#419 — "More From Sam": Elon vs. Trump, Religion, Jordan Peterson, & Rapid Fire Questions

0:16Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

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0:36Hey, Sam, thanks for coming in so quickly. We recorded an episode yesterday that was about to come out, and we discussed Trump and Musk, and in light of today's events, we decided to jump back in here. So thanks for jumping in so quickly. A few things have happened. So I guess we're going to record an addendum now and then tack that on to the back of the episode that was destined to arrive today. Exactly. Yeah.

1:02okay we're back hey sam how are you hey good to see you good to see you too okay we have a lot to get to today but what's happening well just a quick housekeeping before we do i need to clarify some things many uh this isn't for you this is for the audience many in the audience have already picked up on this but again just to clarify the goal of this series is more from sam on current events more often my job here is to draw more energy out of sam to surface his ideas in a format that's a little looser than the podcast. So the tone will be more casual. If the pacing is faster, that's all intentional.

1:35I'll sometimes play devil's advocate and even exaggerate positions, whatever it takes to keep things moving. None of this is about me. So don't get caught up on what you think my positions actually are. This is your response to some hate mail? Oh, well, this is just to clarify. I think a lot of people, most people got it, but some people were confused. And one of the reasons why we didn't bring on another academic or intellectual is that they would show up with their own agenda. And that's not what we wanted here. We wanted to really push you around. And so this will feel different from the polished conversations and essays that the audience is used to.

2:10Again, that's intentional. And this series is not meant to be a replacement for anything. So all those wanting more science podcasts, those are still happening. It's simply in addition to what we're already doing or what you're already doing, Sam. And lastly, it's a work in progress. So who knows where this still may go? I hope that helps. Well, it is a thankless job. So thank you for it. Well, thank you for making the time for this, because I do think that many in the audience do enjoy hearing more from you. And so we're going to do more of these as long as that is the case. All right. Yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore.

2:42This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. you know it. Any thoughts there, Sam? The first thing I notice is the phrase anymore, right? So like just how long has he been putting up with this stupidity and incompetence that he can now no longer stand? I mean, obviously he's been shilling for this administration to a degree that would be impossible to exaggerate. On his own account, he loves Donald Trump more than any, as much as any straight man can love another man. We'll see how long that lasts.

3:14And Trump was right about everything too. Yeah, Trump was right about everything. He has shown nothing but contempt for anyone who would take the opposite side of that debate to any degree. I mean, I don't know how to interpret his utterances at this point. The man seems so dysregulated. I mean, having watched that press conference last week, or at least long sections of it, something's obviously not right with him psychologically. Right. Well, he had apparently a phone call with Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday, and he said that Elon Musk seemed to understand the virtues of the legislation, and he was very disappointed and surprised to hear him come out, I guess, a couple days later.

3:56Yeah, so I think Elon is capable of surprising a lot of people, it seems. He's one person, one moment, another person, the next. I certainly have experienced that surprise over a longer time course. does it not concern you that he couldn't make a real dent in reducing the debt i mean it looks like trump's new bill could add 2.4 billion to the debt and i mean elon for all his his uh all the stuff you say about him he's obviously quite gifted in in some areas and the fact that he just took a wrecking ball and still ended up i mean just in some accounts adding more to the debt Yeah, I mean, we're going to find out more about what Doge actually accomplished.

4:36I think at this point, it's pretty easy to see that the main thing it accomplished was chaos and the reduction of morale among otherwise well-intentioned and competent people in our government and colossal brand damage for Elon and his companies. right and that that's the main effect yes he found some waste and abuse presumably but i think that the lesson that people are drawing now is that there's not nearly as much fraud or waste or abuse to be found in in government spending as many of us would expect you know elon claimed he was going to find two trillion uh then he knocked that down to one trillion he claims to have found something like 150 or 170 billion i think estimates are that it's much less than that and that perversely all of this chaos may have in fact added cost to the government.

5:28I mean, it's been a disaster and it should be viewed as a disaster. I'm sure right of center, they still imagine great things were accomplished because of the level of lying, frankly, that Elon and Trump perpetrated. They stood before the country and said that millions of people are receiving social security checks and they're 150 years old or otherwise dead. that's just not true, right? They lied about that. Trump said it, I think, in his State of the Union, lying about that. I'm sure Elon is still lying about that. And that sits atop a long list of lies. It's just the truth of the matter, per Matt Iglesias' Substack article this morning, is that Social Security just had some weird practice of keeping lots of void accounts still on the books for some data-keeping, you know, bureaucratic principle that I don't understand, but no one was getting these checks.

6:25And everyone knew over there that no one was getting these checks. And, you know, the Doge team just didn't know how to interpret what they saw there. And they quite recklessly announced to the world that millions of people were getting paid. And that's just, everything you hear about what they were up to suggests a level of callousness and contempt and recklessness that those moods were their guiding principle. And again, it remains to be seen whether the real goal was efficiency and not just the demoralization of the so-called deep state, right? I mean, certainly that has been announced by people like Russell Vogt, that the goal is to have everyone working for the government get up in the morning and feel nothing but depression and terror or something.

7:12you know, that's not the verbatim quote, but pretty close. Like they, just to be afraid to come into work because of how fucking awful their lives are. Do we really want an approach to government that maximizes for that attitude? You know, given this fallout, both of these men are two of the most powerful people in the world and they have massive platforms and they're petulant and they're babies and they're bullies. How do you feel about what could happen between the two of them? I hope they collide appropriately and we get to see in the scattering of controversy, they're true characters at this point.

7:46I mean, I just think our society has to, our culture politically and elsewhere has to lose its patience with failures of integrity and dishonesty. Above all, we should want competence and integrity from the people who purport to be guiding our society towards some end, right? And insofar as people are revealed to be liars and crooks and double dealers and just fatally compromised by their own conflicts of interest, just avaricious lunatics of the sort that we see in Trump and company, his rapacious family that's just grifting on everything that can be put within arm's reach. We should lose our patience for this.

8:29I mean, this is disgusting, right? It's like we have to feel a capacity for moral revulsion over this sort of stuff. This is not normal. This is not much less good. And how we get to the point where we all just vomit in unison, I don't know, but I mean, we have to get there. Yeah. Well, I mean, is it possible that we needed a Trump or a Musk type or both of them in Doge to begin to pop the hood? No. To realize how bad Trump and Musk and Doge are? No, no, no, no, no. To realize, to start taking the debt seriously. I mean, do you really think if Kamala Harris was elected, Do we be doing that? Do you think there'd be an abundance movement without Trump?

9:07I mean, is there some credit that goes there? I mean, it's an interesting question. But I mean, basically, you're saying that any kind of pendulum swing back to sanity can be credited to just how bad things have gotten. Well, OK, but like, do we have to rush toward the cliff in order to finally be safe? I mean, no, I think. No, I'm saying we were rushing toward the cliff. No one was addressing. We're still rushing toward the cliff. We still haven't figured out an appropriate response to the debt. Okay, but the last administration wasn't focused on that. No, and nor is this one, apparently. It's adding trillions.

9:44Well, this one is at least pretending to. No, but it's not even pretending to at this point. That's why Elon can't stand it anymore. Anymore probably means the last 30 seconds, but he can't stand it anymore. This is an abomination, this bill on his account. I'm going to shift gears. Thank you for that. I know you're going on Jordan Peterson's podcast soon, so I don't want to talk about him for a moment. He's been credited for bringing so many people back to Christianity 2.0, more of the, I guess, live and let live Christians versus the 1980s or I guess the 1480s for that matter. I think there are a number of reasons why Jordan has been so effective here and I want to come back to him in a moment, but coinciding with his efforts is a massive loneliness epidemic and it's very real.

10:21Given your concerns with religion and the current inability for any other organizations to recapitulate a communal experience in quite the same way religion has been able to, do you feel differently now about people finding their way back to faith, you know, until AI, as you said, maybe could, you know, dream up something that solves all of these concerns. Isn't religion a better alternative for some people? Well, I don't know. I mean, it might be, I mean, it's, if you caveat it that way, I think I can probably say, yes, it might be a better alternative for some people, but, you know, prison is a good alternative for some people.

10:54I mean, it's just, is it the best alternative for any person? I doubt it, right? I mean, just, you know, Christianity, if we could edit the homophobia out of Christianity, if we could edit the expectation that... But they have. I mean, a lot of new, that's what I'm saying, 2.0. Well, no, no, but like really edit it so that it made absolutely no sense to be homophobic. Like there's no recourse to the teachings that could get you homophobia. Okay. But there are a lot of people that are looking away that these days and just don't pay attention to that. Yeah, that's true. They're ignoring that. So I think there is a new version of it and people who are looking for purpose and community after what so many people have seen social media do.

11:30It's just ripped society apart. And it's also just made people feel so alone, or it's at least contributed, I believe, in a big way. Why not encourage people, as Jordan has, to find faith? And I'm sure there's other reasons there as well. But for purpose and community, I mean, I don't necessarily understand the Catholicism part. It feels very ritualistic. I would imagine people would look for something a little bit more lightweight for their connectivity. but I kind of get why people are doing it. You know, as somebody who was a former practicing Jew, as I've said this before, I really miss community and there's just nothing that's replaced that for me.

12:08Yeah. Well, I mean, I do think that's a void and we need to fill it, but the question is, can we fill it with something better and more reasonable and not intrinsically divisive, not intellectually embarrassing, doesn't require any lies to oneself or to one's children. But I think this new brand of Christianity has minimized those sort of self-lies. But it hasn't really. I mean, listen, it takes me 15 seconds to drill down in a conversation with any Christian to get to the crazy part, right? Well, I mean, you're still going to hell, but I mean, there's still some benefit. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if there is no crazy part, then it really isn't fulfilling.

12:46That's the thing, right? If there's no chewy center of superstition and otherworldliness and expectation of redemption after death, There has to be some magic in there. Otherwise, we're just talking about, you know, who's going to bring the egg salad for the picnic, right? I mean, it's like, can we figure out some other way to picnic? It's not just a tailgate. I mean, you're tailgating for God here. You're tailgating for eternity. And that's what makes it especially meaningful, right? And Jordan doesn't disavow that. I mean, I don't know what I'm going to talk about with Jordan. It's been a very long time since we've spoken, and I haven't really followed all of his, kind of the vagaries of his.

13:23Well, but did you see that clip of him going, well, we're going to talk about that too in a second. Did you see that clip going around with him on the Jubilee podcast episode where... I saw that it exists. I actually didn't watch, I think I saw, maybe I caught part of a clip, but I just decided to not pollute my brain with it in advance of my conversation with him. I just, I mean, I could see that there was some kind of consensus forming online that he had not acquitted himself well in those conversations. But do you not want to talk to him about that? I think it'd be very interesting to talk to him about it because he seemed very evasive there.

13:56I just didn't want to prejudice my—I can't imagine he wants to talk to me about it, right? And I don't know what I can say to him. I mean, listen, I know how Jordan debates atheists because I've debated him. It would be unsurprising to me that if he stuck 20 atheists in a room with him, it wouldn't go very well. It's not like anyone on his side has good answers to the questions atheists pose. There are no good answers, right? I mean, the atheists, religious people are slow to recognize it, but they're standing on just a mountain of non-sequiturs. And they recognize it in other people's faith, right?

14:31I mean, no Christian is convinced by the reasoning of it. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.