Nice episode Josh. One frustration for me is that Eric claims he is desirous of information but he only engages the abysmal mass media. COVID led me to a show called This Week in Virology (TWIV), with two episodes per week, it gets technical, but it's worth the effort because it exists at the intersection of medical research and real doctors who are treating patients every day.
On the lab leak theory, and I'd say the jury is still out, Eric ought to be engaging the actual researchers, who are genuinely curious people, not what news readers are saying on CNN or BBC.
You must get many suggestions for guests, but let me add one to the list: Eddie Holmes. He's a really engaging speaker and was there at the outset of COVID. Check him out on TWIV here: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-940/. Maybe have him on to discuss the merits of what Eric is saying, some off which is valid while much is (maybe intentionally) ill-informed.
So your position is that it's totally normal that traditional media, social media, government agencies, and large corporations are all in perfect harmony pushing a single unexamined view on a subject of massive significance, because there's one random podcast that is out there providing (allegedly) better information?
I didn't say anything is normal and I don't really follow your question. But in my lifetime US mainstream media has been abysmal when it comes to many things that matter, from foreign policy to economics to health: 80's proxy wars in Central America, Iraq, social security, health care systems, etc. What can you do but read widely and critically?
In the case of SARS-COV2, there happens to be a podcast on which the leading researchers in virology and infectious disease discuss research and clinical work twice a week. I didn't find it by a random selection. Reading led me to it. One of the many interesting discussions I've listened to was Eddie Holmes, who is at Sydney University, where Josh lives, and he was involved in the original sequencing of the virus and his story is interesting, like it would work well on a podcast such as Josh's. It won't be definitive, but it will be far more informative than listening to someone like Eric Weinstein aimlessly asking the same questions over and over.
I'm sure the media has always been bad, but I don't think it was as homogeneous as it is now. And my understanding was that Eric wasn't so much talking about the virus per se as the information landscape surrounding it. I don't follow him on everything, but his notion of a "distributed idea suppression complex" seems so viscerally real in my experience and so pointed in this case.
I would be quite happy to hear Josh interview some expert virologist, but I would also like a reliable source of information that isn't a podcast.
I'm recommending a podcast guest in the comment section of a podcast, not recommending people get all their information from podcasts.
In fact, TWIV (the podcast) has caused me to read a number of interesting books over the last two years: David Quammen's Breathless (on SARS-COV2), David Quammen's The Chimp and the River (on the origin of HIV), Paul Offit's You Bet Your Life, David Oshinsky's Polio, David Oshinsky's Bellevue, and the host of TWIV, Vincent Raccaniello's textbook Principles of Virology. In addition to this I've been lead to to read any number of academic papers, including from Eddie Holmes. It's been interesting.
I think it's hard to say whether the media landscape is better or worse since the 80's when I started paying attention, but it's real bad, maybe a different kind of horrible.
You are, as far as I can tell, recommending that no one get their information from mainstream news sources, which is a pretty radical claim in and of itself (if not necessarily a bad one).
And on a related note, I also agree with Eric that reading books has become oddly untenable of late. I mean it's great to be able to read a diverse array of primary sources on a subject, but for those of us that don't have time, is it so crazy to think that there ought to be someone that we can trust to do that for us and give us the Cliff's Notes?
You really do misread me. There's no substitute for newspapers, in my opinion. They're both valuable and flawed. I read NYT and FT every day. I don't think it's a good idea to look for a figure you can trust, especially those modern gurus who market themselves as that figure. Look for people that makes sense and also look to see what their critics have to say, see if the criticism has merit also. Some things in life are complicated.
Why isn't anyone asking the government about the ancient aliens residing in the civilization of Agartha at the center of the Earth? This lack of curiousity speaks volumes and is evidence that it must be true and that the goverment is covering it up.
Look, I agree that we need to be intellectually curious, push back against weak narratives coming from authority, analyze the raw data, etc. But his point about no one asking certain questions is nonsense. Reporters can't spend all their time going down every conspiracy theory they encounter.
I also don't understand his point about needing more data about the vaccines. The data is publicly available and has been analyzed by tons of qualified professionals across the world. It's one of the safest and most effective vaccines in human history.
I like listening to someone who is at least trying to grapple with meaningful questions. I do wonder where Eric's own podcast has gone. He is successful in articulating how bizarre the information landscape has become, but he doesn't seem to be that much closer to a solution than anyone else is.
Eric just strikes me as 'off'. I think the best way to explain it is he has such a high opinion of himself and his intellect that any time something comes up counter to his opinion he doesn't 'disagree'... the other person is just 'wrong'. Any criticism of Eric's views or his work aren't just the product of different values or judgements, they must be bad actors or motivated attacks on him personally. He never uses 5 understandable words when 20 overly complicated metaphors will do and he gets so fixated on things that strike me as unimportant except maybe to assuaging his own ego.
Maybe I'm influenced after reading about his 'theory of everything' debacle, but his view of the world seems so skewed I can't take him seriously even though he's incredibly smart and probably has important things to say
E: Yea, he wasn't as bad in the last half of this one as I've seen on other podcasts - but we actually have a lot of information on a lot of the things he was saying we don't - except maybe it wasn't information that supported his theories.
At least the way I interpreted that line of discussion as saying that if the conversation is about a potential nuclear war being decided by a president with dementia, the retort that childhood mortality in sub-Saharan Africa has consistently declined is a completely irrelevant retort.
I'm not sure that if they were directly in dialogue, Steven Pinker would say that. It seems to me all his arguments about progress are direct retorts to a different sort of argument, but maybe I'm giving him too much credit?
Stop, start having the conversations we need to have to be innovative!! Our media is so focused on popular politics rather than reporting on what is changing, speaking to those working on the change and considering the benefits of change. COVID caught our attention, I feel, because so much information was being reported, science, policy change, competing expert views.. etc we were living the change when we should have been executing our plan developed over the time we were discussing the change we all knew was coming. Hopefully we will learn for next time.
It was better by the end. I do agree with his overall "be more curious" mentality, and his goal of getting out there and inhabiting more planets, but yeah, you have to actually explain your positions, not just hide behind hypothetical thought experiments and ominous silences. Josh seemed a little stumped throughout, it wasn't really a conversation so much as Eric grumpy freestyling.
Nice episode Josh. One frustration for me is that Eric claims he is desirous of information but he only engages the abysmal mass media. COVID led me to a show called This Week in Virology (TWIV), with two episodes per week, it gets technical, but it's worth the effort because it exists at the intersection of medical research and real doctors who are treating patients every day.
On the lab leak theory, and I'd say the jury is still out, Eric ought to be engaging the actual researchers, who are genuinely curious people, not what news readers are saying on CNN or BBC.
You must get many suggestions for guests, but let me add one to the list: Eddie Holmes. He's a really engaging speaker and was there at the outset of COVID. Check him out on TWIV here: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-940/. Maybe have him on to discuss the merits of what Eric is saying, some off which is valid while much is (maybe intentionally) ill-informed.
So your position is that it's totally normal that traditional media, social media, government agencies, and large corporations are all in perfect harmony pushing a single unexamined view on a subject of massive significance, because there's one random podcast that is out there providing (allegedly) better information?
I didn't say anything is normal and I don't really follow your question. But in my lifetime US mainstream media has been abysmal when it comes to many things that matter, from foreign policy to economics to health: 80's proxy wars in Central America, Iraq, social security, health care systems, etc. What can you do but read widely and critically?
In the case of SARS-COV2, there happens to be a podcast on which the leading researchers in virology and infectious disease discuss research and clinical work twice a week. I didn't find it by a random selection. Reading led me to it. One of the many interesting discussions I've listened to was Eddie Holmes, who is at Sydney University, where Josh lives, and he was involved in the original sequencing of the virus and his story is interesting, like it would work well on a podcast such as Josh's. It won't be definitive, but it will be far more informative than listening to someone like Eric Weinstein aimlessly asking the same questions over and over.
I'm sure the media has always been bad, but I don't think it was as homogeneous as it is now. And my understanding was that Eric wasn't so much talking about the virus per se as the information landscape surrounding it. I don't follow him on everything, but his notion of a "distributed idea suppression complex" seems so viscerally real in my experience and so pointed in this case.
I would be quite happy to hear Josh interview some expert virologist, but I would also like a reliable source of information that isn't a podcast.
I'm recommending a podcast guest in the comment section of a podcast, not recommending people get all their information from podcasts.
In fact, TWIV (the podcast) has caused me to read a number of interesting books over the last two years: David Quammen's Breathless (on SARS-COV2), David Quammen's The Chimp and the River (on the origin of HIV), Paul Offit's You Bet Your Life, David Oshinsky's Polio, David Oshinsky's Bellevue, and the host of TWIV, Vincent Raccaniello's textbook Principles of Virology. In addition to this I've been lead to to read any number of academic papers, including from Eddie Holmes. It's been interesting.
I think it's hard to say whether the media landscape is better or worse since the 80's when I started paying attention, but it's real bad, maybe a different kind of horrible.
You are, as far as I can tell, recommending that no one get their information from mainstream news sources, which is a pretty radical claim in and of itself (if not necessarily a bad one).
And on a related note, I also agree with Eric that reading books has become oddly untenable of late. I mean it's great to be able to read a diverse array of primary sources on a subject, but for those of us that don't have time, is it so crazy to think that there ought to be someone that we can trust to do that for us and give us the Cliff's Notes?
You really do misread me. There's no substitute for newspapers, in my opinion. They're both valuable and flawed. I read NYT and FT every day. I don't think it's a good idea to look for a figure you can trust, especially those modern gurus who market themselves as that figure. Look for people that makes sense and also look to see what their critics have to say, see if the criticism has merit also. Some things in life are complicated.
Why isn't anyone asking the government about the ancient aliens residing in the civilization of Agartha at the center of the Earth? This lack of curiousity speaks volumes and is evidence that it must be true and that the goverment is covering it up.
Look, I agree that we need to be intellectually curious, push back against weak narratives coming from authority, analyze the raw data, etc. But his point about no one asking certain questions is nonsense. Reporters can't spend all their time going down every conspiracy theory they encounter.
I also don't understand his point about needing more data about the vaccines. The data is publicly available and has been analyzed by tons of qualified professionals across the world. It's one of the safest and most effective vaccines in human history.
I like listening to someone who is at least trying to grapple with meaningful questions. I do wonder where Eric's own podcast has gone. He is successful in articulating how bizarre the information landscape has become, but he doesn't seem to be that much closer to a solution than anyone else is.
Eric just strikes me as 'off'. I think the best way to explain it is he has such a high opinion of himself and his intellect that any time something comes up counter to his opinion he doesn't 'disagree'... the other person is just 'wrong'. Any criticism of Eric's views or his work aren't just the product of different values or judgements, they must be bad actors or motivated attacks on him personally. He never uses 5 understandable words when 20 overly complicated metaphors will do and he gets so fixated on things that strike me as unimportant except maybe to assuaging his own ego.
Maybe I'm influenced after reading about his 'theory of everything' debacle, but his view of the world seems so skewed I can't take him seriously even though he's incredibly smart and probably has important things to say
E: Yea, he wasn't as bad in the last half of this one as I've seen on other podcasts - but we actually have a lot of information on a lot of the things he was saying we don't - except maybe it wasn't information that supported his theories.
“He had no point at all, which is why I refuse to address it”. What a arrogant jerk. Pointless conversation.
Letting a conspiracy theorist spout off with almost zero push back, is not an uncomfortable conversation.
At least the way I interpreted that line of discussion as saying that if the conversation is about a potential nuclear war being decided by a president with dementia, the retort that childhood mortality in sub-Saharan Africa has consistently declined is a completely irrelevant retort.
I'm not sure that if they were directly in dialogue, Steven Pinker would say that. It seems to me all his arguments about progress are direct retorts to a different sort of argument, but maybe I'm giving him too much credit?
Stop, start having the conversations we need to have to be innovative!! Our media is so focused on popular politics rather than reporting on what is changing, speaking to those working on the change and considering the benefits of change. COVID caught our attention, I feel, because so much information was being reported, science, policy change, competing expert views.. etc we were living the change when we should have been executing our plan developed over the time we were discussing the change we all knew was coming. Hopefully we will learn for next time.
Man, what a rough listen. How the mighty have fallen.
At 20 minutes in, I had the urge to shut it off.
It was better by the end. I do agree with his overall "be more curious" mentality, and his goal of getting out there and inhabiting more planets, but yeah, you have to actually explain your positions, not just hide behind hypothetical thought experiments and ominous silences. Josh seemed a little stumped throughout, it wasn't really a conversation so much as Eric grumpy freestyling.