to take greater control and basically wind up with an apartheid state that's incredible so they gavin newsom and the other 30 governors in the united states they are not that stupid they they have to be listening and they know the facts about why 20 governors in the united states have said we are making it unlawful for you to have an apartheid state in our state it's not going to happen it's against the law okay now so we have a fascinating situation what on earth could this motive be now i talked to a person whose father was a politician in another country and he said to me you know the way we think in our family of politicians is they are like cheerleaders like wherever people are cheering that's what they tout okay like like they don't really think that deeply they just try to sniff the wind and find out where the biggest cheering is and that's where they go job number one is get reelected it's not do anything in particular it's to preserve your job right and so that is a possibility and if i and you know we have to look at that rather than look deeper and more you know for more sinister corners it could be that literally the most obvious reason these politicians are going directly counter to all the scientific evidence and logic is because it's in their best personal political interest to do so because their constituency is that stupid yeah their internal polling is telling them god could that they should be doing is that possible people who are most disagreeable are going to scream the loudest and so they'll make it look like you know they're the majority um i mean to some degree but i i think they most of these guys have pretty sophisticated legitimate polling and sure there is certainly for a lot of control of this ride they're you know just the kind of innate fear of contagion and um all of the you know i think i think you have had a majority of people who have been very friendly toward well we need to do what we can these are right majority of people don't have a historical perspective on state power and and how uh reluctantly it gives up its grip once it once it has consolidated a little more control i think the intuition that most people out there in western democracies have because they've never known anything else we live in a post-cold war world mostly um that it's uh you know well yeah you might have to you might have to take some pretty drastic measures short term when you're facing something really unusual what's so problematic about that right um that that doesn't mean that you're marching toward the gulags it just means that you're dealing with the reality of of a difficult unprecedented public health emergency so yeah like wear a damn mask what's the problem and i do think you do see a majority if we were to look at um all of that survey data that someone like trudeau is looking at that's what they're going to see particularly somewhere like canada i mean australia i think is uh the numbers i see or that three quarters of the population is more or less supportive of wow um and so but this gets back to the principle of the the nested dolls of frank underwood's that we've talked about before where where as as uh laura logan pointed out there's kind of the the witless the half wits the full wits that not everybody who's making political decisions is totally in on the entire game there's a lot of people in the bureaucratic mediocre middle who are making decisions to preserve their election prospects to please their donors to play well in a certain district they're they're they're doing things that are expedient and and that um get them some kind of short-term gain that they're after with that you know in a in a pretty ideologically agnostic sort of way right um and uh and they are unwitting pawns in someone else's game so there could be more sinister motives above them but they are just acting predictably in their own self-interest to get themselves reelected i think that's a huge part of the story boy that you know there's something i mean the the nice part about that is that you know i i don't like like my my guess is god knows i don't normally just you just got a you know just a good good-looking guy with a nice haircut is gavin newsom and gavin newsom just looks like some guy who's you know was born to play a political role is smooth enough i i don't see him as an evil dude looking to take over the world you know what i'm saying the uh i look at him he looks to me like the the love child of the american psycho character and gordon gekko but maybe that's just me i think it's the haircut so i don't see him as a particularly nice friendly face like i i don't want that guy you know kissing my babies yeah a few years ago we went over a study that said that there's certain politicians with certain whiter uh facial characteristics are actually perceived as lower conscientious and so when i see gavin newsom i see those whiter whiter facial oh yeah you know he's snorting up something in a restaurant bathroom yeah i mean i just i just look at these guys and i i see you know in that guy probably some 125 130 iq dude who whose job it was from the jump to just you know he had he had a uh basically a yellow brick road just lined out in front of him obviously as his aunt being nancy pelosi and coming from great wealth and um and so but i in other words i don't see him as anything other than a little [ __ ] you know what do you call that half wit that is just doing what he's supposed yeah he's just half he thinks he knows why he's doing what he's doing right and that's what the halfwits are they think that they're in the know they think they know more than the little people do and they're they're acting in their own interest and also the best interest of their constituency presumably or they wouldn't get reelected right um but yeah that's that's a classic example of a half-wit he does not understand the the larger interests that his behavior is potentially serving he's just totally blind to that right yeah yeah and we can only speculate on on what that is right and that's that's where we get wild speculation but but when you get so much of the same like it could be you know it's kind of like uh you know convergent evolution you know there's like principles like if you're seeing you're seeing a lot of the same kind of behavior in a lot of different places around the globe you're not seeing it uniform but you're seeing you're seeing places you know new zealand australia um new york city los angeles san francisco you're seeing uh and certainly in some other places have been you know i don't know a lot about what's been happening in asia but i think there's been an awful lot of draconian you know lockdown uh behavior in asia oh sure yeah so it so some of this obviously comes about because of um you know stupidity ignorance fear mis-mis-parameterization of the problem by people in charge and possibly you know obviously well-meaning like merkel is trying to lock down germany in some ways it's like she's not stupid and and i don't think that uh i don't know if merkel's part of some big bizarre you know underhanded takeover you know world domination theory i have no i i just can't imagine that does the g7 count i mean just i don't know on our perspective she certainly is from a certain perspective yeah interesting so yeah who knows and of course when you when you back the camera up you're thinking okay all right there's two two hypotheses which is that this is just a kind of a uh a political uh political and resource grab [ __ ] show disorganized kind of chaotic uh opportunistic some people that are put in some happen to be in some positions of power have special interests associated with them so they push a [ __ ] agenda if you're an anthony fauci you know you're on the side of your buddies in big pharma et cetera and uh and so you you keep you keep touting some utterly absurd ideas uh and you you're you're looking to have everybody in the damn country vaccinated forever for which is just a terrible uh health policy and um uh and and you don't care and you know it's a terrible health policy but it's in the best interest of whoever whoever it is your your overlords and buddies and constituents are so you know i you could see that and you can see that that's just self-interested you know sociopathic behavior but the i guess the real question is and i think the question in a lot of our minds are are is this way top down okay is this way top down are there are there a dozen people that are actually guiding this show you know we uh that the and what are what is their end game and if that is true so that's uh that's the question that obviously a year ago when we're talking about coronavirus i i'm just shrugging my shoulders about it waiting for this thing to be over thinking that this is a stressor on humanity and it's a threat to a few people uh and it's scary and we're hopeful for treatments uh you know you figure that medicine when it comes to acute infectious disease processes modern medicine is pretty damn good i mean they're they're good at that stuff and so you figured that with some time uh they would get very good at it and the uh et cetera so we figured that we would work our way out of a problem of you know that it would go from an acute pretty serious scary thing to much less etc now now now this is no longer a problem of human beings against copavirus it's it's it's free human beings against uh individuals that are very that that have various and sundry different motivational positions that are out to be very controlling this is weird and uh yeah i don't i'm not sure you know we could talk a little bit about uh you know there's only there's only a couple of motives that you know there's a few things that motivate people so uh power motivates people and the power to get resources over other people status which is a you know a currency that they can use it's basically resources uh in writ large which includes status and and money effectively uh money and and or literally political machinery control so the uh anyway i'm just rambling here because i'm lost i think as a lot of people are at trying to see the rationale that is driving this because we know the rationale that is ostensibly driving it it cannot be driving it because the people that are driving it cannot possibly be this stupid that's where that's where we stand today and that's what makes this uh very disturbing yeah yeah i don't know that you need a a secretive cabal uh you know secret society with uh masks and sex orgies to set the set the agenda for the entire globe necessarily not that that doesn't exist we we uh you know it certainly could um but i think if you just followed up the incentives from from the halfwits to to the to the half full width not quite the full width let's say that the full widths are all the way at the top and we don't even know who those people are they're they're ancient bloodline bankers and we know that bill gates is clearly one of them you know we've recently learned that bill gates basically owns the world health organization so which is something that i did not know so bill gates is but even even bill gates may be like the the top half wit you know there could be there definitely could be puppet masters above bill gates so like just this is all just a thought experiment but you could have a lot of halfwits that do have uh power seeking status seeking money seeking agendas behind something like um a a social credit vaccine passport program you link those two things together this is a grand pre-text to get people digitized and map them and map their interests and and their desires and uh what they want what they'll pay for what what what what they fear everything that any anyone who wants to make money off of them or get a vote from them could ever possibly want to know um there are a lot of people in the mediocre middle who would want their pause on that information or some part of that information and so if you promise them little cookie crumbs of hey you know if we if we implement this it's going to help you get reelected it's going to help you do better fundraising it's going to help you make a bunch of money off of this or or that whether it's pharmaceutical intervention or any anything any of the downstream i mean there are a lot of places to be made to to make money off of not just the pandemic but even beyond the pandemic once you have people nicely uh tied up with a little bow on on an app i mean we already have huge data and analytics on people right um but it's troublesome and expensive to consolidate that data so if you're um a big corporate interest that wants to make money off of people it's it's cumbersome you you can kind of uh corral their data you can get a sense of what they want and and what motivates them but it's not it's just not as easy it's not as cheap as something like this would be if you had access to it so i i just think all along the way all the way up to the the secret cabal you have plenty of people who would who would like to see that affected and and um even if not for raw power and money for the status of saving the world for the status of um doing the right thing of uh you know controlling overpopulation reducing the effects of climate change um things that are um you know good good claims to make uh whether or not they're based in any sort of reality but again confer a certain social status that helps you consolidate more money and power right so yeah yeah yeah so we could i mean we can speculate all we want but i i really do think it comes down to uh you know just nested dolls of interest serving each other and then serving a higher interest rate above them yeah so so what do we do about it i mean i know in the famous quote in the famous movie one of my favorites national treasure is spoken by nicolas cage if you have the uh you have the uh ability to respond then you have the responsibility so what ability do we have to respond to this well yeah that's a big question yeah i think that that you um this is uh i think i think jen explained this to me i don't know two three months ago when we started we started sniffing that this was big and scary and like a almost unimaginable level threat to human freedom as we know it and and so jen being jen and her obviously deep knowledge of political science and political history um it was basically educating me on how extraordinary the the founding fathers were in tying their own hands and trying to devise a government that would distribute power in such a way that nobody could ever get control like this and um and so that this is uh that in fact though that the temptation is always there the if you think about this there's there's three ways to to get resources in the world really there's three three basic functions one of them is to trade for it in other words do something for the other person and then they'll do something for you the uh the other way is to force it in other words threaten at the point of a gun uh i i'm gonna just take it from you and the third is to to trick you that's fraud so the notion of an idealized government is one that that essentially has a monopoly over the force so that you can't have a mafia running around out there or your next door neighbor leveling a gun at you and telling you to move your fence over uh you know so that he has more of your land in other words the the notion is that by having a government government with a monopoly over force then it frees citizens to settle their disputes with the past dispassionate third parties and we minimize the conflicts of interest so you people can't use force against each other and they can't defraud each other because then they're going to wind up in civil court or possibly criminal court uh lose their freedom behind that and and lose their ill-gotten gains and have to pay penalties so the notion is to try to make as much human action as possible uh free transactions between voluntary individuals that's how you're gonna that is what freedom is the government doesn't tell you who you can transact with and what you can transact about so long as you're not forcibly interfering on other people's rights etc and so this is and of course this is where the vaccine comes in it's like well if you're carrying around the vax you're carrying around the coronavirus and you're not vacs or you're going to get the coronavirus because you're not vast then you are infringing on my rights etc because i've got a grandmother who's immunocompromised and you could spread the virus to her uh even though i'm backs and she's backs you know it still could hurt her etc of course now we know that the vax person is just as likely to spread it to his grandmother in fact he's vastly more likely to spend it to his grandmother than i am uh because he's in her house so so the the concept of a social responsibility behind the vaccine this this this specific non-antiseptic vaccine uh is completely gone there's no justification at all the uh however what we're watching is we're watching force and fraud we're watching wholesale massive force and fraud on a continental level and um and so now this is precisely what the united states constitution and the bill of rights etc was all about the whole idea of the united states was hey we're going to have a government by the people for the people where we're going to do everything we can to promote the general well welfare by by trying our best to eliminate force and fraud out of a transition of free individuals that's the whole idea okay it took us 100 years or so or less to get rid of slavery this concept i.e we were forcing people um to do our interests you know not me i wasn't there and i'm not responsible for anybody who did but the point is is that the uh but little by little uh we expanded human freedom over a couple of hundred years we got better okay uh we did a better job and now we're suddenly taking a sharp turn in the other direction and it's scary and we can we can all feel with the big hammer of high tech you know high data analysis ability to track everybody you know uh cameras everywhere yes listeners electronic listeners with massive computer programs on the internet who can analyze who you are what you're going to do they can think about you know when you're about to get a chocolate donut before you know that you're going to be thinking about that and so that suddenly we we are watching the birth of big brother and and the force behind that and also quite frankly people vast widespread unabashed fraud as the government absolutely distorts its information about this issue uh and and it is not being straight with the people at all this is amazing so uh so now now we yeah what what do you do about it well um one thing that that you do is you don't stand in the middle of an avalanche you know so you you understand that your your responsibility is not to save the world that's a mistake your responsibility is to figure out how to live your life in the best way possible um i i liken this to us being in the middle of a war but look you know gunshots aren't being fired the other kind of shots are the uh you know there is uh there are you there isn't literal violence taking place which is good okay so if you look at the standpoint from where where this country and other countries we would have hoped should be in terms of the governments having a commitment to the force and fraud concept of free citizenry a government by the people for the people [Music] that you know that is no longer in place right now okay that's not what you're seeing so now now that that's not what you're saying it's like okay now you have to start thinking about um now you you are now there's a war over this concept so we we are no longer in an expanding freedom process that we have been in for 250 years in the united states we are now in a reversal we don't know how acute it's going to be we don't know how long it's going to go for we don't know all we know is this and this was what jen was educating me on this and charles murray was making this point in our interview with him and that is that that you know freedom is like a garden and the jungle is always trying to take over and the jungle that's involved is actually uh largely driven by energy conservation programming in the heads of of animal life and those animals are people who there's a reason why voice and force and fraud are so dangerous they are biologically efficient under certain conditions in fact they're biologically efficient under a lot of conditions if my village is three times bigger than your village i've got bigger warriors than you then i can just threaten you and take your stuff and there's not not much you can do about it other than die you know and you can be the the young king of maui that at 27 years old was killed by kamehameha okay well i hope you enjoyed your noble short life the um there's a plaque in lahaina you know to you oh well the um so he has a whole park doesn't he there's a whole park yeah yeah the um yeah so i forget where i was going i lost the track a little bit go ahead jen but if you can pick up a thread here i don't know where it is yeah it's just that force and fraud are are biologically programmed yes and that yeah we i mean i think this starts i mean i i always go back to that great documentary series house of cards there's so much to learn from house of cards or without spoiling it too much for people who haven't seen it i think even it's it's just in the you know sort of cultural zeitgeist that they are uh corrupt politicians who will do anything to hold on to power um and but it doesn't start off that way you know it starts it starts slowly it starts innocently enough you're you're in a close race and um it's just a slight advantage to uh you know know know what your constituents are searching for or to know a little bit about their internet behavior or um you know any any little any extra data that you can get in a close democratic election is going to be to your advantage and if you have to kind of you know cut a few corners to get it and it's maybe that you know people wouldn't be too pleased if you had it um you know it's a little dirty but it's it's fair enough and it just it it starts off that way and then of course the rest of the series shows you where it where it goes in this very extreme sense but i think that's uh it's a lot it's this instinct for you know competitive advantage and which is necessary for survival and reproduction um and so you get a little competitive advantage um you get it however you can get it you you weave yourself a narrative that justifies it so you don't feel like a terrible person um and then you've taken a little step forward and then from there you take another step forward and anything that is consolidating uh surveillance over the population that could be parceled out to a lot of interested parties is is just going to be a very potent resource for a lot of different individuals and and stakeholders um and so we have this predilection toward force and fraud that is that is deep deep in the species as it is with most any species um and uh and there you go like you you deceive as much as you can you you deflect as much as you can and when all fails you um you know you carry a big stick you deploy a little force yeah yes yeah yeah it's useful and you believe subjectively the whole time that it's the right thing to do it's it's in the interests of everybody's well-being and and public health and you know you you i think people i think these these half-wits yes uh daniel andrews the premier of victoria you know is like this archetypal evil bureaucrat um absolute archetypal halfwit i think that's i think he subjectively genuinely believes that he's doing the right thing that he has to be the bad guy to to to you know maybe it's not going to be popular um but you'll thank me later it's for your own good uh let alone the fact that it's ultimately his own interest that's being served yeah the uh and i'm sure that that president xi you know what i mean feels the same way that um that that uh this is all you know the these are there's our people that that uh don't have a lot of you know self-awareness as to um you know the the inherent uh they don't have the personality to understand the the beauty of freedom and the and the notion of trade it's like no they're going to use force and fraud you know well first they may trade so they offered people you know joe biden was often peop people 100 bucks to get a vaccine 100 100 bucks you know a drink a point a lap dance like all of those things were offered in the early days and so yeah you you promised sex drugs and rock and roll and money and everything and uh and hey you know this you take it now take it now or you're gonna pay later yep there you go yeah so i think that um you know freedom as an animal is a is a myth you're you know you're if you're trapped in a cage in a zoo you're pretty safe but you've got a lousy uh existence if uh if you are out in the wild you are subject to force and fraud all over the place if you're a thompson's gazelle the tiger that's laying in the grass is fraudulent you know i mean that tigers pretending that they're just a bunch of grass there and they are they're trapping you and so they're they're their coats are fraudulent the their feature the physical features are deceptive the you know they're the colors and the patterns that they are in order to be better camouflaged it's it's just completely built into nature yes and so so would be the self deceptive sanctimonious uh psychologies of semi uh sociopathic uh disagreeable politicians who believe that they know what's in the best interest despite the fact that that all reasonable evidence is absolutely contradicting what they're saying the uh but that evidence would say oh no now we got to go back and take our luck with trading freely with people and trying to pitch what we have versus our competitors in some open election kind of process or forget it not a chance in hell so yeah we are as i as you know what do you do about it what you do about it is you you keep your eyes wide open and you you watch for uh you watch this process and you you know there's uh i guess i would say depend upon where you are in the world you know we talk to people generally i talk to people all around the world and some people's circumstances are an awful lot worse than than we you know than we are here in the united states so the united states you have a great deal of freedom you have a lot of control you you have to put up with a tremendous amount of hassle uh if you want to uh to necessarily duck around like if you live in los angeles or san francisco right now your your life isn't terrible but in other words if you're an unvaccinated person if you decide not to be vaccinated which i believe should absolutely be your right and you have good reason to be suspicious about the cost-benefit analysis of this and you know and even if you if it turns out that ultimately the data analysis if it's ever fairly done three or four or five years from now and it turns out that you were wrong you might have survived but you dodged a bullet that you could have more easily protected yourself with the vaccine than fun okay it was your choice and if it turns out that you you were suspicious didn't get a vaccine and died then you took your you took your gamble you took your you took your shot and you did it your way the i have to tell people that by far the most important thing that you can do to protect yourself is not a vaccine it's your own personal health the uh your own personal health is by far the most potent thing that you could do to reduce your odds of death no matter who it is that you are the uh so that's that's the biggest variable that there is you know how how good is your lung capacity that's a big deal you know what is your obesity level or how what is your blood urea nitrogen level in other words how much animal protein are you eating because that winds up being a tremendous predictor of whether or not people have a severe coveted response or die okay so these things you know you you have a tremendous control nobody talks about that our public health officials it's all about this vaccine which by the way in no way insulates you from a bad course of of uh of covet or death it just it reduces your odds if you're uh in a susceptible group we don't know what the total score score sheet is why because we don't have they have never done the appropriate random assignment to condition longer term outcomes steady they never did it the only outcome study they have is after four to six months or whatever this was out of 21 000 people that got the vaccine 15 of them were dead and 21 000 people that didn't get the vaccine 14 people were dead that's the score okay the appropriate way to judge an intervention is long-term analysis of all cause mortality okay is not to to look at the piecemeal data sets that we are being given access to now do i believe that people are some lives are being saved from this vaccine undoubtedly i have no doubt that some lives are being saved how many at what cost okay and what will the entire score sheet be when we looked at it in retrospect honestly after five years who the hell knows i don't have a clue okay and you know what i i don't know that anybody does right now so certainly not right now no no how could you uh sam harris no nobody knows you you can suspect and you can have a big strong opinion and you can point to subsets of data but if you you know why on earth wouldn't we have had a one-year random assignment to condition study that would not have stopped us from from continuing a an open you know an emergency youth authorization that would be fine but at least a year from now we could look at those 21 000 people in each group and count the dead bodies and we could see as an ethical impossibility right because oh yeah if you're seeing the benefit then you can't keep it blind you have to administer such a great benefit jen because 15 were dead in the vaccinated group at 14 we're dead in the unvaccinated group and that's the big benefit apparently apparently it's a good thing to have one more person dead yeah i think it's it's you know i i want to make sure to distinguish between you know it's it's not a question of getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated that i'm talking about with my my sort of descent into anti-democratic purgatory here so so i think there are individual cbs that it makes a lot of sense to get the vaccine for certain people um and i think there is some some evidence for benefit just like you're talking about without this long-term context of what the full cb is because nobody would agree but i think for certain certain individuals um if it if it makes sense for you in your situation in your context to get it then by all means get the vaccine we're not here to tell you not to do it but um i am here to tell you that that you know you ask what what can be done what can be done about the direction of state power and and the d d uh i don't know i don't even know how to characterize the deterioration of democracy i guess yes um is don't comply get the vaccine but don't get the passport don't patronize businesses that require it don't don't use the vaccine as an excuse to go back to normal life when there's half the half the country that that isn't isn't going to do it and won't do it don't trade your comfort in your your little joys of life for the fundamental uh principles of freedom and liberty so this this requires this moment requires from my perspective the the very people who are um you know potentially benefiting from the deployment of something like a like a surveillance passport or or a movement pass or whatever we want to call this it's those people who need to resist that carrot that hey if i have this then i can go to my favorite restaurant i can go to my favorite pub and meet my friends and and so i'm fine i don't have to worry about it that's the real treacherous dangerous slope here and so it's it's not um just up to people who are resistant to the vaccine to resist and protest and and scream and cry and everything else that they're doing it's this is a joint effort of everybody no matter where you fall on the vaccinate don't vaccinate spectrum to reject the overreach of state power to to trojan horse in a bunch of pharmaceutical surveillance in with you going to your favorite pub and meeting meeting friends for a drink like screw that that is where people really do have a responsibility to to each other into democracy fan jen thank you i i i had not thought of that but it it's a civil rights movement it's like don't don't patronize a restaurant that won't allow black people in the restaurant like what are we doing okay just don't go there boycott them till they starve to death that's exactly what we should do and so this that that is uh that is a a remarkable uh and elegant insight and of course it's asking people you know it's asking people to do something that they're not going to want to do but but that is if anybody asks you know what can you do well that is something that you could do and that's a fascinating you know that that's an absolutely remarkable idea i don't think it i don't think it has a political or practical future but that doesn't mean it's not elegant as hell yeah most most uh important ideas don't but um but yeah i think that's necessary and if that doesn't happen then we really are lost so that's our last stand but uh yeah yeah yes what do you know well you know the uh we were supposed to just [ __ ] about this for the first part of the show but it looks like we've we yeah that's it we're going to be that's all we're good well you know what we're too there there's too much at stake as we watch this world turn and we're watching we are we jen and i uh and nathan all we are confused about the motivation that is driving the such extraordinary irrationality uh uh that that we we understand it must be deeply motivated and there must be tremendous payoffs uh for the the head of the cdc and the head you know anthony fauci and francis collins etc there must be great payoffs for them to be essentially touting something that is not rational these are not stupid people these are highly intelligent people and so we do not understand their motivations uh their motivations have uh are are remarkably um state control status dangerous threat to democracy and freedom this is extraordinary and so uh we sit now in what i what i believe is true i don't know very much about governments around the world so i don't know what switzerland's like and denmark and you know so i'm talking big as somebody that doesn't know but the uh but the united states is extraordinary in the the deep thought of the fractured power base and so that's why you know we've got 50 little states with 50 little independent governments uh and each of those 50 states has a substantial amount of power about how they run their affairs and so that being the case um there there's a great deal of freedom left on you know there's a lot of freedom left in the united states you know in in general with respect to a wide range of things but this is amazingly strangling freedom and uh and yet there is uh tremendous and effective pushback uh where where the where the government has limited control because the states the federal government has limited control because the states have their own individual control how long that lasts what it looks like you know the the interplay between titanic forces of lawsuits funding threats you know it's a state versus government we're uh federal government we're looking for possibly major showdowns uh between states rights and federal rights and who the hell knows uh but uh showdowns between governors and um congressional yes representatives who are looking for toward the midterm elections too i mean there's and needing funding for it and you know having people of the same party very much at odds with each other over that i mean it's it's going to be a mess it's really interesting well we this uh you know i'm hoping obviously that that three years from now we it's almost forgotten that we look back over our shoulders and this uh this thing you know was a as it was a harrowing you know what looked like a near-miss for the for a tremendous loss of freedom in the united states and major consolidation of power and and uh surveillance state etc that did not happen uh or we could be looking at essentially freedom as we as we grew up and as i live my life in the united states very slowly being defended but possibly winking out under pressure one state at a time you know there's a lot of big states that are uh that have a lot of economic muscle and a lot of congressional muscle that and certainly have tremendous power and and finances legally to defend themselves at the level of supreme court uh with all kinds of issues if they're in conflict with the federal government so we we could be looking at a 20-year you know or very long-term battle that takes place or we might not we we might look be looking at something that is much shorter and much more ruthless i don't know and uh but i know that today i'm not panicked because i know that in the united states there is a tremendous amount of freedom left but it is under assault uh in a way that that i you know that i have certainly never seen in my lifetime and i certainly never expected to see so that's where we are and we'll have to just keep our eyes on it as we parameterize uh trying to understand the causal forces and therefore be able to maneuver in ways that serve our own personal interests that's all we can do all right well we've got a lot to uh we've got a lot to look forward to i hope so jen last words i i i i learn more when i shut up and listen to jen hawk what else comes to mind for you oh well we should wrap up but yeah okay i i think it's uh yeah i i think we already are living in a deep surveillance state i mean edward snowden showed us that back in 2013 or whenever that was um so i mean it's not like it's not like we're living uh in a in a situation that is free from larger interests than ourselves kind of knowing what we're up to and being able to manipulate us at will it's just a question of how easy are we making it for them um and and how how limiting of uh our at least appearance of free movement and free association or we are we willing to give up um in that process and it's just it's such a moment to be very very very wary in a way that i think is not intuitive to so many people like it is for people who have really um taken a deep dive with historical totalitarian regimes and seen how these things how this how this power is exercised behind crisis um so to not let a public health crisis and a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty and uh frustration with things not being normal and wanting to get back to normal and all of these things that motivate people to be like okay fine fine fine you know i'll i'll do uh i'll just sign up for this app and um you know it's it's what's the big deal and it is a big deal it's it's a it is a real threshold for who we are as citizens and subjects of what kind of regime um that has what kind of power over us and it's just giving it's giving the regime new little knobs and lovers to control us and and to um get us to behave in ways that are of interest to it and it's it that process is always underway it's been creeping for uh you know a couple centuries now yeah um but it's it's i think we do have a responsibility to try to slow it down and to at least not make it obvious and easy and hand this stuff over to them yeah all good well that's a cheerful discussion for everybody yeah yeah that's his life is cheerful well thank you guys so much for for for uh for giving us your your take on all these things i'm sure we'll love to hear more as as time goes on uh you know it's uh it was an interesting summer and you know australia has gone where australia i didn't expect them to go last year but um hopefully no you know yeah australia is a whole show unto itself to really unpack what's going on um and uh you know we i would love to actually talk to some of our australian listeners um if they wanted to call in and have a conversation i would love to do something like that because i i have one sort of perspective sitting from afar observing this you know wonderful country turn into is one of my one of my clients called it the other day you know the world's largest open-air prison that's the that's the meme um and uh and it's it's terrifying to watch from a distance and if i am wrong about what i'm seeing if i'm if i'm seeing exaggerated claims if um you know i'm i'm misinterpreting it i would like to know that um and i would just like to talk to people about their their actual experiences and uh to help contextualize what looks like you know a lot of public support for what appeared to me to be rather extreme draconian measures yeah well what they say is those who don't wish to move don't feel the chains right yeah that was one of my favorite political quotes ever rosa luxemburg um she's the the unsung marxist heroine so yeah that was my facebook banner ironically for many years before i deleted facebook but but yeah very very very true all right everybody well dr lyle dr hawk thank you so so so much and uh we'll look forward to chatting with you guys next show you
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