How to Spot Lies & Find Truth as Conspiracies Spread on Both Sides | Michael Shermer

0:00If you're a policymaker, you're a politician, and you're sitting there in front of the microphones with all the media, and they go, okay, what should we do on Monday? Do we open the schools or keep them closed? They're not looking for, well, I'd say a 60%. The policymakers, politicians feel the need to say, this is what we absolutely must do. So never sign a zero or 100 % to anything because we're fallible. Who knows? You can read biblical stories and religious literature and find some deeper truths in them. So instead of just saying these are just myths, fake stories, taking a more respectful approach that Democrats are now, they're all a bunch of atheists, seculars, you know, cat ladies, no babies, and we're going to be overrun by Islam.

0:36And even if I'm not a Christian, at least the Christians, you know, understand what Islam is up to. And they even know what a woman is, right? So we have now independent journalists. So that's good. I think many sources checking out stories is good. But I don't trust any one of them either. I think you really need to sample multiple independent journals. What Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, Daryl Cooper are up to, I don't know. I don't know what's worse. They know it's bull**** and they're doing it for clicks and that's the financial model of their podcast. Or they don't know and they've never read much.

1:06How concerned are you that truth will just be lost because we will be inundated with so much counter information constantly that nobody will be able to pill for anything true out of anything?

1:27All right, I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today is the founder of Skeptic Magazine and the author of the new book, Truth, What It Is, How to Find It, and Why It Still Matters. My old friend and Rubin Report returning guest, probably top five Rubin Report guests of all time, at least in appearances, Michael Shermer. How are you, my friend? Nice to see you, Dave. Yeah, we go all the way back to where you had a studio from, who was the, Roseanne Barr's studio. I it's a little known fact that I used to borrow Roseanne Barr's studio outside the airport in Los Angeles was that the that was the first time we ever sat down in person so that was about 2017 but I had had you on the show probably fall of 2015 you were one of the first guests of the show and we go way back so I'm going to ask you the question that I ask you every time we start a show because every time we start a show you have a new book I ask you the same question which is how many books have you written?

2:25And let's see if you even know. Okay. I think this is number 14. I think. Well, see, back in the eighties, I did have a couple of cycling books. I don't count those. You know, how to train and that kind of stuff. And my experience is doing Race Across America as a professional cyclist. But I don't count those. I don't count until Why People Believe Weird Things, my first book in 1997. So what do you consider yourself? If someone said, what is on Michael Shermer's business card? I mean, obviously author, and you've run Skeptic Magazine for years and everything else, and you're an incredible, incredible debater, and we've done some live events together over the years.

3:04But what do you consider yourself really? Like, what would be the tagline under your name? Well, probably writer, editor, researcher. Yeah, I mean, that's the base, basically. So, you know, I'm constantly editing and writing articles for Skeptic, mostly editing articles. And then I'm always working on another book. Like, you know, whenever I'm done, usually what happens is I cut material because the publisher says it's way too long. And I'm like, oh, no, but I love this material. Like, save it for the next book. Like, oh, the next book. Okay. I'm trying to think. The first book of yours that I read, it was when I interviewed the first.

3:37So what book would have come out around 2015? And it was thick. I mean, it was. What was it? Oh, The Moral Arc. Ah, The Moral Arc. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you've been doing this for a long time. First off, I love the title. And when I, you know, just to say truth in the title, how do you even get the title? How could that not have been taken before? Well, one of my Scientific American columns that sort of introduced this topic was called What is Truth Anyway? And then, you know, Pinker's book, Rationality, I thought, yeah, a one-word title. And I've noticed many authors are going to one-word titles now, almost like restaurants are now all one-word titles, names.

4:14So I think that's the trend. And so I thought, well, rationality, yeah, I'm into that, but I want to be different. So truth, you know, sort of the shortened version of what is truth anyway. And that is one of the chapter titles. What is truth anyway? And one of the things that I love about you, and then we'll dive into the book and we'll do some current events and all that, is that you're a great creditor to the people that you get ideas from. I mean, you even did it right there with Pinker. And it's something that I've really tried to incorporate in the show. You know, I know so many people that kind of try to steal ideas or pretend everything popped out of thin air or they came up with it that morning.

4:48And I remember when I sat down, we did the first time you mentioned all of these people and it and it's an homage to them. And it's and it's an honorable thing to do. So let's dive in, Shermer. Truth. Thank you. What is the state of truth in 2026? I suspect not great. Not great. No. I mean, it's not catastrophic. And one reason to write the book is to say let's get back to trust in our institutions and our experts and science and rationality and so on. It's really come under assault because of, I think, mainly because of COVID and the whole pandemic and the inability of professional scientists and public policymakers and politicians to be more Bayesian in how they make suggestions.

5:32But by Bayesian, I mean you assign a probability of something being true with a small t between 1 and 99 percent. So never assign a zero or 100 percent to anything because we're fallible. Who knows? You never know. You could be wrong. So, you know, do masks work or don't they? Does the vaccine stop the spread, slow the spread? What does it do? And so on. And instead of saying, you know, at the moment, we think we should close the schools and have social distancing and wear masks, you know, but we're really and actually not sure. So we're going to recommend this now. And then maybe in a week or two, we'll change our minds.

6:09But they don't say that. They go, OK, here's what the science has settled. Here's what we know. And then, you know, a month later, never mind. Now we're going to go with this. You know, and now we know that by the fall of 2020, let's say everything started shut down in March of 2020. By the fall, it was clear, you know, this is Jay Bhattacharya's Great Barrington Declaration. You know, we really don't need to keep the schools closed anymore. I mean, this virus mainly affects older people, people with pre-existing conditions, obesity, and so on. These kids are going to be fine. You know, but they didn't do that.

6:41And now with the paper trail, it looks like they knew that they didn't need to keep the schools closed, not to mention businesses and so on. I'm in Santa Barbara. They closed the beach day, the beach. I mean, it's sunny and warm and breezy. And it's like, really? I got to sit in my house where it's not warm and sunny and breezy? So what do you think that, where does that come from? Is that hubris on the part of the scientists or does that tell you a little bit more about just what the nature of power is and that when these people were given a certain power over other people, they simply just didn't want to give it up?

7:19I think there's several factors because they wouldn't act that way with other propositions. They'd be more Bayesian and careful and couch their recommendations more cautiously. I think because it was a pandemic and we didn't know, they wanted to err on the precautionary principle just in case. What if it turns out it's more like Ebola or AIDS or something, just super deadly? It didn't turn out to be that way, but they didn't know for sure at the time. But then also, it now looks like the timing, although probably people won't admit to this, but when, you know, they were, it looked like, for example, the teachers' unions were thinking of reopening the schools in the fall of 2020.

7:54And then I think in June or July, Trump said, I want the schools open in the fall. And then immediately the teachers' unions were like, oh, no, in that case. Now, you know, I think really Trump derangement syndrome is, it's a thing. I've seen many of my friends and colleagues, they just cannot think clearly when that word comes into the conversation. And I think there's some of that. And then also, you know, if you're a policymaker, you're a politician, and you're sitting there in front of the microphones with all the media, and they go, okay, what should we do on Monday? Do we open the schools or keep them closed?

8:28And, you know, they're not looking for, well, I'd say a 60%. You know, I think the policymakers, politicians feel the need to say this is what we absolutely must do and we're going to do that. And they wouldn't do that for other things. But I think it's that because, you know, just the circumstances. It's interesting because you said get back to trusting our institutions. And I think so many people have so soured on our institutions that I don't know how many can be gotten back to. You know, obviously what what Bobby Kennedy is doing at HHS and then bringing in Bhattacharya and some of these other people, there's some new faith, I would say, from where I sit.

9:07But I know that there's a lot of people on the other side that now trust those institutions even less. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so it's a very politicized in those circumstances. Jay Bhattacharya, I know him fairly well. And, you know, he's a really good guy and he's not a fringe epidemiologist. epidemiologist. For God's sakes, he's got two PhDs. He's at Stanford University, PhD in economics, PhD in epidemiology. You know, how can you call this guy a fringe? You know, and so that's discouraging on that side. He has made changes within the system. So I think the system still works pretty well. You know, the inside peer review, open peer commentary, and so on.

9:43Talk to your colleagues. But when I say get back, I mean, I guess maybe you're right. Maybe we'll never get back to, you know, Walter Cronkite, this is the way it is. Or 60 Minutes. You know, I've watched 60 Minutes for 40 years every Sunday night. And I don't trust any of them anymore without some fact checking. And I think I'm encouraged that Barry Weiss is, you know, kind of trying to revamp things at CBS, I think, I hope. Well, suddenly, suddenly Variety is doing a hit piece on her, which to me, I was like, oh, that means she must be doing something good, because now Variety is going after her.

10:17Yeah, you know, the new anchor there. This is how it works. You've got to shake things up and start anew. But, you know, no, we'll never go back to the Walter Cronkite because we have now independent journalists. So that's good. I think many sources checking this out, checking out stories is good. But I don't trust any one of them either. I think you really need to sample multiple independent journalists. So how concerned are you that in a world that now offers independent journalists and anyone can open a YouTube channel and, you know, in essence, you can put a desk down and put on a nice jacket and do what I do.

10:56Anyone can do these things. Hopefully they don't do it. I guess if I do it, OK, hopefully not as well as me. But like, but in that world where we all can do this, how concerned are you that truth? And I would like you to define truth, by the way. But how concerned are you that truth will just be lost because we will be inundated with so much counter information constantly that nobody will be able to pill for anything true out of anything? Yeah, I do worry about that. Remember Steve Bannon's line about throwing, just throw shit at the system. I'm Hannah. I've lost 75 pounds in 20 months with GLP-1s, plus diet and exercise.

11:34On Rowe, I've gone from struggling to run a mile to running farther every day. You can access FDA-approved GLP-1s online. Get the support you need to reach your weight loss goals. Go to row.co.weight to see if you qualify. I'm a paid Rowe partner. 20 % average weight loss in one year in non-diabetics with obesity or overweight with a weight-related medical condition versus 3.1 % in placebo arm. Rx only. To stay informed about serious side effects, go to row.co.safety. And people won't know what to believe, and then we'll tell them what the truth is. Yeah. That's not a good solution either. So, well, truth is defined—I define truth as something confirmed to such an extent it would be rational to offer our provisional assent.

12:14That is to say, truth of the small t, provisional, I could change my mind tomorrow. In Bayesian language, my priors, what I know now about something, lead me to a certain level of credence or confidence that it's true, 80 % or 60 % or whatever. But I may change my mind. I mean, so Bayesian reasoning is all about assessing new evidence and when you should change your mind when the evidence changes. And that's an ongoing process that I think, you know, if more of us could adopt that, that would be helpful to evaluate these particular claims. But I worry about like, you know, like the, Just say the Somali fraud cases in Minneapolis.

12:57Apparently this has been known for Minnesota. Been known for a long time. Okay. So why is it that that kid, that 23-year-old Shirley, what's his name? Yeah, Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley. You know, how come it took him to make this a national story? And then when I posted it, you know, people said, oh, we've known about this for years. Like, well, then that's not a good defense. I mean, why didn't you do something about it? Right. How come it takes this kid to do that? So do I trust him? You know, not really, because he's just going door to door. I don't know what he's looking at. I don't know what's actually in that building.

13:30I don't know what he left out. How many places did he go to? And it was a perfectly fine daycare center. We don't know. But I do think something like that is a good trigger. Like, yeah, OK, let's get some more journalists in there. Let's get some more investigators and open up an investigation. The politicians go in and so on, or police even, you know, something that it would trigger that. And, you know, that's just crazy that that's the, you know, environment we live in for journalism now. It's a 23 year old on YouTube. No, he, this kid, I'd met him once or twice before this, and literally with this thing in his pocket, he did more journalism in a day than I think you could argue CNN has done in two decades almost.

14:14so so all right if we have some of individuals that are out there that are looking for the truth on the quest for truth and we have institutions that are rattled at the moment we're in an algorithmic warfare there's ai coming and everything else i mean one of the things that people say to me all the time if i go to the supermarket people say the same thing to me all the time uh dave you're they always say dave you're the only person i trust which i always think is hilarious because it's like man that we're in we're in deep doo-doo if i'm if i'm it You know, I'm trying, but like that it can't be.

14:45So how how do you think in a modern world with this technology we can get out of this? Well, I do think that some of the fact checking sites are good, like PolitiFact and Snopes, Skeptic.com. Also now the new LLMs. So I use Grok and Gemini, but there's others. And I even check multiple ones. I'll just ask a question. How many people actually died from the COVID over and above? Here's the 27 articles that they scraped from the internet, and they're all pretty much the same. So I thought, okay, well, maybe the LLM programs work pretty well. It's not perfect, but at least it's a good fact-checking site there.

15:24One problem is that who has time to do all this for everything? Right, right. I mean, there's like 20 different things that happen in a day. I don't know what I'm looking at. What should I believe? I don't know. Well, I think we're all going to have our own digital assistant that's just basically going to live with us. You know, right now it's our phone, but I think there's going to be something that's just going to be an automatic fact-checking device kind of built into our system. I do that in my car now. I have a Tesla, so I just push the little button and say, you know, hey, what's, hey, Grock, what's the, and then I get an answer.

15:53And then she, it's a female voice, has this conversation, and it's kind of playful. It's actually kind of fun. Except that I keep, so I have a Tesla too. And I, every now and again, she just starts speaking out of nowhere. Like I've somehow accidentally triggered it. And I go, and I go, and I go, are you listening to me right now? She goes, I won't listen if you don't want me to. And I was like, okay, stop listening. And then a minute later I go, are you listening? And she goes, yeah. And I'm like, what? What? One of my longtime buddies was in town and I was driving him around Santa Barbara. And so we started having fun with that.

16:25And then we stopped. And then, you know, he and I are talking about personal stuff that goes back decades, girls and politics and all this stuff. And all of a sudden the voice comes on. Is there anything else? We're like, what? You didn't just hear all that, did you? Well, that's the thing. We're all just so deep in it. So putting aside the technological part, you know, obviously there's a sort of religious version of truth and a secular way to attain truth. You're obviously on the secular side of that. This is something we've discussed many, many times. And one of my favorite episodes of the show that I ever did was sitting down to debate God with you and our friend Dennis Prager.

17:05How do you approach the secular worldview of truth? Do you find it in conflict or in maybe some level companionship with a religious worldview? And how do you constantly grapple with that? Yeah, so I've had some change of heart on some of that relationship with science and religion. In this book, I'm trying out some new things. So science, you know, just standard, as I said, Bayesian reasoning and rationality and the scientific method and, you know, testing hypotheses and the randomized controlled trials and, you know, determining causality from correlation and what you got to do to do that. So I have chapters on that.

17:43But then, to what extent does that apply to some of these bigger, more metaphysical type questions? Does God exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? What was there before the Big Bang? What is consciousness? What about free will? And so, like, let's just take religion. So instead of just saying, these are just myths, false, fake stories, they're not true, it's all bullshit, just don't believe it. I've given up on that. I don't think that works. And I've taken a more respectful approach that, you know, biblical stories, let's say, or any kind of religious literature, is a form of great literature.

18:17And that, just like in great literature, Dostoevsky or Jane Austen or J.R.R. Tolkien's, you know, is there really a Middle Earth that J.R.R. Tolkien writes about? in The Lord of the Rings. What are you talking about? He just made this up. It's a story. Not according to my director, Connor. He loves those little guys with the hairy feet. Where are they? Oh, they're in New Zealand. You know, but to even ask that question is ridiculous. Of course, these are made-up stories, but they carry deeper truths, you know, sort of mythological truths or psychological truths, a little bit along the lines of what Jordan Peterson talks about or who's the great mythologist.

18:58From back in the 80s. Anyway, so that whole thing, I think, says you can read biblical stories and religious literature and find some deeper truths in them. So was Jonah really swallowed by a great fish or a whale and lived three days in there? No, you're missing the point of the story by asking if it really happened. It's a story, an allegory that has other meanings. In this case, the three days is very similar to the three days Jesus in the tomb. So even that, I would say, let's not take that literally. I mean, there was probably somebody, a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus. He probably was crucified.

19:34The Romans did this routinely. And he really was dead. But was he risen from the dead? You know, the evidence is not very good for that. But I think just to ask that, you're missing the point of the story, which has to do with redemption and starting over, being born again, forgiveness, you know, overthrowing your oppressors, in this case the Romans, and so on. And I think I can then engage with religious people in a more respectful, open way and learn something. What do these stories have to do with? Sorry, what caused your shift there? Because, you know, when I first met you, that was sort of at the ascendancy.

20:10Maybe it was the end of the ascendancy of the new atheist movement. and there was a real feeling like what I think a certain set of people liked about it was that it was a little more kind of aggressive atheism and sort of anti-religion. And what some people didn't like was that it was too anti-religious. What caused, you mentioned there was a shift in you here that you're looking at a new way. What was that? Really just engaging with believers and theists and just getting to know them and asking, what is it you believe? Why? Why do you believe these things. And it often had to do with deep personal reasons and deeper truths that they get out of these stories and these accounts and their beliefs that are not meant to be taken literally in a scientific sense.

20:57I'll give you a story where Richard Dawkins and I were on stage with Ken Miller, the great biologist who debunked all the intelligent design creationist arguments. But at the end of his book, he says, you know, I'm a Catholic and I accept Jesus as my Savior, Right. So, you know, Dawkins is sharpening the knives up there on the stage. OK, Ken, you know, and let's say we found a piece of the true cross and on a piece of the true cross is a little bit of flesh. And that's Jesus's flesh. We extract the DNA from that and then we'll find out if he was really, truly born of a virgin or not. You know, and Ken just stops him and says, Richard, I'm not claiming this is true in some scientific sense, like we're going to test the DNA.

21:34I'm a Catholic. This is what we believe. And Richard's like, oh, oh, OK. What do we do with it? Nothing. Okay, so, you know, and then I've gotten to know people like Charles Murray, who's recently found God, and others. Jonathan Rauch has a new respect for religion. And Ross Douthat from the New York Times has, you know, written a book about belief. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali, our friend, you know, she found Jesus. She found God. Okay, so I know the back story there. People find in religion really deep, important truths for them personally. It's a kind of pragmatic truth. And as long as they're not trying to convince me or convert other people, then it doesn't really matter.

22:17It's a different kind of truth than an empirical truth. What has that taught you about the story of powers? Sorry, the power of stories? Because it's interesting. Sort of what you're saying is, okay, there's empirical evidence that can lead us to scientific here and now truth. But in some sense, it needs the memification to scale. And maybe that's why, you know, an atheist movement, which at its best can't really scale because there's not enough imagination to capture people. And that's just part of the human experience. Yeah, there have been attempts over the years to build a, you know, like secular churches in every city.

22:57And there are these secular humanists, organizations that have wedding ceremonies and funerals and coming of age and whatever. you know and they've never really caught on and you know I've been to some of these you know these Sunday morning gatherings where people give testimonies about how they lost God they lost their religion or they they sing hymns to Newton and Darwin you know and it's like ah come on I mean I don't really the coffee is probably decent after I feel like there's probably some good atheist baristas so that you know yes that's right bullet bullet coffee yeah yeah yeah but I so I do think religions have figured out some deeper emotional pragmatic truths about what people need, what society needs.

23:43Whether or not they're literally true is beside the point that, you know, there's this recent movement now of, you know, cultural Christianity. You know, Dawkins himself said, well, I guess I'm a cultural Christian. You know, this is in part in response to the whole Islamic influence in the West now and immigration into Europe. And so people are going, hey, you know what? Those Christians, they had some pretty good ideas. At least they got incorporated with the establishment of Western democracies and free market capitalism and so on. They found ways to make Christianity work really well with that, whereas Islam has never gone through an Enlightenment and come out the other side as a more rational worldview.

24:25So I think by that, People are saying, I know, maybe it's, you know, this story is not true, but, you know, there's value in some of their principles. It's like, OK, all right, I can respect that. Right. And to me, putting aside my own beliefs for a second, that seems like enough of a reason to argue for a loosely, let's say, Christian Western world, because Dawkins himself has basically said he's thrilled to live in a Christian country because he knows that the purely secular version of it, there's no chance in hell they're going to stand up to radical Islam. And actually, ironically, the Christian West may not stand up to it either, which that's a whole other topic, I suppose.