Special: Guru Right to Reply with Robert Wright

7 snips

Jul 31, 2022

Robert Wright returns to clarify his ideas about evolution, teleology, religion, and the mystery of consciousness, sparking a lively debate over whether experience is more than brain activity. The conversation then turns to Ukraine, NATO, Russia, Syria, and competing claims of disinformation, with cognitive empathy and geopolitical loyalties firmly in the crosshairs.

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ANECDOTE

How BloggingHeads Solved Early Video Constraints

Robert Wright described how BloggingHeads.TV worked around limited broadband by having each participant locally record video and splicing them together on a server.
He started this in 2005 before webcams and broadband were common, even giving Jonah Goldberg an early webcam.

ANECDOTE

Candidate Ate On Camera And Warmed Awkward Etiquette

Chris recounts a video interview where a candidate unexpectedly ate on camera, producing a bowl of gurgling food and awkwardness.
The moment highlighted emerging norms and etiquette oddities in early video conferencing.

ADVICE

Use Cognitive Empathy To Predict Not Approve

Do cultivate cognitive empathy to predict others' behavior rather than to agree with them.
Robert Wright argues perspective taking helps avoid catastrophic conflicts and is crucial even without accepting his metaphysical views.

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As per Section 7, paragraph 3, item 2 in the Gurometer Constitution and User Manual states, "All covered gurus shall have a Right to Reply" and Robert Wright has taken us up on this invitation!

Now, this provision is generally intended to allow the poor dears we cover a rejoinder to all the insults, smears, and canards we routinely employ in our 'take-downs'. But our coverage of Bob was almost entirely positive. As Bob says in this episode, "You liked me, you really liked me!". So, this was actually more of an excuse to catch up and tie off a few bows. Bob clarifies a few points on the more speculative frontiers of his worldview, and exactly what he means when he talks about potential teleologies in evolution.

But the warm fuzzies and mutual back-patting in this interview quickly devolve into yet another bitter intra-podcast internecine feud about consciousness and whether it's 'spooky' or not.

Matt accuses Chris of being a p-zombie, which he's done before, but since it's an ad-hominem par excellence, we can all agree it deserves more than one shake of the sauce bottle. Bob does his best to walk (~~Chris)~~ Matt back from the precipice of madness but to no avail. Although we might possibly have failed, once again, to solve the ultimate mystery of the human condition, at least a good waffley time was had by all.

In the original episode, we made only passing reference to our disagreements with Bob over international relations, and Syria in particular. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has happened in the interim, and this has been a big focus of Bob's output since then. So, we have at-it a bit on that, on the benefits and limits of deploying cognitive empathy, and we touch on Grayzone and Bellingcat and who's dis-informing whom.

It's no secret we earnestly disagree with Bob on geopolitics. But it's most definitely one of those topics where decent people can disagree. Since he's a frood who Really Knows Where His Towel is, we always appreciate the chance to talk to him. And who knows, one day Matt and Chris might even be wrong about something!? If so, I'm sure the subreddit will let us know.

Enjoy!

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